Combinatory Schema and Embodied Metaphor

December 27th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Complex behaviour often entails the mobilisation of a number of physical schema simultaneously, as for example when one is walking and juggling at the same time, or, more commonly, when one is talking and also physically displaying emotion through smiling, crying etc. The combination of such schema, which may be seen as complementary or competing, contributes to the overall performance which is taking place. On a cognitive level, this combination suggests that several ‘gists’ (fuzzy traces, scripts, schemata etc) are also in operation simultaneously, all of which are constructed through metaphor.

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Embodied Cognition

January 1st, 2007 Fred McVittie

The relationship between consciousness and the body is such that cognition is constrained by the nature of our embodiment, with the effect that we are only capable of thinking those thoughts which adopt the structure of the physical world apprehensible through the senses (e.g. via metaphor). Cognition is enabled and produced by the fact of our embodiment, and shaped by that fact.

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Thinking and Falling

February 2nd, 2007 Fred McVittie

The act of falling is not an attribute of the object that falls, but includes the object the origin, the destination, the path through the air, and all other aspects of the event. Similarly, a journey is not meaningful only in terms of the person making the journey, or of the place travelled toward, or of the place departed from. The act of seeing includes the eye, the brain, the space in front of the eye, the space inside the eye, the object, and all other aspects of the event. The act of thinking includes the object of that thought, the subject of that thought, the imaginary space that thought occupies, and all other aspects of that thought.

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Adaptive Thinking

March 14th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The evolutionary process contrives to ensure that what is good for us (or at least was good for our ancestors) produces feelings of pleasure, and what is not good for us produces feelings of displeasure. The feelings of pleasure experienced by humans when carrying out such activities as eating nourishing food, having sex, drinking potable water, coming inside to a warm house/cave on a cold day, is nature’s way of reinforcing activities which maximise our chances of survival and the survival of our genetic material. The fact that modern humans live under very different cultural conditions to our ancestors, and yet have largely the same cognitive apparatus, means that some of the pleasures and pains administered by these adaptive systems are now misapplied. The same mechanisms which rewarded our eating of healthy food continue to reward us for overeating, and for eating highly processed unhealthy (but still tasty) food. Ramachandran and others have suggested that this catalogue of pleasures and there misapplication might be extended into areas of cognition which ultimately lead to the aesthetic pleasures we experience through contemplating artworks. So, for example, the adaptively advantageous ability to recognise the shape of a tiger half-concealed in the undergrowth, a skill which would definately contribute to our chances of survival and should therefore be felt as pleasurable, becomes the aesthetic pleasure felt when looking at some abstract or semi-abstract artworks; the broken and indistinct patterns of colour and form are comprehended and made whole, and this cognitive action is rewarded with the pleasure of an aesthetic experience.

It is possible that the highly developed cognitive abilities which we seem to have are themselves the result of a self-reinforcing adaptive trait in which thinking itself is rewarded. Certainly, it would have been a distinct adaptive advantage for some of our ancestors to be able to take independent pieces of data, the location of game for example, and put them together into a coherent pattern, a migration path. A proto-human which was able to make this kind of cognitive leap would have an evolutionary advantage over those that did not, and therefore it is quite likely that such behaviour would become self-reinforcing through the association of pleasure with this type of pattern recognition. To put it crudely, thinking should feel nice, and the more complex the thought, the more extensive the pattern, the more pleasant it should feel. Evidence of this mechanism, as well as its misapplication in modern humans is found in the crossword puzzles and game shows which are in every newspaper and every TV channel. It may also be revealed in the AHA moment at the illumination stage of some creative processes, as well as the HA HA moment at the punch line of a joke, when a new formulation of ideas, a new thought pattern, is taken up by the listener. It may also underpin some of the pleasures associated with some artworks, particularly works of Conceptual Art in which there is conventional aesthetic stimulus, no direct appeal to the senses.

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The Poetic Imagination

March 23rd, 2007 Fred McVittie

The functioning of the mind as described by the theories of Embodied Cognition are radically different from that associated with more blandly ‘computational’ models. The idea that cognition is merely, or even only, the wielding of symbols and the arithmetic calculation of weightings across connectionist networks is replaced by a view that looks out across the mind as a landscape of poetic imagination, not dissimilar to that explored by Bachelard in ‘The Poetics of Space’ and other works. The structure of thought, even the most banal or apparently rational, is underpinned by the methods of poetry and art; metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche are essential elements in the grammar of cognition.

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Bower Birds and the Cognitive Imperative

April 25th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The bower of the Bower Bird is an elaborate construction of twigs, leaves, and flowers, and is built by the males to act as an attractant for females. The action of constructing the bower is completely ‘instinctual’ in that bower birds raised without contact with other birds nevertheless adopt the behaviour without any sense of it being learned. If one were to ask a bower bird why it built the bower, or how it went about it, it wouldn’t know what you were talking about, and not only because it is a bird and has no language. It would not understand you because it would not be able to comprehend the distinction between itself and the action of building the bower. It would be the same as asking it how it went about growing feathers or pumping the blood around its body.

Clearly humans do not build bowers, or if we do it is a learned behaviour arising out of the social and cultural conditions of our individual development. Those rare individuals who have somehow missed the socialisation process, ‘feral’ children for example, show no signs of any complex architectural or sculptural instinct. However, humans do show an innate tendency toward the far more complex routines associated with cognitive behaviour. This has been identified by Newberg and D’Aquili and others, and sometimes referred to as the Cognitive Imperative.

The Cognitive Imperative, a ‘drive’ which impels us irresistably toward certain forms of thinking (both conscious and non-conscious) consists of a number of sub-routines which we apply to the stimuli provided by the senses. Again, pace Newberg and D’Aquili, we might refer to these sub-routines as ‘Cognitive Operators’ and they constitute the routine operations which transform multiform and discontinuous sense data into the coherent and unified experience of being and world. As with the bower bird, if we were to ask ourselves why or how we perform this amazing technical feat we would have great difficulty understanding the question, let alone framing an answer.

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Supervenience and Perception

May 15th, 2007 Fred McVittie

It is axiomatic in the science of the mind that a changes in mental states, whether this be of mood, or of the contents of consciousness, corresponds to a change in the physical organisation of the brain. This change in organisation may be simply a small change in the operation of a neuronal network, or may be a wholesale shift if brain chemistry, as for example, when a surge of adrenaline accompanies the cognitive experience of fear or excitement. This relationship is often spoken of in terms of causality, that these changes in the brain ’cause’ the thoughts and feelings they correspond to. It is more accurate however only to to talk in terms of correlation, correspondence, or ’supervenience’.(1)

The mind and the contents of the mind (assuming such a distinction is meaningful) are ’supervenient’ on the the physical substrate within which the mind is lodged, and on which it depends. Obviously the most obvious physical substrate is the material substance of the brain, and it is clear that changes in, for example, brain chemistry correlate with changes in the state of mind. The mind is, therefore, supervenient on the brain. The supervenience does not stop at the level of the meninge however, it is self-evident that not only internal conditions of wetware of the brain correlate with cognition but also the sensory experiences of the world beyond the boundaries of the body. Changes in external temperature are supervenient with the phenomenological experience of feeling warm; the visual experience of seeing a tree is supervenient with the construction of the concept of that tree in our minds.

1. The physical need not be explanatorily prior to the psychological in the same way a lower-level F is explanatorily prior to a neighboring higher-level G when F and G are connected by an interlevel explanatory theory. Instead, physics can be explanatorily prior to psychology, and indeed to any other (distant) higher-level science, by way of lying at the end of a certain chain of sciences (or theories) between physics and the (distant) science, which sciences (or theories) are connected pairwise by explanatory interlevel theories. The point is not to infer from the chain of pairwise interlevel explanations that there is an interlevel explanation of the psychological by the physical (via some leapfrog physical psychology). This would violate the non-transitivity of the relevant notion(s) of explanation. Rather, given that each level in the chain is explanatorily prior to the next higher level, we infer that the lowest level (physics) is explanatorily prior to the highest. Explanatory priority is transitive even when explanation is not.

“Is Supervenience Asymmetric?” to appear in L. C. Pereira and M. Wrigley, eds., Festshcrift in Honor of Oswaldo Chateaubriand (Manuscrito, 1999)

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Mentalese and Dualism

May 22nd, 2007 Fred McVittie

We have grown accustomed to the idea that actions and our thoughts take place in two radically separate worlds, and that the languages of these worlds is also radically separate. This idea finds its purest expression in the physical dualism of the hardware/software binary of computation. Standard (digital) computation involves both the analog, literal, concrete artifacts of input/output devices, (and the world which the devices connect to), as well as the abstract symbol systems which represent and process the data acquired by the input/output devices. The ‘language’ of I/O is one of spaces and surfaces, of movement and duration, of force, texture and distance. An I/O device is required to interact with the environment and is therefore bound to speak the language of the physics of that environment. The symbolic language spoken by the CPU on the other hand, ultimately a language with the limited but powerful vocabulary of only 0 and 1, has its own grammar and syntax unconnected to the physics of objects and spaces. CPU languages, from LISP to VB and C++, are self-contained symbolic systems and their primary importance is their ability to generate results. The actual working of these languages or codes is irrelevant.

This idea of two radically separate languages, one internal and one external, produces odd results when applied to the human body and mind. It would result in an assumption that the mind, like the CPU of a computer, used a discreet and hermetic symbolic system to process the data provided by by the I/O devices of the senses. Further, that the actual processes of that internal language, call it ‘Mentalese’, is irrelevant provided that the results are appropriate. In other words, computation metaphors of mind reinforce the idea that the language of the body is different to the language of the mind, and contributes towards dualist understandings of mind and body.

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Solaris to Earth (over)

May 28th, 2007 Fred McVittie

It has been estimated that between 75 and 90% of spoken and written language in not literal and concrete, referring to primary experiences with the material substances of the world, but is ‘metaphorical’. It is further believed that this use of metaphor in language reflects a similar widespread use of metaphor in thought, and that most of the cognition we engage in, both conscious and non-conscious, is non-literal. Metaphor allows us to think about aspects of lived experience which would otherwise be unavailable to the senses and therefore unthinkable. These include entities and forces which are simply beyond the reach of the senses because they are too small, too fast, too large, too distant etc. but also includes the many abstract concepts that have been created by human culture and cognition including ‘justice’, ‘truth’, ‘romantic love’ etc. Even such apparently literal and concrete phenomena such as our understanding of numbers has been shown not to be direct (at least above very small numbers), but grounded in metaphor. This dominance of both conscious and non-conscious cognition by metaphor is so great that an entity, person, animal, or artificial intelligence which was only able to process information directly and had no means of embodying abstractions through metaphor would barely qualify as the possessor of a mind at all. It is almost true to say that our modern concept of mind itself is as a kind of metaphor machine.

Our relation to the metaphorising processes which constitute cognition and the formation of mind range from unquestioning acceptance to more self-conscious awareness that we are not thinking or speaking literally. When we speak about atoms we feel that the language is concrete (except to a physicist who knows the truth about atoms), whereas when we speak about God we are not quite so sure if we are talking literally or metaphorically. An uncertainty that will also vary depending on our religious preferences.

Given the ubiquitous concerns with abstractions that seems to characterise the being of human, it is fair to say that most of our phenomenology, and most personal thought and interpersonal discourse is metaphorical. For the most part we live cognitively in a world which is not directly available to the senses, which is beyond human bodily experience. Instead we live in a world of shifting metaphors in which abstract ideas mould themselves into shapes of objects, spaces, and forces that we can see with our minds eye, touch with the mental feelings, move through with the body in our minds. These transient thought forms dissolve and combine, blending and elaborating into complex architectures of thought as our attempts to grasp the ungraspable lead us to constantly build and rebuild these mental structures using the blueprints of embodied experience.

This shifting internal landscape of embodied metaphor, call it ‘imagination’, is the ground for what we experience daily as normal waking consciousness. Behind the clear and constant solidity of waking awareness there is this ongoing dream populated by shape-shifters and transformers. Our consciousness lives on Earth, our imagination lives on Solaris.

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The Pleasures of Thinking

May 30th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The ‘cognitive imperative’ drives the mind to fabricate a coherent model of the world from the disparate, unconnected, and often conflicting signals caught by the senses. This imperative is the phenomenological equivalent of ‘perceptual binding’ in which we perceive the world as a unified, multi-sensory whole; we experience the bird on the branch singing its song, we do not experience bird, branch, and song as distinct from each other (unless we choose to). The cognitive imperative is not an emotionless, machinic process however, rather we experience its operation as patterns of positive and negative stress, pleasures and discomforts. It feels good to see connections and relationships between different sensory input, and it can feel challengingly irritating to notice discontinuites or incongruities in the smooth surface of experience. The removal of these stresses and the maximisation of positive feelings was presumably evolution’s way of shaping mental and physical behaviour which was (and is) adaptive, and would aid in our survival and the likelihood of our reproducing. These stresses and pleasures are nature’s way of keeping us thinking, because thinking aids survival.

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Metaphorical Operator

May 30th, 2007 Fred McVittie

In ‘Why God won’t go Away’, Newberg and D’Aquili list a number of ‘cognitive operators’, or routine mental processes, which they claim give structure to experience. These are:

• Reductionist - which breaks apparently single data objects into multiple elements
• Holistic - which forms connections between inputs, making single concepts out of disparate elements
• Abstractive - which isolates essential components from complex experience, or commonalities between different experiences
• Binary - which divides information into two based on a perceived point of difference
• Causal - which identifies or constructs linear connections between data based on causality
• Quantitative - which recognises quantity and variable amount
• Existential - which recognises or awards agency and intentionality to experienced phenomena

In the spirit of Newberg and D’Aquili’s research, it seems likely that the functioning of metaphor also plays a part within the routine cognitive operations producing and supporting cognition and consciousness. We use metaphor extensively in language and thought, to the extent that without its use we would not have anything like the mental capacity we do. It might even be said that we would barely have ‘minds’ at all. It may be that in addition to the seven cognitive operators noted above (which is extended to eight is some writings) there is an additional ‘metaphorical operator’ which translates abstract concepts into embodied concepts. Alternatively it may be that metaphor is a natural result of the operations of the cognitive operators already proposed, particularly the Abstractive Operator.

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Anti-Epiphany

May 30th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The shifting internal landscape of metaphors and representations that we might call ‘imagination’ includes not only the extensive covert metaphors underpinning routine language and thought as described by Lakoff et al, but also the heightened and more recognisable metaphors found in poetic flourishes, scientific theories, political models, and theological beliefs and cosmologies. All of these constructs are beyond literal embodiment so are fabricated in our imaginations from the building materials of embodied experience. Some might argue that such entities as God, Quarks, and the Invisible Hand of the Free Market are objectively verifiable facts about the world, but such claims, however valid, does not alter the status of these entities as ultimately imaginary and metaphorical. Whilst these overt or ‘heightened’ metaphors actually have the same ontological status as the more routine metaphors, we tend regard these abstractions as deserving of special treatment. We treat poetic metaphor with an aesthetic appreciation that is largely absent from our experience of routine embodied metaphor. We approach political metaphor with revolutionary zeal or protectionist paranoia, and we treat theological metaphor with the reverence and awe we call ’spirituality’.

This ’spiritualisation’ of the imagination, in which we associate a particular attitude and mental state with a certain set of abstraction, amongst the sea of abstractions that surrounds us, is slightly odd. The oddness is that we spend most of our lives in the close embrace of one metaphor or another, completely immersed in the spirit world of embodied abstractions and yet we choose this particular subset of metaphors to have a ‘religious’ relationship with. It would perhaps be more consistent to develop this special kind of relationship with those parts of experience which are unlike the others, and which are distinguished by their rarity and ontological distinction. What is exceedingly rare as a category of human conceptualisation, and which in some ways makes more sense as a location for religious experience, is the unalloyed engagement with the material world, a direct experience of physical material, accessed via the senses. Given the human predeliction for metaphorical thought, such moments of engagement with the raw material of metaphor, physical experience itself, are inordinately difficult to sustain. Listening without putting a name or an interpretation on what is heard. Seeing and trusting the evidences of one’s eye. Feeling the texture of the paper under one’s fingertips. These things are not the epiphanies of spiritual experience but the anti-epiphanies of embodiment, which are far less commonplace.

It is perhaps significant that some practical philosophical traditions stress the importance of this kind of concrete experience; these moments of anti-epiphany are islands of holy materialism in an ocean of tumbling tumultuous metaphors, gleaming crystals of divine contact in a volatile and wholly spiritual world.

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Cognitive Operators and Synectic Triggers

June 7th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The so-called ‘Cognitive Operators’ identified by D’Aquili and Newberg (2005) which organise perceptions into concepts and thoughts have a high degree of correlation with the Synectic Triggers utilised in formal creativity training. Synectic Triggers are routine processes that one might apply to any source text or input such that the text or input is transformed in some way. This is usually followed by an evaluative process in which the results of such transformations are assessed. A common list of these ‘triggers’ includes the following processes.

• Subtract
• Add
• Transfer
• Empathise
• Animate
• Superimpose
• Change
• Scale
• Substitute
• Fragment
• Isolate
• Distort
• Disguise
• Contradict
• Parody
• Prevaricate
• Analogise
• Hybridise
• Metamorphose
• Symbolise
• Mythologise
• Fantasise
• Repeat
• Combine

The degree of overlap between these terms and the processes actuated by the ‘Cognitive Operators’ suggests that these cognitive operations can be brought under conscious control and accentuated for specific creative purposes beyond the routine creative construction of everyday perception and thought. An alternative account is that these Cognitive Operators are fictional constructs mapped from fully conscious experiences and techniques particularly familiar to artists and ‘creative thinkers’. Either way, it is interesting to note that, whilst Synectic Triggers includes metaphorical operations, no such Operator is posited by D’Aquili and Newberg as a (possibly hard-wired) system in the mind/brain.

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Computational Metaphors of Consciousness

June 9th, 2007 Fred McVittie

If the cognitive processes of the mind can be thought of as a kind of computer, then they would constitute a multi-tasking, holographic, qubit-wielding distributed array. If the conscious part of the mind were a monitor attached to this computer, it would be a 15″ black & white with a resolution of 480X640 (and with a dodgy lead).

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Old Knowing

July 18th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Since human conceptualisation is constructed from the abilities and limitations of embodiment, it is inevitable that all systems of thought must also reflect this embodiment. These systems and structures must be ultimately metaphorical, limited to the affordances of the body. In this sense, the capacity for generating effective models of abstract concepts is not progressive in the way that, say, post-Newtonian science is progressive. We do not need to know quantum physics in order to think, since thinking uses the physics of medium sized objects moving at medium speed. Our cognition does not contain charmed quarks and Higgs bosons: nor does it work with black holes and dark energy. The physics of thinking is largely the same as the physics of our embodiment, it is that of the wheel, the lever, the printing press, the pendulum, the spring, and the pulley.

These constraints which organise our cognition along Newtonian lines locate the discourse around cognition within the range of all cultures, not only those with advanced technical knowledge. If our minds are made of levers, wheels, and pendulums then knowledge of these devices is sufficient to build a model of that mind. This means that if we are looking for models of thought, we need not restrict ourselves to only looking at the latest findings from techno-scientific practice. Since all peoples has equivalent access to the necessary knowledge, then the ideas formulated by many people across history is equally useful.

It should be remembered of course, that this Newtonian logic only applies to the mental operations of the mind, not to the functioning of the brain, or to an articulation of the relationship between brain, mind, and world (if indeed such distinctions can be made). The physical brain undoubtedly uses processes which are far beyond the range of Newtonian or Folk science, and probably outside the current reach of the most modern scientific theories. We may think in broadly Newtonian terms, but what we think with is likely to involve extremely esoteric physical principles.

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The Logic of Front and Back

September 1st, 2007 Fred McVittie

It is a fact of our incorporation into these particular bodies that we see the world is specific ways.

One of the inevitables presented by the specifics of our embodiment is that our world is divided into two parts: a part in front that we are aware of visually, and a part behind us which we are not. Standing still with eyes open the world in front of us presents itself to us in a way which is radically different to what exists at our rear. The space in front of us appears brightly-lit whereas the space behind us is in darkness (an unusual kind of darkness, but darkness nonetheless). Before us all is visual clarity and objective reality. Behind us all is slightly mysterious, the subject of guesswork, subjective responses, fallible memory, and unknown fears. Before us is the path and we feel the choices we make with each step. These steps are ours and we can see where we are going. The path behind us is beyond our control and anyone or anything may be following us. Monsters and murderers attack from behind. In front of us is the future and when we move of our own volition it is into that bright space of the future that we take a step. Behind us is the past, another country and they do things differently there. Retreat is always a bad idea and no-one likes to be backed into a corner.

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The Feeling of Light

September 16th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Although enlightenment cannot be reduced to the feelings associated with it, feelings which might include awe, a sense of connectedness, a dissolution of the ego etc, such feelings can be considered as pointers, indications that we are on the right road. Provided one stays aware that these feelings can be a distraction, and that the path to enlightenment continues beyond them, one should welcome them as encouraging landmarks.

Although it is sometimes thought that these sensations are unique, emerging only from spiritual practice and having nothing in common with the more routine feelings experienced in everyday life, this is not the case. It is better to consider the sensation of enlightenment as an amplification of the sensations associated with other experiences and cognitive activities. In particular, it can be regarded that there is a set of experiences which constitute an increasing intensity of feelings culminating in this sense of enlightened ‘unity of being’. A provisional list of these sensations would include: perception, ‘noticing’, recognition, pattern recognition, problem solving, ‘realisation’ and the feeling of ‘getting’ a joke or solving a riddle, the generation of a theory, and the various reaches of artistic creativity. It will be noted that this list, which is not meant to be exhaustive, includes states of mind which are completely unremarkable, and which we would not usually draw our attention. In including perception, it also includes processes of mind which we are unavailable to conscious scrutiny but which perhaps underpin or give content to that consciousness.

These processes have a number of features in common, and which determine them as conceptually connected (remembering that such conceptualisation inevitably involves the use of metaphor). Two shared features are particularly significant for our purposes: these are that all of them involve the bringing together of disparate elements into a unity, and the second is that this unity is conceived of as existing in a single, brightly-lit space. As we will see, these two features are necessarily connected but it may be useful to consider them independently.

Unity
The first feature they share is that of Unification. All of these concepts depend upon the bringing together of disparate elements into a larger unified whole, a singularity or gestalt which is apprehended in its entirety. The difference between the concepts is the extent to which this unification takes place.

enlightenment
creativity
theory (and mythologisation)
realisation
recognition
noticing
perception

The higher up the list one goes, the greater the degree of singularity one is attributing to experience, with the ultimate goal of enlightenment as one in which one experiences the universe, including oneself as a single undivided whole. At that level everything is brought together and there is no distinction between self and other, mind and body, conscious and unconscious; all is seamlessly unified into the singularity of One. Starting at the bottom however this bringing together of individual elements is much more routine. Perception involves the compilation of sense data, the information about the world provided by the senses, into manageable and meaningful phenomena. When we look at a tree for example, we do not observe the individual elements that make up the tree: the branches, bark, leaves, the sound of the wind rustling those leaves etc, and then consciously assemble this data into a unified whole. Rather, it is the whole tree which presents itself to consciousness, the assembly having taken place in the interstices of the brain using the normal processes of perception. This compilation of sensory impressions into complex gestalts is entirely automatic and non-conscious. In fact it is only by an effort of conscious will that we are able to prevent ourselves from performing this routine act of creative construction. If we wish to see the elements which make up the tree, or make up whatever other gestalt is presenting itself, then we have to consciously shift our attention to those elements. (Actually, it may be inaccurate to say that this perception is ‘presented’ to consciousness as if consciousness is a kind of empty stage waiting for the performance of the world. It might be more accurate to see such a ‘performance’ as constituting consciousness.)

It might be a subject of interest why the routine unification of sense-data seems to operate at particular scales. When we look out into the world why do our non-conscious unifying processes stop at the place they do? Why, when we look at a tree do we see a tree first rather than the leaves or the forest? It seems likely that, since cognition derives from the adaptive processes of evolution, then the unifying processes of perception would tend to converge on scales which best served that end. When one is looking for somewhere to hide from a predator there is clearly an adaptive advantage to be gained from seeing tree rather than leaves or forest. Or to bring the example indoors, why, when we look at a chair do we initially and effortlessly see a chair rather than a composite of rectangular shapes or a general piece of furniture? For that matter, why do we not see fragmented patterns of light and shade or particles of matter. Normal waking awareness is partly a process in which the disparate sense data of the world is brought together by non-conscious operations into appropriately-sized gestalts, this ‘appropriateness’ being determined by the affordances offered by these gestalts.

(It should be noted that the scale at which this unconscious unification happens is not only a product of evolutionary determinism but is also partly determined by cultural circumstances; different circumstances suggest different affordances from the environment. So, for example, whilst I might take a trip to the coast and see the ocean, a surfer might look in the same direction and see the wave.)

Perception of the kind I am indicating here is entirely unconscious and requires no effort of will and need produce no sense of awareness. To experience the unification of the sense data of the world at this level would be totally unremarkable. This is the kind of perception we have when we are ‘doing something else’. When we drive down the motorway singing along to the radio, or daydream while we walk the dog in the park, this unifying of perception is what stops us crashing into the armco or stepping off the path, or bumping our head on the low-lying branches of the trees.

On a neurological level, this process is referred to as ‘perceptual binding’ and involves the synchronised firing of networks of neurons. These networks code for different sense data: vertical lines, particular colours, edges, certain shapes etc. and the synchronisation unifies these individual data items into a coherent mental ‘image’ such that we do not see these data elements but only the results of their synchronisation, a chair for example.

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Emotion and Cognition

October 4th, 2007 Fred McVittie

There is no cognition without emotion, even though we are often unaware of the emotional aspects of our thinking’. (Johnson, M. 2007. p.9)

Johnson, M. (2007). The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. University of Chicago Press. London.

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Window metaphors of Visual Consciousness

October 9th, 2007 Fred McVittie

One of the most enduring and intuitively satisfying images for perception (and by metaphorical inference for ‘knowing’) is that of the window. However much we may construct alternatives, or work to disabuse ourselves of this image, it is nevertheless extremely persistent. The window metaphor conceives of perceptual consciousness as formed around this image, and with one’s understanding of ’self’ depending on where one is located, and with which parts of the image one identifies. This image has six (or possibly seven) components, three of which are standard components of all images, both mental and actual. These are:

? The space in which the image appears, usually a three dimensional space replicating the Cartesian space of lived experience.
? A viewing position within that space from which one observes the image, usually from outside of the image itself but sometimes contained within it.
? The direction of the imaginary gaze from the mental viewing position, probably toward a particular point on the image or scene.

All mental images have these elements as standard; the ‘window’ image also contains three (or maybe four) other elements or entailments, the conceptualisation of which determines the state of one’s perceptual consciousness within the limits of the metaphor. These additional components are:

? The space ‘outside’ the window, which in terms of perceptual consciousness is usually conceived of as the objective world.
? The space ‘inside’ the window, which is understood to be the mental space of thought, mind, memory, imagination, and subjective existence.
? The frame of the window, which in visual terms has the incorporated form of the dark border to our vision formed by the eye-sockets, the nose, and the top of the cheeks. Conceptually this frame is the edge of the visual field.
? (Possibly) the surface of the window itself corresponding to the pane of glass which separates outside from inside. I say ‘possibly’ because I personally find no evidence for the appearance of this part of the image in my mind when I look at my mental image of the window and apply it to my cognition.

The default setting for this image as a conceptual metaphor for consciousness places our ’self’ within the internal space, looking through the ‘frame’ of our eye-sockets into the other space of objective interpersonal reality. Support for the ubiquity of this experience presumably comes partly from the very real and tangible existence of the ‘frame’ component, but also from the intuitive, if not innate tendency that we have to locate our identity, and indeed that of others, within an interior space. Experiments with the naïve knowledge of children suggests that we acquire this sense at a very young age indeed, and that this essentialist idea of (self) identity as existing inside the body, and certainly behind the eyes, is not something that is learned through formal or informal cultural practices, but is implicit in the structure of a universal human engagement with the world. The window metaphor then, whilst having no real basis in psychology or neuroscience, corresponds sufficiently well with some elements of naïve knowing and with some facts of embodiment for it to feel ‘right’ as an image of perceptual consciousness.

Posted in Boundary, Cognition, Imagination, Metaphor, Mind, Perception | No Comments »

Copenhagen Interpretation of Sensory Experience

October 21st, 2007 Fred McVittie

The experiences of the senses do not describe the real world, but rather they describe what systems of cognition we need to create in order to understand (live in) the world.

The experience of ‘hardness’ that we sense when we push against a wall or a tree is not simply a result of the tree ‘being hard’, but is the way in which our cognitive systems represent the tree and the forces of which both it and ourselves are composed. A salient feature of the physics to which both the tree and ourselves are subject is that of non-penetrability. I cannot walk through the tree despite both it and I being largely constituted of space. This non-penetrability, should I not be able to experience it phenomenally, would most likely result in my repeated attempts to pass through the tree, an action which would be injurious if not fatal. The gift of evolution has served to avoid this by allowing me to interpret this abstract physical law in human, experiential terms. When I push against a tree I do not have to consciously consider the nature of the strong and weak nuclear forces which prevent one medium-sized object passing through another, I simply feel the tree as ‘hard’.

To a fictional creature which was substantially smaller than we are, the size of an atom, say, the tree would not be hard at all. In fact it would barely exist as a coherent entity at all. The space within each atom of the tree would dominate the experience and passage through this space would be largely unresisted.

The tree therefore, is a product of processes through which reality is imagined.

Posted in Cognition, Imagination, Salience, Sense, Tree | No Comments »

Soul of an Atheist - Overview

November 16th, 2007 Fred McVittie

The ‘Soul of an Atheist’ section of this writing refers to the hypothesis iterated in various places throughout this blog that the desire to understand the relationship between self and world, the universe and the place of human beings within it, is a universal tendency. This desire may be simply a side-effect of the operation of cognition, perhaps an overactive holistic operator (Newberg & D’Aquili), or some version of the HADD or ‘Hyperactive Agency Detecting Device’ suggested by Barrett, or some other pattern recognition system. Such devices, systems, or operators are presumed to provide the function of cohering data from the senses such that prediction and control become possible; we see patterns in the seasons which allow us to plan our harvests, and this same cognitive skill allows (or demands) that we see patterns in the stars, or in the entrails of sacrificed animals. Furthermore, this cohering tendency operates across a range of scales. At one end there is the relatively discreet process which allows us to cohere the partially occluded outline of a tiger in the bushes into a complete image of the entire terrifying animal. At the other end of the scale the tendency urges us to find a single unifying pattern in all creation. It is interesting to note that at both ends of this scale we ourselves are also posited as an element within the unified image; the fearful symmetry of the tiger produced by our cohering cognition is fearful to us, and that fear is part of the image and the rationale for our producing it in the first place. Similarly, our seeking of a unified image of the universe, a cosmology if you will, also inevitably contains ourselves as active participants.

The quest for a satisfying cosmology probably underpins much of the action of scientists in their talk of ‘theories of everything’, and also of seers, prophets, and evangelists who make apparently similar claims for a unifying goal.

For a cosmology to be both useful and satisfying, as well as being resistant to rational dismissal, it must fill certain criteria. These are, that it be coherent, without obvious internal inconsistencies; that it be expressed in concepts which are capable of embodiment (possibly through the use of conceptual metaphor), and that it not be contradicted by the processes of logical deduction and the scientific method.

Posted in Binding, Cognition, Cosmology, Religion, Science, Universals | No Comments »

How Philosophy Captures the Mind

December 7th, 2007 Fred McVittie

It is said that a good question in science is one that is posed in such a way that the answer is easily found, whereas a good question in philosophy is one for which the answer is never found. Scientific questions, formalised in the conventions of the hypothesis, ideally constrain the field of inquiry to within clearly determined limits well-defined terms. The location of the answer to such a question, even if such answer be unexpected or disappointing, is tightly identified and focused upon. Philosophical questions on the other hand tend to focus less on the location or even the identification of possible answers than on the conceptual space opened up by the question. Good philosophical questions are ones which do not point to a specific answer/location but that extend the field of possible questions. This ability of questions in philosophy to capture the imagination and hold it in contemplation of the (possibly) unanswerable is one of the pleasures, if not consolations, of philosophy.

It seems likely that this feature of the ‘big questions’ to provoke extended contemplation, often by hundred of scholars over many centuries, is related to the ‘cognitive imperative’ identified by Newberg and D’Aquili and others, in which the human mind/brain irresistibly seeks out problems and ambiguous stimuli. Further, there may be a relationship with the tendency in babies and small children to give preferential attention to events which are unusual or which contravene their innate understandings of how the world works.

Posted in Attention, Cognition, Knowledge, Philosophy, Problem | No Comments »

The Dying of the Light: Hello Darkness

December 11th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Development in human medicine may one day delay the onset of senile dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and the routine deterioration of memory and reasoning that accompanies old age. (Recent studies have linked these effects with loss of integrity in the white matter of the brain (1).) We may eventually see a time in which aging of the brain is halted and as one gets older there is no loss of mental function, one stays as sharp and alert as a 20 year old, right up to the point when one dies from some somatic breakdown or other. Is this really a good thing? I am not at all sure I want to go out like that, at the absolute height of my cognitive powers, fully wide-awake and fully aware that, if only my body would keep going, then my brain would continue to carry me forward. I suspect that such ‘improvement’ would only add to the fear of death and the impossibility of imagining it. There would be no gradual decline, no fading away, no seeping of consciousness into the fabric of the world, no emptying of the self until the body is a hollow shell. Instead the ghost would be perfectly trapped within the machine, watching the decay of its vessel with increasing frustration and anxiety. There would be no ‘dying of the light’ to rage against, only the solid black wall of terminal embodiment to which we would hurtle, wide-eyed and with our path toward it brightly lit with anachronistic mind.

Let me dissolve into the gathering dusk piece by piece. Take this part of mind, then this, then this. Let me gently forget my friends and family, my home, the books I’ve read and the television I’ve watched, my wife, my past, my name. Return these things from wherever they came, out there beyond the extent of skin and bone. Take my freedom, my independence, my dignity, my continence, my responsiveness, my mobility, my rights as a human being, my sense of self, and stick them where the light of my sun no longer shines. Here is the dark, and here is the whisperer in darkness.

Andrews-Hanna J.R., Snyder A.Z, Vincent J.L., Lustig C, Head D, Fox M.D., Raichle M.E., and R.L. Buckner. “Evidence for large-scale network disruption in advanced aging.” In Preparation. Reported in Scientific American, December 5th, 2007.

Posted in Brain, Cognition, Consciousness, Darkness, Death, Embodiment, Life, Light | No Comments »

Artworks as the result of Epistemic Actions

January 24th, 2008 Fred McVittie

I propose here a novel way of considering a range of artworks that constitutes an analysis of their function which does not rely on art history, aesthetics, or market value. For this I will draw on the distinction between Pragmatic and Epistemic Actions, as identified by Kirsh and Maglio (1994)

David Kirsh and Paul Maglio distinguish between two types of action; what they refer to as ‘pragmatic actions’ which are goal-oriented and fulfil an immediate practical function, and ‘epistemic actions’ which, as they put it, ‘use the world to improve cognition’. In other words, these epistemic actions are those which represent a kind of ‘outsourcing’ of cognitive behaviour to the actions of the body. Simple examples of these include the use of the fingers in carrying out mental arithmetic such that numbers are remembered by the use of the fingers, relieving the resource use of the brain, or the physical rotation of a puzzle piece prior to its placement, which is the main example used by Kirsh and Maglio (the video game ‘Tetris’ is extensively covered). This use of action to assist thought can also be observed in chess players who, when considering possible moves, often temporarily move a piece to a number of different positions first as this seems to facilitate an easier imagining of what the consequences of each move might be. There is no obvious way to explain why this physically moving of the piece is more effective than simply going through it in one’s mind, but nevertheless this action does seem to serve the epistemic function of optimising the particular cognitive task of making a good move in chess.

All artworks are characterised by the fact that they serve no immediately useful purpose (at least to the extent that they are artworks; they may have an additional function beyond their status as art but this status is not dependent upon it and may indeed by compromised by it). To this extent therefore, artworks are not the result of pragmatic action and are not, one might say, ‘pragmatic objects’. Kirsh and Maglio provide an additional option for how these actions and objects might be considered, which is that they might result from ‘ epistemic actions’ and constitute ‘epistemic objects’. This paper will consider this way of interpreting the function of some art objects and the actions which lead to their creation.

Kirsh, D., & Maglio, P. (1994). On distinguishing epistemic from pragmatic action. Cognitive Science, 18, 513-549.

Posted in Art, Cognition, Conference Abstract, Embodiment | No Comments »

Carrying Over of Beliefs

February 15th, 2008 Fred McVittie

The holding of a belief is a cognitive mechanism which allows us to carry out certain mental activities which, without that belief, would be either impossible or extremely resource intensive. If, each time we looked over the edge of a cliff, we had to assess the likelihood that stepping over the edge would result in our death, then we would be incapable of acting. The firm belief that we have in the inevitability that this action would lead to our death relieves us of this arduous assessment process and allows us to use our limited cognitive resources elsewhere.

This process is analogous to the mathematical technique of ‘carrying over’ when adding up large numbers. In this technique the numbers to be added are placed above one another and the columns of numbers formed are added one column of digits at a time starting with the units, then moving up to the tens, the hundreds, the thousands, and so on. When a column of digits adds up to a number larger than ten then the first part of this product is ‘carried over’ by being included in the next column of digits. When this next column of digits is then added the number which has been carried over is also added. The significance of this is that the number carried over is not usually checked at this point, it is simply taken as a fact of the mathematical technique. The number represents an element of the earlier calculation and is given the same status as the rest of the numbers in the column. In a sense, therefore, the number carried over is ‘believed’ to be a relevant and accurate part of the addition process, a belief which could in fact turn out to be fallacious if the previous addition was shown to be inaccurate. Such a fallacious belief would affect the total calculation resulting in an incorrect final answer.

This analogy serves to indicate the status of beliefs within the cumulative and interconnected processes of cognition. Given that we cannot fact check every single perception and conception, we must rely on the carrying over of beliefs from earlier parts of the thought process, or the history of our thought processes, if we are to function at all. When I see a tree in front of me I do not have sufficient cognitive resources to always confirm this perception using another sensory mode, nor can I always call on another person to confirm this perception. I am obliged to believe the evidence of my unalloyed and individual eyes. More abstractly, if I am to make sense of many of the complex and ephemeral experiences which typify human existence then the sheer number of beliefs which I would have to mobilise in order to live these experiences would far exceed my ability to confirm them ‘on the fly’. Again, I would be obliged to trust in the numbers carried forward from earlier parts of the calculation. I would have to use beliefs laid down earlier in my life, possibly in childhood, and possibly even laid down in the biochemistry of my being itself, just to get through the day.

I would anticipate that, if the aim of the establishment of beliefs is to minimise the drain on cognitive resources such that these resources can be spent on more life-supporting activities, then there would be a natural resistance to the revision of such beliefs. Going back over a calculation is an arduous and resource intensive process, and the earlier in the calculation an error is made the more effort would have to be spent having to correct it. By analogy, the earlier in one’s life, or in the life of one’s species, that a belief is laid down the more difficult it would be to muster the effort to go back and check the figures.

Posted in Belief, Cognition, Energy, Mathematics | No Comments »

Mind Brain Physics

February 16th, 2008 Fred McVittie

The account provided by neuroscience for how the brain performs the many functions it does are complex to an incredible degree. What’s more, many of the processes and mechanisms that are cited in these explanations are not only difficult to understand but are effectively impossible to understand in a literal embodied way. For example, it is distinctly possible that quantum mechanical processes are involved, if Penrose and Hammeroff are to be believed, in which case this part of the cognitive process is beyond our intuitive grasp.

The likelihood of the brain’s functioning being non-comprehensible in this literal way is not routinely regarded as a problem for science, as we have strategies for gaining knowledge about even the most non-intuitive systems. Confirmation of this can be found in the success of quantum physics more generally, which provides enormous explanatory power despite its reliance on mathematics for the conveyance of these explanations, rather than the flesh and blood language of intuitive common sense. Investigation of the brain therefore uses all of the tools of modern science, and is not restricted by the limitations of our embodied understanding.

Explanations of the mind, however, seem unable to transcend this limitation. All models of the mind seem locked into a requirement that explanations for mental function (as opposed to brain function) be intuitively evident and available to routine comprehension. This is perhaps inevitable since, given that the (conscious) mind is a product of evolutionary forces aimed at maximising the survival potential of medium-sized social mammals moving at medium speed (to paraphrase Dawkins), the ability of that mind to represent the world, including itself, would only need to address those concerns. Since our ability to intuitively apprehend anything is constrained by this precondition, any model of mind we feel intuitively satisfied with would be similarly constrained. We should expect that models of mind be easily visualisable, and probably follow laws of physics which correspond to Naive or Folk Physics or some version of the Newtonian. What’s more, it is likely that the mind itself, again for good evolutionary reasons, functions in a way which corresponds to this embodied paradigm. If the mind is an organ (or set of organs) produced by evolution which represents and allows for an effective engagement with a largely Newtonian world, then that mind, as part of the world, would need to be similarly Newtonian in structure.

Posted in Brain, Cognition, Consciousness, Embodiment, Evolution, Mind, Naive Physics, Neuroscience | No Comments »

Knowledge and Knowing

March 16th, 2008 Fred McVittie

When we want to introduce or discuss some item of knowledge; a perception, theory, or some expression of personal experience or belief, we use either this word ‘knowledge’, or we use the verb form ‘knowing’. This difference is significant and draws attention to different aspect of the overall metaphorical schema that structures our understanding.

As noted elsewhere, the organisational logic for our understanding of different forms of knowledge is drawn from our embodied experience as spatially-located entities, and the differences in knowledge types is mapped from the differences in spatial and sensory awareness produced by that embodiment. The use of these terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowing’ can be identified with reference to this organisational schema.

When we use the word ‘knowledge’ we are implicitly conferring upon the ‘object’ of knowledge some of the properties associated with objects in the physical world of our embodiment. Objects tend to be clearly bounded, be (visually) available to more than one individual at once, to persist over time and, crucially, to continue to exist in our absence. This last property is particularly interesting as the notion that objects exist even when we are not looking at them, an apparently trivial observation, is problematic when applied metaphorically to knowledge. It is clear that the tree that I look at (and photograph) each day when I walk my dogs does not disappear when I walk past it, (at least to the extent that it continues to be visible from the satellites accessed by Google Earth), however my active knowledge of the tree, as present in my visual perception of it, undoubtedly does. As the physicist Percy Bridgman, put it:

Since an object never occurs naked but always in conjunction with an instrument of measurement or the means whereby we obtain knowledge of it, the concept of ‘object’ as something in and of itself, is an illegitimate one.

This is also a question which exercised Albert Einstein, particularly in relation to status of the moon as ontological/epistemological object of realist knowledge. For a good discussion of this see http://www.eequalsmcsquared.auckland.ac.nz/sites/emc2/tl/philosophy/moon.cfm

This use of the term ‘knowledge’ places our attention on the apparently naked object, and distracts us from the presence of the instument of our own processes of knowledge production. The body is rendered absent and ecstatic in this flight away from the source of such ‘measurement’ toward its destination in the perceived/conceived, and theoretically ‘possessed’ object.

The term ‘knowing’ has a very different function within the overall schema, and it is revealing that certain writers, Mark Johnson for example, make explicit and insistant use of ‘knowing’ as a preferential term. Knowing, as a verb, demands the acknowledgement of a subject engaged in the act indicated; there is no escape or flight from the body of the knower as seems to be implied by ‘knowledge’. In using the term ‘knowing’ the focus is shifted away from the destination of the knowledge production process and widened to include something of the source and the path. There is also a sense, in this use of the verb, that the object of such knowing is not complete and permanent, existing like a rock on the riverbed, but rather is open to the pressings of engagement. There is something of the disposition of the knower present in this knowing, what Perkins might refer to as the dispositional quality of ‘pro-active’ knowledge, and also, critically, the hands-on immediacy of the performative.

Posted in Cognition, Embodiment, Knowledge, Language, Metaphor, Objectivity, Performance, Subjective | No Comments »

Clean Language and Purple Prose

April 9th, 2008 Fred McVittie

It is here that lucidity is at stake. Lucidity is precisely that which sets itself against this fixing of reality, this materialisation of truth, no matter what form it takes. In itself, it is nothing, and the only way of speaking of it would be that of negative theology, in the sense that it is not. It is neither a contract with reality nor with knowledge. It is a pact and, if it has anything to do with light, literally speaking, it is not with Enlightenment reason and objective knowledge. It would lie, to evoke a very beautiful image, at the intersection of the light issuing from the object and the light coming from the gaze. Or rather it would consist, as Musil says, in looking at the world with the eyes of the world – and not, as he says, in having the world at the distant end of the gaze [au fond du regard], because it would then crumble into absurd details, as sadly separated from each other as the stars at night… (Baudrillard, J. 2007)

It seems quite possible that there is a relationship between certain communication styles and our intentions with regard to the information we are trying to communicate. When we are striving for the creation of knowledge which we would like be considered as objective, that is, knowledge which, in metaphorical terms, has some of the features of an object, then we use a particular set of techniques, and these differ from the techniques we use when we are not seeking to create such a knowledge object. Furthermore, the kind of metalanguage we use when we talk about such styles is itself a contributor to the overall schema of knowledge within which the sense of our communication is formed.

In order to explicate this it is perhaps useful to remind ourselves what might be thought of as the prototypical, and possibly paradigmatic example of objectivity. As I have noted elsewhere in this writing, one of the key metaphors through which knowing is understood is through the association of KNOWING with SEEING. This metaphorical relationship is part of a larger set of body-based metaphors which map different types of knowing with different modes of sensory access; touch, smell, hearing, taste, etc. The KNOWING IS SEEING metaphor is particular relevant because it is through the entailments of this metaphor that many aspects of the structure of knowledge are articulated. As we will see, some of these entailments support the concept of ‘objective’ or ‘object-like’ knowledge, and allied to this, other entailments narrate the relationship between the subject (the receiver of the communication) and this knowledge object. It is these latter entailments which shape the metalanguage in which we talk about different communication styles.

To bring out the various entailments mentioned above we might remind ourselves of what the circumstances and conditions are in which SEEING takes place, for it is these circumstances and conditions which are carried over into the metaphor and which give structure to the otherwise abstract concept of KNOWING. For the sake of this example I am here listing the ideal conditions for seeing; the conditions under which, in the embodied physical world, we would best observe the objects around us in their most sovereign state.

Obviously, for seeing to take place there must be a space for the ’seer’ and the ’seen’ to occupy. Also, this space in which both seer and seen are present must be brightly lit. The space between the seer and the seen must be empty and without obstruction, and should also be neither so great that the object disappears into the distance (or over the horizon), nor so near that it cannot be focused upon, or presses against the body in an uncomfortable way. There should be no disturbance in the air between seer and seen, and that air should be free from vapours, fogs, shadows, distracting aerial effects, or in fact anything which might draw the attention of the eye away from the seen object. The air should be colourless, still, and to all intents and purposes, absent; it should approximate the condition of pure space, a perfect conduit for the gaze. These are the conditions one would wish to find at the summit of a mountain, and which might cause one to say “I can see our house from here”. This is the state of interstellar space, where the blackness of the sky is testament to its ability to allow the unimpeded transmission of the light. Crystaline moons with unambiguous, razor-sharp edges. Under such conditions objects achieve their greatest clarity and the features which define them as objects become most available.

If these are the conditions under which our sense of sight produces the most perfect representation of distant objects, clearly outlined and uniquely visible, then it should be the case that these same conditions are taken over as entailments when we wish to produce similarly perfect representations of metaphorical objects. When we want to convey the impression that our knowledge is objective we should find ourselves aspiring to such conditions within our language. We should also find ourselves making overt reference to these conditions when we describe our linguistic aspirations. So, for example, we might try to make our communication ‘clear’ or ‘lucid’, and also be able to say that that is what we are attempting. We might want to make our points (the directions in which we are pointing) as obvious and direct as possible. We would certainly avoid filling the vacuum of this space with conceptual fogs, or put up any obstacles to understanding. We like the space of objectivity to be colourless, so we would avoid purple prose, or the occluding shadows of the occult. Again, it is likely that we would be completely overt in our stating of these aspirations and take pride in our desire to avoid obscurantism through such ‘plain speaking’. These are the kinds of criteria for objective communication that we would cite in any metalinguistic discourse about how we talk about knowledge. The reason for this is clear (sic); in order to simulate in language the conditions in which objects optimally appear, we have to reproduce these conditions in the form of conceptual metaphors, effectively creating the conditions through which our knowledge can appear lucidly as object. When we say ’speak clearly’ we really mean ’simulate with your speech the emptiness of the space around the moon on a cloudless night in Winter, when the frost has taken all of the moisture from the air.’

Which raises the obvious next question of how such an airless space of language might be produced; what are the mechanisms by which this evacuation of atmosphere and blowing away of conceptual fog might be effected? Although a full retelling of this story of banishment and cleansing is beyond the range of this writing we might look to the recent history of how the word ‘metaphor’ has extended its reach for clues.

As noted elsewhere, until two decades ago the most usual understanding of the relationships between language and the world was one of an unproblematic division between the literal and the metaphorical. (For a good overview of this see Ortony, 1993). Developments in embodied cognition, grounded in evolutionary psychology, have demonstrated that our ability to conceptualise abstract concepts, including the concept of knowledge, is an adaptation of existing cognitive mechanism originally designed for to allow the body to sense and negotiate its environment. As linguistist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker describes it, the structures of cognition which in early humans, as in other animals, originally evolved to deal with the problems of moving through a physical spatial environment; sensing objects and movements, experiencing force and resistance, at some point were copied into other parts of the brain such that they became “scaffolding whose slots are filled with symbols for more abstract concerns like states, possessions, ideas, and desires.” (Pinker 1997, 355). The conclusion of these developments is a new understanding of the key role that metaphor plays in language and cognition. This is summed up by Lakoff and Johnson as follows:

Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish–a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act is fundamentally metaphorical in nature…. But our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of (1981.3).

So is there a mode of communication devoid of such epistemological constructions? Only if we limit ourselves to talking of trees, and rocks, and rivers, which might be a relief; to match our minds one to one with the Newtonian and empirical world in which our bodies are most at home, to follow Thoreau who claimed that “As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler”. However, as inheritors of the cognitive imperative, the restless desire to think not only out of the box but also in ways which are beyond the queerness of any suppositions, this is not really an option. What we are undoubtedly capable of is making extensive use of metaphors, imaginatively constructing elaborate structures of abstract thought without at any point being consciously aware that we are doing so. As Lakoff and Johnson put it:

Our conventional ways of talking about arguments presuppose a metaphor we are hardly ever conscious of. The metaphor is not merely in the words we use–it is in our very concept (1981.6)

One implementation of these ideas can be found in the so-called ‘Symbolic Modelling’ techniques developed by Lawley and Tompkins (2000) which are based on the ‘Clean Language’ work of therapist David Grove, and ultimately originating in the couselling/training practice of Neurolinguistic Programming. An underpinning assumption within this technique, and within NLP more generally, is that non-conscious cognition consists largely of conceptual metaphors, which together make up the internal ‘landscape’ of the client’s mind. Within this model, it is believed that personal development or the alleviation of personal problems, can be affected by more optimal organisation of this landscape, such reorganisation taking the form of a kind of internal imaginary psychogeography. The client is assisted in bringing to consciousness the metaphors they habitually use to frame and structure their experiences, with the assumption that such self knowledge can lead to a more effective inhabiting and management of this interior terrain. The usual communications that take place between client and therapist, as in other forms are communication, are rife with metaphors that both individuals contribute, but in this particular form of therapy such mutual metaphorical exchange would prevent the client from gaining effective knowledge of their own cognitive modelling processes. The desired aim is to surface only those metaphors which arise from the psyche of the client. To ensure that the therapist or counsellor does not ‘contaminate’ the communication by accidentally inserting their own metaphors into the communication Clean Language uses a deliberately restricted syntax which minimises the possibility of this contamination taking place. This syntax consists of a small number of questions and statements that the therapist uses to elicit responses and move the conversation forward. These are:

* And is there anything else about ……?
* And what kind of …… is that ……?
* And where is ……?
* And whereabouts?
* And what happens next?
* And then what happens?
* And what happens just before ……?
* And where does/could …… come from?
* And that’s …… like what?
(Lawley and Tompkins. 2000. 54)

The blanks in the sentences are filled in by playing back parts of the utterances made by the client, such that the original metaphors are largely kept intact. The sentences act as prompts by the therapist which allow the client to carry out further exploration of the internal landscape, moving the cursor backwards and forwards across the map whilst making minimum impact upon that environment themselves.

This interrogative and facilitative style of speech is the only example I have discovered of a linguistic strategy which approximates the literal, and even this assumes the existence of a spatially extended field of thought. Given also that it’s aim is the facilitation of knowledge, it is of no use whatsoever in generating, defining, articulating, constructing, or otherwise imparting knowledge itself. Any communication which has as its aim the transmission of ideas or concepts must inevitably set the terms of that communication through unconscious and covert metaphors. This includes the visual metaphors of clarity, directness, and lucidity which create the cognitive simulation of objectivity.

There are two possible implication for this analysis of the way language supports the construction of knowledge through conceptual metaphor. Firstly, there is the slightly vertiginous loss of certainty which inevitably accompanies the realisation that things were not as they seemed and that the prized goal of objectivity is sometimes made rather than found. This is particularly salient in this case since, not only has everything that was solid melted into air but the air itself has been sucked out along with the space which contained it. (Which irresistably reminds me of the scene in ‘Yellow Submarine’ when the Beatles are sailing through the Sea of Holes and Ringo reaches out and grabs one of these holes, a black circle of empty space, plucking it from its setting and putting it in his pocket. What was left behind after the removal of the hole doesn’t bear thinking about.) Within the overall context of conceptual metaphor theory and embodied cognition however, nothing has really changed. This is not the landscape of endlessly deferred meaning one finds within poststructuralism, nor the ‘nothing to scrute’ of Quine for example (1969, p. 5; cf. p. 27 and 1960, p. 58 and p. 77) who wrote that “The thesis of the inscrutability of reference tells us that it makes no sense to say absolutely, i.e., in any language or framework-independent sense, what objects a speaker is talking about. (According to the Stanford Encyclodpedia of Philosophy at least:an objective text if ever such a thing existed.) Within the terms of embodied cognition, the observation that most language, and indeed most thought, is metaphorical does not banish the world, but rather casts the body and the sense-making processes inherent in the body as the interface between thought and world. Objects remain objects and metaphorical objectivity becomes one of a number of imaginative poetic devices for the comprehension of the otherwise incomprehensible.

The second implication for this embodied view of the relationship between language and knowledge, and how cognition relates to both, is that there may be occasions when the knowledge figuring in the communication is not considered to be an object. If this were the case then setting up linguistic conditions, and by implication cognitive conceptual conditions, which simulate the condition of objectivity may be counter-productive, reminiscent of Polanyi’s example: “Suppose a lecturer points his finger at an object, and tells the audience: ‘Look at this!’ The audience will follow the pointing finger and look at the object” (Polanyi, M. 1969 pp. 181/182). This is all very well if the lecturer wanted the audience to look at the object, (the moon, say), but if the point was not where he was pointing or the aim where it was aimed, this constitutes a misdirection. It may be that a better strategy is to accept the inevitable power of language and the embodied cognition it evidences to constitute not only ontology but also epistemology, (it’s not a bug, it’s a feature). Which is all a roundabout way of saying that the writing I am doing here, and which you are reading, and the conceptual spaces that we share and which which we don’t share, and which for me rotate around the axis of my ‘I’ as for you they rotate around yours, is rarely engaged in the production of objects. Hold a rock in your hand, see a tree on the horizon. And all around is the white space, glowing and vibrant and eyeless.

Baudrillard, J. Hetero de Fe. International Journal of Baudrillard Studies. Volume 4, Number 2 (July, 2007). Translated by Rex Butler and Michael Wallace. ISSN: 1705-6411 http://www.ubishops.ca/BaudrillardStudies/vol4_2/v4-2-baudrillard-hetero-da-fe

Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson (1981). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Lawley, J. and P. Tompkins (2000). Metaphors in mind : transformation through symbolic modelling. London, Developing Company Press.

Ortony, Andrew. (1993) Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge University Press

Pinker, S. (1997). How the mind works. New York, Norton.

Polanyi M. Sense-giving and sense-reading. In: Grene M, ed. Knowing and Being, Essays by Michael Polanyi. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969.

Quine, W.V.O. (1969) Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. NY: Columbia University Press.

Posted in Cognition, Knowledge, Language, Sense | 1 Comment »

Cross-modal sensory mapping.

April 13th, 2008 Fred McVittie

The analysis of texts which use sensory mode based metaphors, i.e. that refer to ‘touch’, ‘taste’, ’see’, in a non-literal way, shows that there are a number of consistent patterns within this usage, including patterns of relations between the sensory modes. For example, Shen & Cohen (1989) demonstrate that within poetic texts there is a predictable and coherent use of what they refer to as ’synaesthetic’ metaphors, in which the properties of one sensory modality is mapped onto the other. They give the example of phrases such as ’sweet silence’, and point out that in phrases such as this the modality which they refer to as ‘lower’, i.e. closer to the body, in these cases the sense of taste or touch, is mapped onto the ‘higher’ or less proximal sense. Also, the ‘higher’ sense which forms the target of this metaphor is usually less accessible, less easy to ‘grasp’. So, in the case of ’sweet silence’, the higher and more ethereal auditory quality of silence is referred to using the more delineated, accessible, and proximal sense of taste. Although it is not stated in this article, it is hard to miss the metaphor of elevation which is also being deployed in order to give form to our understanding. Not only are the metaphorical senses ordered across the dimension of proximity and distance, (with the access that such proximity entails), and not only are they distinguished in terms of substantiality, with some being easy to grasp whilst others are harder to get a handle on, but they are also arrayed vertically, with some metaphorical sensory modes appearing more elevated than others. Tasting and touching happen locally and at ground level, sight gives us a wider, but less tangible view, and audition (including listening to the sound of silence) extends that view backward and forward and into the future and the past. Shen and Cohen do not make mention of the part played by olfaction in this schema, but it is likely that given the ubiquity of phrases such as ’strong smell’, or ’sharp odor’ demonstrate that it also figures within the overall structure. In these two possible examples the olfactory experience, which has the characteristics of ephemerality and extension which make access difficult, is understood in terms of the tactile, base-level, and proximal senses of strength and sharpness.

Shen, Y. and M. Cohen (1998). “How come silence is sweet but sweetness is not silent: a cognitive account of directionality in poetic synaesthesia.” Language and Literature 7(2): 123-140.

Posted in Cognition, Grasp, Hearing, Knowledge, Metaphor, Proximity, Seeing, Sense, Silence, Smell, Space, Synaesthesia, Taste | 2 Comments »