Metaphorically thinking

Metaphorically thinking

We commonly think of metaphor as something like analogy. We are trying to explain something to someone and we say this something new is very much like this other something you are familiar with.

This is one form of metaphor but there is another metaphor that is automatic and unconscious. The child playing with objects has an experience of collecting objects in a pile. This experience results in a neurological network that we might identify as grouping. This neurological structure that contains some sort of logic related to this activity serves as a primary metaphor.

The child has various experiences resulting from playing with objects. These experiences result in mental spaces with neural structures that contain the logic resulting from the experience. When the child then begins to count perhaps on her fingers these mental spaces containing the experiences automatically map to a new mental space and become the logic and inference patterns to make it possible for the child to count because counting contains similar operations.

Primary metaphors are the contents of mental spaces developed in experience and the contents then pass to another mental space to become the bases for a new concept. The contents of space A is mapped to space B to then be the foundation for the new concept at space B. This mapping is automatic and unconscious.

Many years ago, before ‘self-service’, it was common to pull into a gas station and when the attendant came to the car the motorist would say “Fillerup”.

“More is up” is a common metaphor. I think of it every time I pour milk into a measuring cup when baking cornbread. The subjective judgment is quantity, the sensorimotor domain is vertical orientation, and the primary experience is the rise and fall of vertical levels as fluid is added or subtracted and objects are piled on top of or removed from a collection.

We can see (know is see) by this mechanism that we equate vertical motion in the spatial domain with quantity; we use the vertical domain to reason about quantity. We have a vast experience in vertical space domain reasoning and thus we derive this great experience to help us in reasoning about quantity; no doubt a very useful thing when first learning arithmetic. Teachers of mathematics, I suspect, depend upon this storehouse of knowledge to make abstract mathematical reasoning for children more comprehensible.

In a metaphor the source domain, ‘up’, is mapped onto the target domain ‘more’. The neural structure of the sensorimotor domain, the primary metaphor, is mapped onto the subjective domain ‘more’. Reasoning about the vertical motion in the spatial domain is mapped onto reasoning about the quantity domain. This is a one-way movement; reasoning about quantity is not mapped onto spatial domain reasoning. The direction of inference indicates which the source is and which the target domain is.

Physical experiences of all kinds lead to conceptual metaphors from which perhaps hundreds of ‘primary metaphors’, which are neural structures resulting from sensorimotor experiences, are created. These primary metaphors provide the ‘seed bed’ for the judgments and subjective experiences in life. “Conceptual metaphor is pervasive in both thought and language. It is hard to think of a common subjective experience that is not conventionally conceptualized in terms of metaphor.”

Cognitive science informs us that “Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical”. Can you think of an abstract concept that can be described without metaphor?

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”—Lakoff and Johnson

The new paradigm for cognitive science that is described in the book “Philosophy in the Flesh” is called ‘conceptual metaphor’. This theory stipulates that as I have an experience I create mental structures that allow me to draw inferences regarding that experience. These mental structures consist of neuron structures that we call concepts. This is all done unconsciously and automatically.

The infant when first held by the mother feels warmth and security. In the infant’s brain a structure develops regarding this experience. Likewise each time it happens this structure is strengthened.

At some time in the future the infant constructs another concept that is strictly subjective, i.e. not based on a literal experience, and we shall call this concept affection.

Automatically and unconsciously the mental structure of the warmth and security experience is copied onto that mental space we have called affection. From that time on the concept ‘affection’ contains the experienced structure of warmth and security and that is why we feel affection to be warm and secure.

We might think of this process as going to a file cabinet in which all of our concepts are contained and automatically the file containing the warmth and security experience is copied and then added to the file containing a new subjective concept called affection.

You should look into “Metaphors We Live By” by Lakeoff and Johnson - a wonderfully insightful book that goes into depth on how metaphor forcefully strings thought processing, diction, and physical action together in such perverse, confining ways.

Metaphor is using one thing to represent another by definition, but we take it far beyond that, actually using metaphor to define the way we understand different concepts.

Example: The way “argument” is understood is partially structured, understood and acted out in terms of war.

People can win and lose arguments.
You Shoot down or attack another person’s arguments.
You can abandon, and take a new line of attack.

I think it’s virtually impossible for us to describe abstract concepts without the use of metaphor to some extent because it’s our conventional way of communicating and worse, living. This cannot be eliminated. More importantly, words in the English language don’t even exist to allow for deviance from metaphor use anyway.

In other words, we are already at rock bottom - because the use of metaphor to communicate isn’t poetical or rhetorical, this is how we literally understand and communicate with eachother. Metaphor is meaning at its finest. You could try to eliminate the use of metaphorical concepts but the ‘real’ message would never be completely conveyed:

Instead of saying I fell asleep, you could say I began to sleep, but the meaning of the first phrase isn’t fully transfered into the second. You need the orientational metaphorical concept of “fell” to solidify the phrase.

Thanks for adding that bit of insight. So few people have any knowledge of the importance of metaphor. It is valuable to communicate such understanding to the population at large. So few people read anything but trivia and these Internet forums are ideal ways for awakening people to important ideas. Keep it up.

Johnson has written another very important book “Moral Imagination”. You might enjoy that book also.

I think that it would be good for you and for everyone if you were to communicate to others via these Internet forums what you have learned about all these important things that Johnsonhas taught you. You could expand on that after you study this other book.

I think that we all must assign our self with the task of helping others to become conscious of important ideas.

Wow, being taught from the root source!
I agree with this being a brilliant angle for tackling semiotics and philosophy of language. Johnson is definitely before his time, I’d say. Hm…I’m not sure how widespread his philosophical perspectives are, I’m curious now though…

Metaphors are essential in intellectual discussions, as long as they don’t get bogged down in hyperbole. Sometimes they are bulwarks in cogent thought. They can be considered as tools of the trade for philosophic debate just like a carpenter’s tool hod. Authors would be in a sad state of affairs without the use comparative descriptions. Plus, going beyond a 3rd grade form of communication helps transform mundane delineations.

The words used for Metaphors must be properly conceptualized as well, or else you mind as well be presenting crude incomplete concepts that lack substance. I like concrete words when I am reading but I am not the bext at expressing myself through words since I think primarily visually and it is a struggle to properly conceptualize what I am thinking and converting it from the visual form to the verbal form.

I aver to that statement. There was one person in which I tried to have a discussion with in another discussion board who swam in metaphorical hyperboles. His tedious inane attempt to get his point across made me lose interest in what he was writing. I tried to constructively make this known to him, but he said ‘life is a party to him’ while his Op friends trashed me after I had posted to him. Needless to say, I never posted in that room again. Words are like brush strokes. In the hands of a seasoned artist, the painting conveys a beautiful rendition of reflection. Knowing how to wield words infuses attentiveness for the beholder.

He coauthored the book “Philosophy in the Flesh” with George Lakoff. This is the source book for Johnson’s ideas.

Metaphor is even more important than you suggest. The book “Philosophy in the Flesh” proposes the hypothesis that the brain automatically copies and pasts from one concept to another and this is called the conceptual metaphor.

Cognitive science: a new paradigm?

Cognitive science, as delineated in “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson, presents a new paradigm for cognitive science. This new paradigm might be called the “conceptual metaphor” paradigm. The theory is that experiences form into concepts and some of these concepts are called “primary metaphors”. These ‘primary metaphors’ are often unconsciously mapped from the originating mental space onto another mental space that is a subjective concept, i.e. abstract concept.

Physical experiences of all kinds lead to conceptual metaphors from which perhaps hundreds of ‘primary metaphors’, which are neural structures resulting from sensorimotor experiences, are created. These primary metaphors provide the ‘seed bed’ for the judgments and subjective experiences in life. “Conceptual metaphor is pervasive in both thought and language.” It is hard to think of a common subjective experience that is not conventionally conceptualized in terms of metaphor.

Metaphors can kill and metaphors can heal. Metaphor can be a neural structure that provides a conscious means for comprehending an unknown and metaphor can be a neural structure that is unconsciously mapped (to be located) from one mental space onto another mental space. There is empirical evidence to justify the hypothesis that the brain will, in many circumstances, copy the neural structure from one mental space onto another mental space.

Linguistic metaphors are learning aids. We constantly communicate our meaning by using linguistic metaphors; we use something already known to communicate the meaning of something unknown. Many metaphors, labeled as primary metaphors by cognitive science, are widespread throughout many languages. These widespread metaphors are not innate; they are learned. “There appear to be at least several hundred such widespread, and perhaps universal, metaphors.”

Primary metaphors have this widespread characteristic because they are products of our common biology. Primary metaphors are embodied; they result from human experience, they “are part of the cognitive unconscious.”

[b]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 that 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.

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 becomes part of the subjective concept. The sensorimotor experience serves the role of an axiom for the subjective experience.[/b]

Physical experiences of all kinds lead to conceptual metaphors from which perhaps hundreds of ‘primary metaphors’, which are neural structures resulting from sensorimotor experiences, are created. These primary metaphors provide the ‘seed bed’ for the judgments and subjective experiences in life. “Conceptual metaphor is pervasive in both thought and language. It is hard to think of a common subjective experience that is not conventionally conceptualized in terms of metaphor.”

The neural network created by the sensorimotor function when an infant is embraced becomes a segment of the neural network when that infant creates the subjective experience of affection. Thus—affection is warmth.

An infant is born and when embraced for the first time by its mother the infant experiences the sensation of warmth. In succeeding experiences the warmth is felt along with other sensations.

Empirical data verifies that there often happens a conflation of this sensation experience together with the development of a subjective (abstract) concept we can call affection. With each similar experience the infant fortifies both the sensation experience and the affection experience and a little later this conflation aspect ends and the child has these two concepts in different mental spaces.

This conflation leads us to readily recognize the metaphor ‘affection is warmth’.

Cognitive science hypothesizes that conceptual metaphors resulting from conflation emerges in two stages: during the conflation stage two distinct but coactive domains are established that remain separate for only a short while at which time they lose their coactive characteristic and become differentiated into metaphorical source and target.

I find that this ‘conceptual metaphor’ paradigm is a great means for comprehending the human condition. But, like me, you will have to study the matter for a long time before you will be able to make a judgment as to its value. This book “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson, from which I derived these ideas and quotes, is filled with ideas that are new to the reader and thus studying it will require a good bit of perseverance.

Have you ever, before reading this post, thought that the brain unconsciously copies the neural structure from one mental space onto another mental space? Those who find this idea compelling will discover, in this new cognitive science paradigm, a completely new way of thinking about philosophy and human nature.

This new cognitive science paradigm is the best thing to happen to philosophy since Thales! How about them apples?

The brain creates a network of neurons that represent the concept. When we have an experience such as eating an apple the brain creates a neural structure and that structure is contained somewhere in the brain it has its 'mental space. The concepts created make it possible for the brain to draw inferences about that structure. Concepts are contained in mental spaces.

When the infant has the experience of warmth and security when held that mental space contains this neuron network and the brain will under certain circumstances map that same structure onto another concept and thus that other concept contains this copied structure. It is a complex hypothesis that can only be understood with some effort. I took me many months to get the idea.

The revolutionary hypothesis proposed in this book “Philosophy in the Flesh” is beyond anything that we have thought about before. This theory is backed by much empirical evidence developed by groups of linguists, cognitive scientists, neurobiological scientists, and others. These sciences have been putting this together since the early 70s.

The heart of this theory is that the brain maps (copies and pasts) from one conceptual structure onto another. Thus when we feel that affection is a warm and fuzzy feeling it is because the conceptual structure that makes it possible for us to draw logical inferences about a concept has been copied from one structure and placed into another conceptual structure. The brain is automatically doing an inside the brain metaphor for us.

Very nice. But a hint of injustice lingers in these statements – It’s important to note that not all people are seasoned artists, and that most people never will be. In fact most of us, (probably similar to the fellow you met in that chat room,) are struggling to understand abstract thoughts for themselves through metaphor by force, for the sake of understanding and being understood by others - which is no easy feat if it doesn’t come ‘naturally’.

Doubling the bias, people who aren’t naturally inclined towards graceful discourse also struggle to convey their shaky, metaphorically construed thoughts articulately, or as best as they can, through language - which arguably is all metaphorical anyway - vicious cycle. This makes the chances of effectively reflecting thoughts very slim for many.

This process will never change because it’s the only way we know/accept understanding in our society, through language and metaphor.

(Example: Try walking into a final exam and performing an interpretive dance for your professor to express your thoughts instead of sitting down to write a metaphorically infused essay you hardly understand yourself. FAIL. Even if you do depict the tone better through the latter method.)

In clearer terms, language simply isn’t for everyone, and it never will be, but no one cares.

So, in my opinion, no one is really at fault for the hyperbolic use of metaphor, in a sense, it can hardly even be looked down upon because it’s our faults’ as a collective of language users. We’ve made it the standard, knowing that not everyone should have to, or can keep up. I think the exaggeration of metaphor by certain individuals is a byproduct of the metaphor’s uncompromising grip on language and understanding. Maybe it’s outcry, who knows!! Sorry to romanticize.
(Oh, and this of course, all applies only if someone is using hyperbolic metaphors literally, not in a joking manner.)

Nods humbly