[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

[David M]

Case

How is this imagined world compared to the real
world to decide if it is like it?

Think you've gone wrong here somewhere.

David M


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Case" <Case at iSpots.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 6:04 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)


> Ian,
>
> The process of metaphor begins on the cutting edge of experience. As
> sensation is transformed into perception, representations are formed. We
> call them memories. Our thought processes are fundamentally different from
> the things they represent. But we like to think there is some degree of
> correspondence.
>
> Our imagined world is "like" the real world. This is the first metaphor.
>
> In this sense I think it is true to say everything is a metaphor. But
> metaphors are fingers pointing at the moon. The more fingers you can see
> pointing the easier it is to triangulate on what they are pointing at.
>
> Everyday language is a vehicle for expressing metaphor metaphorically.
> Sensation, perception, representation and expression are all stages in the
> process of metaphor.
>
> In the everyday world we survive by assimilating ambiguity. We see the
> likeness and dissimilarity of things and weight their relationships
> accordingly. Certainly metaphors die but often they are only transformed 
> by
> circumstance. Jung was especially able to identify ideas and stories that
> resonate across time and culture. He pointed to images that evoke 
> emotional
> responses in many people and speculated that they had structural even
> evolutionary significance in human awareness.
>
> Perhaps metaphors die. But more likely they are simply expressed
> differently. New metaphors are created and adopted with astonishing speed 
> in
> the modern world. For every one that dies 10 spring up. But dead or alive
> they are still fingers pointing at Quality. The problem is that not all of
> them point in the same direction.
>
> Language is an especially slippery material with which to construct 
> reality.
> The texture and shading of connotation can be especially troubling.
> Mathematic circumvents this through metaphors devoid of ambiguity.
>
> Few of us can tolerate such an unambiguous world, however the metaphors 
> Math
> offers are of such sublime significance that philosophers from the Greeks 
> to
> the Enlightenment to the Post-Moderns have served mainly to aid in the
> assimilation and general understanding of them.
>
> Case
>
> p.s. Ok this does not really follow what you said but this is what you 
> said
> made me think about.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org
> [mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of ian glendinning
> Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 6:32 PM
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)
>
> Case, (Mark, DMB and Marsha mentioned ...)
>
> I can hear the shouts of obfuscation already ... I have another
> excluded middle here ... but I've seen it like this.
>
> At one extreme the view is "everything is metaphor" - nothing is
> literally real or literal. In some sense I actually subscribe to that
> view, but I'll need to elaborate, and suggest a stiff brandy at this
> point.
>
> One reason I latched onto the Johnson quote you brought up (or was it
> Arlo) is because Lakoff & Johnson's "Metaphors We Live By" and "Fire,
> Women and Dangerous Things" made a big impression on me.
>
> Every piece of language is (or more precisely was) a metaphor, or
> derived from one. A symbol of something else, a gesture, an
> onomatopeic sound, whatever. "Was" is important. Gradually metaphors
> die. (DMB had to point out the open-handshake gesture to us, because
> in daily life the reason for the meaning is forgotten and irrelevant).
> They actually die by the authority of social adoption (as Mark poined
> out, the "accepted" meaning of word is a social phenomenon.). At some
> point we (socially) accept a word's meaning directly from (sight and
> sound of) the word, without thinking there is any metaphor to decode
> first, in fact we positively forget it ever was a metaphor. And the
> provenance of the word may thoroughly disguise the fact it ever had
> any metaphorical connotation, thanks to translation, spread and
> adoption of usage from culture to culture, language to language, and
> don't forget the original languages and cutures that gave us the roots
> of the words die too. (The Sanskrit "Rta" passages of Pirsig are my
> favourites BTW) (Wow, I said all of that without the "m" word - meme
> that is.)
>
> Most words therefore do not seem to be metaphors to us. They are dead
> metaphors. And most are so long dead, we may have no idea where the
> metaphor lies buried, to ever be able to demonstrate its metaphorical
> origins. (Lakoff and Johnson also deal with the invented -
> deliberately meaningless tokens - neologisms that get attached to new
> things too ..... there is always an element of either derivation or
> connotation somewhere ...)
>
> So here you have it. The difference between "metaphorical" and
> "literal" is really just time ... or distance on the evolutionary
> axis.
>
> So if we're talking about our most fundamental (metaphysical) division
> of reality, Quality in this case ... we're still at (haven't even
> reached) base camp on the evolutionary axis. Everything evolves from
> here. Quality is effectively both literal and metaphorical at the same
> time, (possibly a duality ?). Alternatively you could say the
> distinction becomes meaningless.
>
> As Marsha points out quality is not so much undefined, and
> undefinable, as a matter of principle, being the chosen origin for our
> metaphysics. Worrying about defining the meaning of Quality is
> lierally (hah!) pointless. It's simply the chosen (deemed) root of our
> world-view, and a very effective one at that.
>
> We can (must) use literal sounding talk about it without any care as
> to whether there is anything under it on which it is metaphorically
> based.
>
> OK shoot.
> Ian
> PS BTW Case, when you say Pirsig was "talking nonsense" which bits of
> the MoQ do you not buy ?
>
> On 1/19/07, Case <Case at ispots.com> wrote:
>> [IG] But Case, you explained this perfectly already when you said
>> "Johnson's exposition is filled with anthropomorphic metaphors that
>> make his meanings clear when understood as such. When taken literally
>> they become gibberish. Understanding what he says requires the ability
>> to translate his metaphorical language."
>>
>> I couldn't have said it better. It's about explanation and
>> understanding, not literal meaning. If we choose to misunderstand, all
>> language can be made to look like gibberish. Even mine ;-)
>>
>> [Case]
>> Oddly enough the problem works both ways. I originally read Chapter 11 of
>> Lila in this light. It was only after being called on it a couple of 
>> times
>> and on rereading it twice that I finally got the message that he was not
>> speaking metaphorically he really was saying nonsense.
>>
>> I would be especially happy to be proven wrong on this one.
>>
>>
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