Metaphor: Unconscious Catalyst of Thought
Many years ago while rummaging in a used book store I decided to buy “Human Evolution Coloring Book, I wanted to learn more about evolution. I learned all about how the hand evolved from the fin—or was it the gills—of fish. I looked in vain for a description of how my reasoning ability evolved from the fish.
“Philosophy in The Flesh by George Lakoff, linguist, and Mark Johnson, philosopher, that I discovered at my local community college library several months ago finally helped me understand this, which since Darwin must be an obvious connection.
Darwin’s theory declares that human capacity grows out of animal capacity but until I discovered this book PTF no one had given me any idea how this is possible. I studied a little philosophy but it never made much sense to me how pure reason with a dichotomy of mind and body could be inherited from tadpoles.
In the last three decades linguists, neuroscientists, philosophers, and others utilizing the scientific method of empirical study have organized a new cognitive theory that is described in this book. These ‘cognitive scientists’ from many differing domains of knowledge speak of themselves as experimentalists. The theory might properly be called the embodied mind. I think that this theory will one day become the only functional paradigm of a new cognitive science.
We normally think of metaphors as merely linguistic means to associate an unknown with a known. ‘Understand is grasp’ is one common metaphor ‘more is up’ is another. The woods are full of such common metaphors and these metaphors are much more than meet the uninitiated eye.
Metaphor theory claims that almost all cognitive action, more than 95%, takes place unconsciously. Metaphors, as we commonly know them, are conscious phenomena but metaphors are more importantly unconscious happenings in tadpoles and in humans. All creatures with neural capacity categorize, conceptualize, and infer; the principal characteristics of reasoning. Here, in metaphors, we see how human reason is connected to tadpole existence.
A standard technique for checking out new ideas is to create computer models of the idea and subject that model to simulated conditions to determine if the model behaves as does the reality. Such modeling techniques are used constantly in projecting behavior of meteorological parameters.
Neural computer models have shown that the types of operations required to perceive and move in space require the very same type of capability associated with reasoning. That is, neural models capable of doing all of the things that a body must be able to do when perceiving and moving can also perform the same kinds of actions associated with reasoning, i.e. inferring, categorizing, and conceiving.
Throughout our life we constantly make judgments about such abstract matters as difference, importance, difficulty, and morality, and we have subjective experiences such as affection, desire, love, intimacy and achievement. Cognitive science claims that the manner in which we conceptualize and reason about these matters are determined, to one extinct or another, by sensorimotor domains of experience. CS claims that, in many cases, early experiences of normal mundane manipulations of objects become the prototypes from which these later concrete and abstract judgments are made.
“When we conceptualize understanding an idea (subjective experience) in terms of grasping an object (sensorimotor experience) and failing to understand an idea as having it go right by us or over our heads we are using a sensorimotor experience as the metaphor for the subjective experience. The metaphor ‘understand is grasp’ results from our conflating a sensorimotor happening with a later subjective experience.
Metaphor is a standard means we have of understanding an unknown by association with a known. When we analyze the metaphor ‘bad is stinky’ we will find: we are making a subjective judgment wherein the olfactory sensation becomes the source of the judgment. ‘This movie stinks’ is a subjective judgment and it is made in this manner because a sensorimotor experience is the structure for making this judgment.
Why is the premise “A straight line is the shortest distance between two points self-evident. It is because this is one of the first things an infant learns and it is verified and reinforced constantly throughout life by our sensorimotor experiences. The metaphor ‘more is up’ is not so pervasive in our experience but its rationale is similar.
If we recognize metaphor as a means to associate something new with something old, something known with something unknown, we can begin to understand what CS is proposing in this revolutionary theory. CS is presenting a theory based upon empirical evidence gathered by the combined effort of linguists, philosophers, and neural physicists that metaphor is a very necessary element of our ability to reason as we do.
We normally think of metaphor as a tool of language whereby one can enlighten another by making an association of an unknown with a known. CS is making a much more radical use of metaphor.
CS is claiming that the neural structure of sensorimotor experience is mapped onto the mental space for another experience that is not sensorimotor but subjective and that this neural mapping, which is unconscious and automatic, serves as part of the “DNA of the subjective experience. The sensorimotor experience serves the role of an axiom for the subjective experience.
Metaphor: Unconscious Catalyst of Thought
Metaphor: Unconscious Catalyst of Thought
Devonin;1082680 wrote: http://www.forumgarden.com/forums/philo ... post233300
"Container schemas have a logic that is very much like Boolean logic--a logic that appears to arise from the structure of part of our visual and imaging system¦It can be used both for structuring space and for the more abstract reason...What Boole proposed, from a cognitive perspective, was a historic metaphor that allowed one to conceptualize classes as having an algebraic structure...In cognitive terms, he constructed a linking metaphor between arithmetic and classes, mapping numbers to classes, arithmetic operations to class operations, and arithmetic laws to "laws of thought".
Quotes from "Where Mathematics Comes From" by Lakoff and Nunez
See Venn Diagrams at:
Venn diagram - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Container schemas have a logic that is very much like Boolean logic--a logic that appears to arise from the structure of part of our visual and imaging system¦It can be used both for structuring space and for the more abstract reason...What Boole proposed, from a cognitive perspective, was a historic metaphor that allowed one to conceptualize classes as having an algebraic structure...In cognitive terms, he constructed a linking metaphor between arithmetic and classes, mapping numbers to classes, arithmetic operations to class operations, and arithmetic laws to "laws of thought".
Quotes from "Where Mathematics Comes From" by Lakoff and Nunez
See Venn Diagrams at:
Venn diagram - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Metaphor: Unconscious Catalyst of Thought
Why did you quote my post in that response?
Metaphor: Unconscious Catalyst of Thought
Devonin;1084008 wrote: Why did you quote my post in that response?
Seemed like the polite thing to do.
Seemed like the polite thing to do.
Metaphor: Unconscious Catalyst of Thought
jimbo;1084324 wrote: although i never reply i read all your posts with great interests ... please keep them coming .... james... jim... jimbo
Thanks jimbo, I needed that!
I have often wondered about what might distinguish the average non responder with the standard responder. Does the responder represent a random sample of all viewers or does the responder represent a very small percentage of viewers?
It appears that on average about 3 to 4% of viewers are responders.
Do you have any thoughts on this matter?
Thanks jimbo, I needed that!
I have often wondered about what might distinguish the average non responder with the standard responder. Does the responder represent a random sample of all viewers or does the responder represent a very small percentage of viewers?
It appears that on average about 3 to 4% of viewers are responders.
Do you have any thoughts on this matter?
Metaphor: Unconscious Catalyst of Thought
coberst;1084315 wrote: Seemed like the polite thing to do.
It's polite to quote my post when posting something that has absolutely nothing to do with the you quoted? How is that polite? Just seems daft to me.
Or did you just not notice that I posted a link?
It's polite to quote my post when posting something that has absolutely nothing to do with the you quoted? How is that polite? Just seems daft to me.
Or did you just not notice that I posted a link?
Metaphor: Unconscious Catalyst of Thought
Devonin;1085190 wrote: It's polite to quote my post when posting something that has absolutely nothing to do with the you quoted? How is that polite? Just seems daft to me.
Or did you just not notice that I posted a link?
Your motivations are often a mystery to me and this is one of those mysteries.
Or did you just not notice that I posted a link?
Your motivations are often a mystery to me and this is one of those mysteries.
Metaphor: Unconscious Catalyst of Thought
If you don't understand the significance of my pointing out to you that once again you posted a new thread that was word-for-word identical from something else you had already posted, you might want to get your short-term memory examined.