X Marks the Spot

Thinking again about knowledge and the feeling of certainty which accompanies it, I'm toying with some ideas to do with the conceptual metaphors which may underpin our cognition with regard to this certainty. I've spoken before about that sense of certainty which might be called 'cartesian'; one which is closely associated with the being conscious and with the embodiment which gives form to that consciousness, and I think some of the expressions we use in ordinary language refer to that kind of certainty. The examples I offer in this video are firstly the phrase 'as sure as I'm standing here' which I have heard used when someone wants to indicate the certainty of the belief they are attesting to. This seems to refer to a notion of certainty which is precisely located in space, that location being coterminous with the location of body, standing at the centre of its own experience. The second example is the phrase 'cross my heart' (and hope to die) which we might say when we are making a promise and assuring someone that they can be certain of the truth of our words. The cross we indicate feels to me like the cross one might find on a pirate's map, with the location of the treasure marked by the cartesian coordinates of the cross which uniquely identify the point in conceptual space where certainty can be found. That point where the lines intersect crosses the heart, the notional core of our being and axis of our world.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• knowledge
• certainty
• knowing
• metaphor
• cognition
• cognitive
• poetics
• poetic
• conceptual
• Stephen
• Pinker
• language
• human
• nature
• pirates
• treasure
• heart
• core
• Lakoff
• Johnson
• linguistics

[TheSocraticApproach]

No hat! where's the hat?! :D