Natural Metaphors: Metaphor Resides in Thought as Well as Words/

[coberst]

Natural Metaphors: Metaphor Resides in Thought as Well as Words/

 

A natural metaphor, which is “motivated by the structure of our experience”, consists of two conceptual domains, a source domain is mapped into the target domain. “Metaphor resides in thought not just in words…We have to distinguish metaphorical thought from the language that expresses that thought.”

 

As an example let’s examine the metaphors MORE IS UP and LESS IS DOWN.

 

Gas prices are rising. The cost of crude keeps going up and stocks prices are going down. Bank stocks have fallen and sales dropped last month. The mood of the citizens couldn’t be lower.

 

The source domain in this case is VERTICALITY and the target domain is QUANTITY.

 

The questions to be answered are:

 

1) Why is VERTICALITY appropriate as a source?

2) Why is MORE mapped into UP rather than into DOWN?

 

To function as a source domain the contents of the domain must be independently understandable. VERTICALITY is independently understandable, perhaps because of gravity. When I make corn bread and measure the appropriate amount of milk I recognize the relationship of up and more instinctively; MORE equals UP and LESS equals DOWN. Details of this metaphor make sense because of our basic experience.

 

Let us try the metaphor PURPOSES ARE DESTINATIONS:

 

From childhood we develop an intention of getting from one location to another, we have the purpose of getting from A to B. In this case there exists an identity between the domain of purpose and the physical domain. There is motion from location A to location B motivated by desire.

 

“This pairing in our experience is not metaphorical; it is a special case of achieving a purpose where that involves movement…and is absolutely vital to our everyday functioning in the physical environment.”

 

The SOURCE-PATH-GOAL schema one the most important structures facilitating our daily functioning. It is pervasive in experience, thus well understood, simple, and well demarcated for these reasons. There is an experiential correlation between the source and target domain.

 

“The point of this: Schemas that structure our bodily experience preconceptually have a basic logic. Preconceptual structural correlations in experience motivate metaphors that map that logic into abstract domains. Thus, what has been called abstract reason has a bodily basis in our everyday physical functioning. It is this that allows us to base a theory of meaning and rationality on aspects of bodily functioning.”

 

Quotes from “Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind” by George Lakoff

[Symbology]

George writes great stuff! =)

 

More More! er... Up! Up!

[Donk]

Another couple of Natural Metaphor classes:

 

Black = Bad

As in black-hearted, blackmail, things are looking black, etc. Lately some people have tried to strike these expressions from the language. An exercise in futility, as they have nothing to do with racism - equivalent expressions are found in African languages. Rather, they're rooted in a perfectly natural primitive fear of the dark.

 

Warm = Good

Warm hearted, a warm welcome versus a cool reception, getting the cold shoulder. Some of my earliest memories, back when I was getting a grip on the language, involve puzzling over this metaphor class. I'm one of those people who prefer low temperatures to high. I have a metabolism which quickly converts food into heat rather than fat (source of wifely envy), combined with a thick coat of fur which stops the heat dissipating (not source of wifely envy!). My body was telling me that cold is good and heat bad, while the words I was trying to understand said the opposite.

 

I eventually learned to translate the metaphor, but even now, decades on, I very rarely use it myself, preferring good hearted, hearty welcome and so on.

[Symbology]

Others out of my psych class too.

 

There are supposedly 3 kinds of people, visual, auditory, and tactile. You can generally tell what kind of a person they are by the language that they choose.

Visual metaphors:

"Do you see what I am saying?"

"I see your point"

 

Auditory metaphors:

"Can you hear what I am saying?"

"That rings a bell"

 

Tactile metaphors:

"Do you get what I am saying?"

"I feel ya man"

 

 

You can also ask them to think about the back of their head and then watch their eyes. If they look up, they are visual. If they look side to side towards their ears, they are auditory. If they look down they are tactile. Their memories will often be of that particular type as well.

 

If they look to their left they are remembering what they are thinking. (ie they have seen, heard about, or felt the back of their head). If they look to their right they are creating/imagining what they are thinking.

 

Lairs tend to look to the right when they are fibbing because they are creating what they are saying. Just because someone is creating what they are saying doesn't mean they are lying though. Be sure to take it in context.

[coberst]

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 much of our 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.

[nutronjon]

I am not sure what I am thinking relates to what you have said, but my mind immediately latched on the Greek gods as metaphors. My terminology is not as eloquent as yours, and my thoughts are not as well organized, but more free floating, right brain. I have said the gods are concepts. Each one representing a different concept and way of looking at a problem. I think they are the language of civilization and that we are doing very poorly without them.

 

Every time the Greeks had a new idea, they invented a new god to convey that idea through story telling. I don't see this as so different from talking about the flavors of atomic particles and coming up with new names for atomic particles, every time a new observation is made. I am kind of expecting all these atomic particles to become one, like all the gods became one.

 

I think we associate feelings with god metaphors, and when we invoke a god, we trigger the feeling our mind associates with this god. I once got through a rather challenging situation in the wilderness by invoking Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Surely I do not believe these supernatural beings exist, but by focusing my mind on the qualities of Artemis, I could feel the courage and sense of purpose I associate with Artemis.

 

The colonist and pioneers achieved amazing feats of endurance and courage by focusing on their concept of God and God's will. Washington, very much relied on the effectiveness of faith when he led his troops during the American revolution. Does this come close to that of which you speak?

 

Then to there is William James who in 1899 explained to teachers the importance of habit, to freeing our minds for higher level thinking. If every minute of every day, we are trying to decide what to do, our mental energy and activity is wasted away on these primal thoughts, leaving us little mental energy and time to explore the meaning of being human and to know ourselves.