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| 24464 | True statements are largely based on our categories, which are not fixed |
| Full Idea: In general, true statements are based on the way we categorise things and, therefore, on what is highlighted by the natural dimensions of the categories. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 24) | |||
| A reaction: Since categorisation is rather fluid and imprecise, they infer from this that there is no such thing as what they call 'absolute' truth. This is a failure to understand the word 'true', which means it is right. Period. Their problem is epistemological. |
| 24448 | Events are metaphorical objects (and activities are substances, and states are containers) |
| Full Idea: Events and actions are conceptualised metaphorically as object, activities as substances, and states as containers. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 06) | |||
| A reaction: A nice, and persuasive, example of how deeply metaphors penetrate the way we conceptualise things. It takes an big effort to reject the object metaphor, and really conceive of events as processes. |
| 24454 | Two metaphors for one thing may be coherent, even if inconsistent |
| Full Idea: Two different metaphors for 'argument' (journey, or container) would be consistent if there were a way to completely satisfy both purposes with one clear concept; instead we get coherence, where there is a partial satisfaction of both purposes. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 16) | |||
| A reaction: As a fan of coherence (as the main criterion of justification) I like this. We grasp the experience of an argument clearly enough, but it is complex, so varied metaphors can highlight different aspects. |
| 24445 | Seeing experiences as entities facilitates reference, categorising, quantifying and reasoning |
| Full Idea: Once we can identify our experiences as entities or substances, we can refer to them, categorize them, group them, and quantify them - and, by this means, reason about them. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 06) | |||
| A reaction: I've finally found authors who endorse this important point. However, they see objectification as an aspect of much wider metaphorical thought, where I prefer to see it in terms of a specific 'philosophical' faculty. Inflation is their example. |
| 24447 | Seeing experience as objects doesn't (unlike metaphors) enhance understanding |
| Full Idea: Merely viewing a nonphysical thing as an entity or substance does not allow us to comprehend very much. But ontological metaphors may be further elaborated. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 06) | |||
| A reaction: An important step to their view that metaphors are the mental tool which lead us to understanding. Mere objectification enables the manipulation of a concept, withouth a full grasp of it. |
| 24450 | Metaphorical concepts arise not from concrete images but from general ones |
| Full Idea: Metaphorical concepts are defined not in terms of concrete images (flying, creeping, going down the road etc.), but in terms of more general categories, like passing. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 09) | |||
| A reaction: An important aspect of their claim that metaphors are foundational to our conceptual scheme. It seems obvious that concepts generated from more concrete images are more 'foundational' than the generalised ones. Generalisation precedes metaphors. |
| 24449 | Personification sees object in human terms, usually selecting one aspect |
| Full Idea: Specifying objects as persons can comprehend experiences in terms of our motivations, characteristics and activities. Each personification picks out a different aspect (such as attacking, outwitting, giving birth to). | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 07) | |||
| A reaction: [compressed] This is helpful in pointing to a more detail understanding of personification. They give 14 examples of the kind of aspects that can be selected. (They also cite metonymy and synecdoche) |
| 24457 | We must explain how concepts are grounded, structured, related, and defined |
| Full Idea: An adequate theory of the human conceptual scheme will have to give an account of how concepts are 1) grounded, 2) structured, 3) related to each other, and 4) defined. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 18) | |||
| A reaction: They place metaphor at the centre of such an account. I like the idea of mental files as the framework for such an account (especially since it implies the organisation of the relevant neurons). Does philosophy contribute to this project? |
| 24458 | Definitions give the essence of a concept, but metaphors are how we use them |
| Full Idea: Definitions characterise things that are inherent in the concept, but we are concerned with how humans get a handle on the concept - to understand it and function in terms of it. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 19) | |||
| A reaction: Their thesis about metaphorical thought is particularly persuasive if it concerns mental techniques we use in order to grasp and manipulate concepts (for example, the way we think about and discuss arguments). Metaphor is a tool of coherence. |
| 24446 | Human purposes imposes boundaries around our experiences |
| Full Idea: Human purposes typically require us to impose artificial boundaries that make physical phenomena discrete just as we are: entities bounded by a surface. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 06) | |||
| A reaction: Nice. An obvious example is the concept of an 'event'. Logicians then have to face the problem of vague boundaries. |
| 24451 | We usually conceptualise vague nonphysical things in terms of more precise physical things |
| Full Idea: We typically conceptualise the nonphysical in terms of the physical - that is, we conceptualise the less clearly delineated in terms of the more clearly dilineated. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 12) | |||
| A reaction: They sugggest 'in the kitchen' and 'in love' as instances. The authors demonstrate how this tendency runs much more deeply (see what I did there!) than you might expect. |
| 24452 | We reject the standard view that all concepts are analyzable into primitive concepts |
| Full Idea: Standard theories of meaning assume that all of our complex concepts can be analyzed into undecomposable primitives. …We assume that this is fundamentally mistaken. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 14) | |||
| A reaction: If any concepts are primitive they are the universally familiar ones which arise from immediate experience, such as 'water', 'sky', 'tree', 'leg'. I don't think those can be 'analysed' into categories like 'liquid' or 'limb', or 'object'. |
| 24455 | Metaphors help us to understand aspects of concepts |
| Full Idea: A metaphor works when it satisfies a purpose, namely, understanding an aspect of the concept. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 17) | |||
| A reaction: There is a tension in their account between metaphors as the creators of concepts, and as means for understanding concepts. I'm trying to fit together their nice account of metaphor with the idea of concepts as mental files (qv). |
| 24460 | Categories as prototypes can be qualified by a variety of verbal 'hedges' |
| Full Idea: Categories as prototypes can be extended with modifiers (called 'hedges'), such as 'par excellence', 'strictly speaking', 'loosely speaking', 'technically', and 'in certain respects'. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 19) | |||
| A reaction: [They cite Lakoff 1975] These two are committed to the prototype view (which seems plausible to me), and this addition of hedges greatly strengthens that theory, which can otherwise sound implausibly rigid (e.g. the prototype human being). |
| 24443 | Metaphor not only pervades language, but also our fundamental conceptual scheme |
| Full Idea: Metaphor is pervasive not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 01) | |||
| A reaction: The main thesis of their book. I'm a philosopher of thought, not of language (Dummett's distinction) so I like this. But I am not persuaded that metaphor is 'fundamental'. |
| 24444 | Metaphors understand and experience one thing in terms of another |
| Full Idea: The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 01) | |||
| A reaction: A pretty good definition, which gets us away from a mere comparison or resemblance. I'm cautious, though, about the word 'understanding' here. It seems obvious that metaphorical conceptualising could lead straight to misunderstanding. |
| 24456 | Argument seen as journey, container or building reveals eight different aspects of it |
| Full Idea: The metaphors for 'argument' (journey, container, building) reveal the following aspects: content, progress, structure, strength, basicness, obviousness, directness, clarity. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 17) | |||
| A reaction: A nice illustration of their main thesis - that metaphor has an epistemological role, and is not mere linguistic decoration. |
| 24463 | Metaphors restructure our experience, and thus create new similarities |
| Full Idea: A metaphor, by virtue of giving coherent structure to a range of our experiences, creates similarities of a new kind. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 22) | |||
| A reaction: One of the most persuasive ideas in their book. For example 'Juliet is the sun' is taught simply as a compressed simile, but she is nothing like a large fiery ball until you see her through Romeo's feelings about her. |
| 24462 | Metaphor stuctures our conceptual and decisions systems, and is not mere language |
| Full Idea: Metaphor has traditionally been viewed as a matter of mere language rather than primarily as a means of structuring our conceptual system and the kinds of everday activities we perform. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 23) | |||
| A reaction: The best statement they offer of their main thesis, which I find plausible, despite their tendency to over-emphasise metaphor in thinking and concept formation. Better, perhaps, to say that making connections does the structuring. |
| 24453 | The concept of 'love' is structured mostly in physical terms |
| Full Idea: The concept of 'love' is structured mostly in physical terms, as journey, a patient, a force, madness, war etc. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 15) | |||
| A reaction: Their case is that nearly all of our moral thinking grounded in general metaphorical concepts. 'Good' doesn't seem to be metaphorical, even if it starts in direct experience. Mere 'I feel love' doesn't seem metaphorical. |
| 24461 | Cultures were partly westernised by the new time-is-money metaphor |
| Full Idea: The Westernisation of cultures throughout the world is partly a matter of introducing the time is money metaphor into those cultures. | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 21) | |||
| A reaction: Nice thought, though I would guess that the invention of the cheap clock is what initiated this development. |
| 24459 | We understand time in almost entirely metaphorical terms |
| Full Idea: The experience of time is understood almost entirely in metaphorical terms (as spatialised, or as moving object,, or as money). | |||
| From: G Lakoff / M Johnson (Metaphors We Live By [1980], 19) | |||
| A reaction: But we also abstract away from this metaphorical (and physical) presentation, and try to consider time in itself. We represent it in equations as plain 't', or as a number like 10:15. |