Metaphors and validity

Analogies—which we make constantly, relentlessly and mostly unconsciously—are what allow categorization to happen, he said. "Our minds are constructed with an unlimited quality for 'chunking' primordial concepts, which then become larger concepts."

Hofstadter used as an example the word "hub," as in "Denver is the hub for United Airlines," and displayed a hand-drawn chart mapping words representing some of the linked concepts that are "chunked" together to make up the commonly used term. His examples ranged from basics like "wheel" and "node" to higher-order concepts like "spoke" and "network." Higher-order concepts are glommed together from lower-order ones, he said.

There's no fundamental difference in thinking with basic concepts and very large concepts because we don't "see" inside them, he said. "We build concepts by putting several concepts together and putting a membrane around them, and kind of miraculously these [interior] concepts disappear."
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Underground competition is going on in every word choice, in every situation and at all times, Hofstadter said. "We are trying to put labels on things by mapping situations that we have encountered before. That to me is nothing but analogy."

If analogy is such a prevalent thing in our cognition, then it would seem to be necessary (though perhaps not completely possible) to find some way of talking about this phenomenon without participating in it, in order to reach a true understanding of it and the world in general.

they're also, in a certain sense, pitfalls for they, I surmise, constrain a person to a particular point of view, a one-dimensional way of looking at things that though helpful can result in tunnel vision.

we are mostly stuck

Maybe metaphors occur as systems

there could be physics metaphors

If I may fuse Wittgenstein and Gadamer, then I postulate that 'automatic' metaphor (the kind we act on without noticing) is hugely important for us to be intelligible to one another. At the same time it's one of the major opponents of the philosopher. My fancy way of putting it is...the past that haunts the future that haunts the present. We are future oriented beings whose very goals are determined by inherited ways of talking/thinking. But it's only this inheritance that lets us think at all.

I ask myself how language could develop to include more and more 'literal' abstractions. I don't think some God put the idea of cause and God and rationality in our skulls. I imagine we'd have had to start with names for objects and embed them in a dialogue that lifted them from such a narrow use.

An example of a successful metaphor rehash is the brain-in-a-vat gedanken experiment.

It's time we updated the metaphors we find so useful and adapt them to current times so that people can relate to them more easily.

Eliot challenges the common perception that a poet's greatness and individuality lie in their departure from their predecessors; he argues that "the most individual parts of his [the poet's] work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously." Eliot claims that this "historical sense" is not only a resemblance to traditional works but an awareness and understanding of their relation to his poetry.

This fidelity to tradition, however, does not require the great poet to forfeit novelty in an act of surrender to repetition. Rather, Eliot has a much more dynamic and progressive conception of the poetic process: novelty is possible only through tapping into tradition. ...The act of artistic creation does not take place in a vacuum. The introduction of a new work alters the cohesion of this existing order, and causes a readjustment of the old to accommodate the new. The inclusion of the new work alters the way in which the past is seen... In Eliot’s own words, "What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art that preceded it." Eliot refers to this organic tradition, this developing canon, as the "mind of Europe." The private mind is subsumed by this more massive one.
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Since the poet engages in a "continual surrender of himself" to the vast order of tradition, artistic creation is a process of depersonalisation. The mature poet is viewed as a medium, through which tradition is channelled and elaborated. The poet is a depersonalised vessel, a mere medium.

Yep, I remember how I tried to modernize Plato's Allegory of the Cave and simply couldn't find anything in today's world that could replace "shadows" and "cave".

I think the update is simulation theory.

I think the update is simulation theory.

In a similar way, Schlegel affirms that our encounters with the world are always poetical, in the sense that they are not be merely receptive, but also creative. Reality exists through language, or, in other words, we always relate to the world metaphorically. This also means that there cannot be an ‘absolute’ (i.e., an absolutely true) way of referring to the external world, for we do not see the world as it is, but always in relation to ourselves. Schlegel’s theory of language is thus intrinsically connected to his theory of mythology. Both in his Jena and in his Berlin lectures, Schlegel stressed the fact the experience of an existing totality has a mythological basis without which the experience itself would be impossible (Behler 1992: 77–78). Once again, Schlegel stressed the idea that mythology is not merely a phase of human rationality, but is part of our being in the world. It is a structural principle of human intellectual activity, the purest rational activity being a mythological one: be it in art, sciences, or in our daily activities, we always relate to the world metaphorically.

In his letters, Schlegel claims that language is the “most wonderful creation of human being’s poetical talent”, because it is through language that human nature is able to reflect upon itself (SW: VII, 104).

We need the same dead metaphors that trap us. We are snakes climbing out of our skins, Neurathian rafts of metaphors clusters.

The German soldier is equated to a bloodthirsty ape.

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." An odd, odd book whose major premise I have a hard time swallowing

But it's easy to think of the ancient Greek getting an idea and thinking it is a God speaking to him.

W.S. Merwin, Flower and Hand:A Contemporary

What if I came down now out of these
solid dark clouds that build up against the mountain
day after day with no rain in them
and lived as a blade of grass
in a garden in the south when the clouds part in winter
from the beginning I would be older than all the animals
and to the last I would be simpler
frost would design me and dew would disappear on me
sun would shine through me
I would be green with white roots
feel worms touch my feet as a bounty
have no name and no fear
turn naturally to the light
know how to spend the day and night
climbing out of myself
all my life.

Understanding a thing is to arrive at a metaphor for that thing by substituting something more familiar to us. And the feeling of familiarity is the feeling of understanding.

Doesn't seem bloodthirsty to me. Why did the poster convey to you the idea the ape, or German soldier, drank blood or was thirsty for it?

Have you read the book? As I noted, it has some interesting stuff in it. But the main idea seems farfetched.

All events are metaphorical in themselves, as a mutual inter-affecting of source and target escaping the binary of representation and arbitrariness.

Contrary to a long history, I have argued that a metaphor does not consist of two situations, a "source domain" and a "target domain". There is only one situation, the one in which the word is now used. What the word brings from elsewhere is not a situation; rather it brings a use-family, a great many situations.

Which I can't make sense of, so maybe I'm Cypher. It hurts to stub my toe, whether or not I call the pain 'real' or 'simulated.'

germans are apes

A metaphor shows something, rather than saying it.

Would the real hurt more than the simulation?

It frequently pops up in discussions on Wittgenstein. Pain presumably collapses the pereceived boundary betwixt reality and dreams (illusions).

I'm thinking we tend to aim a word like 'real' socially. If something caused lots of people pain at the same time, it'd be called real. But if you suffer alone, not so much ?

So, a person who's in pain but alone, isn't in pain?

Life, no fair!

So there can be no consensus on pain? What about analgesics like aspirin, paracetamol, etc.. They seem to have a good track record; why else do they sell?

Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.

Sounds to me like a longwinded description of a target domain ('the one situation') and a source domain ('a use-family, a great many situations.') Roughly the source is...the past.

What if the meaning of 'pain' is everything 'around' the otherwise ineffable painfeeling? The 'pain itself' is the hole in a donut. The dough is buying aspirin, saying the word 'pain,' etc.

The mess goes back at least to Aristotle:
Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.

How can Aristotle know this ? Did he mindmeld with all his buddies when they complained of toothache? Or is this some kind of mostly unquestioned folk psychology that evolved as a convenience?

we share a biology that would, in my humble opinion, mean that my experiences (inner ones included) are going to be very similar if not identical to another's. So, my pain will feel exactly like your pain or someone else's.

It's good to be skeptical, but as 180 Proof reminds me, there's gotta be a good reason to be doubtful like that and we have none.

Is it valid to use metaphors to illustrate certain attributes of an object, even though the objects being compared are not actually identical (although they are said to be)?