| Author |
Message
|
| coberst |
 Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 4:17 am Post subject: People in power get to construct reality |
 |
|
Forum Senior
Joined: 18 Feb 2007
Posts: 319
|
People in power get to construct reality
President Carter declared that the energy crisis is the “moral equivalent of war” in 1977. This declaration immediately imposed a network of entailments (to impose, involve, or imply as a necessary accompaniment or result). These entailments were such things as “enemy”, “threat to national security”, requiring “setting targets”, “reorganizing priorities”, organizing “strategies”, accepting “sacrifice”, “obeying the Commander in Chief”, etc.
New metaphors, like old tried and true metaphors, can have the power to define reality; thus the conclusion that power can determine reality.
Metaphors create reality through a network of entailments that are coherent and commanding. Metaphors high light some things and push others under the rug. Our acceptance of a metaphor forces us to focus attention only on the aspects of our experience that it illuminates thereby by causing us to view its entailments as being true.
Concerns of truth do arise regarding new metaphors but of most importance are our perceptions and inferences following the metaphor and the actions sanctioned by it.
“In all aspects of life…we define our reality in terms of metaphors and then proceed to act on the basis of the metaphor. We draw inference, set goals, make commitments, and execute plans, all on the basis of how we in part structure our experience, consciously and unconsciously, by means of metaphor.”
Can you give examples of how metaphors have directed action in your life?
Quotes from “Metaphors We Live By” by Lakoff and Johnson |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
| Harold14370 |
| Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 7:49 am Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Professor
Joined: 13 Apr 2007
Posts: 1263
Location: Pennsylvania
|
| Come on, Coberst. You've already writtten about that Lakoff and Johnson book, several times. If you are going to be a self actuated self learner, you are going to have to read more than a couple or three books a year. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| coberst |
| Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 10:30 am Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Senior
Joined: 18 Feb 2007
Posts: 319
|
| Harold14370 wrote: |
| Come on, Coberst. You've already writtten about that Lakoff and Johnson book, several times. If you are going to be a self actuated self learner, you are going to have to read more than a couple or three books a year. |
Who told you that? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Harold14370 |
| Posted: Sat May 03, 2008 11:45 am Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Professor
Joined: 13 Apr 2007
Posts: 1263
Location: Pennsylvania
|
I just deduced that you must not have read any new books, or you would write about them instead of grinding the same axe. There's a metaphor for you - grinding your axe.
Regarding Carter's moral equivalent of war, I don't see where that directed anybody's actions. What was actually accomplished? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Cold Fusion |
| Posted: Sun May 04, 2008 4:42 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Bachelors Degree
Joined: 10 Apr 2007
Posts: 476
Location: In the circuitous haze of my mind
|
I agree that metaphors can greatly alter your life style. Coberst, how would you define these metaphors? A metaphor is something that discretely relates two things without the use of like or as.....this definition can span a very large number of entities in the philosophical world. Such as, the beautiful sunset I saw yesterday could act as a metaphor in my mind, and therefore influence the rest of my day, week, or month, with inconspicuous implications that alter my actions and mind set.
_________________
Forget all that you know, achievements can only be accomplished by starting from nothing and selectively applying facts that are purely objective and absolutely necessary. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| coberst |
| Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 12:13 am Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Senior
Joined: 18 Feb 2007
Posts: 319
|
| Cold Fusion wrote: |
| I agree that metaphors can greatly alter your life style. Coberst, how would you define these metaphors? A metaphor is something that discretely relates two things without the use of like or as.....this definition can span a very large number of entities in the philosophical world. Such as, the beautiful sunset I saw yesterday could act as a metaphor in my mind, and therefore influence the rest of my day, week, or month, with inconspicuous implications that alter my actions and mind set. |
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. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Harold14370 |
| Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 2:53 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Professor
Joined: 13 Apr 2007
Posts: 1263
Location: Pennsylvania
|
| coberst wrote: |
| “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson |
Congrats, Coberst, you did read another book albeit by the same authors.
I started reading some excerpts from Metaphors We Live By here:
http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html
but quit reading when I got to this.
| Quote: |
RATIONAL IS UP; EMOTIONAL IS DOWN
The discussion fell to the emotional level, but I raised it back up to the rational plane. We put our feelings aside and had a high-level intellectual discussion of the matter. He couldn't rise above his emotions.
Physical and cultural basis: In our culture people view themselves as being in control over animals, plants, and their physical environment, and it is their unique ability to reason that places human beings above other animals and gives them this control. CONTROL IS UP thus provides a basis for MAN IS UP and therefore RATIONAL IS UP. |
Uh, Doc Lakoff, did you forget about "Get your head out of the clouds" and "Come back down to earth"?
My impression of the book is that it looks like pseudoscience or pop psychology. The idea that language controls our thinking is not exactly new. One could almost say it's a cliche'. I can't really see where the metaphor angle adds much new to the discussion. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Pong |
| Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 11:19 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Forum Senior
Joined: 08 Apr 2008
Posts: 358
|
The message is constrained by the media. In this case, all one may express is textual, English language. Well, there's poetry, but I hate poetry. Smiley time:
I should paint a refutation. Or cook one for supper.
*sigh* |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
