As
I have written for over 20 years, we are experiential beings. Mind-brain is a judgmental system. What we call
‘experience’
refers to the judgments of Analogos, the intuitive mind. This is the judgmental system that uses the
language
of
‘sensation’ in which to present or express its judgments. All sensations can be considered judgments
already made
and
presented in the language of Analogos (analog mind). Sensation is a general term that covers strong and gentle
sensations
including pure sensations, emotions, feelings and spontaneous images
(sensations-emotions-feelings-images
or
SEFI for short hand). Each of these
sensations can be said to have ‘meaning’.
The meaning is act that they urge.
But,
since intellect or Logos has now evolved in man, man alone can also interpret
the ‘meaning’ of the sensations into
the
language of intellect. The language of
intellect is ‘symbolic language’.
Symbolic language is
representational. The
symbols
re-present or ‘present again’ in intellectual terms, what we decide the meaning
of the sensation(s) is or are.
Intellect
is the conceptual judgmental system using the language of symbols. Concepts are all symbolic. They can be either
‘pictorial
concepts’ such as pictures, contrived images, photos, graphs, drawings, etc.,
or they can be ‘verbal concepts’
which
are basically explanations not conducive to being conveyed adequately in
pictorial mode.
The
entire panoply of sensations-emotions-feelings-images comprise the world of
Actuality. The entire panoply of
symbols,
pictorial and verbal concepts, comprise the world of Reality. It can be considered that human uniquely
are
able to interpret and translate from the language of Actuality
(sensations-emotions-feelings-images) into the
language
of Reality (symbolic language, including all concepts, both pictorial and
verbal). The process of interpreting
from
the language of Actuality to that of Reality is the process we call
‘realization’. When we realize
something,
it
means that we can now understand it in intellectual terms, in terms of symbolic
language like English. We are now
able
to ‘explain’ what it is that we came to realize because it is now encoded in
the system of communication, namely
what
we call common language.
What
must be realized is that to interpret from one language into another is to use
the terms of the second language
metaphorically. One must use terms which represent something
else. One must use one set of terms
(intellectual terms)
to
mean what the original terms meant.
This is called metaphor, to use the sense of one word to convey
something
about
another. What is unique is that the
original language or terms are those of sensation while the second are those
of symbol.
The reverse interpretation, from those of symbol to those of sensation,
would be called ‘actualization’.
The
interpretation from sensation to symbol can generate not only feelings,
emotions, sensations, and images, they can
also
produce action.
Since
philosophy is the attempt to make experience intelligible, which means to
understand, in intellectual terms, that
which
we know in experiential terms, all intellectual or Logos thought and language
are basically metaphorical.
The
idea that all thought is metaphorical is fundamentally correct, as we have
defined those terms. However, it is an
unnecessarily
difficult and complicated way to understand the interpretation and translation
of the language of Analogos
into
the language of Logos. It is simply the
interpretation and translation from one language into another.
An
additional observation: if you were to
listen to someone explain something in common language, and after the
explanation
had been given, the speaker asked you whether you understood what he/she said,
how would you respond
to
show that you had grasped his/her meaning?
Could you parrot back, word for word, exactly what the person said
and
have it count as understanding? The
speaker would probably say: “Well, I realize that you heard every word I said,
but
did you understand it, did you grasp my meaning?”
Why
would he say that? Because we all
realize intuitively, that memorizing word for word does not indicate real
understanding. In order to convey to another that you do
fully understand, it is intuitively felt that one must interpret
and
translate the original explanation into one’s own language. Only when one is able to interpret and
translate something
into
one’s own language can one claim to understand. It is no different that interpreting and translating from Chinese
into
English,
one must be able to go from one language into the other and not simply repeat
the original Chinese statements.
The
second language into which one interprets and translates the first, can be said
to be used metaphorical since the terms
of
the second are used in place of those of the first. Such is intellectual thought!
This
is stimulated by reading Philosophy In The Flesh, by Lakoff and Johnson.