Tap shift

Railway map Source: "London - Metropolitan Railway / Underground Map 1923 (Postcard)" by Roger W/Flickr, CC BY SA 2.0 Can the use of analogy provide us a deeper understanding of the mind? To draw this out, in this post, I discuss the use of metaphor as a form of pragmatic exploration. Metaphors entail correspondence between terms that each have their own associational fields and thus enriches the semantic field of the phenomenon in question (Black, 1962;1977). The topic or tenor (i.e. principal subject) is conceived in the context of a vehicle (or modifying term) against a ground that serves as the semantic basis of the metaphor (Hoffman, Cochran, and Nead, 1990; Richards, 1965). A successful metaphor reverberates through the network of entailments, thus serving as a stimulating guide to disambiguate new discoveries (Boyd, 1979; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). For example, the topic of memory has often been portrayed in the vehicle of a container. The associational semantic … [Read more...] about Metaphors of Mind

David Livingston Smith has a new book, On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It , which offers a helpful review of the kinds of psychological and social structures that lead to dehumanization and mistreatment of others. Smith defines dehumanization as conceiving of another person as subhuman. He asserts that: “Given the right circumstances, virtually all of us are capable of slipping into the dehumanizing mindset, and committing acts of cruelty that would otherwise be difficult or even impossible for us to perform. (p. 6) As I’ve pointed out too, individuals can shift into survival systems— fear , rage , or panic states which are intertwined with the stress response—that shift the body toward self-protection (Narvaez, 2014). If my babyhood has been severe or if I was traumatized later, my brain can be “wired” to downshift to survivalism more easily and automatically than for those who have resilient brains, whose brains are wired for staying connected to … [Read more...] about Inhuman Treatment of Others Is a Thought Away