Reading report: Metaphors we live by

Title: Metaphors we live by
Author(s): George Lakoff, Mark Johnson
ISBN: 0226468011
Read: February 2008

Summary from [p. 272]

-Metaphors are fundamentally conceptual in nature; metaphorical language is secondary.
-Conceptual metaphors are grounded in everyday experience.
-Abstract thought is largely, though not entirely, metaphorical.
-Metaphorical thought is unavoidable, ubiquitous, and mostly unconscious.
-Abstract concepts have a literal core but are extended by metaphors, often by many mutually inconsistent metaphors.
-Abstract concepts are note complete without metaphors. For example, love is not love without metaphors of magic, attraction, madness, union, nurturance, and so on.
-Our conceptual systems are not consistent overall, since the metaphors used to reason about concepts may be inconsistent.
-We live our lives on the basis of inferences we derive via metaphor.

Interesting bits

Metaphors are explained using other metaphors.

Structural metaphors [p.]
Based on the direct manipulation and the associated experience of the situation.

Orientational metaphors [p. 14] more is up, happy is up

General orientations cut across cultures, but specific orientation vary from culture to another [p. 24]

Ontological metaphors [p. 30]
To comprehend the states, events, actions

Personification [p.33] Object or non-human as human.
Metonymy [p. 35] Using one entity to refer to another that is related to it. Proxy.

Metaphors coherence (fit together) vs consistency (form a single image)

Dimensions of structure: participants, parts, stages, linear sequence, causation, purpose. Description [p. 78] Examples [p. 80]

We classify particular experiences in terms of experiental gestals in our conceptual system. A concept must fits an experience [p. 83]

Truth is based on Understanding (direct and indirect of the situation) [p. 177]

Conduit metaphor: [p. 10]
Ideas (or meanings) are objects.
Linguistic expressions are containers.
Communication is sending.

A fundamental finding here is that the reasoning in abstract domains uses the logic of our sensory-motor experience [p. 248]

The metaphor theory is in conflict with the traditional Objectivism position where:
Meaning is objective and disembodied, independent of human understanding [p. 196]
Meaning is compositional – The building-block theory [p. 202]

The metaphor theory is in conflict with the traditional Subjectivism position where:
Meaning is private, is a individual experience [p. 224]
Meaning have no natural structures

In response => new Experientialist Alternative where

Understanding emerges from interaction, from constant negotiation with the environment and other people. The nature of our bodies and our physical and cultural environment imposes a structure on our experience. Recurrent experience leads to the formation of categories, which are experiential gestals with those natural dimensions. Such gestals define coherence in our experience. We understand our experience directly when we see it as being structured coherently in terms of gestalts that have emerged directly from interaction with and in our environment. We understand experience metaphorically when we use a gestalt from one domain of experience to structure experience in another domain. [p. 230]

It provides a rich perspective on some important areas of experience in our everyday lives: [p. 230]
Interpersonal communication and mutual understanding
Self-understanding
Ritual
Aesthetic experience
Politics

Primary metaphor and Neural theory [p. 254]
Functioning in the everyday world -> primal neural mapping