[MD] Mystics and Brains

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Craig]
I hope your answer is "No".  If so, you've conceded my point that words don't
have meaning like paintings. 

[Arlo]
Just as all paintings do not take us to new understandings, neither does all
textual metaphor. I could reduce Margritte's painting to a "simpler painting"
using solid colors, rather than shading. As with anything else, the more its
"tied down", the less it works as a pointer "out". And I've heard quite a few
textual metaphors that were more "meaningful" than some visual metaphors
(paintings) I've come across.

[Arlo previously]
Take the metaphor, "Man is a wolf". Restate that to me using only "literal" 
language. Do you feel your restatement captures the meaning of the metaphor? 

[Craig]
Depends on what you meant by the metaphor.  "Men flirt with women" does it for
me.

[Arlo]
You're arguing the two statements "man is a wolf" and "men flirt with women" are
exactly identical. Neither has any other meaning except for the other? What
about man's aggressiveness? Man's social packing? Man's nurturing of their
young? Man's predatory nature? Certainly we can keep "unpacking" this metaphor
on and on and on, but do any of these things capture the same insight and
meaning as "man is a wolf"? I'd say absolutely not.

[Craig]
But the exercise is irrelevant.  That literal and metaphorical meaning are
different does not entail that the latter can be reduced to the former. 

[Arlo]
I'm not sure just what you're arguing against here. I never denied there are
"literal" definitions, just that these have only pragmatic meaning, and the
more defined the more pragmatic meaning but less value as a pointer "out". 

[Arlo previously]
Art, music, language are all symbolic systems.

[Craig]
Yikes.  Is music for you those dots that appear on the lines of the bass and
treble clefs?

[Arlo]
Are you suggesting that symbols must be visual? The sounds of a didgeridoo
coming from a campsite are just as symbolic as a Cezanne or a poem by Poe.

[Craig]
What does Magritte's "False Mirror" point to/symbolize?  What does Beethoven's
"Fifth Symphony" point to? What does the sentence "Plan ahead" point to?  (the
future?)  Reread your Wittgenstein on the "picture theory of language".

[Arlo]
Avoiding the condescending remark, your questions ask for definitions. If I
could tell you what they symbolize in "literal words", the art would be
meaningless. They may serve to point towards different "things" for every
person, but always the pointer is going outside the (any) symbolic system. 

[Craig]
Your underlying theory of language:  the Platonic Form of 'House' has something
in common with the Platonic Form of 'Red', is about 2400 years out of date.

[Arlo]
My "theory of language" is based mostly in Mark Johnson's writings on metaphor,
and Vygotsky's insights into how we are enculturated. But I'll just avoid the
condescension here as well.

[Craig]
I agree that definitions are loose or open-ended.  But metaphors are not uses of
a word that just loosely fit the definition.  "Man is a wolf" is not a metaphor
because the man loosely fits the definition of wolf (or vice versa).  ("He's a
snake" or "He's a volcano" make this even more obvious.)
  
[Arlo]
No metaphors are not uses that loosely fit a definition. Creating metaphor is
creating art. Whether textual, visual or auditory. It is using symbols to
create a larger symbol that points out of the system, towards that which can
never be part of the system. It points towards the void, the incompleteness,
the unexpressable, the immediate and the pre-intellectual. Good metaphor (or I
should say valuable ones) are those which shatter our static perceptions, give
us a glimpse of DQ.