Women, Fire and Dangerous Things

Notes on:
"Women, Fire and dangerous things" By Lakoff.

Pg.xi We make sense of experience by catagorizing. The catagories into which we differentiate the things we percieve are traditionally thought to be characterized soley by the common, literal properties of the members - making reasoning transcendental in that it in no way is biased by the physical form of the thing which makes distinctions, and reasons with them. (AKA - Objectivism)

Newer theories however, suggest that reasoning, and the methods by which we catagorize things are both fuzzier and more embodied than was once thought.

Prototypes (Eleanor Rosch), metaphor, metonymy and mental imagery - used in both catagorizing and reasoning, are closely tied, not only to the form that is doing the thinking, but also its needs, and its surrounding enviroment. (AKA - Experiential Realism)

Pg. Xii-Xvi - Summary of positions.

Objectivism:

• Thought is the manipulation of abstract symbols, which, though arbitrarily assigned and devoid of innate meaning - are lent meaning by virtue of their capacity to refer to 'real' things in actuality or possibilty.
• The mind is essentially an organic machine, using algorithmic computation to think.
• Symbols - inviolate of the perciever/thinker - get their meanings by corresponding to things in the external world, becoming internal representations of external things (ie: without internal 'photoshopping').
• Thus the internal world of the mind is the 'mirror' of nature, and correct thought a mirror also, of the logic of the external world.
• Thought therefore is disembodied - conclusions are the same for any peceptual set, regardless of the physical form of the thinker.
• Objectivist axioms allow hard AI.
• Thought is atomistic - and can be thoroughly deconstructed without loss of meaning.
• Thought is narrowly logical subject to philosophic laws of falacy.

Experiential Realism:

• Thought is embodied, ie. we use our bodies as a template/interface with which we build complexes of meaning and conceptual models to relate ourselves to the external world, in a useful and stable manner.
• Thought is imaginative - providing a stylized, rather than a literal internal representation of the world.
• Thought is gestalt - holding recursive emergent properties of meaning - which are lost if atomistically deconstructed.
• Thought is ecological in nature - the overall structure of a conceptual process is just as important as the symbols of meaning they hold within. The medium imprinting itself on the message.
• AI, unless embodied, becomes unlikely/impossible.

Pg.6: Catagorization. We do so largely automatically, employing conscious thought only in paradoxical cases of "What the hell is that..?"

We catagorize not only concrete objects but everything else from spacial relationships to emotional connotations; Abstract concepts and outright fantasies.

Pg.16: Problems with Objectivism 1 - Wittgenstein noticed that catagories possess central and noncentral members - ie. some examples of a catagory are 'better' or at least more intuitive than others - which should not occur if classic objectivist theories of mind are true - all should be equal.

Pg.20- : Body projection as locator algorithm. "The foot of the mountain" "Footnotes" "The head of the queue" "Headlines" "The heart of the forest" etc.

Holistic structures - when overall structure is more important than its parts - example golf or cricket - cricket bat, golf club, balls, wickets, in/out etc. - all parts, but none actually encapsulate the entire meaning of 'cricket' as an entity - but it is impossible also to discuss the meaning of cricket without resorting to the description of its parts - cricket as a word remains elusive, it's more of a general prefix.

Fuzzy sets - catagories blur into each other as members overlap in different sets - eg. duck billed platypus. Is it a bird or a mammal, a duck or a vole etc. (Leading naturally to prototypic and metonymic examples within suppposedly equal sets).

Pg.24: Colour sets. Though different languages from different places around the world have different names for the colours, and in some cases, no specific names at all - the 'focal colours' are the same for all humans. ie - if you have a colour sheet and ask someone to pick out the best example of X colour, they will choose the same shades. ie - everyone sees colours the same, but do not weight them equally linguisitically.

The language hierarchy for colours in relation to number of language terms available to describe colour:

• Black, white (sometimes synonymous with cool/warm). 2 words.
• Red. 3 words.
• Yellow, blue or green. (interchangeable for 4/5 colour-word languages). 4-6 words.
• Brown. 7 words.
• Purple, pink, orange, gray (again - interchangeable dependent on word number). 8 - 11 words.

English uses all eleven, some languages only two. The above hierarchy is not arbitrary however - the set obeys fuzzy logic - each strata holding the next inside it.

Pg.31 [see also pg.46]: Catagorization levels: We have a basic level of complexity - which we 'intuitively' are happy with - and learn first as children. It is the levels of distinctive actions. - Dogs go 'bow-wow', what noise does a quadruped make..?

We also give objects at that level shorter, simpler names, remember them more readily, give them higher cultural significance and perceive objects at that level holistically without having to focus on details, nor with the fuzziness or actions of logic required by higher, less distinct levels.

It is a 'natural' level - requiring little or no imagination. ie. Dog, not quadruped. A balance of useful properties vs. prohibitive info-load.

Three-year olds have mastered basic level sorting, superordinate and subordinate (higher/basic/lower - animal/dog/spaniel) come later, at four and five.

Pg.45: Catagory structure plays a role in reasoning. [Rosch 1975/1981] Prototypes act as cognitive reference points forming the basis of inference/theorizing.

Pg47: Part-whole divisions and basic level knowledge:

The way an object is divided into parts determines:

• Parts are usually correlated with functions, and hence our knowledge about functions is usually associated with knowledge about parts.
• Parts determine shape and hence the way an object will be percieved and imaged.
• Most importantly - We usually interact with things via their parts - therefore part/whole divisions play a major role in determining what motor control programs we can use to interact with an object.

ie: there is no disembodied knowledge, unreliant upon the knower, and we catagorize at a basic level not in a way dependent soley on the objects themselves, but in the way we interact with them. We, physically, are at the heart of everything we know, and every concept we use to reason with.

Pg.54: Prototypic Causation.

This is our intuitive (and sometimes fallicious) grasp of causation the gradient being from most general to most detailed:

1. there is a [single definite] agent that does something.
2. there is [single definite] patient (target of 1) which undergoes a change into a new state.
3. 1 & 2 are a single event - overlap in time and space - they come into contact.
4. Part if not all the agent does precedes the change of state in 2.
5. 1 is a source of energy, 2 its target - there is a transfer of energy.
6. 1 is human, and wills/controls/is responsible for both his actions and the change in 2.
7. 1 uses his hands body or some other instrument, and is looking at the patient, whom is percievable. 1 also senses the change, which is also percievable.

Pg.60: Neutralization and asymetric pairings.

For example "tall/short" - "How tall is Harry" - we are not suggesting Harry is tall, simply asking about his height. "How short is Harry" - however here we are implying Harry is a shortarse.

ie. Of this pairing - "Tall" is neutral, prototypic, intuitively used.

Pg.63: "Nouny" Nouns. Some nouns are easier to process grammatically than others. Nouny nous - like Toe for example - obey all the different grammatic stiutaions in a general manner, but less nouny nouns - Way for example - either prove exceptions, or require extra words and special cases to conform.

ie. All nouns and names are not born equal.

Pg.77: Metonymy. The very common practice of cognition of taking one (well understood) example to stand for the whole set of related situations or objects. It is the basis of the process of levelling and generalization.

Pg.83: Radial Structures: Subcategories all derive from a central case (eg. Mother) but not all possible variations exist.

Pg.85/6/7: Social stereotypes are used as metonyms for whole catagories - though they mutate over time and are sometines subject to intense public scrutiny.

(proto)Typicals are usually subconscious 'best examples' from a catagory. "Saws and hammers are typical tools" etc.

Ideals - abstract concepts usually combining all the best traits of a catagory - the "ideal man" "ideal home" etc.

Paragons - single [real] members of a catagory used to represent the best of anything in that catagory - "He's the Genghis Khan of corporate takeovers" etc.

Pg.93: Classification methods. There is no pan-criteria scheme among languages governing classification methods. Locale enviroment, myth-cycles, religion and simple association are all used indiscriminately. Usually chains of associative traits run out from central members of a catagory. Eg in Dyirbal (language of aborigines) Women are linked to the sun - the sun to sunburn - sunburn to rash/pain - rash/pain to the hairy mary grub. By this tenuous logic, women are placed in the same catagory as irritating bugs.

Pg.104: Shape and trajectory used in catagorization. Japanese 'hon'.

Pg.444/5/6: perceptual schema, conscious imagery, kinesthetic imagery. Basically, where you are, and what you do, has an effect on language, metaphor and metonymy. Differing catagorization methods and prototypes lead to a different 'culturo-linguistic' mind-set. The concept of 'desert menatality' for example, is real.

General Note: Remember: "Not what 'ball' means in abstract, but what 'ball' means to Bob." Wholistic meaning - any individual term in our personal lexus is linked to all terms, all of experience - we are our own living dictionaries.

...Continued...