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July 11, 2015 10:33 PM   Subscribe

Mapping Metaphors with the Historical Thesaurus

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Metaphor in English
Metaphor is fundamental to the ways in which we conceptualise and articulate even seemingly basic concepts. We talk about the mind as if it were a container for ideas, which can be placed in there or taken out and passed to others. We talk about our lives as if they were journeys with milestones, obstacles and end points. In fact it is difficult to talk about abstract ideas at all without using vocabulary from another area. When we talk about ‘a healthy economy’ or ‘a clear argument’ we are using expressions that imply the mapping of one domain of experience (e.g. medicine, sight) onto another (e.g. finance, perception). When we describe an argument in terms of warfare or destruction (‘he demolished my case’), we may be saying something about the society we live in. Metaphor, then, might have an effect on the ways in which people understand the world around them: if immigration is presented in terms of a flow of water by the media (e.g. as a wave or as a flood) then this may predispose people to think about this issue in a particular way.
Metaphor Map charts the images that structure our thinking
posted by the man of twists and turns (11 comments total) 32 users marked this as a favorite
 
Extraordinary project, remarkably ambitious, incredibly interesting.

I think it has to be somewhat historical. Take 'clarity'. It may be that this was originally a purely visual quality and it has been borrowed for conceptual clarity. But absent the historical dimension you could as well argue that it is simply a concept of great generality which has applications in both realms, neither necessarily being primary. I wouldn't have said that that in itself constitutes metaphor...?
posted by Segundus at 2:12 AM on July 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


Segundus, to me, your position echoes the ambiguity found in Derrida's White Mythology, which actually precedes Lakoff and Johnson by a number of years, and covers similar ground. For those not familiar, there is a useful description here. I like this passage a lot: "The reversal [of the relationship between metaphor and concept] is such that there can be no final separation between the linguistic-metaphorical and the philosophical realms. These domains are co-constitutive of one another, in the sense that either one cannot be fully theorized or made to fully or transparently explain the meaning of the other."

I know a lot of people in the Anglo-American tradition simply won't read or engage with Derrida at all, and I know that, to a significant extent, Derrida's own hostile and ill-judged engagements with the tradition are part of this. Despite that, I'd suggest that anyone interested in the field of metaphor read White Mythology, if nothing else by Derrida. I find it both lucid and illuminating (note the metaphors there!), and think it is a rewarding use of a couple of hours.
posted by howfar at 3:05 AM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


At heart, we are nothing but metaphor. The reality we experience isn't whatever reality actually is; it's a map, a model, a metaphor. That's the nature of consciousness. We can't be aware of this all the time, but it's true and sometimes important to know this.

So everything, including the concept of 'metaphor' is itself built on metaphor. It's unsurprising, when you start to dismantle these ideas and examine examples, that as you unpeel the onion, there really is nothing else that can be differentiated. Words and language operate several layers up from the tissue of consciousness, but metaphor's metaphor, baby.

It's a simple idea, yet playing with it can have very different effects - if you look at your coffee cup and ask yourself "what is that a metaphor of?" you'll go down a very different path than if you look at, say, the Judeo-Christian God or if you ask why is a raven like a writing-desk. Nonetheless, the idea is not in itself complex or perplexing, and I think one of post-modernism's biggest structural failings is its conflation of profundity with complexity.

Which is a shame, as we're embarking on an epoch where we'll have the tools and experience to start dealing with these concepts with a firm hand, a clear eye, and a proper sense of our evolution past, present and future, as a species built from personal and social consciousness.
posted by Devonian at 7:41 AM on July 12, 2015


Regarding metaphor, I'd also like to suggest Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. That is one trippy book.
posted by ChuckRamone at 8:04 AM on July 12, 2015


At heart, we are nothing but metaphor. The reality we experience isn't whatever reality actually is; it's a map, a model, a metaphor.

I think that conflating concept and metaphor in this way is problematic, as it seems to elide real distinctions in the way that these things are handled, and also to empty metaphor, as a trope, of any explanatory power, while simultaneously throwing in the towel on any sort of epistemological realism. It seems to be a very high price to pay for not very much gain.

Better to acknowledge the destabilising function of metaphor in knowledge without going to the simplistic extreme of claiming that knowledge is nothing but metaphor, I think. If "postmodernism" (although I don't really think this is an actual intellectual movement) is not to your taste I'd suggest Quine on the analytic/synthetic distinction and indeterminacy of translation as useful examples of philosophical tools for grappling with the problem in a productive way.
posted by howfar at 8:23 AM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


George Lakoff’s work on politics upended my brain when I took a few of his classes in the mid-1990s, especially the influence of family models (strong-father vs. nurturing-mother?) on political beliefs. If you think of the nation as a family, and you have conflicting beliefs about how families should operate, then those conflicts will transfer to politics.

The UI designed for this project does bum me out, though. Press the rotate button to watch it jerkily animate! Academics love getting grants for whizzy UI junk, and they never have quality engineers available to build them well. It’s always some grad student who knows a little Javascript or Flash putting them together, and the results are rarely better than the equivalent plain web page.
posted by migurski at 9:01 AM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


I threw in the towel with epistemological realism a long time ago, eventually realising to my great surprise that I actually meant it, and really don't regret doing so. It was a useful move not just because it is, I think, logically unavoidable, but because it realigned my interests away from "what is real?" to "what is it that we are doing when we look for/at reality?" - which is more accessible, and gives more useful results. Doesn't mean I get any less joy from science or will ever abandon my demonstrably futile quest to answer "What is a photon?", but it does mean I expect to learn more about myself and others along the way.

And I don't mean that concept=metaphor and there's an end to it. That's as sterile as saying "all chemistry is the physics of the electron"; well, yes it is, but you won't get very far in chemistry if you restrict yourself to the electron wave function and so on. My concept of my coffee cup as a thing that helps me drink coffee is more useful than my awareness that 'coffee cup' in my head is a construct of complex analogue and metaphor; that awareness in no way helps me drink coffee. I like coffee. But the two aren't exclusive, and (especially as a writer and communicator) the ability to change perspective is fruitful. When Eliot measures out a life in coffee spoons, he uses that sort of linkage - and how, you can pull that one phrase apart for hours - and its interesting that he was notably precise in (and generally disdainful of) concepts of imagery, symbolism and metaphor. At first, he seems to be being disingenuous (He answered, "I meant, 'Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree.'"), but he's warning about the dangers.

Will Quine up. Thanks for that.
posted by Devonian at 9:34 AM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Amazing work. Understanding the symbolic ways we express our selves, experiences, knowledge, and understanding is increasingly urgent in this stupidly-literal cultural moment we're in.

(Also, mad props for the post title.)
posted by LooseFilter at 10:03 AM on July 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


I threw in the towel with epistemological realism a long time ago, eventually realising to my great surprise that I actually meant it, and really don't regret doing so.

While I think there are some very strong parallels between our views on this (especially given what you go on to say), I'm wary of making any strong general epistemological commitment. Knowing doesn't seem, to me, like an activity that abides by a single generalisable set of rules, realist or otherwise. I tend more towards the notion that realism is a matter of context and degree, and that multiple epistemological standards can be operating in respect of the same claim simultaneously. If we don't do this, I think there is a tendency for the antirealist resistance to reductive thought to become reductive in itself. I've often said that it's incredibly easy for "no more grand narratives" to become the grandest narrative of all.

Derrida and Quine are the modern philosophers whose epistemology feels sufficiently cautious for me. I think that caution is there in Nietzsche, too, but I think it's more useful to read Nietzsche as a challenge to one's beliefs, rather than to coopt him in support of them.

I really need to read more phenomenology, too, when I can find the time, as it seems relevant to much of my ongoing developing thought.

I'd recommend Quine's 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' as a great essay relating to these issues. It's just a brilliant piece of philosophical writing all round, really.
posted by howfar at 12:47 PM on July 12, 2015


To paraphrase Browning: A man's meta-reach should exceed his meta-grasp or what's a meta for?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:30 PM on July 12, 2015


I think it has to be somewhat historical. Take 'clarity'. It may be that this was originally a purely visual quality and it has been borrowed for conceptual clarity. But absent the historical dimension you could as well argue that it is simply a concept of great generality which has applications in both realms, neither necessarily being primary.

Yes! I have thought that the Lakoffian "conceptual metaphor" type view acquires an irrealist odor mainly because of how you have to tell the theory: as the story of importing the logic and laws of motion from a familiar domain into a more exotic one. But if the port works, then it works, and maybe it's just sort of an accident of our history and learning careers that one domain is more familiar and the other more exotic. Differently constituted intelligences could conceivably move in the other direction and all that.
posted by batfish at 4:29 PM on July 12, 2015


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