First Day

April 10th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I arrived too late last night to hear the opening address from …….. Just caught the end of it. There was no room inside the main auditorium so myself and what seemed like hundreds of other delegates had to stand around and watch it on a screen in the foyer. It’s my first time at The Conference, so I didn’t know what to expect, but I got talking to a chap from Calcutta, India, who I was standing next to and he said these opening speeches are always the same. Polite welcoming noises followed by lots of words like ‘deeper’, and ’simpler’, and phrases like ‘going into the light’, and ‘exactly here, precisely now’. These were the exact words that ……… closed with so I guess the chap from Calcutta knows what he’s talking about.

The hotel I’m in is not what I expected at all. I registered with The Conference too late to use one of the suggested hotels to had to pick one pretty much at random from lastminute.com Tiny room, lots of concrete, complete silence.

There are a LOT of parallel sessions here so choices about what to go to are pretty hard to make. This morning I went to hear a paper on Mirror Neurons and Zham Zhong (which is a kind of tai chi meditation practice apparently). I’ll report back on that later when I’ve heard a few more. The next presentation that sounds interesting is something to do with Morality and Quantum Theory. Again, more of this later.

Posted in Mirror neurons, Morality, Quantum Theory, Story | No Comments »

New Spectacles

April 16th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Today is Easter Sunday, and for some reason my mobile isn’t working so I’ve not been able to ring home and wish the children Happy Easter. I’ll try to borrow someone’s later maybe. There are no papers this morning so I’m sitting in my hotel room right now, writing this on my laptop, and squinting a little because my spectacle prescription is out of date and the words on the screen are distinctly fuzzy (if that isn’t too oxymoronic a thing to say).

Which sets my thinking about the first pair of glasses I ever got, when I was about 12 I suppose. Up until that point I just assumed that everyone else saw the world as I did; that things not only became smaller as they moved away but they also became indistinct. I also believed that this was not a feature of my dodgy perception, but a property of the actual material world. I truly thought that beyond a distance of a few hundred yards from my head the world was an undifferentiated mass, and it was only within my orbit (and presumably the orbit of other humans) that the parts emerged from the whole. If I don’t get my prescription renewed and get myself some new spectacles I may have to re-embrace that worldview.

Posted in Perception, Seeing, Space, Story, Subjective | No Comments »

Categories of Interest

April 16th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Still haven’t been able to phone home, things are very quiet here today, not many people around. I’ve been reading through my notes and previous entries on this blog, and it looks like the papers I have been attracted to are falling into a number of rough categories, so to make reading this easier I am putting an index together. I imagine it will probably change as I hear other things, and as my own interests evolve, in which case I will change it accordingly. (Thanks David for the good suggestion.)

Happy Easter

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Atheist seeks Enlightenment

April 17th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I seem to have been hearing quite a bit about ‘enlightenment’ over the last few days, which is a little alien to me since I am a confirmed atheist. The difficulty I am having is that without a religious framework to my understanding I don’t really know what the term means. The only context I have for understanding it as an idea is theological, and as an atheist I can’t buy into that at all.

The nearest I can get, in terms of an analogy at least, it BBC2. That TV channel was launched in Britain in 1964, but my family didn’t own a TV set capable of receiving BBC2 until some time in 1972, so for those 8 years I only knew about its programming through rumour and cultural osmosis; The Goodies, Playschool, Match of the Day (first broadcast game, Liverpool v. Arsenal. Liverpool won 3:2 at home). All the time though, I knew it was there, that there was this other channel, its signals beaming through my front room and passing unheeded through the television. Is this what enlightenment is like? Am I just not receiving it? (Answer: No)

An interesting footnote to the BBC2 launch that I found is that there was a massive power outage on the opening night, and most of the programming was scrapped. An iconic image for this event is a picture of a darkened TV studio with the only illumination being a single candle.

Anyway, I am going to avoid papers that concern themselves with BBC2 type material for a few days.

Posted in Atheism, Enlightenment, Story | 1 Comment »

Can a Brain be Creative, and would we know

April 19th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Last night’s paper (presented at midnight in a disused church for some reason!)

In ‘Can a robot be creative, and would we know’, Margeret Boden (in Ford, 1996) identifies two types of creativity, each associated with different domains. That which she calls ‘H-creativity’ (for Historical) is associated with actions and artifacts which have never been produced before anywhere (or at lease not anywhere in the culture). These artifacts are usually applauded as genuinely original; unique solutions to old problems, new scientific theories, patentable inventions, copyrightable artworks etc. What Boden refers to as ‘P-creativity’ (for Personal) is only creative in the limited domain of personal experience. Although the person carrying out the creative act may be doing it for the first time, the actions and artifacts produced already exist in the wider domain of culture. It follows from this that whilst all instances of H-creativity are also P-creative, the reverse is not true.

Ford, K. M., C. N. Glymour, et al. (1995). Android epistemology. Menlo Park Cambridge, Mass., AAAI Press; MIT Press.

Posted in Boden, Margaret, Conference Abstract, Consciousness, Creativity, Phenomenology, Story | No Comments »

Intentionality, Agency, and Performance

April 21st, 2006 Fred McVittie

Tonight there is a Conference Banquet at a local hotel, but I really don’t like that kind of thing, so am giving it a miss. I’ll probably grab a pizza later, or maybe ring down to reception for a sandwich. Anyway, this was the paper that stood out for me today.

It is a trait of all humans, but particularly of children, to attribute agency to inanimate objects. This tendency has variously been dubbed ‘the intentional stance’ (Dennett, 1987) and the operation of a ‘hyperactive agency detector’ (Barrett, 2004). This tendency is often considered to be naive and a precursor to more sophisticated methods for explaining form and action, and such attributions tend to be dubbed anthropomorphism or ‘Disneyfication’. It will be argued here that this strategy of recognising agency in non-human entities and objects can actually be regarded as a highly effective method for gaining complex tacit knowledge and for improving performance and for learning particular skills and concepts. Human behaviour, when relating to entities which are considered to have agency, contains far more abstract content, and that content is far more integrated, than behaviour directed toward objects regarded simply as inanimate. The mobilisation of intentionality and agency, and even anthropomorphism, can therefore be shown to be a robust method for holistic learning.

Barrett, J. L. (2004). Why would anyone believe in God? Walnut Creek, CA, AltaMira Press.

Dennett (1987). The intentional stance. Cambridge, Mass. London, MIT Press.

Posted in Barrett, Justin L., Conference Abstract, Dennett, Daniel, Intentionality, Story | No Comments »

Performing the Now

April 24th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I know I said I wouldn’t be reporting on any more ‘BBC2′ type activity for a while, but I found myself at this presentation, which on paper looks suspiciously like more flapdoodle (vanilla flavoured rather than quantum). However, the presenter was disarmingly normal and seemed quite distant from the ideas he was presenting, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

All activity has extension both in time and space but the experienced and evaluated now of that activity is its performance. Phelan (1993) seems to take the view that performance is an act of disappearance, but if we are to grant this then we have to acknowledge that it is also, necessarily, an act of continuous and ongoing appearance. But even the terms appearance and disappearance are not totally applicable to the performance moment, as this moment is best seen not as a sluice gate through which time passes, carrying the future toward the past, but rather as a still point in which time is experienced out of existence, a standing wave in space-time. Performance, then, is the moment of coming-into-being. It corresponds in creativity studies with the moment of illumination (critiqued by Perkins). In consciousness studies it corresponds with the ‘now’ of consciousness (heightened and extended in the long now of ‘the zone’, and the exactly here, precisely now of zen and other enlightenment practices). In physics this might be analogised with the process by which energy and matter are transformed by accelerating particles of that matter to a speed where everywhere is present in the continuous now.

Phelan, P. (1993). Unmarked: the politics of performance. London, Routledge.

Posted in Conference Abstract, Flapdoodle, Perkins, David, Phelan, Peggy, Physics, Story, Time | No Comments »

‘Mind at Play’ Workshop

April 25th, 2006 Fred McVittie

This is the description of a workshop that I am thinking of attending, (although a date hasn’t actually been given of when it will be held). If it happens, and if I hear about it in time, and if I decide to go along, and if I can find the room it is being held in, I’ll report back.

There has long been a tradition in arts training, particularly training in the performing arts, of physical and mental exercises designed not to lead to any particular outcome but to produce a certain desired state in the performer or artist. These ‘warm-up’ exercises often take the form of games and play-like activity. In fact it is occasionally overtly stated that to be an artist one needs to learn to ‘play’ like a child. This suggests that there is a particular mental state found in play behaviour which is desirable for the creative process to be fully engaged in. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi has identified and written extensively on a mode of cognition which he refers to as ‘flow’, again associated with certain types of focussed play, but also found in individuals who are able to fully absorb themselves into an activity of any kind. As with the above terms, the flow state corresponds to a loss of ego boundaries, a complete identification with the action, and often an unproblematic sense of mastery or control. Research has also been carried out on a similar condition found in athletes during certain peak experiences of sport activity. This subjective state, which is known colloquially amongst athletes as being ‘in the zone’ seems to correlate closely to a state in which the brainwave patterns become much simpler than at other times and adopt what is called the alpha wave state. There seems to be a further correlation in athletes between the adoption of this alpha wave state and the achievement of maximum potential. This cluster of terms and activities; play, flow, the alpha-wave state, and being ‘in the zone’, clearly refer to a family of closely related states which have particular relevance for the achievement of optimal performance in all areas, including theatre and creative arts. This workshop will introduce a range of techniques which will allow participants to experience these states.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York, HarperPerennial.

Posted in Csikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi, Exercises, Neuroscience, Play, Story | No Comments »

More on Mirror Neurons

April 26th, 2006 Fred McVittie

This abstract was given to me at dinner last night (hand written!) and the presentation is apparently some time today. I will try to get to it and report back.

It has been shown that the areas of the brain which are activated when we carry out an action, say ‘grasping’, are also activated when we imagine the activity. This is sometimes referred to as a ’simulation’. Furthermore, these same areas are activated when we read about or witness someone else carrying out the action of ‘grasping’. This simulation, or mirroring of the action seems to be a key component in understanding the action or the meaning of the word (Feldman & Narayanan 2004), and the process is occasionally referred to as the action of ‘mirror neurons’.

The significance of these findings for metaphor studies is that these same areas of the brain are also activated when we read about or hear an utterance which makes metaphorical use of the term ‘to grasp’, for example; ‘to grasp and idea’; ‘to grasp an opportunity’. This implies that the metaphorical mapping of concrete, body-based concepts onto abstract concepts is not only a function of the minds cognitive processes, but is also taking place at a neural level. The patterns of neuronal firings which occur during metaphor usage are, in effect, the neural correlates of concepts.

Feldman, J. and S. Narayanan (2004). “Embodied Meaning in a Neural Theory of Language.” Brain and Language(89): 385.

Posted in Conference Abstract, Feldman, J. and Narayanan, S., Grasp, Metaphor, Mirror neurons, Neuroscience, Story | No Comments »

The Details of Excellence (workshop)

April 27th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Well I intended to go the the ‘Mind at Play’ workshop but ended up at this one by mistake. I’ll write up what happened later.

The difference between an exemplary performance by a person at the top of their field, and that of a person who, for want of a better word is simply ‘accomplished’ or ‘competent’ is extremely small. For example, the world record for the 100 metre sprint is currently held by Tim Montgomery at 9.78 seconds, while schoolboy Gareth Lamb of the Stockport Harriers won the Inter Boys’ championship final in 11.4 seconds over the same distance. A difference of just 1.62 seconds. The words spoken by Ian McKellen playing King Lear are exactly the same as those spoken by an amateur actor in a village hall production of the same play, and the differences in intonation, eye gaze direction, speed of gesture, length of pause, are again apparently minor. Two cars may have the same size engine and the same basic body shape, but small differences in ignition timing and fuel mixture can dramatically alter the accelleration rate and top speed. This workshop introduce participants to a series of strategies for accessing the fine grain of performance and thereby gain control over this vital percentage. It is available for performers at all levels and aims to improve focus and presence.

Posted in Conference Abstract, Performance, Sport, Story | 1 Comment »

Folk Physics and Performer Training

April 30th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The first part of this paper will look at a range of training regimes associated with theatrical and public performance forms, paying particular attention to techniques which appear to enhance ‘presence’. Particular attention will be paid to body-based training practices. From this initial research key ideas and terms will be extracted that use metaphors which are drawn from and have accurate meaning in the physical sciences; terms such as energy and focus, and ideas such as ‘being centered’ and ‘extension’.

Keywords: Folk Physics, Naive Physics, Performance, Metaphor, Embodiment.

(Time did not actually permit any practical demonstration of these ideas, but I could see some relationship between these ideas and the content of the ‘Details of Excellence’ workshop I went to.)

Posted in Conference Abstract, Metaphor, Naive Physics, Presence, Story, Training | No Comments »

Ivor Cutler

May 4th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I have just been told that Ivor Cutler is dead. Not only that, but that he died nearly 2 months ago. I don’t know how I missed that. R.I.P. Ivor.

Posted in Cutler, Ivor, Death, Story | No Comments »

Beautiful Cosmos

May 8th, 2006 Fred McVittie

You are the centre of your little world
And I am of mine
Now and again we meet for tea
We’re two of a kind
This is our universe
Cups of tea
We have a beautiful cosmos
You and me
We have a Beautiful cosmos

- Ivor Cutler

This is my favourite Ivor Cutler song.

Posted in Centre, Cutler, Ivor, Story | No Comments »

The Flow of Space

May 8th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I went to a workshop last week which I said I would report back on, but I’ve just realised that I never did so here is a description of one of the exercises.

Hold a rock in your hand.

Hold you hand out to the side and feel the rock in the following ways.

1. Imagine the rock has a force inside it (call it weight). Feel the force striving to get to the ground. The rock is almost alive and is pushing against your palm its its desire to return to its natural resting place on the earth.
2. Imagine the rock is being pulled toward the earth by a force (call it gravity). The pull of the Earth is like a magnet acting on the rock, and you can feel this attractive force through your hand.
3. Imagine you are standing in a shower; a shower not of rain, call it space. You can feel the space flowing down on you from above, an etheric downpour acting on every part of your body. The rain of space cascades onto the rock and pushes it toward the earth, and only the upward pressure of your hand holds the rock steady against the flood.

Each of these different interpretations of the feeling of holding a rock in your hand is subtly different. Hold onto the last interpretation.

Posted in Energy, Exercises, Rock, Story | No Comments »

Frames, Presence, and the Now. (10.26)

May 9th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I keep meaning to write commentaries on these abstracts, or at least let readers of this blog know a bit more about The Conference and what goes on here, but for some reason I just can’t seem to remember to do it. Whenever I sit down at the laptop all I can remember is the abstracts that I’ve heard. This was last night’s:

A frame by frame analysis of performances by experienced actors in cinema reveals that there is a significant difference in the composition of these frames compared to those extracted from footage of less experience actors. Experienced film actors seem to be able to produce performances in which almost all filmed frames are coherent and present the actor in a fully ‘posed’ way. This contrasts significantly with the frames of inexperienced actors, many of which catch the actor in a ‘transition’ moment, often with protruding tongue, half-closed eyes, etc. It is proposed that these fine-grained differences in frame content constitute the difference between a filmed performance which has ‘presence’ and one which does not.

Also, I lost my watch today. I took it off when I was washing my hands in the bathroom and walked off without it. I went back to see if it was still there, but couldn’t even find the bathroom never mind the watch. I have the time on the computer of course (10.26 right now).

Posted in Conference Abstract, Story | No Comments »

Spurious Flapdoodle?

May 12th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I’ve been re-reading some of my recent posts, and I can’t help wondering what the status of some of these papers might be. the one I posted yesterday on the 3 dimensions of Cartesian space, when I look back on it, seems completely spurious, but I know that when I heard the paper itself it was very compelling and well supported academically. If I get the opportunity I’ll try to track down the presenter and get a copy of the full paper.

Posted in Dimension, Flapdoodle, Space, Story | No Comments »

Human Physics and Being at the Centre

May 13th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I have found some notes that I made at one of the workshops I got to, although I don’t honestly remember much about it (truth be told, I’m not absolutely sure I actually went to it, but I have the notes so I suppose I must have).

Stand in the middle of a field, or on a hilltop, and look around.
Forget for a moment everything that you have been taught about space, everything that you know about your place in the world, lose your hard won objectivity for a moment, and trust only in the evidence of your senses.

This centrality is an integral element of the folk physics of subjectivity. A first person account of being-in-the-world.

So there you are then.

Posted in Centre, Exercises, Space, Story | No Comments »

Clover

May 15th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Last Monday I was out for a walk and found this 4-leafed clover

Posted in Clover, Story | No Comments »

Clover 2

May 15th, 2006 Fred McVittie

On Thursday I found these 2

Posted in Clover, Perception, Story | No Comments »

Clover 3

May 15th, 2006 Fred McVittie

And this morning I found these

Posted in Attention, Clover, Story | No Comments »

Clover 4

May 15th, 2006 Fred McVittie

And this 5-leafed specimin.

I’m not intentionally looking for them, they just seem to be ‘jumping out’ at me. Very strange.

Posted in Attention, Clover, Intentionality, Story | No Comments »

Clover 5

May 16th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Just one today.

Posted in Attention, Clover, Story | No Comments »

Counting Clover

May 18th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I’ve been thinking about that Clover.

Maybe the reasons why the four-leafed clover is jumping out at me is that I am somehow non-consciously primed to look down at the clover and give it minimal attention, (even though I have no conscious awareness that I am doing this). This primed looking must somehow involve subitizing the number of leaves because if I was counting or estimating the number I would have to be conscious of the act. As far as I know the evidence is pretty conclusive that there are (at least) two ways of perceiving numbers (Kaufman, Pylyshyn, Trick, Dehaene, etc.) and subitizing, which is innate and immediate, is the only one that seems to be able to operate non-consciously.

Posted in Attention, Clover, Consciousness, Mathematics, Story | No Comments »

Phone Call from Home

May 22nd, 2006 Fred McVittie

I had the embarrassing experience this morning of being ‘paged’ because the registration desk had my wife on the phone who needed to talk to me ‘urgently’. I don’t really know what the crisis was, she knows where I am and that I may not be able to phone home because of the scheduling of the papers or whatever (actually, my mobile hasn’t been able to pick up a signal since I’ve been here). She seems to think that I’ve been gone ages, although its only been a few days. I think I’d put her mind at rest by the end though.

Posted in Family, Story, Time | No Comments »

More Clover

May 23rd, 2006 Fred McVittie

More clover

Unbelievable

Posted in Belief, Clover, Story | No Comments »

Blurred Vision

May 26th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I spent this morning wandering around without my spectacles. I didn’t lose them, everything had just seemed a little bit ’sharp’ and clearly defined recently. Without my specs looking becomes a bit more like listening; things lose their distinction, edges blur, colours run. The world changes from a piece of Russian Constructivist art to an Impressionist piece, a Monet maybe, or sometimes even a Rothko. Much better.

On the subject of art, I bumped into the Indian chap I met on the first day, he said the thing he was enjoying most about The Conference was the artworks, which is wierd because I haven’t seen any artwork here at all yet. I am going to make a special effort to find some over the next few days, maybe if I prime myself to look for it, it will ‘jump out’ at me much like the clover did a few days back. Watch, this space.

Posted in Clover, Hearing, Seeing, Story, Synaesthesia | No Comments »

Enlightenment for Atheists

May 28th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I say a poster at lunchtime today advertising a workshop entitled Enlightenment for Atheists. I can’t imagine what that could possibly mean, but since I was saying I was after this kind of thing I should make the effort to find out about it. There was no date, time, or venue information on the poster (which it completely typical of this Conference), so I am going to use the ‘clover’ method and basically wander about hopefully for the next few days and see if it ‘jumps out at me’.

Oh, and here’s another picture of that tree.

Posted in Story, Tree | No Comments »

Tree (yesterday)

June 6th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Posted in Story, Time, Tree | No Comments »

Disgusting Girls (and Ron Athey)

June 29th, 2006 Fred McVittie

One of the presentations today included some footage of a Ron Athey piece, which some people in the audience were clearly having problems with. It is interesting to note what people do when they are disgusted by something. There was a lot of squirming. According to the conceptual metaphor theory of Lakoff and Johnson and others, a possible reason why they/we were doing this is because of a process of cognitive metaphor creation. The mind effectively maps the structure of the physical and emotional response from the concrete concept of something pathogenically disgusting like a toxic substance onto the abstact concept of ‘deviant’ sexuality, such that we get ‘DEVIANT’ SEXUALITY IS A TOXIC SUBSTANCE. The details of the behavior which follows, lip curling (as if at a bitter taste), nose wrinkling (as if at a bad smell), and mouth gape (in preparation for vomiting) are metaphorical projections from the concrete concept onto the abstract concept enacted as a physical schema or performance.

Another revealing feature of the disgust reflex is that, once learnt through embodied experience with real TOXIC SUBSTANCES, the behaviour is then available not only for unconscious metaphorical mapping onto abstract concepts (as in the case of the Ron Athey video) but as an intentional gestalt performance which can be consciously activated to indicate moral or ethical disgust. An interesting example of this from my own experience is observing my children, both boys, metaphorically mapping GIRLS ARE A TOXIC SUBSTANCE. Before the age of around 6 this mapping did not exist, but from 6 onward the presence of a girl stimulated all aspects of the disgust reflex indicated above. From the age of around 12 however, this physical schema has become more of a conscious performance which is activated only in certain contexts (when they are with their friends), and which is clearly in competition with other physical schema presumably appropriate to metaphors such as GIRLS ARE RARE AND UNUSUAL OBJECTS, and even GIRLS ARE PEOPLE.

Posted in Art, Gesture, Johnson, Mark, Lakoff, George, Metaphor, Performance, Schema, Story | No Comments »

That Tree

July 5th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I haven’t posted any pictures of that tree recently, so here it is.

Posted in Story, Tree | No Comments »

Creativity and Presence

July 13th, 2006 Fred McVittie

There seem to be two key strands of concern that I am developing an interest in, at least to the extent that I keep finding myself at presentations concerning these ideas; these are presence and creativy. I guess something I would like to do would be to find a way of thinking of them as part of the same gestalt, or having a similarity of structure. There does seem to be a relationship of shared metaphor, particularly in relation to the metaphor of light, which (sort of) figures in both concepts. For now, I am assuming there is a link between theatrical presence (i.e. an assessment of presence carried out be an outside observer or audience) and presence as signifying an individual, phenomenological feeling of being exactly here, precisely now.

In performances which have presence, the moment of continuous becoming which marks the ‘being in the moment’ of performance, can be considered as a constant ’stepping into the light’, a state of wakefulness and breaking consciousness.

In creative processes there is (usually) a moment in which connections are made, solutions are revealed, intuitive leaps are made, and this moment is often termed illumination. In this case the light is that of conscious awareness. There is a feeling that the creative process has been proceeding in the darkness of unconscious processing, and that the end result is forced up or brought forth into the light.

In terms of training, assuming that these metaphors have any validity, there is clearly a benefit to be gained by both performers seeking to improve their presence and others wishing to improve their creativity by working on this shared moment of enlightenment.

Posted in Consciousness, Creativity, Light, Performance, Presence, Story, Theatre, Walking | No Comments »

A Dream about Mixed Metaphors

September 11th, 2006 Fred McVittie

I had a dream last night about a world without any objects. Everything was unstable, in flux, but not chaotic or confusing. What would happen is that I would look at something, and that looking would be accompanied by a thought, and then as my stream of consciousness proceeded then as my thoughts changed this would physically change the thing I was looking at. It was as if I was watching the motion of my own thinking. I can only assume the dream was a reflection of the material on metaphor I have been hearing about; that as the metaphors which comprise my conceptualisation of experience shift, then the experience itself shifts. This kind of shifting presumably happens all the time in non-conscious cognition; I am thinking about something, love for example, and (usually unconsciously) understanding it as a PATH, and then my metaphorical understanding of that shifts so that I (again usually unconsciously) start to understand it as a CONTAINER. This suggests that however stable and consistent the external world may be, the internal, symbolically (metaphorically) structured, world must be much more motile. Many of the elements of the external world which we regard as object-like, particularly abstract concepts like love, justice, truth, etc. must exist in our minds as variable, transformable entities; PATHS can turn into CONTAINERS and then into BATTLES, and then into a DANCE. The symbolic universe of the unconscious must undergo these kind of transformations all the time, and these transformations should be surreal but not arbitrary; they should follow the logic of cognitive linguistics. I think it must be a vision of that universe that I dreamed about.

Posted in Cognitive Linguistics, Dream, Metaphor, Sleep, Story, Transformation | No Comments »