experiential basis

"It would be more correct to say that all experience is cultural through and through, that we experience our "world" in such a way that our culture is already present in the very experience itself." (#60 1070)

"However, even if we grant that every experience involves cultural presuppositions, we can still make the important distinction between experiences that are "more" physical, such as standing up, and those that are "more" cultural, such as participating in a wedding ceremony. When we speak of "physical" versus "cultural" experience in what follows, it is in this sense that we use the terms." (#60 1072)

"what we are claiming about grounding is that we typically conceptualize the nonphysical in terms of the physical—that is, we conceptualize the less clearly delineated in terms of the more clearly delineated." (#60 1100)

"Metaphors based on simple physical concepts—up-down, in-out, object, substance, etc.—which are as basic as anything in our conceptual system and without which we could not function in the world —could not reason or communicate—are not in themselves very rich." (#60 1114)

"Piaget has hypothesized that infants first learn about causation by realizing that they can directly manipulate objects around them—pull off their blankets, throw their bottles, drop toys. There is, in fact, a stage in which infants seem to "practice" these manipulations, e.g., they repeatedly drop their spoons. Such direct manipulations, even on the part of infants, involve certain shared features that characterize the notion of direct causation that is so integral a part of our constant everyday functioning in our environment—as when we flip light switches, button our shirts, open doors, etc. Though each of these actions is different, the overwhelming proportion of them share features of what we may call a "prototypical" or "paradigmatic" case of direct causation." (#60 1256)

"These shared features include: The agent has as a goal some change of state in the patient. The change of state is physical. The agent has a "plan" for carrying out this goal. The plan requires the agent's use of a motor program. The agent is in control of that motor program. The agent is primarily responsible for carrying out the plan. The agent is the energy source (i.e., the agent is directing his energies toward the patient), and the patient is the energy goal (i.e., the change in the patient is due to an external source of energy). The agent touches the patient either with his body or an instrument (i.e., there is a spatiotemporal overlap between what the agent does and the change in the patient). The agent successfully carries out the plan. The change in the patient is perceptible. The agent monitors the change in the patient through sensory perception. There is a single specific agent and a single specific patient." (#60 1261)

"(In physical causation the agent and patient are events, a physical law takes the place of plan, goal, and motor activity, and all of the peculiarly human aspects are factored out.)" (#60 1285)

"the structure of our spatial concepts emerges from our constant spatial experience, that is, our interaction with the physical environment. Concepts that emerge in this way are concepts that we live by in the most fundamental way." (#60 1061)

"We use ontological metaphors to comprehend events, actions, activities, and states. Events and actions are conceptualized metaphorically as objects, activities as substances, states as containers." (#60 586)

"GOOD IS UP; BAD IS DOWN" (#60 333)

"good is up gives an up orientation to general well-being, and this orientation is coherent with special cases" (#60 364)

"happy is up is maximally coherent with good is up" (#60 375)

"Not all cultures give the priorities we do to up-down orientation. There are cultures where balance or centrality plays a much more important role than it does in our culture." (#60 463)

"Or consider the nonspatial orientation active-passive. For us ACTIVE IS UP AND PASIIVE IS DOWN in most matters. But there are cultures where passivity is valued more than activity. In general the major orientations up-down, in-out, central-peripheral, active-passive, etc., seem to cut across all cultures, but which concepts are oriented which way and which orientations are most important vary from culture to culture." (#60 464)

"Experience with physical objects provides the basis for metonymy." (#60 1095)

"Metonymie concepts emerge from correlations in our experience between two physical entities (e.g., PART FOR WHOLE, OBJECT FOR USER) or between a physical entity and something metaphorically conceptualized as a physical entity (e.g., THE PLACE FOR THE EVENT, THE INSTITUTION FOR THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE)." (#60 1095)

"In order to understand the world and function in it, we have to categorize, in ways that make sense to us, the things and experiences that we encounter." (#60 2778)

"there are natural dimensions to our categories for objects: perceptual, based on the conception of the object by means of our sensory apparatus; motor activity, based on the nature of motor interactions with objects; functional, based on our conception of the functions of the object; and purposive, based on the uses we can make of an object in a given situation." (#60 2781)

"since the natural dimensions of categories (perceptual, functional, etc.) arise out of our interactions with the world, the properties given by those dimensions are not properties of objects in themselves but are, rather, interactional properties, based on the human perceptual apparatus, human conceptions of function, etc. It follows from this that true statements made in terms of human categories typically do not predicate properties of objects in themselves but rather interactional properties that make sense only relative to human functioning." (#60 2802)

"Interactional properties are prominent among the kinds of properties that count in determining sufficient family resemblance. Chairs share with stools and other kinds of seats the PURPOSIVE property of allowing us to sit. But the range of MOTOR ACTIVITIES permitted by chairs is usually different from stools and other seats. Thus the interactional properties relevant to our comprehension of chairs will include perceptual properties (the way they look, feel, etc.), functional properties (allowing us to sit), motor-activity properties (what we do with our bodies in getting in and out of them and while we're in them), and purposive properties (relaxing, eating, writing letters, etc.)." (#60 2142)

"FAKE preserves: Perceptual properties (a fake gun looks like a gun) Motor-activity properties (you handle it like a gun) Purposive properties (it serves some of the purposes of a gun) FAKE negates: Functional properties (a fake gun doesn't shoot) History of function (if it was made to be a real gun, then it's not a fake)" (#60 2109)

"This suggests that we conceptualize a gun in terms of a multidimensional gestalt of properties where the dimensions are PERCEPTUAL, MOTOR ACTIVITY, PURPOSIVE, FUNCTIONAL, etc." (#60 2118)

"If we look at what perceptual, motor-activity, and purposive properties are, we see that they are not inherent in guns themselves. Instead, they have to do with the way we interact with guns. This indicates that the concept GUN, as people actually understand it, is at least partly defined by interactional properties having to do with perception, motor activity, purpose, function, etc. Thus we find that our concepts of objects, like our concepts of events and activities, are characterizable as multidimensional gestalts whose dimensions emerge naturally from our experience in the world." (#60 2120)

"On the standard objectivist view, we can understand (and hence define) an object entirely in terms of a set of its inherent properties. But, as we have just seen, at least some of the properties that characterize our concept of an object are interactional. In addition, the properties do not merely form a set but rather a structured gestalt, with dimensions that emerge naturally from our experience." (#60 2125)

"there are directly emergent concepts (like UP-DOWN, IN-OUT, OBJECT, SUBSTANCE, etc.) and emergent metaphorical concepts based on our experience (like THE VISUAL FIELD IS A CONTAINER, AN ACTIVITY IS A CONTAINER, etc.)." (#60 1242)

"Both directly emergent concepts (like UP-DOWN, OBJECT, and DIRECT MANIPULATION) and metaphors (like HAPPY IS UP, EVENTS ARE OBJECTS, ARGUMENT IS WAR) are grounded in our constant interaction with our physical and cultural environments." (#60 2072)

"Background: An experiential gestalt will typically serve as a background for understanding something we experience as an aspect of that gestalt. Thus a person or object may be understood as a participant in a gestalt, and an action may be understood as a part of a gestalt. One gestalt may presuppose the presence of another, which may, in turn, presuppose the presence of others, and so on. The result will typically be an incredibly rich background structure necessary for a full understanding of any given situation. Most of this background structure will never be noticed, since it is presupposed in so many of our daily activities and experiences." (#60 3003)

"Even in as simple a case as a polite two-party conversation, several dimensions of structure can be seen: Participants, Parts, Stages, Linear sequence, Causation, Purpose" (#60 1385)

"these six dimensions of structure give the main outlines of what is common to typical conversations." (#60 1403)

"Even a concept as basic as CAUSATION is not purely emergent or purely metaphorical. Rather, it appears to have a directly emergent core that is elaborated metaphorically." (#60 1245)

"What constitutes a "basic domain of experience"? Each such domain is a structured whole within our experience that is conceptualized as what we have called an experiential gestalt. Such gestalts are experientially basic because they characterize structured wholes within recurrent human experiences. They represent coherent organizations of our experiences in terms of natural dimensions (parts, stages, causes, etc.). Domains of experience that are organized as gestalts in terms of such natural dimensions seem to us to be natural kinds of experience." (#60 2045)

"these "natural" kinds of experience are products of human nature. Some may be universal, while others will vary from culture to culture." (#60 2055)

"There are also complex gestalts, which are structured partially in terms of other gestalts. These are what we have been calling metaphorically structured concepts. Certain concepts are structured almost entirely metaphorically." (#60 1528)

"there are directly emergent concepts (like UP-DOWN, IN-OUT, OBJECT, SUBSTANCE, etc.) and emergent metaphorical concepts based on our experience (like THE VISUAL FIELD IS A CONTAINER, AN ACTIVITY IS A CONTAINER, etc.)." (#60 1242)

"Both directly emergent concepts (like UP-DOWN, OBJECT, and DIRECT MANIPULATION) and metaphors (like HAPPY IS UP, EVENTS ARE OBJECTS, ARGUMENT IS WAR) are grounded in our constant interaction with our physical and cultural environments." (#60 2072)

"Metaphors are learned when two experiences occur at once. If a metaphorical link would result in a contradiction in the target domain, it will not be learned. Neurally, contradictions are mutual inhibitions. Any would-be link that would lead to a contradiction with the inherent structure of the target domain will be inhibited; thus it will never be learned." (#60 4201)

"we have given an account of metaphorical grounding in terms of systematic correspondences in our experience, for example, being dominant in a fight and being physically up. But there is a difference between correspondences in our experience and similarities, since the correspondence need not be based on any similarity. On the basis of such correspondences in our experience, we can give an account of the range of possible metaphors. The weak homonymy position has no predictive power at all and seeks none. It simply tries to provide an after-the-fact account of what similarities there are. Thus, in the cases where similarities can be found, the weak homonymy position still gives no account of why just those similarities should be there." (#60 1996)

"Religious rituals are typically metaphorical kinds of activities, which usually involve metonymies—real-world objects standing for entities in the world as defined by the conceptual system of the religion." (#60 3895)

"There is a corollary of this that has to do with the issue of whether a computer could ever understand things the way people do. The answer we give is no—simply because understanding requires experience, and computers don't have bodies and don't have human experiences." (#60 3735)