Conceptual metaphors are not just tools for poetry. They reflect the way we think and understand our reality. A great deal of our subjective life is rich in judgements about abstract things. Consider the phrases “I got a good grasp of her idea,” or “that idea flew right over my head.” We use these conceptual metaphors to talk about one domain of experience (ideas as a subjective experience) in terms of another (sensorimotor experiences to catch or miss.) Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible because there are metaphor circuits (gestalts) in our brains. And this leads to some very interesting conclusion about how we see the world and make meaning. But what is most striking about this discovery is that there are universal conceptual metaphors in all human cultures around the world that present a common understanding of how meaning is made.
From Physical To Abstract Concepts
How we experience reality grounds how we conceptualise something else. This is why ‘stock markets fall’ and why ‘rates skyrocket,’ because we conceptualise the non-physical in terms of the physical. In their groundbreaking book Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explore how the brain makes meaning from an embodied mind. A deeper dive into these discoveries can be found in the book Philosophy In The Flesh, which explores in detail how the brain does this, crediting discoveries and investigations by prominent figures in cognitive science.
Primary Metaphors
The most important realisation was the significance of Primary Metaphors. Since most of how we reason and conceptualise things come from our physical sensorimotor domains of experience, it stands to reason that the sensorimotor cortex became the locus of inquiry. What emerged from the research were metaphors consistently appearing cross-culturally in many languages, such as Affection Is Warmth (the primary experience being initiated as a baby held affectionately.) Another is Important Is Big, (a primary experience based in the childhood experience of your giant guardians watching over you.) Or what about Happy Is Up (an experience primarily in being happy and energetic as upright in posture and orientation.) Our bodies are always sensing temperature, verticality and objects, which is why these experiences are the prime domains for other metaphorical networks.
These associations are not conscious, they are a product of millions of neural connections being recruited to communicate an experience coherently in any given culture. This coherence relates to how we reason about reality and understand one another, and is also why new metaphors may only find niche appeal to subcultural groups. But how do our brains first make these connections? What are the conditions before the conceptual metaphors that allows the brain to achieve these neural recruitments?
Conflation & Language Development
During his research into conflation, Christopher Johnson learned that connections between two domains in early childhood development (like seeing and knowing) are coactive and experienced together. Later in development there is a secondary stage of differentiation, whereby these previously coactive domains are metaphorical sources and targets for more complex expressions and understandings. So, knowing is seeing for a baby, while something can be illuminating for an older child who can differentiate the meaning from the coactive experience. It is from this conflation that primary metaphors are made, later growing to more complex metaphors. But this raises more questions. How is the brain able to make assessments about the world outside itself? Is there are way it specifically speaks to its various different elements? And when we use terms like into and out of, how can the brain manage these concepts as merely a structure for sensory inputs?
Image Schema & Spatial-Relations
It turns out that the heart of our conceptual system are concepts of spatial-relations that help us make sense of our environments. These concepts are not simple and vary wildly from language-to-language. We impose them onto our physical world. Take for instance, a rock. We impose upon the rock object a front-back orientation. (E.g. Where is the ball? It’s in-front of the rock.) A rock doesn’t have an inherent front or back until we put it there.
Another example of this is the phrase into, a composite of the elementary relations in and to. The word on is composed of elementary spatial relations above, in contact with, and supported by. These are called image schema. A container schema frames how we understand containment, from boxes to rooms to houses – anything with an interior, a boundary and an exterior. Another sort of frame is a source-path-goal schema with a trajectory that moves through it. Incredibly, we infer from this metaphors that express time passing by, or ideas as objects we didn’t catch.
You can think of image schemas as circuit maps in the brain. How these maps communicate determines how well we understand new concepts.
Neural Binding
Hold tight, this bit gets a little heavy. Thoughts are physical circuits embodied in the brain. People’s brains have several functions and each function has a map of the body. The motor cortex has one, so too does the sensory cortex, your visual cortex and so on. Brain chemicals help to bind neurons in order to build these topographical maps and these circuits fire repeatedly to strengthen the synapses and reinforce learning. (This is known as Hebbian learning.) So when we see a glass fill with water, we understand more is up. Two parts of the brain are being activated, a schema for verticality, and for quantity. The more they activate together the stronger the circuit, until it becomes the metaphor More Is Up. With the right connections across maps, our brains compute containment, motion, lines, and a range of other image schema in much the same way.
Therefore, when we understand into, our brain links several maps through neural binding. For example, In is a containment schema. It links to the source-path-goal schema To, which itself is a whole schema with three semantic roles (a source domain, a path and a goal.) When we understand new concepts, our brains recruit pre-existing neural maps (neural recruitment) to make sense of new ideas.
Systematic Metaphor
So, you may be wondering at this point, why is this important? The systematicity of metaphorical concepts means the way we understand one thing shapes how we talk about it. Since it shapes how we talk about it, it also shapes our behaviour. For example, consider the metaphor Argument Is War. There are linguistic expressions for talking about argument in terms of warfare. She shot down my argument. He’s dodging the point. She’s gaining ground. His position is indefensible. When we talk about the aspects of battle, we highlight the conflict aspects but inevitably hide other concepts, like collaboration or constructive learning as in the metaphor Arguments are Buildings.
“Corporations Are People, My Friend”
In 2011, Presidential Candidate, Mitt Romney, set the record straight during the Iowa State Fair. “Corporations are people, my friend.” The statement caused quite a stir with his audience, but not long after, corporate personhood was endorsed by the Supreme Court. What’s more, according to Huffpost, these institutions have been legally endowed with more rights than individuals. What this demonstrates is the powerful nature of conceptual metaphors in changing our reality. Supposing, in our crisis-ridden-world, that the COVID19 virus had been framed as a Thief, or the Earth as a Person, how different our understanding of complex systems like viruses and climate change might be. What systematic entailments would follow if such aspects were more common place in our conceptual metaphors? Would it make them easier to understand? Would that understanding change our behaviour?
Well, yes and no – as with most things, there’s a catch. Just as we don’t all accept that corporations are people, many would not so easily accept other innovative metaphors. They first need to be grounded based on coherent structures. And to do that, we must meet people where they are at and understand their values. Truth depends on understanding, and we are not all equipped to understand a new domain of experience when the gestalt circuits are not in place to do so.
New Realities
Nevertheless, metaphors are pervasive in our lives and these discoveries have come at a time most needed. Our myths of pure objectivism can no longer weave together the fabric of our fragile world. Science and innovation alone can no longer promise to save us from a horrifying path of mass extinction. Humanity has always been able to change the world through its ability to conceptualize cognitively and reinvent itself, a stable fact we must not take for granted now. We have the ability to think and build something new, and it seems we will need new metaphors and narratives to do so. Cognitive science has overcome a traditional view of mind and matter as separate and distinct. In fact, they appear to be two aspects of life – process and structure. If mind is process and matter is structure, then we have the power to construct and actualize new realities.
To change your mind is to change your brain, a potential that can change the world.
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