direct physical experience

all experience is cultural through and through

"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)

we typically conceptualize the nonphysical in terms of the physical

"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)

directly emergent concepts and emergent metaphorical concepts based on our experience

"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 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)

prototypical direct manipulations

"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)

MAKING is an instance of a directly emergent concept

"MAKING is an instance of a directly emergent concept, namely, DIRECT MANIPULATION, which is further elaborated by the metaphor THE OBJECT COMES OUT OF THE SUBSTANCE." (#60 1315)

"Simple instances of making an object (e.g., a paper airplane, a snowball, a sand castle) are all special cases of direct causation." (#60 1301)

"Another way we can conceptualize making is by elaborating on direct manipulation, using another metaphor: THE SUBSTANCE GOES INTO THE OBJECT." (#60 1317)

"In birth, an object (the baby) comes out of a container (the mother). At the same time, the mother's substance (her flesh and blood) are in the baby (the container object). The experience of birth (and also agricultural growth) provides a grounding for the general concept of CREATION, which has as its core the concept of MAKING a physical object but which extends to abstract entities as well." (#60 1332)

spatial concepts

"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)

—

"Thus UP is not understood purely in its own terms but emerges from the collection of constantly performed motor functions having to do with our erect position relative to the gravitational field we live in. Imagine a spherical being living outside any gravitational field, with no knowledge or imagination of any other kind of experience. What could up possibly mean to such a being? The answer to this question would depend, not only on the physiology of this spherical being, but also on its culture." (#60 1063)

direct physical experience

"what we call "direct physical experience" is never merely a matter of having a body of a certain sort; rather, every experience takes place within a vast background of cultural presuppositions." (#60 1067)

"It can be misleading, therefore, to speak of direct physical experience as though there were some core of immediate experience which we then "interpret" in terms of our conceptual system." (#60 1068)

spatialization metaphors

"Most of our fundamental concepts are organized in terms of one or more spatialization metaphors." (#60 358)

"Our physical and cultural experience provides many possible bases for spatialization metaphors. Which ones are chosen, and which ones are major, may vary from culture to culture." (#60 388)

ontological metaphors

"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)

object

"Our experience of physical objects and substances provides a further basis for understanding—one that goes beyond mere orientation." (#60 470)

"Understanding our experiences in terms of objects and substances allows us to pick out parts of our experience and treat them as discrete entities or substances of a uniform kind." (#60 471)

"Once we can identify our experiences as entities or substances, we can refer to them, categorize them, group them, and quantify them—and, by this means, reason about them." (#60 472)

container

"We are physical beings, bounded and set off from the rest of the world by the surface of our skins, and we experience the rest of the world as outside us. Each of us is a container, with a bounding surface and an in-out orientation." (#60 559)

"activities are viewed as containers for the actions and other activities that make them up." (#60 609)

personification

"personification is a general category that covers a very wide range of metaphors, each picking out different aspects of a person or ways of looking at a person." (#60 647)

"Viewing something as abstract as inflation in human terms has an explanatory power of the only sort that makes sense to most people." (#60 649)

orientational metaphors

"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)

front-back orientation

"Moving objects generally receive a front-back orientation so that the front is in the direction of motion (or in the canonical direction of motion, so that a car backing up retains its front)." (#60 787)

ME-FIRST orientation

"Since people typically function in an upright position, see and move frontward, spend most of their time performing actions, and view themselves as being basically good, we have a basis in our experience for viewing ourselves as more UP than DOWN, more FRONT than BACK, more ACTIVE than PASSIVE, more GOOD than BAD. Since we are where we are and exist in the present, we conceive of ourselves as being HERE rather than THERE, and NOW rather than THEN. This determines what Cooper and Ross call the ME-FIRST orientation: UP, FRONT, ACTIVE, GOOD, HERE, and now are all oriented toward the canonical person; DOWN, BACKWARD, PASSIVE, BAD, THERE, and THEN are all oriented away from the canonical person." (#60 2309)

Experience with physical objects provides the basis for metonymy

"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)