On Science of Metaphors and the Nature of Systemic Reasoning

Scientific method is presented not as a means for investigating a true and objective character of universal reality, but as a metaphorical tool applied for mutual co-ordination of experiences. By acknowledging the co-orientational and metaphoric roots of science, religion, arts, and ordinary linguistic communications alike, potential for their fruitful interdependent application becomes apparent. References to the paradigms of constructivism and objectivism are drawn in parallel in outlining the tracks along which the proposed concept of co-creation of experiential qualities is arrived at. Systemic reasoning based on analogies between different levels of complexity of natural systems emanates as an imaginative aspect of creative thinking.     

Clocks,Creation and Clarity: Insights on Ethics and Economics from a Feminist Perspective

This essay discusses the origins, biases, and effects on contemporary discussions of economics and ethics of the unexamined use of the metaphor an economy is a machine. Both neoliberal economics and many critiques of capitalist systems take this metaphor as their starting point. The belief that economies run according to universal laws of motion, however, is shown to be based on a variety of rationalist thinking that – while widely held – is inadequate for explaining lived human experience. Feminist scholarship in the philosophy of science and economics has brought to light some of the biases that have supported the mechanistic worldview. Possible alternatives to the an economy is a machine include an economy is a creative process and an economy is an organism. Such metaphors are intellectually defensible as guides to scientific inquiry and provide a richer ground for moral imagination.     

Sexual metaphor and the language of unconscious phantasy

This paper investigates the attempt to find a 'bedrock' for psychic life in the idea of unconscious phantasy. Through a detailed examination of the development of the concept of unconscious phantasy, especially in Kleinian discourse, it is argued that unconscious phantasies are inherently metaphorical and have no 'concrete' existence in the unconscious. The use of unconscious phantasy as metaphor enables a 'two-way' form of interpretation that describes sexual behaviour and fantasy in terms of object relations (interpreting 'away from sex', while simultaneously describing object relations in terms of the sexual body (interpreting 'towards sex').     

A review of processing and analysing visual metaphors in psychology

IntroductionA visual metaphor is an image depicting an incongruity in the spatial distribution of visual elements, which is not consistent with reality. In this paper, we present an overview of theoretical and empirical studies on visual metaphor processing.ObjectiveFirstly, attention is given to the spatial distribution of visual elements, which defines the type of visual metaphors as well as the meaning operations required to understand the communicative message. The paper then reviews several empirical studies that collect behavioural measures for assessing visual metaphor processing using questionnaires and exploring the role played by cognitive abilities. In line with the contemporary literature, we then present three semiotic dimensions for visual metaphor processing, namely the expression, conceptualisation, and communication. We then present a pilot study that focusses on these three dimensions. Few research studies have collected behavioural data for visual metaphors processing. This may be due to the lack of theoretical framework in the corresponding field of research. These three semiotic dimensions highlight the value of pursuing research on visual metaphors in the scope of psychology. The presented pilot study could be a starting point for the investigation of visual metaphors in the framework of psychology.ConclusionWe propose future avenues of research that consider the visual structure of metaphors and meaning operations while assessing the influence of cognitive abilities in visual metaphor processing.     

The synergy of memory, affects and metaphor

Recently, the concept of metaphor has been revitalized as a result of the convergence of interest in this subject from a variety of disciplines including neurobiology, linguistics and cognitive science. Metaphor is now viewed as an emergent property of mind. Metaphor is rooted in the body in two senses: metaphor is used to organize bodily sensation cognitively, especially affects, and secondly, metaphor is rooted in the body as it rests on the border between mind and brain. Metaphor is therefore viewed as a developmentally early, primitive mental function related to synesthesia. There is a significant distinction between frozen or foreclosed metaphors and open and generative metaphors. The foreclosed metaphor will dominate the perception of others in cases of trauma and can be understood as an explanation of transference repetition. Clinical examples of foreclosed metaphors are illustrated by vignettes of patients who have suffered traumas. Examples taken from two artists are used to illustrate instances in which the artist's own unassimilated experiences appear as generative metaphors.     

Effects of different types of analogy instruction on the performance and inter-joint coordination of novice darts learners

ObjectivesAnalogy instruction has an advantage on motor skill learning. The effect of analogy instructional type on kinematics, particularly on inter-joint coordination, is an extremely understudied area of research. Against this background, this paper experimentally controlled the quality and quantity of the to-be-learned information included in instruction and applied principal component analysis (PCA) to time-series data of joint angles to examine whether different instruction methods could change inter-joint coordination structure.Methods and designForty-five novice participants, fifteen each for three independent groups, performed dart-throwing training with either explicit, rule-based biomechanical metaphor (RBM), or information-integrated biomechanical metaphor (IIM) instructions. Performance and kinematics were evaluated in pre-test, retention test, and transfer test that can increase psychological pressure. The dependent variables were performance outcome, joint variability, and measurements derived from PCA.ResultsAnalyses revealed a significant test effect for the performance outcome, joint variability, and PCA measurements. No significant group effect or group–test interaction was found for the performance outcome and joint variability. Significant test effect and test–group interaction were found for the wrist PC1 loading. The IIM group means significantly increased in the retention and transfer tests. The explicit and RBM group means showed no significant effects of the test. These results suggest that IIM learners significantly changed the PCA structure in the retention test and maintained it in the transfer test, whereas explicit and RBM learners did not.ConclusionsThe findings provide the first insight into the effects of information-integrated biomechanical metaphors on the acquisition of inter-joint coordination structures for novice learners.     

听觉任务下汉语母语者对不同类型时间句的加工

采用听觉刺激-口头问答任务考察汉语母语者对指示性时间句和顺序性时间句的加工。结果表明:(1)对指示性时间句,被试的加工不受听觉刺激的呈现位置影响,时间概念与空间知觉之间无法形成对应的自动化联结;(2)对顺序性时间句,汉语母语者对出现在前方的"较早"事件和出现在后方的"较晚"事件反应快,出现了隐喻一致性效应,即汉语母语者更倾向于用"前"表示过去,用"后"表示未来。整个研究表明,对于汉语母语者而言,"自我参照点"和"时间参照点"两大时间隐喻系统都具有心理现实性,二者之间的区别在于是否有运动经验参与,并由此造成汉语母语者在听觉任务中对指示性时间句和顺序性时间句加工的差异。     

Cognitive Metaphor Theory and the Metaphysics of Immediacy

One of the core tenets of cognitive metaphor theory is the claim that metaphors ground abstract knowledge in concrete, first‐hand experience. In this paper, I argue that this grounding hypothesis contains some problematic conceptual ambiguities and, under many reasonable interpretations, empirical difficulties. I present evidence that there are foundational obstacles to defining a coherent and cognitively valid concept of “metaphor” and “concrete meaning,” and some general problems with singling out certain domains of experience as more immediate than others. I conclude from these considerations that whatever the facts are about the comprehension of individual metaphors, the available evidence is incompatible with the notion of an underlying conceptual structure organized according to the immediacy of experience.     

What Poetry Brings to the Table of Science and Religion

Ever since Plato's famous attack on artists and poets in Book 10 of The Republic, lovers of literature have felt pressed to defend poetry, and indeed from ancient times down to the present, literature and art have had to fight various battles against philosophy, religion, and science. After providing a brief overview of this conflict and then arguing that between poetry and science there are some noteworthy similarities—that is, that some of the basic mental structures with which the scientist studies the “text” of nature (facts, laws, theories) find their counterparts in ways an informed reader studies the poetic text, I develop what I see as the most important differences between poetry, on the one hand, and science, philosophy, and theology, on the other. These differences lie chiefly in two areas: (1) in the stance that each takes toward language itself and (2) in the stance each takes toward that ancient polarity between the one and the many. The aim of my argument is neither to privilege poetry over the other modes of knowing the world nor to grant, particularly to science in its reductive “objectivity,” a higher epistemological status than that accorded to poetry and the arts. Instead, I wish to argue that science, by pushing the boundaries of knowledge about the material world, shows the poet, as well as the theologian, some of the more important work to be done and that poetry, with its emphasis on the particular over the abstract and on the ambiguities and paradoxes of language as inherently metaphorical, serves science and religion by providing a caution against the naive acceptance of language as literal and the consequent enthrallment to the power of absolutes and totalizing abstractions.