Dialogue on Metaphor

[sexdrugsRnR]

prof anton stop interrupting dr peterson!! :)

[photent]

Buckminster Fuller proposed that instead of using the words "up" and "down", we should say "in" and "out" because these better describe our relation to the earths gravitational center. So he would get people to say "I'm going outstairs" or "I'm going instairs". Funny huh, it gives you a great perspective.

[shakeyourdimsims]

i'd hit it

[JoSieLove2Sing4u]

*Interesting* topic.

[swinewarrior]

well do not know how i ended up here but now I need to go and look

up the word............snail trail I got

[bcon4136]

Was the metaphor intentional when you said to "show the book to the world" ?

[senorfarqueso]

saying "in the u.s." is not a metaphor. you are stretching the definition to the point of meaninglessness.

[luis04191]

In any language it is practically impossible not to have, or use, metaphors however subtle and/or referenced to. The metaphors may be generally understood and/or locally known and/or period associated, and more. I use "Life is a bowl of cheerios..." in my sayings. There was a time cheerios did not exist and there will be a time (I think) that it will no longer be. Great subject and food for thought (metaphorically speaking.) Peace

God bless

[CammieSpectrum]

A metaphor becomes literal once it is metaphorically intended as opposed to being literally intended; this is in addition to being true or false in degree; for the difference between metaphor and literal is a difference in type, in addition to differences or similarities in degree

[pfarabee]

One potential difficulty of metaphor is the separation of thoughts associated with the "out of place" word. It is this aspect that gives metaphor it's power, however, especially as literary embellishment.

With flowery words, as Valerie mentioned, the very metaphor "flowery" brings with it additional aspects.. "colorful", for example, or "delicate" From these aspects, you can make even further links, from "delicate" to "spider's web" to "intricate", and the connections just continue.

[pfarabee]

In a scientific situation, what is important is the understandable presentation of the material. I think this is why metaphor is resisted in such situations, to keep the number of possible interpretations to a minimum.

I agree with you, however, that metaphor is an embedded part of language, and should not be resisted or denied, simply understood and used appropriately.

[PMathematica]

By the way, science has answered the question: What is life. Life is an emergent property of cellular activity. On the other hand, I agree that we will never know everything -- knowledge is always partial. But this does not mean that science is stuck with metaphor.

[PMathematica]

The idea that one cannot get away from metaphor is closely linked to the inductivist (= radical empiricist) thesis that the overall pattern of inference in science is inductive. This is demonstrably false. Think, for example, of the relativized law of falling bodies. Or the ideal gas law. The ideal gas law was not inferred from observation, but rather deduced from analytic mechanics.  Not to sound obnoxious, but it might help both of you to study some science before talking about it.

[PMathematica]

Neither logic nor mathematics make use of metaphor. Of course, one learns these metaphor-less languages with the help of natural language (meta-language), which is laden with metaphorical notions.

However, science does not rely on metaphor except at the teaching stage. For example, one of the reasons its so hard to understand quantum reality is because quantum phenomena can't be understood by either analogy or metaphor. Metaphors are only useful to get the ball rolling.

[conferencereport]

Good video, many thanks. Are you familiar with Fauconnier's work on compression? watch?v=kiHw3N6d1Js

[prhughes0]

5:24 Isn't he deliberately demonstrating the effect he speaks of?

[Professoranton]

Lakoff is suggest that the scientist is doing his criticism despite not recognizing the use of metaphor.

[prhughes0]

# An Account of the Nature and Extent of the Divine Dominion & Goodnesse. Oxford: 1666.

# A Free and Impartial Censure of the Platonick Philosophie. Oxford: 1666. are the 2 pubs. i find for S.Parker in 1666. (per Wikip.) "Scientist" perhaps (17th century, though), cleric, politician, theologian and philosopher for sure.

And not dumb enough to fail at seeing what he is saying.

My guess: he demonstrates his disgust for metaphor, and knows he is doing it.

p

[prhughes0]

"these works were designed to put distance between the experimentalists of the Society and the speculations of metaphysics. In fact the Free and Impartial Censure took wide aim at hermetic thinkers in general, such as Rosicrucians, Thomas Vaughan and John Heydon. It also had as a byproduct of the critique of Platonism acute things to say about the assumption that innate knowledge was necessarily correct" (Wikip)

i think he was conducting a poetic experiment

[Professoranton]

That is insightful and probably correct. Or at the least, he saw the difference in speech genre's/speech context between a scientific paper and use of metaphor in a nonscientific tract.

[prhughes0]

Those guys in 1666 were just beginning to define what a "scientific paper" might come to be (by building a society for sharing information gained through experiment), and championing empiricism: demonstrate your belief if you expect me to believe. Parker demonstrated (and thus communicated) the disgust one ought to feel when empirical results are mixed with metaphors that lead the mind astray. Platonic philosophy, for example.

[5jeanbittersweet]

reprieved..Thank You! ;^)

[kazene10]

Professoranton u freak me out lol, i can never understand what ur talking about XD

[JustinNyland]

Oh, Wow . . . listen to these two blow each other. . .

[rollsthepaul]

It's almost like we have primitive minds; nah, couldn't be.

The Universal Mind thinks in metaphors and that is not the Conscious or Unconscious mind. There is a lady who is adept at interpreting the Universal Mind metaphors and I certainly hope what she is telling us, comes to pass.

[Internalexpansion]

I think the underlying issue is that somewhere in our historical development of language we began forming a misplaced concreteness about the patterns of symbols and sounds we use to convey meaning, and the meaning itself. We confused the map with the territory, and somehow forgot that meaning is transcendent of the pattern of symbols or sounds used to convey that meaning.

[Internalexpansion]

There's a necessary ambiguity involved with the conveyance of any individual experience through language. Language can only point to experience, or perhaps project a cross section of experience. However, pointing in the right direction will not always take you to the intended destination; also projecting the cross-section of a sphere can resemble a cylinder in a certain orientation. I guess my point is that language is used as a metaphor for experience.

[taids]

great vid. thoroughly enjoyed :-)

[rollerpodger]

why dose the microcosm of being in a bucket have more validity than the macrocosm being in a country - indeed we could take it one step further and say we are in the planet , ingrained in the process and the scape of the thinking required changes with the scale

[jedimasterbooboo]

Thanks for this from the bottom of my heart. !!!!!

[Bley121]

My guardian use to say if travel, see roofs. And so, in my absurdity, i thought, sharp pointy roofs as a sign of swift action, recursive/curvy roofs as a sign of best be keeping your wits close and unproportional roof as a sure sign of mudslingers ahead.

[Bley121]

Then, with a sigh, she explains the relationship between written language, with custom and architecture. But have you been to Azieniejan? And, best keep your wits close in streets of Dolhi, And, out in Borneo, it storms tards of mud!

[Bley121]

Hmm sounded orwellian, please do use the delete function on both posts, thanks.

[plutodrvv]

Love the idea of a guest host. Very nice format.

[CousinoMacul]

Last year I saw George Lakoff talk (he was on his "Political Mind" book tour), and I completely agreed with everything he had to say about metaphors.

[anglaismoyen]

One word- Lojban.

[Professoranton]

Interesting, I have you that, but still, the entry was written in English.

As an aside, why do we use the word "in" when talking about languages? Is this a metaphor?

[anglaismoyen]

I suppose it is. Though do you not think that a society in which everyone spoke only Lojban would indeed have a language without at least the intrinsic metaphors of "in" and others. Or would such a language, when subject to natural evolution, develop its own 'intrinsic' metaphors? Is it unavoidable?

[Professoranton]

Not sure, but Nietzsche argues that thought is an "equating of the unequal" and so long as new conditions emerge from life metaphor is not going to go away.

[2bsirius]

5 *s and saved to favorites...

Thanks!

[2bsirius]

Good stuff!

[CousinoMacul]

Agreed! This is one of Corey's best videos.

[directspirit]

One thing is missing from this vid: a precise definition of metaphor. What's a metaphor? Cows to graze in.

[Ramiiam]

She's enjoyable to listen to.

[wideeyevideo]

All we are is metaphors

[2bsirius]

Good point...

A metaphor is a figure of speech concisely comparing two things, saying that one is the other Metaphors such as fear, cost, abhor and angry, commonly share the projection of consciousness onto the world. Metaphors such as these represent the human tendency to view the world through anthropomorphic glasses. However, the metaphors employed by molecular biologists are not of this type.

Metaphors typically break down when we begin to take them literally.

"Red in tooth & claw"

[2bsirius]

If biologists talk about "selfish genes," for example, that doesn't mean that genes actually are. Genes are little chunks of DNA. They can no more be selfish than a river can be "angry" or sun rays "loving"...When people don't realize that these terms are being used in this way, it can cause all sorts of problems. [As in Skilling's use of the selfish gene metaphor in Enron]... When a literal meaning is substituted for a metaphoric one, it causes deep misunderstandings.

SORRY THIS WAS SO LONG!

[trick0171]

It is great to look at the limitations of language. I would suggest the usage of metaphor directly connects seemingly unrelated subjects. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think you are trying to show the distinction between purposeful use of metaphor, and not so obvious metaphor in which people are unaware of.

[jogayot]

wosom

[Ontologistics]

The word "in" is only a metaphor, as in "in the US", if you consider that preposition has one, or several, particular 'correct' meanings.

But as prepositions, especially, have no empirical reference, this assumption is unwarranted.

Therefore "in" is not a metaphor in your example, but as literal as any use of it.

[alteringenting]

great video

[ElectronicPhone]

excellent!

[zarkoff45]

Metaphorically speaking, perhaps, everything you know about the world is a metaphor for the world.

The brain can only produce models of how reality works and metaphors are models.

[danielacheson]

Really great video guys; I totally "get" what you're "getting at". I don't feel that I need to say much more than that.

[lxvlx]

" ""I" "completely" "agree" "with" "you"" "." "

[azrienoch]

Newspeak is Orwell's idea of a sort of basic language imposed on a people. He disliked Ogden's Basic English because of the threat of something like Newspeak happening. He thought that when you removed metaphor and most word choice in general, you remove people's ability to think for themselves. Considering that, it's a bit of a mystery why anyone would want both non-metaphorical language AND free thought, which are both common ideals among positivists and scientistic people.