Muscle memory and metaphor

[coberst]

Muscle memory and metaphor

 

The novice tennis player develops the same success that the infant achieves as it begins the process of learning how to walk. This process is commonly thought of as muscle memory. New born humans and novice tennis players must start with fundamental movements that are repeated many times until such movements can be carried out without conscious effort.

 

The artist learns the same kind of lesson. The painter develops inference patterns that allow the accomplished painter to use that developed craft for creating images in which much of the activity is carried forward without conscious effort thereby leaving the conscious mind completely available for the creative activity of true artistry.

 

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) has discovered what might be metaphorically styled as MMM ‘Metaphor is Muscle Memory’. This linguistic metaphor is not to be comprehended to mean that linguistic metaphor is exactly like muscle memory but that conceptual metaphor carries the same kind of similarity.

 

We might imagine a string of MMMs interconnected with perceptions to form a complete set of inference patterns that guide muscle movement when the tennis player carries out a serve and volley point. A similar set might be imagined that leads an artist through the construction of a landscape painting.

 

SGCS has discovered that this interconnection of real time perceptions coupled with metaphors of passed experiences leads us through all of our thinking actions. One might comprehend all thinking as being an interconnection of conceptual metaphors developed through past experiences.

 

SGCS, 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.”

 

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.

 

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.

[HydrogenBond]

Another way to look at this, is relative to the two brain hemispheres. The right hemisphere is more integrated, while the left hemisphere is more differential. The original learning of the child begins in the right side, while the conflation shifts data into the left for additional differential processing.

 

Metaphors, like symbolism are more right hemisphere. They are not fully rational, but add an intuitive element which tries to approximate the 3-D memory storage of the right side. For example, if I said, someone is as sharp as a tack, this makes no logical sense if taken literally, since there is no place on the body that has the same level of sharpness as a tack. But figuratively, it is bringing together nebulous concepts that don't always display differential boundaries. In spite of that, people can still get the gist of what the metaphor is trying to say. That is because the right hemisphere can process this data and conflate the result into the left. One can not start directly in the left hemisphere or it will appear illogical. But right-left works fine.

 

This brings up the alternative. Can data go left-right and deflate? The answer is yes and can be seen in the creative right hemisphere. For example, the artist can bring a wide range of differential items into a painting and organize all these elements into one integrated scene. Someone trying to copy this art, may need to conflate it from right to left so they can plot out the scheme and address each aspect, independently.

[coberst]

Hydrogen

 

You may have a point but I have never put much value on the left/right brain dichotomy. Are you suggesting a real thing here or just a way of speaking.

[jedaisoul]

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.

This all sounds very credible, indeed obvious. But I'm concerned at the claim about "different mental spaces". Have these spaces beeen mapped in actual experiments? Or are they merely presumed to exist? Is this just another metaphor on top of all the other metaphors? Where is the science???

 

It's an important question, because when scientists make a claim, they have to justify it with physical evidence. If these "Cognitive Scientists" want to justify their claim to scientific status, it is important that they claim only that which they can prove. If they called themselves "Cognitive Philosophers" they would be free to extrapolate their ideas without need to justify them to scientific standards. But they don't.

 

This is not a criticism of you, coberst, but you have repeated these claims here, so it's up to you to defend them.

[coberst]

This all sounds very credible, indeed obvious. But I'm concerned at the claim about "different mental spaces". Have these spaces beeen mapped in actual experiments? Or are they merely presumed to exist? Is this just another metaphor on top of all the other metaphors? Where is the science???

 

It's an important question, because when scientists make a claim, they have to justify it with physical evidence. If these "Cognitive Scientists" want to justify their claim to scientific status, it is important that they claim only that which they can prove. If they called themselves "Cognitive Philosophers" they would be free to extrapolate their ideas without need to justify them to scientific standards. But they don't.

 

This is not a criticism of you, coberst, but you have repeated these claims here, so it's up to you to defend them.

 

Mental spaces is an idealized cognitive model much as the Bohr atom that provides a means for comprehending theory.

 

I have not read any of these source documents that are listed below:

 

The theory of primary metaphors has four parts:

1) Johnson’s theory of conflation—in the early years of childhood the sensorimotor experiences are often conflated with the subjective (nonsensorimotor) experiences and judgments. An example might be when a newborn experiences the warmth of the embrace by its mother and that literal experience becomes conflated with a later subjective experience of affection. That is why our feeling of affection is accompanied by a sense of warmth. “During the early period of conflation, associations are automatically built up between the two domains. Later, during a period of differentiation, children then able to separate out the domains, but the cross-domain associations persist.”

 

2) Grady’s theory of primary metaphor—complex metaphors are like molecular structure with primary metaphors as the atomic elements.

 

3) Narayanan’s neural theory of metaphor—the associations made during conflation “are realized neurally in simultaneous activations that result in permanent neural connections being made across the neural networks that define conceptual domains…that constitute metaphorical entailments.”

 

4) Fauconnier and Turner’s theory of conceptual blending—Distinct separate conceptual domains can be coactivated thereby creating a blending, which creates new and unique conceptual blends.

 

Fauconnier, G “Mappings in Thought and Language”

 

Grady, J “Conceptual Structure, Discourse, and Language”

 

Narayanan, S. Ph.D Dissertation Department of Computer Science University of Calif

[jedaisoul]

Mental spaces is an idealized cognitive model much as the Bohr atom that provides a means for comprehending theory.

Thank you for this frank and clear reply. I appreciate that this discussion is in the philosophy forum, and I'd agree that is where it belongs.

 

I think it has a lot of merit as philosophy/psycology, though it is not as original as it may seem. The idea of our comprehension being built up by association with existing thought models is not new. Jung's idea of archetypes has some similarities. My only concern is when it is referred to as "science". From the sound of it, it has not reached that level yet.

[coberst]

Thank you for this frank and clear reply. I appreciate that this discussion is in the philosophy forum, and I'd agree that is where it belongs.

 

I think it has a lot of merit as philosophy/psycology, though it is not as original as it may seem. The idea of our comprehension being built up by association with existing thought models is not new. Jung's idea of archetypes has some similarities. My only concern is when it is referred to as "science". From the sound of it, it has not reached that level yet.

 

I suspect you are speaking beyond your understanding. It is a science and it challenges the presuppositions of philosophy.

[Symbology]

Muscle memory and metaphor

 

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.

 

...

 

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.

 

 

I would contend that the brain does not go to the effort to copy the network of cells and thousands of interconnections at precisely the same ratio, but instead just strengthens connections between the source network to the target network. It takes several magnitudes less effort and accomplishes the same thing - that if you activate one part of the metaphor, all related concepts are considered in the brain.

 

I like the concept that it may well be one network on the left side of the brain connecting with a partner on the right side of the brain. It has the advantage of getting fuzzified going through the Corpus Callosum area between the two halves. We often take advantage of this compression/decompression in computer Neural Networks to intentionally "generalize" a concept. Basically like taking a sharp picture and storing it as a low res JPG to intentionally blur the colors. Woops... used a metaphor there :doh:

 

My point is that from now on you might consider JPG images whenever "over generalizing" is mentioned - not because your brain made a copy of either of the concepts - but because it made a connection between the two and reuses all the subtleties from the originals.

 

It has the added advantage of "centralized code" in that if you alter your original concept, all the other concepts are also adjusted.

 

The reverse is a nightmare on computer programming, where a rookie programmer has copied code and customized it. Then if a change is made all the copies have to be tracked down and modified in their particular context.

 

If instead a central function is used, it is forced to get resolved correctly, not only for the original change, but also for any other "attached" concepts that may challenge the "validity" of the original (much like I am doing for your original point here). Once a central idea is refined that works for all cases, then it can go forward with greater reliability.

 

Hmm you know what? You may be onto something there. The Guardian archetype from the Meyers-Briggs is the personality type that tends to be the "straight man" in a conceptual joke. (though maybe they might be pretty good at "practical" jokes). They take everything at face value and don't "get" the connections. You are getting me to ponder that maybe their brains do make a new copy of a concept and therefore don't carry forward any changes in the future. Instead they keep a large catalog of "facts" instead of "concepts". Maybe our brains do one or the other based on the general personality temperament.

 

 

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

- Vincent Van Gogh

[coberst]

Symbology

 

Whoo! I love that quote:

 

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

- Vincent Van Gogh

 

This is something that I have been trying to say for months and here it is in such a wonderfully constructed sentence. This is one of the great failings of our educational system. Few of our young people ever learn this wonderful sense of fulfillment and self-confidence that arises from the act of understanding derived from an intellectual effort well done. This is what Carl Sagan meant when he said "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy".

[Boerseun]

Hydrogen

 

You may have a point but I have never put much value on the left/right brain dichotomy.

Unfortunately, the data backs it up. Left-brain trauma causes right-body disabilities, and vice versa.

 

Brain mapping shows definite right-brain activity when busy with spatial actions, and left-brain activity when busy with such endeavours as maths, reading, writing, etc.

 

This is not cast in stone, however, seeing as in left-handed people the situation is reversed. But the principle stays the same, obviously.

 

The reversed symmetry between brain side/function and body actions is so profound and real that in last-line epilepsy surgery where the corpus callossum is cut to prevent synapses to fire between the brain hemispheres, a patient holding an orange in his left hand can't explain what he's holding, until he puts it in his right hand, when he'll immediately tell you he's holding an orange.

 

So, whether you put any value on it or not is immaterial - it's simply how it is.

[coberst]

Boerseum

 

I gather most of my comprehension of the brain from Antonio Damasio's two books, especially "The Feeling of What Happens". I have looked for some info on this matter in that book but cannot find it, are you familiar with the book and if so can you find such info in that book?

[Boerseun]

Boerseum

 

I gather most of my comprehension of the brain from Antonio Damasio's two books, especially "The Feeling of What Happens". I have looked for some info on this matter in that book but cannot find it, are you familiar with the book and if so can you find such info in that book?

Never read the book, unfortunately. Does it deal specifically with brain symmetry, or what's the gist of it?

[coberst]

Never read the book, unfortunately. Does it deal specifically with brain symmetry, or what's the gist of it?

 

I find nothing in the book about brain symmetry.

 

This book is about consciousness and the brain. His views are grounded by clinical research on patients who have suffered brain damage through various strokes and traumatic brain injury. He researches what kinds of injury affects what aspect of human cognition.

[Boerseun]

I find nothing in the book about brain symmetry.

 

This book is about consciousness and the brain. His views are grounded by clinical research on patients who have suffered brain damage through various strokes and traumatic brain injury. He researches what kinds of injury affects what aspect of human cognition.

Surely the issue must feature somewhere in the book, seeing as doctors routinely diagnose the area of brain damage by observing the side of the body affected by strokes.

[coberst]

Surely the issue must feature somewhere in the book, seeing as doctors routinely diagnose the area of brain damage by observing the side of the body affected by strokes.

 

You are probably right but I am unable to find it.