Hi David, and all. I am taking the liberty of creating a new thread on metaphor, and moving the last four messages from "Introduction" to this thread, to keep topics separate. It seems likely we will continue to discuss this subject, so it made sense to give it its own thread.

Nora

Linguist Georga Lakoff & Philosopher Mark Johnson have pretty clearly established that metaphors play a significant part in our use of language.

There are some URLS below.

The, to me, interesting aspect of their theories is that they show that metaphors are *mappings* from a source *conceptual-domain* onto another target domain, and which preserve the *structure* of the source domain.

It is also interesting to note that such metaphors are almost invariably, (at least so far as I have seen), mappings of *intensionally defined* domains onto *extensionally* defined domains which give us, in some sense, more clearly defined 'handles' to the *intensional* domains.

Somehow, I can't help but feel that this theory has a place within the GS framework, but I am struggling at present to determine just how it fits.

One very obvious question is, "What, precisely, is a 'domain' and how does it fit"?

Obviously, both domains of the metaphors are being represented at the verbal level, but it would seem to me to be necessary that they would also be
represented in the non-verbal level in order for the relationship of the structures of the two domains to be recognized.

What do you think?

http://cogsci.berkeley.edu/lakoff/metaphors/
http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html
http://cogsci.berkeley.edu/lakoff/MetaphorHome.htm l

These are just a few of the URLS. Google has a large number of them.

They have published several books on the subject and including some applications of the theory to political happenings in recent years.

Disclaimer: I do *not* claim any preference 'for' or 'against' their political viewpoints.

David Wright Sr.

Ah Ha. I see that I am not the first to think of Lakoff and Metaphors within a GS framework. I just came across Nora Miller's article "THINKING INSIDE THE FRAME" in Volume 62 Number 2 of ETC.

Thanks Nora. I will be digesting your thoughts on the subject as the next few days roll by.

David W.

Hi David. Glad you found the article. I had just finished "Don't Think of an Elephant" at that point and found his ideas pretty relevant and meaningful.

I believe Lakoff and Johnson's tour de force on this is Philosophy in the Flesh, which I hope to read in the coming months (after I get my copy back from my son!).

As I understand it, this book brings all their previous thinking into focus, identifying the fact that we *have* or *are* bodies as the source for our most effective metaphors. Our brains have a frame of reference for eating, so we can apply eating metaphors to other concepts and use all the brain's wired-in associations to make the concept understandable.

So a "domain," I think, means "the set of information and associations relating to a concept"--like eating, which has wires running to food categories, methods of consumption and preparation, flavors and aromas, health and illness, etc, etc. When we apply any part of the eating "domain" to an unrelated concept, like, say, thinking, we can call on all the associated items to "flesh out" the metaphor.

Hence, "food for thought" and an idea that "sticks in your craw" and a proposal you can "sink your teeth into", etc etc. The more of the original domain that we can map to the metaphorical domain, the better the fit--or maybe that should read the other way 'round, I don't know.

For GS purposes, these ideas give us both a framework for explaining how our language conditions our perceptions (by creating a "domain" within which we operate without full conscious awareness), and a signpost indicating where we should look for pitfalls and abstraction confusions.

Best,
Nora

So, do you think that 'domains' are to be found in the 'object' level or only in the 'verbal' levels? That's where I seem to be having problems in grasping the concept. (Look Ma, another metaphor!) It would seem to me that they would have to exist at the 'object' level in order for the correlation between the source and target domains to 'come out' at the 'verbal level'. Does any of this make sense to you?

Thanks for your comments

David

David said:

"So, do you think that 'domains' are to be found in the 'object' level or only in the 'verbal' levels?"

Well, good question. Not having read the book, I can't say for sure, but, I guess I would say, yeah, and no.

I think the substance for domains exists on the object level--bodies and food, eg. And I think Lakoff postulates that *because* we "are" bodies, we perceive/conceive domains on the object level in a certain way. A body that has an exoskeleton, for example, would have an entirely different "domain" concerning skin, and therefore a different set of metaphors to use verbally.

It occurs to me to wonder if an aspect of elementalism exists regarding the terms "object" and "verbal". I mean, I understand that the word *is not* the thing. But in terms of perceiving/conceiving, can we validly separate one from the other? Never occurred to me before.

Nora

Thanks Nora.

I have been looking over the list of metaphors on Berkeley's website[1] and I have found that my earlier observation that metaphors appeared to be mappings from 'extensionally' defined domains to 'intensionally' defined ones is not correct, and a lot of them do not relate to any bodily relationships that I can determine.

However, I still think that 'domains' exist on the non-verbal level. The question then becomes how do they get there since they are not in any received through the senses. What occurred to me is that this happens because of the link from the higher levels as demonstrated in the Structural Differential. As I understand it, things defined at the higher levels can become part of the non-verbal level.

[1]http://cogsci.berkeley.edu/lakoff/MetaphorHome.htm l

David

I should modify my last post slightly. While *many* metaphors are not 'extensionally' defined, there are, indeed, many which are.

David

Well, surely *some* metaphors qualify as second-order metaphors, or higher. In fact, if you browse that list on the Berkeley site, you can see that.

For example, the metaphor "Maintaining A Belief Is Loving A Partner" comes from the domain "Beliefs Are Love Objects" which relates to "Love Is A Unity (of Two Complementary Parts)".

I believe if you pursue the last one further, you come to the object level, where because our bodies experience certain physical phenomena in proximity to other bodies, we have a set of concepts that we verbalize as "love". Here again, we bump into the difficult line between the sensed and the spoken. How much of the "oneness" one feels with a loved one is object level and how much verbal?

I'm reading Anatol Rapoport's 1950 book entitled Science & The Goals of Man and it's really helping to clarify some of the basic concepts for me in g.s. Today, it helped clarify "language" for me, in a way I think Korzybski did as well only I had forgotten.

I'm posting about this on this thread because of the question of what constitutes a domain.

It seems to me that the term "domain" (given the information I've read in this thread, not in Lakoff) extensionally refers to what we typically call "experience," or "something(s) in experience," or roughly "something(s) in reality." Experience corresponds on the Structural Differential to the parabola; a domain probably corresponds to the object level, or maybe just the 'strings' coming from the parabola.

In particular, "domain" refers to the map of that experience, meaning those 'elements' of the experience you abstracted and not those 'elements' left behind. Those 'elements' left behind would be supposedly "outside the domain" to you. Obviously, such is an elementalistic, man-made split, not one occuring in nature, as 'all' of the 'elements' of that experience have a non-elementalistic relationship. You 'take' them out mentally, though they stay together in experience.

This map that you've made then gets encoded into symbols of a certain familiarity to others for communication of your experience. We call those symbols "language." Language is thought to be the means by which we communicate experience(s).

Experiences happen, then words describe them. A word is extensionally defined if it has an experience to which it refers. If we define a word without using a referential experience, and instead just use other words to define that word, we've merely intensionally defined that word.

So, if the experience happens, then we come up with words that extensionally 'match,' we communicate fairly literally. But if that method of communication fails (say, I saw an Xsdfsf, and I call an Xsdfsf an "Xsdfsf," and said to you "I saw an Xsdfsf," and you had never heard that word in your life, the communication of my experience fails), the benefit of a metaphor may aid your understanding my experience.

To build that metaphor, we take the experience we've abstracted--the "domain" I described above--and we abstract details from it again, to see if there is something it resembles that you might be familiar with (because calling it what it 'is' transmits no experience to you). The hope is that once I transmit an experience similar to the experience I have of the Xsdfsf (say that it's "like a skunk"), I can then communicate other experiences to you to 'shape' that experience in your head to be one very close to my experience of the Xsdfsf that I just saw ("like a skunk, but green, and drinks Pabst").

This being said, it doesn't seem to me, at least by the example I'm providing, that a metaphor is absolutely a mapping of an intensionally defined domain. Instead, it seems like a more abstract domain used to build a less abstract domain, to better communicate my experience.

*

On a separate note, the danger I'm seeing start to crop up, though, is the use of the word "metaphor." Metaphor and simile are different concepts, and it seems to me (granted, I've yet to read Lakoff, so maybe this is addressed!) that metaphors are structurally aristotelian and similes are structurally non-aristotelian.

For example, these are my understandings of similes and metaphors from school:

Similes:
The room is like an oven.
The linebacker is like a truck.
I'm as pleased as punch.

Metaphors:
The room is an oven.
The linebacker is a truck.
I'm punch.

By non-identity, no two things can be alike in all respects for they at least different in the space-time 'position.' So things can only be similar, i.e., "like" each other in many respects at best. A metaphor sets as identical two different abstractions, thus confusing orders. A simile does not set them as identical, admitting to some differences but 'enough' similarity.

If someone comes along at the fresh development of an experience, grabs a mic, and "frames" the experience metaphorically as "an act of God," then that frame will stick insofar as the people who hear it do not discount the identity promulgated by the metaphor. A person with an understanding of Korzybski's teachings, or at least an uncommon sense of understanding that identity is impossible in experience, will (silently) revise the "framing" as "That experience was like an act of God," "That experience was as intense as an act of God," etc.; "It was not an act of God literally."

My apologies if these comments fall outside the discussion of Lakoff. If they do, feel free to ignore them!

Cheers,
Ben

Ben. Thanks for the thougtful response.

I am skipping over the first part of your post as I am currently evaluating the whole subject and will post on that part later.

========= You said =============
On a separate note, the danger I'm seeing start to crop up, though, is the use of the word "metaphor." Metaphor and simile are different concepts, and it seems to me (granted, I've yet to read Lakoff, so maybe this is addressed!) that metaphors are structurally aristotelian and similes are structurally non-aristotelian.

For example, these are my understandings of similes and metaphors from school:

Similes:
The room is like an oven.
The linebacker is like a truck.
I'm as pleased as punch.

Metaphors:
The room is an oven.
The linebacker is a truck.
I'm punch.

By non-identity, no two things can be alike in all respects for they at least different in the space-time 'position.' So things can only be similar, i.e., "like" each other in many respects at best. A metaphor sets as identical two different abstractions, thus confusing orders. A simile does not set them as identical, admitting to some differences but 'enough' similarity.

If someone comes along at the fresh development of an experience, grabs a mic, and "frames" the experience metaphorically as "an act of God," then that frame will stick insofar as the people who hear it do not discount the identity promulgated by the metaphor. A person with an understanding of Korzybski's teachings, or at least an uncommon sense of understanding that identity is impossible in experience, will (silently) revise the "framing" as "That experience was like an act of God," "That experience was as intense as an act of God," etc.; "It was not an act of God literally."

My apologies if these comments fall outside the discussion of Lakoff. If they do, feel free to ignore them!

Cheers,
Ben
===== End quoted text =======
Actually and technically, "Metaphors" as used by L&J fit your definition of 'simile' rather than the 'metaphor' definition in that 'source domains' map *some* but no necessary *all* aspects to the 'target' so that a 'source' is *like* a 'target' in some respects, rather than "being" a 'target'.

However, as I have been thinking on the subject, it has occurred to me that while 'metaphorical conceptualization' appears to be useful to think about things more 'concretely', It may be that this is not necessarily a 'good thing', for the very reason that you mentioned in that it might actually be *promoting* 'identification' of different levels of abstraction, and since these metaphors appear to be extremely pervasive and have solid foundations in the 'unspeakable level', they would be very difficult to overcome.

The very fact that such "metaphors" are very well used, (mis-used), in propaganda of all sorts, especially, as L&J pointed out in political areas, is beginning to impress upon me the danger of such 'identifications', which would appear to provide even more subtle 'influences' on our s.r. than does the 'is' of identification or the 'is' of predication.

What do you think?

--
David Wright Sr.
http://home.alltel.net/dwrighsr/index.html
dwrighsr@alltel.net

What do I think? I think on the whole I'd agree.

Again, I haven't read Lakoff so I'm not sure of the politics behind his message, but I'm presuming (shoot me) he's trying to help the Democratic Party 'fight' 'better' the Republican Party next election. One way I get the sense he's suggesting is to improve DP rhetoric through the use of more competitive "frames."

This does not make me go "Three cheers for the Democratic Party! Three cheers for Howard Dean!" Rather, this makes me want to tune out what the Democrats might have to say nearly as much as I tune out the Republicans! Why? Because we start to lose the referents. It is my opinion (please do note that) that the Democrats of late talk more about experience ("the parabola") than Republicans do, that Democrats tend to back their arguments up with evidence plus a more objective look at both sides than Republicans, whom I see as citing "tradition" for their evidence or tending to emphasize only one side of a problem.

If this opinion is fairly valid, it would seem that more "scientistic" Democrats will abandon the provision of evidence for their arguments for metaphor (not simile), hoping that poetic words, powerful symbols, and the like will get them elected. The evidence for their opinions will mean little; their tough, persuasive talk will matter more. A tough talker means little to me; I don't want to elect someone who's a peacock. I want to elect an eagle.*

[*] Those metaphors intentionally used to show the danger of metaphor. If we start talking about officials as birds, we forget some of their rather human characteristics. Namely, humans are not peacocks; they can do more than just flaunt their feathers. Nor are they eagles; there are shows like Jerry Springer that show the non-"eagalitarian."

As for my political views(today), I lean Democrat, though I consider myself rather independent and consider most arguments case-by-case; I don't just jump on a Democratic Party bandwagon. [That's to help you flesh out where I'm coming from if you needed that.]

Thanks for the response. However, I learned long ago not to discuss politics on the internet, but it will be interesting to see just how Lakoff's influences will play out. As I understand it, he was an advisor to John Dean.

I suspect that you are right and that we will see *more* use of "metaphors" to enhance their position, by increasingly 'creating identification of different levels of abstraction.

The sad thing is that had GS made the impact that it should have, and will, hopefully some day, we could be having better choices in our electoral process. The very thrust of GS is antithetical to those who hold the power (rule the symbols), politically and academically and it's going to continue to be hard-going.
--
David Wright Sr.
http://home.alltel.net/dwrighsr/index.html
dwrighsr@alltel.net

Quote David:
The sad thing is that had GS made the impact that it should have, and will, hopefully some day, we could be having better choices in our electoral process. The very thrust of GS is antithetical to those who hold the power (rule the symbols), politically and academically and it's going to continue to be hard-going.
---

Well put.

I imagine g.s has its relevance or importance pointed up whenever&wherever propaganda crops up in abundance. The time for a g.s resurgence may be forthcoming!

When I first read about L&J's 'Metaphor work', as a linguist, I was very excited, but as a fledgling 'General Semantician', I now see the whole thing in a totally different light. I seem to recall Korzybski writing something about 'metaphors' in S&S. I'll have to look back into S&S[1] for that. When I was last reading it, I was only looking for references that could directly relate to those things in Heinlein's works that I recalled since that was the sole thrust of my research at the time[2], namely, for a paper on GS influences in Heinlein. That's why I have also been re-reading the entire Heinlein canon to look for references that hadn't already occurred to me.

Now, I feel the need to work on a second paper, to examine 'Metaphors' in a GS framework. As I said above, I think that such metaphors are possibly an even *more* insidious influence on our proper 'evaluating' than is the simple 'is' of identification.

[1] Maybe some kind posters know about this and can post the relevant items.

[2] However, I am trying now to develop a *true* GS orientation, which is why I am calling myself a 'fledgling General Semantician'.

--
David Wright Sr.
http://home.alltel.net/dwrighsr/index.html
dwrighsr@alltel.net

I'm sorry, guys, but I think you have missed the major points of Lakoff's work by a mile.

He does NOT promote metaphors as a "better" way to influence others.

He has uncovered the mechanism by which we, as human animals, develop metaphors intrinsically as an extension of our "being" an organism. His work completely rejects previous philosophical thought about the meaning and operation of metaphor.

We cannot and need not try to escape metaphor-making. "All" communication involves some level of metaphor-making. Indeed, I think this can work as an alternative or complementary explanation of Korzybski's "levels of abstraction."

A metaphor provides a verbal handle on a concept that has no extensional referent. "Love is a journey" allows us to talk and think about the insubstantial feeling we call "love" with the tangible experiences we have when we move in a purposeful way. Otherwise, we have NO handle for such talk.

Lakoff's advice to the Dems has nothing to do with poetic language. Indeed, such an evaluation harkens back to the traditional dismissal of metaphor as nothing but poetry. Lakoff shows that metaphor operates constantly whenever we communicate. He suggests that the choice of the words we use to talk about something can "frame" or trigger different, intrinsic metaphors. Without remaining aware of our choice of words (consciousness of abstraction), we simply use the words of whoever started the conversation. If that person chose a metaphor that doesn't include handles for the values we seek to espouse, we are TONGUE-TIED.

The Reps use a lot of strong-father, obedient family metaphors. In that circumstance, the attempt to discuss nurturant behavior comes across as weak and feminine. Lakoff has suggested that the Dems reject the wording forced on them by the Reps metaphors and find their own metaphors that provide handles to their values. This is not evasiveness or propaganda. This is taking control of the symbols by which they communicate.

This is GS at its best.

Ben, I strongly suggest you read at least one of Lakoff's shorter books before continuing to guess at the meaning of his work based on what you read here. Secondhand knowledge leaves a *lot* out.

Cheers,
Nora

Nora. No offense intended, but I seem to be seeing contradictory statements here:

"He [Lakoff] does NOT promote metaphors as a "better" way to influence others. "

and

"Lakoff has suggested that ....[Democrats] find their own metaphors that provide handles to their values. This is not evasiveness or propaganda. This is taking control of the symbols by which they communicate."

How is this latter quotation not implying that he wishes to use 'metaphors' to influence, (assuming that the purpose of communication from a political point of view is to influence)? In other words,"Rule the Symbols" by which they communicate?

All I am saying is that the use of metaphors seems to promote precisely what K was arguing against, i.e. Identification of different levels of abstraction so that proper evaluation is hindered.

"A metaphor provides a verbal handle on a concept that has no extensional referent. "Love is a journey" allows us to talk and think about the insubstantial feeling we call "love" with the tangible experiences we have when we move in a purposeful way. Otherwise, we have NO handle for such talk. "

I agree that we may, indeed, have no other way to handle such, but I still think that we must become more conscious of the abstractions involved.

David
--
http://home.alltel.net/dwrighsr/index.html
dwrighsr@alltel.net

David, I cannot but agree that communication, especially political communication, has the purpose of influence. So, yes, of course, we use metaphors in political language in order to influence people.

My point is that we can't NOT use metaphors in political language, or any other language for that matter, because metaphor is in our nature ("in the flesh" as Lakoff says). Proper evaluation requires understanding and controlling the inevitability of metaphor.

You say you grant that we have no other way to handle such things. I say that's true because, as Lakoff explains, we intrinsically make metaphors based on our existence as an organism, AND because, as Korzybski says, we intrinsically abstract from the object level. To me, these two views sound like two ways to say one thing--we WILL abstract from one level to another, especially from the object or physical level to the metaphorical or verbal level, by our very physical nature.

Perhaps an example will help: the word "comprehend", which we use to mean "understand" comes from the Latin for "to grasp". This represents the movement from the object level (fingers grasping an object) to the verbal and metaphorical level (minds grasping an idea). A huge fraction of language contains these kinds of metaphors, which don't even rise to the level of consciousness in everyday language. If I use a word that relies on a touch metaphor and your brain tends to respond to sight metaphors, you will have a harder time "grasping" what I mean to say. So as I become more conscious of my language choice, I can improve my communication by choosing words that convey more meaning to you.

So, yes, we must become more conscious of the abstractions involved. That, to me, is precisely what Lakoff is recommending to the Dems. Don't just take the language offered and ignore the implications of the abstractions contained therein. Become CONSCIOUS of what words and metaphors imply to and elicit from listeners. CHOOSE the language you want to use so that you have a better chance of communicating YOUR ideas and not the ideas of someone else.

How is this promoting anything but what K prescribed for sanity? Consciousness of abstracting, to me, implies more than the passive act of awareness. It implies acting ON the awareness to change my behavior.

Regards,
Nora

Nora. I appreciate your thoughts on the subject.

I will agree that *some* metaphors are 'in our flesh', but I am not yet convinced that this constitutes the sole source, but I can't argue the point at this time. Looking over the list from Berkeley that I posted up-thread, it appears to me that some of the metaphors do *not* appear to be derivable 'in the flesh', e,g, TIME IS MONEY, or IDEAS ARE OBJECTS. I think that a *lot* of research needs to be done on this.

No, I didn't say that we *don't* have any other way, what I said was the we *may not* have any other way. This remains to be seen also, in my opinion.

I am still skeptical of the ability of *any* political entities to not use 'metaphors' in a way that will be consistent with 'awareness of abstraction'. Without a GS-aware electorate, I think that it would be difficult for their values to be understood otherwise[1]. However, I will have to wait and see on that one also.

[1] I rewrote this sentence 3 times, and the first 2 were expressed strictly in metaphor. It's too,too easy to do, but sometimes, I think, that it can be done without loss of understanding. Yes, a lot of our vocabulary has its roots in metaphor, 'understand' as well as 'comprehend', but to the average person without specialized knowledge, the metaphorical origin no longer has significance.

My regards also.

David
--
http://home.alltel.net/dwrighsr/index.html
dwrighsr@alltel.net

Quote Nora:
Ben, I strongly suggest you read at least one of Lakoff's shorter books before continuing to guess at the meaning of his work based on what you read here. Secondhand knowledge leaves a *lot* out.
---
Point taken. I realized what I was doing for the most part; thanks for noting that/where I was off.

Cheers,
Ben

Well, interesting here: Brooke Gladstone mentions framing (though it's not sure whether she is using it in Lakoff's sense) in this week's "On The Media":

http://www.onthemedia.org/stream/ram.py?file=otm/o tm072905stream.mp3

(Just the first segment.)

The discussion is on the change from "war on terrorism" to "global struggle against violent extremism."

Frame shift? Metaphor shift? Political correction? Something else?

This post could also go in the Symbol Rulers Forum, but I chose to put it here for the mention of framing.

Ben

Hi Ben. This sounds to me like "all of the above" to some extent, but mostly a political correction, more like "doublespeak." I suppose we will have to watch out for people applying the "framing" concept to any matter having to do with language for a while.

To me, a framing change would go from "war on terrorism" to something like "reconciliation of global philosophies" (--not a very metaphorical example but hey, I just got up.) Meaning, a framing change involves substantive changes in the underlying principles espoused.

In the Brooke Gladstone example, the change in wording has little to do with presenting a different view of the referent, only with softening or elucidating or elaborating or embroidering the same view. They still want to get the bad people, they just think the listerner has objections to the idea of war. Using "struggle" does imply some solidarity, a labor union concept, which does imply a small shift in view. But since the "global" part probably still doesn't involve *every* nation, since some of them are the bad people, the phrase does little to change the frame.

A big shift in view, ie, a framing change, has to encompass a different evaluation of the bad people, into victims or at least into people with justification or reasons for their behavior towards us, and with some redeeming features. It has to replace the "us and them, good and evil" basis of the starting statement with a fundamentally different basis, like "bringing home the prodigal sons" or "saving the boats sinking in the rising tide".

When the symbols ruler says "violent extremism," the frame changer, assuming they truly don't agree with that term, has to use a different term to show that what THEY call "extremism" could also be called "patriotism" or "understandable outrage" etc etc. After all, wasn't it a member of the party in power who said "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice"? A radical frame change might show that TO THE ISLAMIST, this "extremism" is in defense of THEIR liberty against OUR terrorism--"middle eastern freedom fighters defending their homelands against the grasping greed of the 1st and 2nd world militarists."

And of course, other frames no doubt exist. Such as "one more skirmish in the age-old struggle between rich and poor", which puts this "global struggle" into the perspective of "normal" human behavior. Or how about "supply and demand"--they have the supply and we demand it.

As usual, we come to find that word choice has a huge effect on the way the listener thinks about the ideas behind the words and about the speaker of those words, for better or worse.

At least, that's how I see it.

Nora...

I keep finding myself saying "Yes...yes!" as I read your writings. I have read Lakoff (Metaphors, Elephants, etc.) and have become enamoured of the constructivists (e.g., Paul Watzlawick). Per that view, "reality is unspeakable," so we model it with words and symbols (e.g., math). Our models "are not the territory" and none of us has a pipeline to reality to verify them. Instead, we hold various confidence levels in the models based upon criteria (e.g., form, fit, and function).

Framings are constructions of situations or actions. When we "reframe" something, we reconstruct it. Both the framing and the reframing are constructions. Framing thus has no priority over reframing, for the sequence could as well have been reversed in order.

We frame "problems," only to hear some gung-ho optimist say, "That's not a problem. That's an opportunity!" Pogo's answer to that was, "Then we is surrounded by insurmountable opportunity."

I understand the administration's motive for reframing "The War on Terror" because they've constructed a "war" we can't win. So let's not frame it as a war.

Not all reframings are specious. I remember in the 1970s when the gasoline supply became scarce. The then government said, "We don't have a gas shortage...we have an energy shortage." I thought, "Here we go again with the useless word games," but I changed my mind when I was educated about the conversion of various energy sources into each other.

I feel strongly about your points on framing from one's point of view. To us, we own patriotism and the "terrorists" own extremism. To them, we own capitalistic extremism and they own piety. Who is right? Form, fit, and function won't tell us. The constructivists might say, "That's the way both sides have constructed it." If we say, "But who is right?" they might respond, "That question is unanswerable. Reality is unspeakable."

So we and the "terrorists" continue our deadly squabbles, and there is no parent to tell us, "Now you kids just STOP that nonsense or you're BOTH going to your rooms!" I'd like the U.N. to be that parent, but my own country won't let it be (e.g., our opting out of the World Court, et al).

Constructivism says we have a choice between framing and remaining mute. If we choose to frame, our normal human tendency is to frame from our own "priviledged" viewpoint. A civilized world requires that we disputants step up a meta level to frame from a more no-fault viewpoint, but patriotism, ours and theirs, prevents that.

Bob

Although I can't sustain the almost conversational participation that makes the message board so lively, I wish to chime in on the metaphor thread, disregarding Lakoff, whose writings and activities have received such extended consideration here. I agree with Mr. Wright, Ms. Miller and others that metaphor has huge significance for any study of general semantics. I recommend to your attention the "Metaphor and Language" section of Book I, Chapter 2 (pp. 48-59) of Julian Jaynes's THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND (1976). Hoping to get you interested enough to get hold of this book, I'll now copy some text from the introductory portion of the aforementioned section. Regards, Phil Ardery

"...[M]etaphor is not a mere trick of language, as it is so often slighted in the old schoolbooks on composition; it is the very constitutive ground of language. I am using metaphor here in the most general sense: the use of a term for one thing to describe another because of some kind of similarity between them or between their relations to other things. There are thus always two terms in a metaphor, the thing to be described, which I shall call the metaphrand, and the thing or relation used to elucidate it, which I shall call the metaphier. A metaphor is always a known metaphier operating on a less known metaphrand....
"It is by metaphor that language grows.... The grand and vigorous function of metaphor is the generation of new language as it is needed, as human culture becomes more and more complex.
"...The human body is a particularly generative metaphier, creating previously unspeakable distinctions in a throng of areas. The head of an army, table, page, bed, ship, household, or nail, or of steam or water; the face of a clock, cliff, card, or crystal; the eyes of needles, winds, storms, targets, flowers or potatoes.... All of these concrete metaphors increase enormously our powers of perception of the world around us and our understanding of it, and literally create new objects. Indeed, language is an organ of perception, not simply a means of communication....
"In early times, language and its referents climbed up from the concrete to the absctract on the steps of metaphors, even, we may say, created the abstract on the bases of metaphors.
"It is not always obvious that metaphor has played this all-important function. But this is because the concrete metaphiers become hidden in phonemic change, leaving the words to exist on their own. Even such an unmetaphorical-sounding word as the verb 'to be' was generated from a metaphor. It comes from the Sanskrit bhu, 'to grow or make grow,' while the English forms 'am' and 'is' have evolved from the same root as the Sanskrit asmi, 'to breathe'. It is something of a lovely surprise that the irregular conjugation of our most nondescript verb is thus a record of a time when man had no independent word for 'existence' and could only say that something 'grows' or that it 'breathes.'"

Hi Phil. Many thanks for the reference. It looks from what you quoted that Jayne had insight into this stuff well before L&J started working on it. I did a search through all of my collected papers from L&J and found no mention whatsoever of Jayne. Interesting.

I'll have to locate the book and get a first-hand look at it. Hmm. "First-hand look". Seems to be a metaphor there somewhere.

Again Thanks.

David

HI

It delighted me to see mention of Professor Julian Jaynes' book, 'The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' here. 'Science and Sanity' is perhaps the only book I could more highly recommend at this stage of my reading experience.

I often wonder (in humourous mood) if USA politicians' oft-mentioned 'messages' or 'conversations' with 'god' have come from an atavistic bicameral 'state-of-mind', or if indeed TV and other media could perform a similar function as 'the voice of god', given an individual's psyche-integration (in cases of schizophrenia, etc, I imagine this may have been observed). Don't take this tooooo seriously, I don't want to come on like I'm advancing a conspiracy theory here, folks! :-D

Fantastic reading though, I hope you can get a copy, David, and find it stimulating, as I have.

All the best,

Robbie

This is my first visit to this message board and it is strange to find this thread on Lakoff and metaphore. I have studied GS for some years now and was recently directed to Philosphy In the Flesh, which I am in the middle of at this moment. It feels very much like studying GS.

I wanted to give my take on the questions above about domain. A fundamental theme in the book is that the mind is embodied. I haven't finished the book yet but this seems to be the theme by which he will proceed to dismantle western philosophy. Some conclusions drawn from this is that reasoning is embodied and conceptualizing is embodied. That is, our sensorimotor system contributes to our abilities to conceptualize and to reason. There is the notion that our reasoning and conception reuse our senorimotor neural structures. "An embodied concept is a neural structure that is actually part of, or makes use of, the sensorimotor system of our brains. Much of conceptual inference is, therefore, sensorimotor inference." This is how I understand the notion of domains: much of the book so far is about how we map or project sensorimotor logic onto concepts (metaphore). We borrow from our sensorimotor "domain" (space-time for example) onto more abstract (perhaps intensional as mentioned above) ideas - like love. For example, he refers to the common use of a travel metaphore for love (a conceptual domain). "Love is a journey". "I think our relationship has reached a dead end", etc. Travel is very connected to our sensory experience of time and space and motion, for which our brain has evolved complex neural structures, which we borrow from to help reason through our non-sensorimotor concepts. This is all very much a detailing of consciousness of abstracting. A very cool idea for me is that we do borrow the logic of the metaphore domain unconsciously and so bring that logic to bear on the conceptual domain unquestionly. So, if a dead end means trouble for a journey, it must be trouble for love.

Some other examples from Philosophy In the Flesh that remind me of GS formulations:

Chapter 3: The Embodied Mind: Neural Beings Must Categorize - "each human eye has 100 million light-sensing cells, but only about 1 million fibers leading to the brain. Each incomin image must therefore be reduced in complexity by a factor of 100. That is, information in each fiber constitutes a "categorization" of the information from about 100 cells". (Abstracting)

Chapter 2: "every act we perform is based upon philosophical assumptions...We go around armed with a host of presuppositions about what is real, what counts as knowledge, how the mind works, who we are, and how we should act."

Chapter 3: Pg 23 - "The sky is blue. Fresh grass is green. Blood is Red (Uh-oh, 'Is' of Identity?). The Sun and moon are yellow. We see colors as inhering in things. Blue is in the sky, green in the grass, red in the blood, yellow in the sun...cognitive science tells us that colors do not exist in the external world...Colors are not objective; there is in the grass or the sky no greenness or blueness independent of retinas, color cones, neural circuitry, and brains(p24). Nor are colors purely subjective;...Rather, color is a function of the world and our biology interacting (p25)".

Page 26 - "Why is it so common to feel that our concepts reflect the world as it is - that our categories of mind fit the categories of the world?" (Map is not the territory - consciousness of abstracting). He does take an interesting turn here, however, and discusses what he calls "Basic-Level catagories" which are an abstract level that he argues works best for mapping the world - and h seems to argue that it is actually "ok" to mistake this map for the world (as we most commonly do) because it works good enough (my take).

Wecome Steve and thanks for a very readable and useful summary of Phil in the Flesh (so far). I finally got a hold of my copy from my son and have been slowly working through it as well. So many ideas, so little time.

I agree completely that it feels like studying gs. Only in this case, reading about gs as grounded in thoroughly detailed and modern neuroscience, which it greatly benefits from.

In your last paragraph, concerning basic-level categories, you end with the comment that "it is actually ok to mistake this map for the world (as we most commonly do) because it works good enough." I got the impression that the authors would say we cannot get beyond a certain level of mistaking this map for the world because we use a brain full of neurons evolved and grown just for the purpose of making the first order abstractions. We don't exactly "mistake" this map for the world, we simply have no way to make the map any more precise, biologically.

Have to share something. As I pondered the idea that having a different brain and different formative experiences would result in a different set of perceptions, I suddenly thought of the old saying "If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." I had to laugh. It seems sometimes that much of the knowledge about how our brains work already exists in little bits and pieces, but we don't "get" the whole picture until someone comes along who truly "thinks outside the box" (another example of understanding the difficulty and value of rising above our brain-imposed patterns.)

To me, Phil in the Flesh promises a long, enjoyable and exhilirating read. Glad to have another fellow "traveler" (ooh, another use for the travel metaphor--learning is a journey!) to discuss it with.

In fact, WOW, what an idea I just had! I think I will propose a reading club. So many of us labor through these wonderful books with no one to talk to when the ideas start to burn! This board can take the place of those late night sessions exploring the mental realm.

So, prepare yourself, Steve, and anyone else out there who has succumbed to lure of Lakoff. We will need your input as you make progress through the book. Look for another message soon.

Nora

Hi Nora. I like the idea of the book club. I tried to do this with the friend that refered me to the book. Thanks for your comments on what I had to say. I like your comment about how "we don't exactly "mistake" this map for the world, we simply have no way to make the map any more precise, biologically": Much better framing for well-being.
Steve

Would you believe I only just now finished "philosophy in the flesh"? Well, there were some other books read and some half finished along the way. This book is a very significant book for me. I maintain my position that cognitive science, apparently indirectly, follows up from GS formulations (see some of my examples for LAST YEAR! above). It seems to be after the same thing that K was, a theory of mind/evaluating. And I don't know of any effort so general/fundamental/comprehensive since K's effort - what I hear about is usually very specific or specialized and not with such explanitory breadth. Prior to this book, metaphor wasn't part of my "abstacting" vocabulary. At first I thought of metaphor as an example of (a type of) abstraction such as judgement, inference, assumption, etc? But now I'm conceptualizing it as more of a process - a way of using our brain - a technique to help us reason and conceptualize and make sense of our world? Maybe both? Metaphor seems to play a fundamental role that makes it more than just another type of abstraction. It seems to be a new tool for understanding our abstracting rather than just other form of abstraction. My comments pertains specifically to metaphor as used by Lakoff and cognitive science - Input from other readers of Lakoff?

I don't know, to me, 'metaphor' seems TO BE a word

I think metaphor allows us to make much more "colourful" statements - ones that pertain to sensory experience. This can be helpful in getting one's point across in a general way and so it has value in that respect. GS, to me, does not imply speaking in an "all-specific-low-level-of-abstraction language" but rather it's about learning how to move back and forth from high to low as necessary. If I am watching a play or movie designed to induce drama then I will evaluate the statements accordingly and not react as if the characters were "real" and saying "real" things, if you know what I mean.

Actually, Lakoff and Johnson take metaphor way, WAY beyond making colorful statements. They say that as neural beings, we cannot NOT make metaphors, that our brains operate specifically by making a metaphorical relationship between our physical experiences and those non-physical experiences about which we need to verbalize.

And I agree with you Steve, that this provides a new framework for considering the abstracting process. K says we perceive and then abstract from our perceptions, then generalize from our abstractions (more or less.) He talks about retraining our neural structure to make more accurate abstractions.

Lakoff and Johnson say our brain uses its connections to sensory structures throughout the body to structure its model of the world. For example, we stand with our heads at the top and our feet at the bottom--this proprioceptive sense provides a structure for verbalizing about abstractions having to do with UP. Another example--we have an awareness that force results in motion (pushing something and seeing it move). This gives us a structure for verbalizing about abstractions having to do with causality. So we can say "the upward pressure on prices resulted in a market shift" when no *actual* pressure was exerted and no *actual* shift occurred in any physical sense.

Lakoff basically says because we have bodies (are? bodies?) we describe everything in structural terms our bodies can comprehend. We have no other option. This sounds to me like Korzybski's assertion that because we are neuronal beings, and because senses can only provide us with relations between things, the only information we can have is structural.

As I have understood it so far, 'metaphors' a la L&J automatically help to 'extensionalize' abstract concepts.

David Wright Sr.

Nora, thanks for the supportive and helpful comments. And David, I like your concise definition. You both seem to express a similar sense as I, that metaphors (ala L&J) are best thought of as part of the machinery of our evaluating rather than a product of our evaluating (as is an abstraction). As an excercise, how would you work it into the structural differential?

Here is a thought on one way L&J metaphors can be put to work in the structural differential. It seems to me that the S.D. as a whole is limited to concepts that can be directly traced to process level entities. It assumes that we are starting with something of an object form that has existence outside of language, which we then abstract from. But does this account for all of our language concepts? What about “love” as a concept unrelated to a particular experience. If love in this sense is a high-order abstraction on the S.D, what is the object or process level? If in this case there is no “complete” S.D., then our minds come to the rescue and supply the missing ingredient - the connects to the object/process level - by using metaphors. Why is it necessary for the brain to do this? As L&J suggest, we really can’t talk “about” such concepts without doing this: we can only conceptualize and reason where object/process entities are involved.

Well, I'm confused, I thought 'metaphor' represented a figure of speech and therefore firmly putting it on the verbal level of abstractions. If, as Steve said, metaphor should be thought of as "part of the machinery of our evaluating rather than a product of our evaluating" then it implies that 'metaphor' represents some sort of neural structure which I seriously doubt.

Also Steve, I do not see a problem with representation of 'love' with the SD as you apparently do. 'Love' represents a feeling on objective levels which admittedly cannot be experienced directly by others like what we call 'apple' can. This is why words like 'love' and 'hate' and other emotions are what I call 'poorly defined' in the sense that they cannot be removed examined like an internal organ could. But just because they are not visible does not make them any less real in the same sense as 'electrons' or other sub-atomic particles??

Being true to the moment and avoiding distraction:
Rather than distract yourself with metaphorical definitions, enter into nothing else, but go to the extent of living single thought by single thought. If your vocation is theatrical then metaphors it is. If you are new like me, then it's "what I'm said," or "what it is?"