George Lakoff and Mark Johnson: Metaphors We Live By

Since the last blog, I have been thinking about the nature of metaphorical thinking. Agamben, after all, is using the Camp as a metaphor to think through contemporary politics. What does it mean to think metaphorically? When is it valid? When is it not? To think through these questions, I read George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By, by now a classic in linguistics and philosophy.

The aim of the book is to bring understanding to the human conceptual system: how do we conceive the world around us, understand it, and make inferences about it.

In order to get a handle on the human conceptual system, which is usually hidden from our full view, the two authors rely on analyses of language: since we build our conceptual systems with language, it provides a source of evidence for what our conceptual system is like. With examples from the English language, the authors illustrate that the human conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical.

What is a metaphor:

The essence of metaphor is to conceive one kind of thing in terms of another. In the English language, metaphorical speech abound.

For example, consider the following statements about “arguments” and the act of “arguing.” What do you discern?

Your claims are indefensible.

He attacked every weak point in my argument.

His criticisms were right on target.

I demolished his argument.

I've never won an argument with him.

If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out.

He shot down all of my arguments.

When we talk about “arguing” in the English language, we argue with an “opponent”, plan strategies, attack his positions and defend our own. In the end, we “win or lose” arguments. These expressions suggest that our concept of an “argument” is partially structured by the concept of war, i.e. “war” is a metaphor for the act of arguing.

This is just one example among many more metaphorical speeches in the English language. For example, we often say: I am fed up; he is up there; she feels very down today; my heart is not in it; this matter is out of my mind; we are very close to each other… When we use these propositions, we may not realize that we are using metaphors, but these expressions are metaphorical nonetheless. They involve spatialization metaphors (up-down, front-back, on-off, center-periphery, near-far), ontological metaphors (i.e. picturing some abstract thing as an entity), container metaphors (i.e. picturing one abstract idea to be inside of another), etc.

Using examples from everyday speech, the authors argue that metaphorical thinking is built into our language and modes of comprehension. Metaphorical thinking happens when we ground our understanding of non-physical and more abstract concepts in the less abstract concepts relating to our direct physical and sensory experiences with the world.

Further traits of metaphors:

Metaphorical thinking is systematic. For example, when “war” serves as a metaphor for an argument, it offers a systematic and multi-dimensional way to structure our understanding of the act of arguing, bringing us to consider elements such as rivalry, attacks and counter-attacks, strategy, etc. The most effective metaphors can be further elaborated. They allow us to use one highly structured and clearly delineated concept to structure another.

Metaphors help us understand and categorize because they highlight the “important” aspects of an experience.

Metaphorical thinking is always partial, because if one concept could totally cover all aspects of another concept, then the two concepts would be identical to each other. A metaphor always highlights certain aspects of an experience, while hiding some other aspects.

When a concept is structured by more than one metaphor, the different metaphorical structurings usually fit together in a coherent fashion. It’s not likely that one would use metaphors of totally opposite meanings to structure the same experience.

Metaphorical concepts are extensive—they help extending the concept beyond the range of literal thinking, into the range of figurative, poetic, or fanciful thought and language. Metaphor happens with a leap of imagination (to associate one thing with another), and it leads to further imaginative acts.

Almost all emotional concepts must be comprehended indirectly, via metaphor.

Why do metaphors matter?

The author’s investigation into the metaphorical nature of human conception leads them to believe that there is a false dichotomy between Objectivism (there is absolute truth) and Subjectivism (one can make the world in one’s own image). They propose an Experiential Theory of Truth as a third option.

The Myths of Objectivism and Subjectivism

According to the authors, Objectivism is a belief that the world is made up of objects with inherent properties. People understand these objects by creating categories and concepts, which correspond to the inherent properties of the objects and to the relations among them. Objectivists believe that people can be objective and can speak objectively, but they can do so only if they use clearly and precisely defined language, and speak directly and straightforwardly--only by speaking this way can people communicate precisely about the external world and make statements that can be judged objectively to be true or false. Objectivists consider metaphors and other kinds of figurative language unclear, imprecise and subjective. Some further equate objectivity with rationality, and subjectivity with irrationality and emotionalism.

The authors believe that the myth of Objectivism runs deep in western philosophy: Plato viewed poetry and rhetoric with suspicion and banned poetry from his utopian Republic, because it gives no truth of its own, stirs up the emotions, and thereby blinds mankind to the real truth. Hobbes believes that metaphors are absurd and misleadingly emotional. Locke, continuing the empiricist tradition, shows a similar contempt for figurative speech, which he views as a tool of rhetoric. Among the classical philosophers, the authors single out Aristotle as someone who sees positive value in metaphorical speech. In his Poetics, he argues that “ordinary words only convey what we know already, it is from metaphor that we can best get ahold of something fresh.”

On the other hand, Subjectivists believe that meaning is private and individualistic, and experience is purely holistic and has no structure. The authors attribute Subjectivism to the Romantic tradition (which, historically, was a reaction to the rise of Objectivism) and to certain “contemporary (mis)comprehensions of recent Continental philosophy, especially traditions of phenomenology and existentialism.”

Metaphor as Imaginative Rationality

The authors argue that Objectivism misses the fact that human conceptual systems are metaphorical in nature and involve an imaginative understanding of one kind of thing in terms of another.

Since the foundation of thinking is metaphorical, even an objectivist model is a set of metaphors. So what makes it objectivist? The authors argue that an objectist model is a consistent set of metaphors. Consistency follows stricter logic than coherence. Consistency allows us to make non-conflicting inferences and suggestions for behavior.

While it’s ok to impose a single objectivist model in some restricted situations, this model cannot be an accurate reflection of reality, because there is a reason why our conceptual systems have inconsistent metaphors for a single concept. Any consistent set of metaphors will most likely hide indefinitely many aspects of reality – aspects that can be highlighted only by other metaphors that are inconsistent with it. Therefore, successful functioning in our daily lives requires a constant shifting of metaphors. Inconsistent but coherent metaphors seem necessary for us to comprehend the details of our daily existence.

Subjectivism, on the other hand, misses the fact that our understanding relies on a systematic and sharable conceptual system grounded in our physical and cultural environments. Though there is no absolute objectivity, there can be a kind of objectivity relative to one conceptual system. Impartiality and fairness can be achieved within one conceptual system.

If Reason involves categorization, systematic entailment, and inference, and Imagination involves seeing one kind of thing in terms of another kind of thing, then Metaphor unites reason and imagination. The authors believe that metaphorical imagination is a crucial skill in creating rapport and in communicating the nature of unshared experience. This skill consists of the ability to bend one’s world view and adjust the way one categorizes one’s experience.

The Experiential Theory of Truth

The authors’ proposed “experiential theory of truth” includes the following understanding:

Meaning is not disembodied and is always attached to a conceptual system.

Properties as interactional rather than inherent.

Truth depends on categorization. True statements that we make are based on the way we categorize things and on what is highlighted by the natural dimensions of the categories. Every true statement necessarily leaves out what is downplayed or hidden by the categories used in it.

Since we understand situations and statements in terms of our conceptual system, truth for us is always relative to that conceptual system. However, people who share the same conceptual system can verify and share the truth relative to the common conceptual system. Meanwhile, the conceptual system is not fixed and always changes, as new experiences would create new metaphors that would modify the conceptual system.

What to think about metaphorical thinking?

I remember reading Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor; and, AIDS and its metaphors a few years ago. So I revisited the beginning of her book. Here is an interesting excerpt:

"Illness is the nightside of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of the other place.

I want to describe, not what it is really like to emigrate to the kingdom of the ill and live there, but the punitive or sentimental fantasies concocted about that situation: not real geography, but stereotypes of national character. My subject is not illness itself, but the use of illness as a figure or metaphor. I argue that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness—and the healthiest way of being ill—is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphorical thinking. Yet it is hardly possible to take up one’s residence in the kingdom of the ill unprejudiced by the lurid metaphors with which it has been landscaped. It is towards an elucidation of those metaphors, and a liberation from them, that I dedicate this inquiry."

Sontag was fighting against a set of metaphors that people commonly used to think about illness such as cancer and AIDS, a mystifying set of metaphors that resulted in suspicion of moral characters of the patients and social exclusion of them. Yet what an illuminating passage this is. One sees that Sontag is creating a set of new metaphors in her arguments against an old set of metaphors. The use of “citizenship” provides an essential structure to her advocacy for the demystification of illness.

Therefore, the unending task for artists, scientists, and anyone who tries to be creative and responsible, seems to be harboring a discernment for the blind spots of common metaphorical thinking, and an imagination to create new metaphors to highlight previously ignored experiences, modify conceptual systems, and aid dialogues between different systems.