Metaphors matter. They matter a lot, shaping not only the way we communicate but also how we think, feel, and even behave. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson explained this well in their now classic work, Metaphors We Live By. Their premier example in that book analyzed how the concept "argument" becomes colored by its close association with the metaphor "war." Thus "argument is war." Here are some of the expressions they found that structure how we think about an argument as a war:
Your claims are indefensible.
He attacked every weak point in my argument.
His criticisms were right on target.
He shot down all my arguments.
Essentially, Lakoff and Johnson contend that metaphors impact the way we experience and understand the associated concepts, so that in the case of argument, for example, we in part understand, act, and talk about it in terms of war. It's not a dance. It's not a writing process. It's a battle.
The widespread use of the metaphor of the computer to describe the workings of the human brain today has a similar effect. By using such an analogy, people are accepting the implications that the human brain is simply a logical device. This leads to such statements and by implications activities as the following:
IBM's Blue Brain Project is attempting to reverse-engineer the human brain.
Modern architectural design acknowledges that how buildings are structured influences how people interface.
The position of department head requires an expert multitasker capable of processing multiple projects at any given time.
His behavior does not compute.
Human beings do possess logical functions. But the danger with using the digital computer, which runs algorithms based on IF, THEN, ELSE, and COPY logical gates, as a metaphor for the brain is what it leaves out: messy feelings, ambiguous behaviors, irrational thoughts, and the natural ebb and flow of memories. It also leaves out the influences of our subconscious--and the rest of our physical, organic bodies--on how we think, act, and make decisions. Thinking of the brain as a computer addresses very little about what it feels like to be a human being, very little about what it feels like to be alive.
In The Myth of the Machine, Lewis Mumford argued that far too much emphasis has been placed on distinguishing humans from animals because of our tool-making capacities. He wrote that there was nothing uniquely human in our tool-making. After all, apes use tools. Rather it was the human mind "based on the fullest use of all his bodily organs" and that mind's capacity to create language and use symbols that allowed human beings to build social organizations, civilizations, that distinguish us from other animals. It was through symbols and language that humans rose above a purely animal state. But the ability to create symbols, to be conscious of life and death, of past and future, of tears and hopes, distinguishes humans from other animals far more than any tool-making capability. "The burial of the body tells us more about man's nature than would the tool that dug the grave."
If we continue to distinguish human beings from other animals along the lines of tool-making, Mumford believed, the trajectory would be quite dire:
"In terms of the currently accepted picture of the relation of man to technics, our age is passing from the primeval state of man, marked by his invention of tools and weapons for the purpose of achieving mastery over the forces of nature, to a radically different condition, in which he will have not only conquered nature, but detached himself as far as possible from the organic habitat."
So we need to be careful about using the metaphor of the computer, our most modern of tools, to describe our minds and what it means to be a human being.
Your claims are indefensible.
He attacked every weak point in my argument.
His criticisms were right on target.
He shot down all my arguments.
Essentially, Lakoff and Johnson contend that metaphors impact the way we experience and understand the associated concepts, so that in the case of argument, for example, we in part understand, act, and talk about it in terms of war. It's not a dance. It's not a writing process. It's a battle.
The widespread use of the metaphor of the computer to describe the workings of the human brain today has a similar effect. By using such an analogy, people are accepting the implications that the human brain is simply a logical device. This leads to such statements and by implications activities as the following:
IBM's Blue Brain Project is attempting to reverse-engineer the human brain.
Modern architectural design acknowledges that how buildings are structured influences how people interface.
The position of department head requires an expert multitasker capable of processing multiple projects at any given time.
His behavior does not compute.
Human beings do possess logical functions. But the danger with using the digital computer, which runs algorithms based on IF, THEN, ELSE, and COPY logical gates, as a metaphor for the brain is what it leaves out: messy feelings, ambiguous behaviors, irrational thoughts, and the natural ebb and flow of memories. It also leaves out the influences of our subconscious--and the rest of our physical, organic bodies--on how we think, act, and make decisions. Thinking of the brain as a computer addresses very little about what it feels like to be a human being, very little about what it feels like to be alive.
In The Myth of the Machine, Lewis Mumford argued that far too much emphasis has been placed on distinguishing humans from animals because of our tool-making capacities. He wrote that there was nothing uniquely human in our tool-making. After all, apes use tools. Rather it was the human mind "based on the fullest use of all his bodily organs" and that mind's capacity to create language and use symbols that allowed human beings to build social organizations, civilizations, that distinguish us from other animals. It was through symbols and language that humans rose above a purely animal state. But the ability to create symbols, to be conscious of life and death, of past and future, of tears and hopes, distinguishes humans from other animals far more than any tool-making capability. "The burial of the body tells us more about man's nature than would the tool that dug the grave."
If we continue to distinguish human beings from other animals along the lines of tool-making, Mumford believed, the trajectory would be quite dire:
"In terms of the currently accepted picture of the relation of man to technics, our age is passing from the primeval state of man, marked by his invention of tools and weapons for the purpose of achieving mastery over the forces of nature, to a radically different condition, in which he will have not only conquered nature, but detached himself as far as possible from the organic habitat."
So we need to be careful about using the metaphor of the computer, our most modern of tools, to describe our minds and what it means to be a human being.
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