I was listening to Radio Open Source on KUOW about a month ago and heard a very interesting conversation on ra [...]

The bulk of this post went into the Dennett thread yesterday, but I’m giving it here again here since this thread seems to be prematurely drying up – and because both my posts of this yesterday were marred by typos and other errors. (However, the ‘follow-up’ I’ve planned for this will go to the Dennett thread.)

Lakoff & Johnson show in astonishing detail how metaphor permeates everyday language. More pertinent to your question, they show how this metaphoric conceptual system called language creates human ‘reality’ – and thereby belief. Bolded words are particularly germane to your question, and all bolded words are my blogitorial emphases:

Metaphors We Live By – George Lakoff and Mark Johnson; Chapter 1: Concepts We Live By:

(begin quote)

Metaphor is for most people a device of the poetic imagination and the rhetorical flourish—a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather in thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.

The concepts that govern our thought are not just maters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. Our conceptual system thus plays a central role in defining our everyday realities. If we are right in suggesting that that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.

But our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of. In most of the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more or less automatically along certain lines. Just what these lines are is by no means obvious. One way to find out is by looking at language. Since communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like.

Primarily on the basis of linguistic evidence, we have found that most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature. And we have found a way to begin to identify in detail just what the metaphors are that structure how we perceive, how we think, and what we do. To give some idea of what it could mean for a concept to be metaphorical and for such a concept to structure an everyday activity, let us start with concept ARGUMENT and the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR. This metaphor is reflected in our everyday language by a wide variety of expressions:

ARGUMENT IS WAR

– Your claims are indefensible.

– He attacked every weak point in my argument.

– His criticisms were right on target.

– I demolished his argument.

– I’ve never won an argument with him.

– You disagree? Okay, shoot!

– If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out.

– He shot down all my arguments.

It is important to see that we don’t just talk about arguments in terms of war. We can actually win and lose arguments. We see the person we are arguing with as an opponent. We attack his positions and we defend our own. We gain and lose ground. We plan and use strategies. If we find a position indefensible, we can abandon it and take a new line of attack. Many of the things we do in arguing are partially structured by the concept of war. Though there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure of an argument—attack, defense, counterattack, etc.—reflects this. It is in this sense that the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor is one that we live by in this culture; it structures the actions we perform in arguing.

Try to imagine a culture where arguments are not viewed in terms of war, where no one wins or loses, where there is no sense of attacking or defending, gaining or losing ground. Imagine a culture where an argument is viewed as a dance, the participants are seen as performers, and the goal is to perform in a balanced and aesthetically pleasing way. In such a culture, people would view arguments differently, carry them our differently, and talk about them differently. But we would probably not view them as arguing at all: they would simply be doing something different. It would seem strange to even call what they were doing “arguing�. Perhaps the most neutral way of describing this difference between their culture and ours would be to say that we have a discourse form structured in terms of battle and they have one structured in terms of dance.

This is what it means for a metaphorical concept, namely, ARGUMENT IS WAR, to structure (at least in part) what we do and how we understand what we are doing when we argue. The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind thing in terms of another. It is not that arguments are a subspecies of war. Arguments and wars are different kinds of things—verbal discourse and armed conflict—and the actions performed are different kinds of actions. But ARGUMENT is partially structured, understood, performed, and talked about in terms of WAR. The concept is metaphorically structured, the activity is metaphorically structured, and consequently, the language is metaphorically structured.

Moreover, this is the ordinary way of having an argument and talking about it. The normal way for us to talk about attacking a position is to use the words “attacking a position�. Our conventional ways of talking about arguments presuppose a metaphor we are hardly ever conscious of. The metaphor is not merely in the words we use—it is in our very concept of an argument. The language of argument is not poetic, fanciful, or rhetorical; it is literal. We talk about arguments that way because we conceive of them that way—and we act according to the way we conceive of things.

The most important claim we have made so far is that metaphor is not just a matter of language, that is, of mere words, we shall argue that, on the contrary, human thought processes are largely metaphorical. This is what we mean when we say that the human conceptual system is metaphorically structured and defined. Metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person’s conceptual system. Therefore, whenever in this book we speak of metaphors, such as ARGUMENT IS WAR, it should be understood that metaphor means metaphorical concept.

(end quote)

That’s the whole of chapter 1.

It’s ‘pregnant’ (another metaphor) with implications.

Our language is ‘built on’ (another metaphor) metaphor, in thousands and thousands of ways. Yet if our language’s metaphors don’t accurately enough represent (by their implicit comparisons) the realities we intend to comprehend by using them, the realities seem unreal. (This is the crippling, self-defeating flaw of the ‘mechanistic universe’ metaphor I excoriate at length in http://www.radioopensource.org/is-god-in-our-genes/#comment-8013 .)

As things stand now (another metaphor), our language has no commonly understood conceptual distinction between ‘mental acceptance of empirically validated tenets’ and ‘mental acceptance of religiously validated tenets’. This lack leads us to conflate the two types of ‘mental acceptances’. This conflation leads in turn to actions to deny the claim of conflation. And these actions take place within the domain of the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor. Worse, the ‘argument’ can actually engender real war: such as the asymmetrical war between the world view of the Islamists and the increasingly divergent understanding of the world and of humankind provided by Western science.

So, to your question was about the role of language in belief: ‘beliefs’ are mental acceptances of ideas. Ideas are inevitably products of the conceptual ‘processing’ (another metaphor) called language. Language is fundamentally metaphoric, and so beliefs are fundamentally the stuff of metaphoric comparisons. (My follow-up in the Dennett thread will carry on the Lakoff & Johnson demonstration of this.)

This means that whenever our language relies on inadequate or inaccurate metaphoric comparisons, our beliefs will be wrongly ‘founded’ (another metaphor). Worse, because we largely think ‘within’ language, we are hard-pressed (another metaphor) to even begin to recognize the entrapment (another metaphor). If our beliefs are wrongly founded we can’t ‘see’ it (another metaphor), because the language is inaccurate, and that inaccuracy will persist no matter how many times our beliefs are empirically proven wrong. To fix (another metaphor) the inaccuracy, the language must change first. (This is why so much science is conducted in impenetrable lingo that requires years of college to master. Like physics! To be accurate, scientific inquiry must abandon everyday language – and that’s why scientists are often loathe to ‘popularize’ their fields: to give their explanations in ‘plain language’, with all its attendant metaphoric shortcomings, inevitably compromises their accuracy.)

Worst of all, our language is riddled with metaphors that are obsolete by centuries in comparison to our contemporary empirical pursuit of knowledge. Popular beliefs, therefore, consistently seem ‘medieval’ to those whose comprehensions of reality are at the forefront of the human pursuit of enlightenment.

Think about the Islamist hatred of Western science: It’s not just that science finds no evidence to support the teachings of the medieval Koran – it’s also that classical Arabic is rooted in metaphoric concepts that don’t ‘translate’ into the metaphoric conceptual systems used by Western scientists. To the Islamist (who reads and understands the Koran in Arabic), scientific explorations are patently false – and to his thinking this is TRUE! – yet only in metaphor.

However, because we think in metaphors, the Islamist literally can’t perceive the realities described by science. To do so would require learning the language of science. Which would ‘ruin’ him as a true believer.

Obviously, humankind as a whole is in dire need of a host of new metaphoric concepts. Yet this is a glacially slow process, and subject to violent objections from those whose biases prevent them from feeling any authentic desire to update their obsolete metaphoric conceptual comprehensions of the world.

Right: enough already – this is a damn loooooong post.

Does it begin to answer your questions?

Sorry, I don’t think I have expressed myself well here but it is after a long day of work.

Jazzman mentioned Dr Suess, Sneetches

That was just the textbook for the class that came to my mind.

Sure, the basketball court is literally a small arena compared to that of life in general, life in this country that is supposed to be so great. Jane Elliot says that we need to walk in the shoes of others, specifically minorities, and this is an example of that.

Think about the rise of the right-wing Christian dominated Republican Party and the “Southern Strategy” that polarized its white base using race (through Reagan to Bush’s Willie Horton, to the present day in New Orleans) and I cannot find a way to avoid saying that this is a failure of Christians and Christianity.