Clippings

This was nothing like Tokyo, where the past, all that remained of it, was nurtured with a nervous care. History there had become a quantity, a rare thing, parceled out by government and preserved by law and corporate funding. Here it seemed the very fabric of things, as if the city were a single growth of stone and brick, uncounted strata of message and meaning, age upon age, generated over the centuries to the dictates of some now-all-but-unreadable DNA of commerce and empire.

One does not so much learn category theory as absorb it over a period of time. It is difficult, at a first or second reading, to appreciate the point of many definitions and the reasons for the subject’s abstract nature.

How we think metaphorically matters. It can determine questions of war and peace, economic policy, and legal decisions, as well as the mundane choices of everyday life. Is a military attack a “rape,” “a threat to our security,” or “the defense of a population against terrorism”? The same attack can be conceptualized in any of these ways with very different military consequences. Is your marriage a partnership, a journey through life together, a haven from the outside world, a means for growth, or a union of two people into a third entity? The choice among such common ways of conceptualizing marriage can determine what your marriage becomes. Drastic metaphorical differences can result in marital conflict. Take for example the case where one spouse views marriage as a partnership, and the other spouse views it as a haven. The responsibilities of a partnership may well be at odds with the relief from responsibilities characteristic of a haven.

Classical mathematics comprises an objectivist universe. It has entities that are clearly distinguished from one another, e.g., numbers. Mathematical entities have inherent properties, e.g., three is odd. And there are fixed relationships among those entities, e.g., nine is the square of three. Mathematical logic was developed as part of the enterprise of providing foundations for classical mathematics. Formal semantics also developed out of that enterprise. The models used in formal semantics are examples of what we will call “objectivist models” — models appropriate to universes of discourse where there are distinct entities which have inherent properties and where there are fixed relationships among the entities.

But the real world is not an objectivist universe, especially those aspects of the real world having to do with human beings: human experience, human institutions, human language, the human conceptual system. What it means to be a hard-core objectivist is to claim that there is an objectivist model that fits the world as it really is. We have just argued that objectivist philosophy is empirically incorrect in that it makes false predictions about language, truth, understanding, and the human conceptual system. On the basis of this we have claimed that objectivist philosophy provides an inadequate basis for the human sciences. Nonetheless, a lot of remarkably insightful mathematicians, logicians, linguists, psychologists, and computer scientists have designed objectivist models for use in the human sciences. Are we claiming that all of this work is worthless and that objectivist models have no place at all in the human sciences?

We are claiming no such thing. We believe that objectivist models as mathematical entities do not necessarily have to be tied to objectivist philosophy. One can believe that objectivist models can have a function — even an important function — in the human sciences without adopting the objectivist premise that there is an objectivist model that completely and accurately fits the world as it really is. But if we reject this premise, what role is left for objectivist models?

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…it is one thing to impose a single objectivist model in some restricted situations and to function in terms of that model — perhaps successfully; it is another to conclude that the model is an accurate reflection of reality. There is a good reason why our conceptual systems have inconsistent metaphors for a single concept. The reason is that there is no one metaphor that will do. Each one gives a certain comprehension of one aspect of the concept and hides others. To operate only in terms of a consistent set of metaphors is to hide many aspects of reality. Successful functioning in our daily lives seems to require a constant shifting of metaphors. The use of many metaphors that are inconsistent with one another seems necessary for us if we are to comprehend the details of our daily existence.

One obvious utility for the study of formal objectivist models in the human sciences is that they can allow us to understand, in part, the ability to reason and function in terms of a consistent set of metaphors. This is a common activity and an important one to understand. It can also allow us to see what can be wrong with imposing a requirement of consistency — to see that any consistent set of metaphors will most likely hide indefinitely many aspects of reality — aspects that can be highlighted only by other metaphors that are inconsistent with it.

[Objectivists would] say simply that experientialists are merely concerned with how human beings happen to understand reality, given all of their limitations, whereas the objectivist is concerned not with how people understand something as being true but rather with what it means for something to actually be true.

This objectivist response perfectly highlights the fundamental difference between objectivism and experientialism. Such an objectivist reply boils down to a reaffirmation of their fundamental concern with “absolute truth” and “objective meaning,” entirely independent of anything having to do with human functioning or understanding. Against this, we have been maintaining that there is no reason to believe that there is any absolute truth or objective meaning. Instead, we maintain that it is possible to give an account of truth and meaning only relative to the way people function in the world and understand it. We are simply in a different philosophical universe from such objectivists.

…the entailments of [the metaphor] love is a collaborative work of art arise from our beliefs about, and experiences of, what it means for something to be a collaborative work of art. Our personal views of work and art give rise to at least the following entailments for this metaphor:

Love is work.
Love is active.
Love requires cooperation.
Love requires dedication.
Love requires compromise.
Love requires a discipline.
Love involves shared responsibility.
Love requires patience.
Love requires shared values and goals.
Love demands sacrifice.
Love regularly brings frustration.
Love requires instinctive communication.
Love is an aesthetic experience.
Love is primarily valued for its own sake.
Love involves creativity.
Love requires a shared aesthetic.
Love cannot be achieved by formula.
Love is unique in each instance.
Love is an expression of who you are.
Love creates a reality.
Love reflects how you see the world.
Love requires the greatest honesty.
Love may be transient or permanent.
Love needs funding.
Love yields a shared aesthetic satisfaction from your joint efforts.

Many of our activities (arguing, solving problems, budgeting time, etc.) are metaphorical in nature. The metaphorical concepts that characterize those activities structure our present reality. New metaphors have the power to create a new reality. This can begin to happen when we start to comprehend our experience in terms of a metaphor, and it becomes a deeper reality when we begin to act in terms of it. If a new metaphor enters the conceptual system that we base our actions on, it will alter that conceptual system and the perceptions and actions that the system gives rise to. Much of cultural change arises from the introduction of new metaphorical concepts and the loss of old ones. For example, the Westernization of cultures throughout the world is partly a matter of introducing the time is money metaphor into those cultures.