elegation’s posterous

 

 

Knowledge about how we know changes everything.

The essay by Boroditsky in the Edge series has the following interesting comments:

In the past ten years, research in cognitive science has started uncovering the neural and psychological substrates of abstract thought, tracing the acquisition and consolidation of information from motor movements to abstract notions like mathematics and time. These studies have discovered that human cognition, even in its most abstract and sophisticated form, is deeply embodied, deeply dependent on the processes and representations underlying perception and motor action. We invent all kinds of complex abstract ideas, but we have to do it with old hardware: machinery that evolved for moving around, eating, and mating, not for playing chess, composing symphonies, inventing particle colliders, or engaging in epistemology for that matter. Being able to re-use this old machinery for new purposes has allowed us to build tremendously rich knowledge repertoires. But it also means that the evolutionary adaptations made for basic perception and motor action have inadvertently shaped and constrained even our most sophisticated mental efforts. Understanding how our evolved machinery both helps and constrains us in creating knowledge, will allow us to create new knowledge, either by using our old mental machinery in yet new ways, or by using new and different machinery for knowledge-making, augmenting our normal cognition.

So why will knowing more about how we know change everything? Because everything in our world is based on knowledge. Humans, leaps and bounds beyond any other creatures, acquire, create, share, and pass on vast quantities of knowledge. All scientific advances, inventions, and discoveries are acts of knowledge creation. We owe civilization, culture, science, art, and technology all to our ability to acquire and create knowledge. When we study the mechanics of knowledge building, we are approaching an understanding of what it means to be human—the very nature of the human essence. Understanding the building blocks and the limitations of the normal human knowledge building mechanisms will allow us to get beyond them. And what lies beyond is, well, yet unknown...

Filed under  //   boroditsky   edge series   embodied mind   metaphor   narrative   philosophy   psychology  

I have been a big fan of Lakoff since undergrad.  I found him by chance in the local bookstore near Champaign.  The ideas he and Johnson bring forth in Philosophy in the Flesh (actual text available in this link via googlebooks).
have altered my thought process, and I feel there is potential to study and apply these theories to enhance our lives in many areas.  Lakoff himself has been carrying the water on applying metaphorical thinking to the progressive movement.  It is obvious Obama has been using narratives and metaphors quite well in his campaign, as described in an earlier post.  I believe these theories can be applied to medicine, human behavior, and human communication. 


Recent posts I found on blogs around the world about Metaphors We Live By

1.  I found this post on the blog "Labour and Capital"

"Surprising isn't it that we use loads of different expressions based around one metaphor? That leads on to one of the fundamental arguments in the book - that metaphors are not merely linguistic devices, they are conceptual. We don't just use the 'theories are buildings' metaphor to get across our message, we actually think and act in those terms too."

2.  Getting things done: applied metaphors - Productive Flourishing Blog
"But the more fundamental point about metaphors is that they have a powerful effect on our behavior. Since our behavior is partly determined by how we think about things, changing metaphors can have a powerful effect of changing behavior. Another important fact to remember is that metaphors do their work below the cognitive level - we don't think about the associations, yet we act on those associations."


3.  Dan Ward's mind is blown - blog post
"I liken it to watching The Matrix (or, more precisely, actually being in the movie The Matrix and discovering that reality isn't what I thought it was)."

He goes on to ponder what changing a common metaphor, "more is up" to "more is heavy" would do to our thinking:

"I wonder if our society would be less consumeristic if we used the MORE IS HEAVY metaphor instead of MORE IS UP. Certainly, many spiritual traditions (Christianity & Buddhism in particular) talk about wealth and possessions in a MORE IS HEAVY metaphor, in which we are burdened down by an excessive accumulation of stuff."

A longer list of metaphors is available here.  Religious figures use metaphors to help get their point across, see parables.



Clear applications in the medical setting would include:

1. Altering Metaphors, relaying new or activating helpful metaphors in depression to bring the patient out of depression.
2. Using a metaphor to relay difficult medical language to everyday language (ie. the hearts "plumbing vs electrical" problem to explain CAD vs arrythmia)
   
3. Applying "Life is a journey" to end of life discussions.
4. Creating the complex metaphor: "Your hospital stay is a journey" to help patients, staff, students, computer programmers for medical software, hospital administration to be "on the same page" and facilitate good, safe, and cost effective care.

I will flesh out #4 and create a separate post, and perhaps a clearer mindset to share with you all (hopefully) soon.

Filed under  //   book   George Lakoff   Lakoff   Mark Johnson   metaphor   philosophy