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Metaphor |
What do we mean when we say we know something? Epistemology is the study of the
theory of knowledge. Epistemological considerations quickly come to the fore
when we start analyzing what we mean when we say we know something.We know what a chair is, for example. We can define a chair or look up the meaning in a dictionary. The definition will use words to explain what a chair is. A picture may even be used. But the very words used to define a chair also have definitions, ad infinitum. The picture relies on previous experience of having seen a chair and understanding its use. There is no root set of absolute words or pictures. All words are self-referential (by definition!), and thus, all definitions are self-referential. The pictures, if they are to be useful, rely on previously grasped meanings and experiences. At best, language and pictures, in and of themselves, are fuzzy means of gaining true knowledge, that is, knowledge with meaning, such that there is understanding. The picture and words may in fact lead to understanding, but only because we have previously understood basic things through metaphor. The knowledge made available though metaphor provides a solution to the mind-body problem, one of the oldest problems in philosophy. A chair is a simple object, and even with the self referential inexactness of language, we can feel fairly confident that we do indeed KNOW something about chairs. We say we have determined certain 'facts' about chairs. But such facts are trivial. They are basically just definitions. The situation becomes much murkier when we start trying to define abstractions, emotions, and other non-object ideas and words. As humans developed, our ancestors slowly became able to use abstract thoughts such as numbers and words to quantify and qualify the world and give it meaning. But the first thoughts of those early people were rooted in metaphor. The first people to develop actual language and arithmetic must have done so based on their experiences in the world which they internalized and generalized into operative internal pictures and intuitions about the world. They created the first words and symbols from nothing but these non verbal paradigms. Metaphors. There were no prior symbols, or even any concept of symbols to start with! These pictures and intuitions were based on experiential metaphor as they discerned patterns and truth by inference and subconscious inductive reasoning. As these metaphors of understanding became codified in symbols, humans built the hierarchies of knowledge that exist today which allow us to feel confident in our knowledge. But, at root, the factual elements of knowledge themselves are meaningless until we attach meaning and understanding through appreciating the metaphors that led originally to them. Using the symbolic logic we have inherited is a short cut to gaining knowledge as the many metaphors of understanding are connected in our brains by following the symbolic logic. In this manner, we can learn very quickly and gain the knowledge in a very short time that took much work and time to produce originally by our forbears. So called knowledge that consists merely of definitions and labels is, in fact, not knowledge at all. It comforts us to put labels on things about which we have no understanding. Just the act of naming and classifying serves to fool us into thinking we know something. And, in fact, this is a vital first step towards knowledge. But it is not knowledge itself. Knowledge implies understanding of lower level causes, effects, and meanings.. and it was, (and is), through an infinite variety of metaphors that the original thoughts comprising true knowledge were born. - WHS |