Space Mind Metaphor

September 6th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Space is a key concept, perhaps the most important key concept, in Naive Physics. Remembering that Naive Physics is an extended field of knowledge that includes mental entities such as consciousness (Smith 1994) it is not surprising that our understanding of the mind itself in turn draws on spatial metaphors to structure that understanding. In other words, the Naive Physics of cognition imagines the mind as spatial. We talk of consciousness being ‘raised’, (following a general metaphor GOOD IS UP), and we may think of ourselves and other people as being ‘broadminded’ or ‘narrowminded’. Techniques, experiences, and chemicals for altering the state of one’s mind positively are routinely referred to as ‘mind expanding’. Generally these metaphors rely on two further assumptions about the mind, both of which are also features of naive science.

Dualism - that the mind is radically separate from the brain, possibly to the extent that it can have independent existence (as in the pre-psychological notion of the immortal soul).

Vitalism - that the mind is composed of a non-material, ‘ethereal’ substance which is often conceptualised as gaseous or liquid, (c.f. ‘flow’, the ‘oceanic’, ’streams of consciousness’ etc).
In this formulation when we talk about the mind we conceive it as a vital substance existing within Newtonian/Cartesian space, centred on the person.

With these two features in place, when we use spatial metaphors to talk and think of the mind we imagine this fluid mind-stuff, centred behind the eyes, as expanding and contracting; flowing from one part of the body to another and capable of extension outside of the body through processes we refer to as concentration, focus, attention, etc.

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