p.61
13
The Grounding of Structural Metaphors
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. To say that something is viewed as a container object with an in-out orientation does not say very much about it. But, as we saw with the mind is a machine metaphor and the various personification metaphors, we can elaborate spatialization metaphors in much more specific terms. This allows us not only to elaborate a concept (like the mind) in considerable detail but also to find appropriate means for highlighting some aspects of it and hiding others. Structural metaphors (such as rational argument is war) provide the richest source of such elaboration. Structural metaphors allow us to do much more than just orient concepts, refer to them, quantify them, etc., as we do with simple orientational and ontological metaphors; they allow us, in addition, to use one highly structured and clearly delineated concept to structure another.
Like orientational and ontological metaphors, structural metaphors are grounded in systematic correlations within our experience. To see what this means in detail, let us examine how the rational argument is war metaphor might be grounded. This metaphor allows us to conceptualize what a rational argument is in terms of something that we understand more readily, namely, physical conflict. Fighting is found everywhere in the animal kingdom and
p.62
nowhere so much as among human animals. Animals fight to get what they want---food, sex, territory, control, etc.--- because there are other animals who want the same thing or who want to stop them from getting it. The same is true of human animals, except that we have developed more sophisticated techniques for getting our way. Being "rational animals," we have institutionalized our fighting in a number of ways, one of them being war. Even though we have over the ages institutionalized physical conflict and have employed many of our finest minds to develop more effective means of carrying it out, its basic structure remains essentially unchanged. In fights between two brute animals, scientists have observed the practices of issuing challenges for the sake of intimidation, of establishing and defending territory, attacking, defending, counterattacking, retreating, and surrendering. Human fighting involves the same practices.
Part of being a rational animal, however, involves getting what you want without subjecting yourself to the dangers of actual physical conflict. As a result, we humans have evolved the social institution of verbal argument. We have arguments all the time in order to try to get what we want, and sometimes these "degenerate" into physical violence. Such verbal battles are comprehended in much the same terms as physical battles. Take a domestic quarrel, for instance. Husband and wife are both trying to get what each of them wants, such as getting the other to accept a certain viewpoint on some issue or at least to act according to that viewpoint. Each sees himself as having something to win and something to lose, territory to establish and territory to defend. In a no-holds-barred argument, you attack, defend, counterattack, etc., using whatever verbal means you have at your disposal---intimidation, threat, invoking authority, insult, belittling, challenging authority, evading issues, bargaining, flattering, and even trying to give "rational reasons." But all of these tactics can be, and often are, presented as reasons; for example:
p.63
... because I'm bigger than you. (intimidation)
... because if you don't, I'll... (threat)
... because I'm the boss. (authority)
... because you're stupid, (insult)
... because you usually do it wrong, (belittling)
... because I have as much right as you do. (challenging
authority)
... because I love you. (evading the issue) ... because if you will..., I'll... (bargaining) ... because you're so much better at it. (flattery)
Arguments that use tactics like these are the most common in our culture, and because they are so much a part of our daily lives, we sometimes don't notice them. However, there are important and powerful segments of our culture where such tactics are, at least in principle, frowned upon because they are considered to be "irrational" and "unfair." The academic world, the legal world, the diplomatic world, the ecclesiastical world, and the world of journalism claim to present an ideal, or "higher," form of rational argument, in which all of these tactics are forbidden. The only permissible tactics in this rational argument are supposedly the stating of premises, the citing of supporting evidence, and the drawing of logical conclusions. But even in the most ideal cases, where all of these conditions hold, rational argument is still comprehended and carried out in terms of war. There is still a position to be established and defended, you can win or lose, you have an opponent whose position you attack and try to destroy and whose argument you try to shoot down. If you are completely successful, you can wipe him out.
The point here is that not only our conception of an argument but the way we carry it out is grounded in our knowledge and experience of physical combat. Even if you have never fought a fistfight in you life, much less a war, but have been arguing from the time you began to talk, you still conceive of arguments, and execute them, according to the
p.64
argument is war metaphor because the metaphor is built into the conceptual system of the culture in which you live. Not only are all the "rational" arguments that are assumed to actually live up to the ideal of rational argument conceived of in terms of war, but almost all of them contain, in hidden form, the "irrational" and "unfair" tactics that rational arguments in their ideal form are supposed to transcend. Here are some typical examples:
It is plausible to assume that... (intimidation)
Clearly,...
Obviously,...
It would be unscientific to fail to ... {threat)
To say that would be to commit the Fallacy of...
As Descartes showed,... (authority)
Hume observed that...
Footnote 374: cf. Verschlugenheimer, 1954.
The work lacks the necessary rigor for... (insult)
Let us call such a theory "Narrow" Rationalism.
In a display of "scholarly objectivity," ...
The work will not lead to a formalized theory, (belittling)
His results cannot be quantified.
Few people today seriously hold that view.
Lest we succumb to the error of positivist approaches,...
(challenging authority)
Behaviorism has led to ...
He does not present any alternative theory, (evading the issue)
But that is a matter of...
The author does present some challenging facts, although ...
Your position is right as far as it goes,... (bargaining)
If one takes a realist point of view, one can accept the claim that...
In his stimulating paper,... (flattery)
His paper raises some interesting issues ...
Examples like these allow us to trace the lineage of our rational argument back through "irrational" argument (== everyday arguing) to its origins in physical combat. The
p.65
tactics of intimidation, threat, appeal to authority, etc., though couched, perhaps, in more refined phrases, are just as present in rational argument as they are in everyday arguing and in war. Whether we are in a scientific, academic, or legal setting, aspiring to the ideal of rational argument, or whether we are just trying to get our way in our own household by haggling, the way we conceive of, carry out, and describe our arguments is grounded in the argument is war metaphor.
Let us now consider other structural metaphors that are important in our lives: labor is a resource and time is a resource. Both of these metaphors are culturally grounded in our experience with material resources. Material resources are typically raw materials or sources of fuel. Both are viewed as serving purposeful ends. Fuel may be used for heating, transportation, or the energy used in producing a finished product. Raw materials typically go directly into products. In both cases, the material, resources can be quantified and given a value. In both cases, it is the kind of material as opposed to the particular piece or quantity of it that is important for achieving the purpose. For example, it doesn't matter which particular pieces of coal heat your house as long as they are the right kind of coal. In both cases, the material gets used up progressively as the purpose is served. To summarize:
A material resource is a kind of substance
can be quantified fairly precisely
can be assigned a value per unit quantity
serves a purposeful end
is used up progressively as it serves its
purpose
Take the simple case where you make a product from raw material. It takes a certain amount of labor. In general, the more labor you perform, the more you produce. Assuming that this is true---that the labor is proportional to the amount of product---we can assign value to the labor in
p.66
terms of the time it takes to produce a unit of product. The perfect model of this is the assembly line, where the raw material comes in at one end, labor is performed in progressive stages, whose duration is fixed by the speed of the line itself, and products come out at the other end. This provides a grounding for the labor is resource metaphor, as follows:
labor is a kind of activity (recall: an activity is a substance)
can be quantified fairly precisely (in terms of time)
can be assigned a value per unit
serves a purposeful end
is used up progressively as it serves it purpose
Since labor can be quantified in terms of time and usually is, in an industrial society, we get the basis for the time is a resource metaphor:
time is a kind of (abstract) substance
can be quantified fairly precisely
can be assigned a value per unit
serves a purposeful end
is used up progressively as it serves its purpose
When we are living by the metaphors labor is a resource and time is a resource, as we do in our culture, we tend not to see them as metaphors at all. But, as the above account of their grounding in experience shows, both are structural metaphors that are basic to Western industrial societies.
These two complex structural metaphors both employ simple ontological metaphors. labor is a resource uses
AN ACTIVITY IS A SUBSTANCE. TIME IS A RESOURCE USCS
time is a substance. These two substance metaphors permit labor and time to be quantifiedthat is, measured, conceived of as being progressively "used up," and assigned monetary values; they also allow us to view time and labor as things that can be "used" for various ends.
p.67
labor is a resource and time is a resource are by no means universal. They emerged naturally in our culture because of the way we view work, our passion for quantification, and our obsession with purposeful ends. These metaphors highlight those aspects of labor and time that are centrally important in our culture. In doing this, they also deemphasize or hide certain aspects of labor and time. We can see what both metaphors hide by examining what they focus on.
In viewing labor as a kind of activity, the metaphor assumes that labor can be clearly identified and distinguished from things that are not labor. It makes the assumptions that we can tell work from play and productive activity from nonproductive activity. These assumptions obviously fail to fit reality much of the time, except perhaps on assembly lines, chain gangs, etc. The view of labor as merely a kind of activity, independent of who performs it, how he experiences it, and what it means in his life, hides the issues of whether the work is personally meaningful, satisfying, and humane.
The quantification of labor in terms of time, together with the view of time as serving a purposeful end, induces a notion of leisure time, which is parallel to the concept labor time. In a society like ours, where inactivity is not considered a purposeful end, a whole industry devoted to leisure activity has evolved. As a result, leisure time becomes a resource tooto be spent productively, used wisely, saved up, budgeted, wasted, lost, etc. What is hidden by the resource metaphors for labor and time is the way our concepts of labor and time affect our concept of leisure, turning it into something remarkably like labor.
The resource metaphors for labor and time hide all sons of possible conceptions of labor and time that exist in other cultures and in some subcultures of our own society: the idea that work can be play, that inactivity can be productive, that much of what we classify as labor serves either no clear purpose or no worthwhile purpose.
The three structural metaphors we have considered in
p.68
this section---rational argument is war, labor is a resource, and time is a resource---all have a strong cultural basis. They emerged naturally in a culture like ours because what they highlight corresponds so closely to what we experience collectively and what they hide corresponds to so little. But not only are they grounded in our physical and cultural experience; they also influence our experience and our actions.