Think In Pictures

"Who/what is behind all this?" (It's as if the facts-so-far are conceived as a curtain.) The sub-text is the under-text. The text is the mask of the sub-text.

Hasn't Western Philosophy long been concerned with penetration? Do we not love stripping Goddesses?

"No ideas but in things" W C Williams.

For the most part, I think we humans think in pictures. For me, creative thought is figurative language, generally metaphorical.

It's as if we still point at objects to get our points across. (Note the word "across.")

I'm over this. (As if one were a rock thrown over a swamp.)


"Who/what is behind all this?" (It's as if the facts-so-far are conceived as a curtain.) The sub-text is the under-text. The text is the mask of the sub-text.

Hasn't Western Philosophy long been concerned with penetration? Do we not love stripping Goddesses?

I very seldom think in pictures, myself, And how can anyone think in pictures about, for example, the difference between knowledge and belief which are abstractions?

But words themselves are abstractions, so how can anyone think in words without objects to attach them to. This may be why thinking about knowledge and belief never go anywhere because they are only grounded upon abstraction.

It is penetration for the sake of procreation. We don't just want to f*ck existence, we want existence to have our babies.

I would enjoy some elaboration on this. What do babies represent here, for instance? The tropes/concepts invented/discovered? Something else?

Is our signature a sort of baby? Absalom piled up rocks. Plato piled up arrangements of words. These rocks and words were given a tag representing their author/creator (who is really perhaps just a re-arranger.)

***

But what I really want to get is the foundation of language/thinking which seems objects and persons used to describe other objects and persons. In this late stage in the game, I feel that the metaphoricity of thinking is obscured.

However, many of the most learned and wise adhere to the new scheme of expressing themselves by things; which has only this inconvenience attending it, that if a man's business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged, in proportion, to carry a greater bundle of things upon his back, unless he can afford one or two strong servants to attend him.
I have often beheld two of those sages almost sinking under the weight of their packs, like pedlars among us, who, when they met in the street, would lay down their loads, open their sacks, and hold conversation for an hour together; then put up their implements, help each other to resume their burdens, and take their leave.
But for short conversations, a man may carry implements in his pockets, and under his arms, enough to supply him; and in his house, he cannot be at a loss.
Therefore the room where company meet who practise this art, is full of all things, ready at hand, requisite to furnish matter for this kind of artificial converse. - from Gulliver's Travels

But words themselves are abstractions, so how can anyone think in words without objects to attach them to. This may be why thinking about knowledge and belief never go anywhere because they are only grounded upon abstraction.

I like where you're going with this. To me, much time is wasted on treated abstract words as if they were precise in their meaning like numbers.

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But back to the OP. I am reminded of Guliver's travels. The philosophers of Laputa:

Thought/language seems to be the dirt that the house of philosophy is built on. If thought is essentially figurative, then even man's thinking is a mirror of his sensual environment.

How does what you are saying differ from regular old empiricism?

It's as if we still point at objects to get our points across.

I think we resort to metaphor when we can't point at objects to explain our thoughts or when there is no ready sign to point at i.e. no ready word to say. Metaphor begins where ostention ends.

The method of speaking employed by the philosophers of Laputa would render them incapable of metaphor since they always had to point to the actual object.

I suppose what I'm trying to emphasize is that abstractions themselves are all dead/literalized metaphors/figurative language. For instance, all the abstract words I just used: dead, literalized, metaphor, figurative, language.

We were born into a world full of such literalized metaphors and learned them from context and use. But at some point in the past these words had to be invented. It's my opinion that etymology offers us the original metaphor through which abstractions are invented.

DEAD
O.E. dead, from P.Gmc. *dauthaz, from PIE *dheu-. Meaning "insensible" is first attested early 13c

LITERAL
late 14c., "taking words in their natural meaning" (originally in reference to Scripture and opposed to mystical or allegorical), from O.Fr. literal, from L.L. lit(t)eralis "of or belonging to letters or writing," from L. lit(t)era
"letter."

METAPHOR
1530s, from M.Fr. metaphore, from L. metaphora, from Gk. metaphora "a transfer," especially of the sense of one word to a different word, lit. "a carrying over," from metapherein "transfer, carry over," from meta- "over, across" (see meta-) + pherein "to carry, bear"

FIGURE
early 13c., from O.Fr. figure, from L. figura "a shape, form, figure," from PIE *dheigh- "to form, build" (see dough);

LANGUAGE
late 13c., from O.Fr. langage (12c.), from V.L. *linguaticum, from L. lingua "tongue," also "speech, language" (see lingual).

Agree with everything but :

...My question is, Why do this walk towards abstraction occurs in the first place? is it entropy, noise, complexity ???
...Or do we look for something more essential ?

Sometimes I say Kleenex instead of tissue or Coke instead of pop. Certain objects, or actions e.g. writing for literal and tongues for language have brand name recognition than other objects/actions in their class. For whatever reason some words become representative of a class of things. This is synecdoche, not metaphor although sometimes metaphor is used as a synecdoche for figures of speech including synecdoches

I agree that your examples are examples of synecdoche, an example of trope.

The broader category of trope is the one I regard as more exact, as far as the general point I am trying to make. Unfortunately the word "trope" is not well known. I usually use the phrase "figurative language" or the word "metaphor." I appreciate the drawing of distinctions in this matter.
I feel that metaphor is more central in this issue than synecdoche, though synecdoche plays its part. Metaphor in the broad sense covers most of it.

Moreover, metaphor also denotes rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via association, comparison, and resemblance, e.g. antithesis, hyperbole, metonymy, and simile; all are species of metaphor.

To give you an example: Rorty suggests that the "self is a network of belief and desires." Self as network. Or virtue as knowledge. I think the bigger leaps are made by the more discursive trope metaphor, rather than synecdoche. I like the etymology of trope. It's a twist, a fertile perversion.

1533, from L. tropus "a figure of speech," from Gk. tropos "turn, direction, turn or figure of speech," related to trope "a turning" and trepein "to turn," from PIE base trep- "to turn" (cf. Skt. trapate "is ashamed, confused," prop. "turns away in shame;" L. trepit "he turns").

Tropes did not arise mysteriously reflections of sensual experience into the realm of thought/language but rather because these reflections are useful within various workshops/games.