Is everything a metaphor?

[Ren]

No, it's not. A metaphor is transferring a characteristic to an object/idea ect. that cannot have that characteristic in reality. A non literal use of language. For example, "he has a heart of gold". What maths and physics do is describe with language something theoretical and incorporeal.

Of course I agree that not everything is a metaphor. That said, I disagree about maths and physics -- there is plenty of metaphor in science, especially revolutionary science. In fact it's absolutely fundamental to progress. New ways of looking at the world, whether scientific or otherwise, often emerge first as metaphorical. If they succeed and the theory becomes the dominant one (e.g. Newtonian mechanics, Relativity, etc.) the metaphors tend to become literalised, i.e. dead metaphors. Today we don't think anymore of sentences like 'the Earth revolves around the Sun' or 'supermassive black holes' as metaphors, but they once were. Metaphors have lifespans.

The OP's question is a lot deeper than it may seem at first.

 

[Ren]

This question came to my mind a few weeks ago and I've been thinking about it a lot. Even material world things we take for granted like mathematics. Is math just a metaphor? Equations describing motion and velocity after all aren't ACTUALLY motion or velocity but is velocity even velocity or motion even motion or just another metaphor to describe something we are clueless about? Meditating on what motion is just leads me to more concepts and ideas that could be construed as metaphor in absence of concrete KNOWING (whatever that is) and can't be rested on default BELIEVING or THEORIZING for they overflow with metaphor. We continually develop more and more sensitive instruments to describe the world around us but again are the instruments just another metaphor? Just an unrelated object used to describe something we could never truly understand.

I think it's important to draw a distinction between things, on the one hand, and our description of things, on the other.

Of course things are not metaphors. Metaphors are a linguistic phenomenon, so they only apply to language. Since there is more to the world than language, everything isn't metaphor.

What remains to be determined is whether all of our language is metaphorical. Of course that can't be true. Metaphors only derive their meaning/power from the contrast with the literal. If everything was metaphorical, the very word 'metaphor' would be meaningless. So the argument is incoherent.

What I think is true, however, is that a lot more of our use of language is metaphorical than we realise. Because metaphors are a way of expanding vocabularies and therefore thought. (See also my post above). Any kind of creative thinking typically relies on sets of metaphors, and there is nothing really magical about this.

 

[Ren]

Good question and what I've been contemplating for quite a while. It's direct knowledge. Everything we seem to "know" about anything is second hand. Is it possible to discuss or consider the nature of reality without bringing in the filtering mechanisms of what someone else said or wrote? This goes back to my original question is everything a metaphor? We're just in this warehouse of reality with its "rules" because those around us conditioned us to this limited space and we can't get out of it because the dogma of said "rules". I don't mean "The Matrix" either which is another conditioning/meme where by culturally it's easy to "believe" someone or something (aliens) are manipulating us because again second hand "knowledge" (stupidity) has conditioned us like lab rats that of course someone or something is lording over you like some pathetic and abused child. This is the stupid mindset I'm tired of. Again is there such thing as direct knowledge / empowerment?

To be honest, I think your use of the term 'metaphor' is misleading. It would be more usefully replaced with something like 'virtuality' or 'simulation'.

It's a familiar skeptical argument, probably first formulated 2500 years ago or so. I don't think a refutation of it is possible, except to point out that it's self-defeating. i.e., the skeptic must inevitably be skeptical of his own skeptical conclusions.

 

[aeon]

the skeptic must inevitably be skeptical of his own skeptical conclusions.

you called?

Cheers,
Ian

 

[Ren]

you called?

Cheers,
Ian

Lmao.

Well, as a bit of skeptic myself, I self-defeat on a regular basis. But such is life!

 

[Matty]

The problem is intractable though. All we ever experience takes place within our minds and is a model of what may be happening in a so-called external world. We tend not to question whether such a world actually exists and it seems plausible that it does, but there can be no actual proof.

I suppose that we could say our minds provide us with a metaphorical representation of the real world if it does really exist - but that implies that we can compare our experiences of the world with the real thing, but we can’t so I hesitate to call it metaphorical. Instead we each live within our own private universes. It’s really only on trust that we can say that they do in fact give us access to a real world and to each other’s private universes.

As an example of how challenging it can be once we start to think about it deeply, consider how hard it is to prove conclusively that there was a yesterday.

That's a bizarre take.

As long as you distinguish between your perception of something, and the thing perceived, everything you said is irrelevant.

To illustrate: given the relative size of atoms to the subatomic particles from which they are composed, everything on Earth, including our bodies, is 99.999...% empty space. Yet we perceive everything as substantial and hefty. Even if what we perceived was completely insubstantial, and entirely numinous/formal/intellectual, we can clearly distinguish between what is perceived (the object), the perceiver (ourselves), and the perception (our impressions/concepts/memories/etc).
It doesn't matter that our perception may reveal little about the true nature of things (re empty spaces), it is distinct from the object, and thus our musings can either be objective, or subjective; not simply subjective.

 

[John K]

That's a bizarre take.

As long as you distinguish between your perception of something, and the thing perceived, everything you said is irrelevant.

To illustrate: given the relative size of atoms to the subatomic particles from which they are composed, everything on Earth, including our bodies, is 99.999...% empty space. Yet we perceive everything as substantial and hefty. Even if what we perceived was completely insubstantial, and entirely numinous/formal/intellectual, we can clearly distinguish between what is perceived (the object), the perceiver (ourselves), and the perception (our impressions/concepts/memories/etc).
It doesn't matter that our perception may reveal little about the true nature of things (re empty spaces), it is distinct from the object, and thus our musings can either be objective, or subjective; not simply subjective.

It's not really that our peception may only have a limited access to the true nature of things - it's that all the concepts embodied in that statement are artifacts of the way we perceive and conceptualise things, and it's only these that we have access to. What we think is the world is actually a simplified simulation of it wholly contained in each of our minds. It is my belief that this is anchored to a genuine objective world outside my head through my low level senses, but I have no direct access to these low level senses. For example, the image on my retinas goes through masses of processing and interpretation before it gets anywhere near my conscious perception; what I see is actually coloured strongly by all the templates I have absorbed since childhood that help me to individuate objects and interpret what they are. If I did have conscious access to the individual flickering pixelations on my retinas, it would probably not make a lot of sense to me. This goes very deep, because we project without thinking highly structuring concepts such as 'thing' onto the world, but this is a human mind artifact par exellence - the separation of the world into distinct objects is an artifact of our minds rather than part of objective reality. I'm not talking about language and naming things here which is secondary - I'm talking about our mechanisms of perception before we express something in words.

Time is another problem too. We presume that there is a past and a future history, but all I'm actually aware of when I stop and think about it is here, now. I can't go back five minutes to convince myself it was really there, not can I go forward five minutes to check that it will be. I cannot verify directly that the past existed.

So all I can be certain of is what I am aware of inside my mind in the present moment - there's no way I can get outside myself to see if there really is a world out there separate to myself. I believe that others with far more philosophical ability than myself have tried and failed to overcome that barrier. What I can do though is to make a free choice and believe that there is an external reality. While accepting that there can be no certainty that I'm right, it's the choice that seems most consistent with the way my world presents itself to me (and it's much more comfortable to believe that too ). But like you say, the world that I perceive, granted that it really is there, is both like but also very unlike how I perceive it.

You might wonder where all this sort of thinking comes from, but when I was a child of about seven or eight, I woke up one morning and noticed that the world didn't look real - it was one of those moments that coloured my life since then in many ways. It's been a long story since then, coming to terms with it and finding that there is no hard edged resolution to it. It's strange that it has led me to the conclusion that I have to decide what reality is as much as to perceive and understand it.

 

[Matty]

It's not really that our peception may only have a limited access to the true nature of things - it's that all the concepts embodied in that statement are artifacts of the way we perceive and conceptualise things, and it's only these that we have access to. What we think is the world is actually a simplified simulation of it wholly contained in each of our minds. It is my belief that this is anchored to a genuine objective world outside my head through my low level senses, but I have no direct access to these low level senses. For example, the image on my retinas goes through masses of processing and interpretation before it gets anywhere near my conscious perception; what I see is actually coloured strongly by all the templates I have absorbed since childhood that help me to individuate objects and interpret what they are. If I did have conscious access to the individual flickering pixelations on my retinas, it would probably not make a lot of sense to me. This goes very deep, because we project without thinking highly structuring concepts such as 'thing' onto the world, but this is a human mind artifact par exellence - the separation of the world into distinct objects is an artifact of our minds rather than part of objective reality. I'm not talking about language and naming things here which is secondary - I'm talking about our mechanisms of perception before we express something in words.

Time is another problem too. We presume that there is a past and a future history, but all I'm actually aware of when I stop and think about it is here, now. I can't go back five minutes to convince myself it was really there, not can I go forward five minutes to check that it will be. I cannot verify directly that the past existed.

So all I can be certain of is what I am aware of inside my mind in the present moment - there's no way I can get outside myself to see if there really is a world out there separate to myself. I believe that others with far more philosophical ability than myself have tried and failed to overcome that barrier. What I can do though is to make a free choice and believe that there is an external reality. While accepting that there can be no certainty that I'm right, it's the choice that seems most consistent with the way my world presents itself to me (and it's much more comfortable to believe that too ). But like you say, the world that I perceive, granted that it really is there, is both like but also very unlike how I perceive it.

You might wonder where all this sort of thinking comes from, but when I was a child of about seven or eight, I woke up one morning and noticed that the world didn't look real - it was one of those moments that coloured my life since then in many ways. It's been a long story since then, coming to terms with it and finding that there is no hard edged resolution to it. It's strange that it has led me to the conclusion that I have to decide what reality is as much as to perceive and understand it.

You missed the point.

You're so caught up in wondering if there's a "world out there" (which includes time), and if there is, whether our perceptions of it reflect in any way, anything real, that you ignore your own distinction between your perceiving self, and that which you wonder if it exists.

If you're wondering about it, it exists in some way, which is different to your thoughts about it, and different from your perceptions about it. The earth may in reality be nothing physical in the ordinary sense, but what it definitely isn't is you.

Despite your protest, it really is just fussing over terminology to worry is the earth just in your mind. It changes nothing about how you can explore, understand, and consider it, than if you simply changed the terminology to: the earth is just in physical space-time.

If you want to determine a way to predict earthquakes, it makes absolutely no difference if you say the earth is physical, or just in your mind.

Personally, extreme skepticismcomes across as a hybrid of narcissism with some sort of social avoidant disorder.

 

[Ren]

The problem is intractable though. All we ever experience takes place within our minds and is a model of what may be happening in a so-called external world. We tend not to question whether such a world actually exists and it seems plausible that it does, but there can be no actual proof.

So all I can be certain of is what I am aware of inside my mind in the present moment - there's no way I can get outside myself to see if there really is a world out there separate to myself. I believe that others with far more philosophical ability than myself have tried and failed to overcome that barrier. What I can do though is to make a free choice and believe that there is an external reality.

"The skeptic" is like a recurring character in the history of philosophy. Nearly every well-known philosopher has tried to refute him, but I agree the task is probably impossible. That said, even in failing to provide 'proof', really interesting theories have cropped up which have been fruitful to other ends. Descartes' cogito, Kantian faculties, Wittgenstein's private language argument, etc.

In practice I don't think anyone agrees with the skeptic, but he offers an interesting challenge that's fun to take up and can lead to new insights into reality and the self.

 

[Ren]

@John K -- Here's an argument against skepticism I think you'll find, if not convincing, at least entertaining.

 

[aeon]

@John K -- Here's an argument against skepticism I think you'll find, if not convincing, at least entertaining.

Interesting? Yes, quite. Entertaining? Not in the usual use of the word. Convincing? Haha, no.

My degree of skepticism led me to question, if just for a second, whether that was a real Wikipedia article, so ludicrous was line 3 — “There are at least two external objects in the world.”

You want me to just accept the premises that “external,” and “the world,” not just exist, but that those things can be known and demonstrably proven to be true?

It’s not so much that I am unwilling, but because nothing in my experience and understanding suggests I could know those things, much less have the ability to discern the truth of those things, I am unable to accept the premises.

What @John K said above made sense to me, but I must add that though I’m aware that brain-related catecholamine and electrical activity has tremendous influence on our senses and perceptual ability, I’m unsure of the source, or the mechanism of, consciousness itself. I’m not comfortable saying one’s brain is the source of it, even if I acknowledge it is involved in some way(s).

I use all kinds of conventions, like this and that, cause and effect, and time, because those things are beneficial in the day to day, and as a social animal, those things help facilitate communication and the development and maintenance of relationships. That said, my experience and understanding suggest those conventions are, in truth, artifacts of the perceptual reality that results from a particular state of consciousness.

In a different state of consciousness, perhaps no-thing-ness, a singularity of isness and the ever-present now is the perceptual reality.

Which is true? I don’t know, and I have no means by which to know. That’s okay. Ambiguity is my oldest friend.

Cheers,
Ian

 

[John K]

You missed the point.

You're so caught up in wondering if there's a "world out there" (which includes time), and if there is, whether our perceptions of it reflect in any way, anything real, that you ignore your own distinction between your perceiving self, and that which you wonder if it exists.

If you're wondering about it, it exists in some way, which is different to your thoughts about it, and different from your perceptions about it. The earth may in reality be nothing physical in the ordinary sense, but what it definitely isn't is you.

Despite your protest, it really is just fussing over terminology to worry is the earth just in your mind. It changes nothing about how you can explore, understand, and consider it, than if you simply changed the terminology to: the earth is just in physical space-time.

If you want to determine a way to predict earthquakes, it makes absolutely no difference if you say the earth is physical, or just in your mind.

If only it were that simple, but I can wonder about Middle Earth without that making it exists in the way that I hope the world exists. The reason I raised this perspective was not to deny the existence of reality - though it cannot be proven, it is the most plausible explanation for what I experience. All of science is like that - none of it is proven because the validations come from induction and can be falsified at any time by new evidence. So we take each theory as a working model until something better emerges, and it's for their utility that we value the ones preferred today rather than the consistency with which they explain between them what the world actually is.

The reason I raised this issue is to address the OP question (is everything a metaphor?) by underlining the way that what each of us experiences as the world is not the real thing, but a mental construct coloured strongly by the way our senses translate it, and the way we process it based on the patterns and experiences of our lives to date. That suggests to me very strongly that while it leaves open the question of whether the actual universe expresses itself in metaphor, the only way we humans can relate to it is through the models that are created in our minds which are representations, but are not the reality, of what is out there.

I suspect my working attitude to the external world is not wildly different to your own for everyday purposes, but it's interesting and entertaining to play with alternative takes on it.

Personally, extreme skepticismcomes across as a hybrid of narcissism with some sort of social avoidant disorder.

I'd not considered that belief in an external reality could be decided partly on ethical grounds. I've come across that sort of approach suggested about belief in god, as something that people ought to do, but not a belief in the existence of an external world.

But even if someone did believe there was no external world, that doesn't necessarily mean they think they themselves are the only thing that exists. For example, my thoughts and my feelings are not me but what I experience, and I experience them internally in ways that are quite different to external things. Very little of my inner world is what I'd identify with 'I'. What I am is another variable too - am I the same I as I was yesterday or will be tomorrow?

Perhaps for some, a solipsistic experience can involve a self-inflation, but it's not something I'd wish on anyone because it is far more likely to be an archetypal bad trip. There's a cautionary note here though, because just as belief in god can be no more than a comfort blanket, this is true of belief in a hard reality too - I get the impression that some of the arguments for its existence in the literature are strongly coloured by this.

 

[Ren]

I use all kinds of conventions, like this and that, cause and effect, and time, because those things are beneficial in the day to day, and as a social animal, those things help facilitate communication and the development and maintenance of relationships. That said, my experience and understanding suggest those conventions are, in truth, artifacts of the perceptual reality that results from a particular state of consciousness.

My issue with skepticism boils down to this: when it makes truth claims, it's self-refuting, since it denies the possibility of certain knowledge. So all it can really do is make an argument for plausibility. But no skeptical argument seems to be remotely near as plausible as the argument for common sense -- according to which I really have a right arm, and a left arm, and children in Palestine are suffering, and there really used to be slavery in America, etc. I take this to be Moore's point.

So I have to agree with @Sometimes Yeah that only someone very self-absorbed could believe skepticism is more plausible than common sense. The only consistent skeptic I have come across is probably the ancient Greek philosopher Pyrrho, whose friends had to save regularly from death because he forgot to eat, walked straight into crevices, etc., because he genuinely believed that none of that stuff was real. Was he nuts? Maybe, but one thing's for sure, he was consistent!

 

[Ren]

The reason I raised this issue is to address the OP question (is everything a metaphor?) by underlining the way that what each of us experiences as the world is not the real thing, but a mental construct coloured strongly by the way our senses translate it, and the way we process it based on the patterns and experiences of our lives to date. That suggests to me very strongly that while it leaves open the question of whether the actual universe expresses itself in metaphor, the only way we humans can relate to it is through the models that are created in our minds which are representations, but are not the reality, of what is out there.

My my, perhaps you are a Kantian after all, John

The difficulty with this view, I think, is that it's very hard to make sense of this idea of 'the real thing' -- 'the world as it is in itself', etc. What is this thing? If this means the world uncorrelated with human perception, then it's a truism that we can't experience the world like that. I don't think that makes the world ontologically any more or less real, though. Why not go with the view that the world exists at lots of different levels of description? Subatomic, molecular, common sense, psychological, mystical, etc.

 

[Ren]

There's a cautionary note here though, because just as belief in god can be no more than a comfort blanket, this is true of belief in a hard reality too - I get the impression that some of the arguments for its existence in the literature are strongly coloured by this.

The idea of salvation and eternal life after death sounds a lot more comforting to me that the hard reality of body decomposition.

 

[aeon]

@Ren

I think common sense is much more likely than any number of alternatives, but I wilfully choose to believe common sense, because I cannot know for sure.

Regarding my use of “in truth,” above, that was not meant in any way to describe the external, but the internal understanding that as I change, so does my perceptual reality. My sense is each of those differing perspectives offer some experience of a more-likely-than-not external reality, but an experience that is very necessarily subjective with all that entails. “in my experience” would have been a better choice of words for what I was attempting to convey.

But I’m certainly open to the idea that my approach and view of things is epistemologically unsound.

My mother recently told me that I was a skeptic from the moment I could speak, and that interests me as to the how and why.

Cheers,
Ian

 

[Ren]

@Ren

I think common sense is much more likely than any number of alternatives, but I wilfully choose to believe common sense, because I cannot know for sure.

Regarding my use of “in truth,” above, that was not meant in any way to describe the external, but the internal understanding that as I change, so does my perceptual reality. My sense is each of those differing perspectives offer some experience of a more-likely-than-not external reality, but an experience that is very necessarily subjective with all that entails. “in my experience” would have been a better choice of words for what I was attempting to convey.

But I’m certainly open to the idea that my approach and view of things is epistemologically unsound.

My mother recently told me that I was a skeptic from the moment I could speak, and that interests me as to the how and why.

Cheers,
Ian

I don't think your approach is epistemologically unsound. It's more that it's difficult (for anyone) to make skeptical arguments without inadvertently making use of anti-skeptical concepts, such as e.g. certainty and truth. Not impossible, but tricky.

Most healthy skeptics just have a way of not taking it for granted that 'this is necessarily true', 'that must be the case absolutely', etc. and that's a very good trait to have I think. Rather than denying the external world exists, it's more a way of keeping in mind that there is an act of faith involved that can't be completely eliminated.

 

[John K]

@John K -- Here's an argument against skepticism I think you'll find, if not convincing, at least entertaining.

Yes ! Here are my hands so there is a world
But I could just as easily say here is my soul so there really is an afterlife
It's great fun though.

My my, perhaps you are a Kantian after all, John

The difficulty with this view, I think, is that it's very hard to make sense of this idea of 'the real thing' -- 'the world as it is in itself', etc. What is this thing? If this means the world uncorrelated with human perception, then it's a truism that we can't experience the world like that. I don't think that makes the world ontologically any more or less real, though. Why not go with the view that the world exists at lots of different levels of description? Subatomic, molecular, common sense, psychological, mystical, etc.

I agree and I think this rather makes my point - that the only world we have ready access to is the one we are aware of using the mental matrix that is our lot. I guess we could say that this matrix is 'metaphorical' of the world outside our minds, but I think metaphor is the wrong analogy - I'd go more for 'model' as a way of describing it.

It's important to keep clear the distinction I'm making between the how we experience the world as something that happens inside our heads with whether or not there is an objective reality. The former doesn't depend on the the answer to the latter in terms of the point I'm making.

For myself, I find it advantageous to always be skeptical about how the world seems to me. I don't mean it in that hard skeptical denial of an objective world, but in the sense that always some new experience or conclusion could alter the level of likelihood I attach to a particular view. Playing with shifted perspectives as well can bring fresh viewpoints - for example I don't think a solipsistic worldview is at all a likely match to truth, but playing with it and suspending belief to live with it for a while is quite a fascinating game to play. My basecamp perspective is more like panentheistic monism.

 

[Ren]

I agree and I think this rather makes my point - that the only world we have ready access to is the one we are aware of using the mental matrix that is our lot. I guess we could say that this matrix is 'metaphorical' of the world outside our minds, but I think metaphor is the wrong analogy - I'd go more for 'model' as a way of describing it.

Yeah, 'model' is better. I think metaphor is a property that the model can take on in its expressive aspects, but it's not the model itself.

 

[Anomalous]

I'm not sure what is meant by 'metaphor' in this context.

A metaphor is a function of language and language is ultimately subjective. What it comes down to is how we distinguish between representation and object. We distinguish between things subjectively and so mathematics is technically a language. It describes the world only in terms of its relationship to us.

Mathematics can lead to new discoveries, but only in the event that the logic leads to a conclusion that fits with the prior model.

Take that Ti-doms.