Metaphorically thinking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the problem I have is that the way "metaphorical" is being used above makes it synonymous with "representational", which seems not in accord with most people's definition of "metaphorical". Of course, in the mind everything is representation and mappings. Interesting read though.


There should be many. Justice, for example.

Dianah

So few recognize this truth!!

Rawles says in his book "A Theory of Justice" justice is fairness.



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

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

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

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

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

There is a story of a little boy who walks up to his newborn baby brother, and as he looks into the crib and into his brothers eyes he says, "Tell me about God, I'm beginning to forget."
The story may or may not be true, but the innocence in which we approach life as children is rapidly overshadowed by the conditioning that becomes habitual or subconscious.
But there exists the subconscious impulses of life which we had when we were children to explore it without conditioning.
The love and innocence children radiate is not something that is taught but something that came with the packaging. Could these impulses be neural pathways that are conditioned by the manufacturer? Could it be that these impulses can be re-discovered by cleansing the negative conditioning that creates fear in the subconscious mind to return the mind to innocence and love?

What is it that draws our attention back to the simplicity of preconditioned response and association to life as a struggle?

Spiritual tradition tells us, that we bring with us memories of the divine mother and father which we quickly replace with the association to our physical parents.
Born into a physical body we associate our worth to the care we get from our parents. Where before the physical birth all our needs were met instantly while we basked in the love of the infinite spiritual parents, now in the flesh we depend on the care of our physical parents to keep us warm, feed us, change us, keep us clean and to we associate the love we felt in spirit with the attention we get in the physical.
If we lay in the crib crying because we are wet, soiled and uncomfortable we might start to think why do I feel this way and why am I not experiencing the feelings I had before being uncomfortable?
We might begin to associate the length of discomfort with a punishment, being that we are helpless to change ourselves and dependent on our physical parents.
We might also try to comprehend what it is that we must do to be in good graces, so that we are taken care of, rather than punished and left to feel the way we do.
Later on as an adult we think God has abandoned us every time we feel slighted or left alone to feel helpless.

Is it possible to go back the file cabinet and pull up the file that has all the information that exists to return us to our assembly line innocence? Are we simply mechanical in nature and subject to our external programs without any choice to change, or are we both the programmer and the running program?

Can we find justice in the experience of life?

If I can I will, and I do. But the question would be what would I find if no one but me experiences it?

But you are the one telling me to dive deeper. Are you, asking me, to experience the I, or experience you?

Ok.... that was a nice distraction.
Now what I'm interested in is any subjective determination to the rewriting of neural pathways or the subconscious?

In oberst's description of the child creating a paradigm labeled affection due to the familiarity of coordinating experiences, I'm interested in asking whether anyone has made any determination in whether the child has a running operating system that came with the package.
Those that have looked into the eyes of a child have spoken of innocence and love. Is it the cognitive association to ones own experience of feelings and the experience of inexperience that the adult labels the child as innocent and full of love, or is there actually innocence and love within the child?

When a person (who is not a computer whiz) buys a computer, the computer usually purchased comes with a basic operating system, and one adds programs to create compatibility in function based on the needs of the computer operator.
The operating system creates the compatibility for the software. The operating system also must be able to recognize the software.
The child must have neural pathways that are capable of imprinting information and the information is by some determination grouped into subjective/objective awareness.

When a person gains familiarity with a loved one there is resonance. Generally one does not always have to ask their familiar loved one how they feel to know how they feel. I could tell when my Father had a bad day as soon as he walked in the house and knew when to clear out of the room so I didn't become the target for his frustration. Obviously the neural pathways of recognition would associate experience with the moment but what attunes the neural recognition, with the senses and reason, or free will?
Suppose I decided to give my Father some attention, such as fixing him a drink and asking him to tell me about his day, like my mother might in hopes of deepening my experience of my relationship with him rather than seeking higher ground to avoid the exploding bombs of his frustration? What neural pathways would be activated to inspire compassion?
Why are some more likely to be compassionate in a situation regardless of conditioning, and has it been determined that it is possible to change the nature of conditioning through desire rather than psychological unravelling and hypnosis?

Here's an example. Twins are brought up in the same environment and getting the same amount of attention from their parents, one develops a self worth complex never feeling they will ever achieve anything worth while. The one who doesn't feel worthless moves outward into life without hesitation. The other develops addictions to drugs and alcohol and eventually develops cirrhosis of the liver and dies at a young age.
Both were brought up in the same environment, both played together and hung out in the same social group and yet they had different perspectives about their self worth. What creates the difference in imprinting neural information and recognition, and does the environment really have anything to do with processing experience?
If its not the environment then it could be the operating system in how it recognizes software, and that doesn't necessarily mean a physical abnormality.
Karl Lashley, a pioneer in neurophysiology, trained rats to run in a maze, and then began to systematically remove their brain tissue. He kept taking out more and more and found that their brains worked just fine. He took out as much as 90% and the rats still could run the maze!
John Lorber, a British neurologist, found something similar in a human patient. His specialty is hydrocephalics -- people with water on the brain. A patient was referred to him with an unusually large head, but no other symptoms. The patient was a gifted college student, majoring in mathematics, with an IQ of 130. Dr. Lorber performed a brain scan on him and found that his cortex was only one millimeter thick! The normal is over 4.5 centimeters! Fluid had replaced over 98% of the neurons used for thinking, and he was still above average!
If this is true, using only 2% of the normal amount of neurons normally active in the human brain to create a subconscious ghosting mechanism to metaphorically think, is the subconscious really isolated to the neural pathways of the brain?

Interesting read. There's a slight error above which suggests that normal cortex is 10 times thicker than it actually is. The thickness of human cortex varies between 1 and 4.5 mm, with an overall average of approximately 2.5 mm.


the ventricular enlargement in hydrocephalus, while causing displacement of many neurons, does not necessarily make them non-functional. The patient referred to above most certainly was using much more than 2% of his neurons, and is figure is probably closer to 60-80%.


what's interesting is that, if you examine the brains of identical twins, you'll see they are very different in terms of sulci and gyri. It seems that having identical genes does not guarantee having identical brains. However, given there are only 20,000 genes in the human genome, and over 100 billion neurons with over a quadrillion (10^15) synapses, there is no way that genes can uniquely determine brain structure, because there's not enough of them. You can imagine that some uniqueness in phenotype is due to randomness, not just from outer environment, but from the inner environment of neuron interactions.

I agree and would add that the "operating system" can be affected by outer environments (i.e., the environment around the individual) and inner environments (i.e., the environment around each neuron).

but not every experience of warmth and security brings up associations of being held by mother, which means either your filing cabinet is stochastic, or that my experience of warmth and security is not necessarily dependent on my experience with mother and hence that my experiences of warmth and security are not metaphors for being held by mother. What ever happened to mapping our experiences to memories via association? Metaphorical thinking doesn't seem necessary for making these types of associations between memories and everyday experience.

We would have to do empirical and morally incorrect tests to understand the full impact of nature vs. nurture. Isolating twins from each other and creating identical environments for them to live in would yield some interesting data I'm sure.

People would scream at the mistreatment of people, human rights etc., without giving a thought to how many other lives are wasted through war and famine. If people don't know any better, they aren't sufferring. You need to experience better before you become discontent.

I like how most people say they are Utilitarians, yet do not abide by the principle of Utility.

Personally I am definitely not a Utilitarian.

I am neither, not in a strict sense. But everyone makes weighted decisions every second, and biology and psychology would suggest this is the method that our minds developed.

But if we need that data, or any similar dilemna, we will be having debates about ethics for decades and still be unable to act. There is no right answer, thats our humanity doing all the acting and judging.

I urge any Utilitarian to watch The Boy in the Bubble, and think about the principle of utility

The problem with the wester ethical perspective is the fact that ethics is based on reason, when in reality the only way to bridge what is with what ought to be is intuition.

So who are the utilitarians among us?

When it comes to ethics, what's wrong with the Golden Rule?