Lost Embodiment

June 6th, 2006 Fred McVittie Posted in Evolution, Metaphor, Sense |

It has been observed that people who lack the physical means to experience certain sensations or behaviours nevertheless use metaphors associated with these sensations or behaviours in their speech and, presumably, in their thinking. For example, those blind from birth still often make extensive use of sight-based metaphors such as ‘I see what you mean’ etc. This is presumably (after Lakoff) because the neurological substrate and organisation supporting the use of such metaphors, the various neural pathways associated with vision, are in place, even though they are not able to be used by the actual sensory mechanisms. The suggestion is therefore that it is possible for neural pathways to exist, forged by evolution, which an individual may have no sensory access to but which may still be used by their differently equipped ‘metaphorical body’.

This begs the question of whether there are other neurological pathways forged by evolutionary experience which we have lost access to, not as individuals by accident of birth or by injury, but collectively by other means. (Possible candidate methods for this pruning of sensory awareness are the selecting out of biological traits through evolutionary adaptation, and the suppression of such ‘talents’ through socialisation/acculturation). It may well be that, even though we no longer have direct sensory access to particular sensations or are able to enact certain behaviours we may still have the neurological capacity to comprehend, in an conceptually embodied way, such sensations and behaviours. If we do, then we should not expect such pathways to figure metaphorically in our language, since in all likelihood any abilities we may have lost undoubtedly predate language.

The questions are; does our brain come pre-loaded with antique software that no longer runs literally on our current body platform (because we are incapable of breathing underwater, etc), and if it does, how can we may use of it?