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The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending And The Mind's Hidden Complexities
In its first two decades, much of cognitive science focused on such mental functions as memory, learning, symbolic thought, and language acquisition -- the functions in which the human mind most closely resembles a computer. But humans are more than computers, and the cutting-edge research in cognitive science is increasingly focused on the more mysterious, creative aspects of the mind. The Way We Think is a landmark synthesis that exemplifies this new direction. The theory of conceptual blending is already widely known in laboratories throughout the world; this book is its definitive statement. Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner argue that all learning and all thinking consist of blends of metaphors based on simple bodily experiences. These blends are then themselves blended together into an increasingly rich structure that makes up our mental functioning in modern society. A child's entire development consists of learning and navigating these blends. The Way We Think shows how this blending operates; how it is affected by (and gives rise to) language, identity, and concept of category; and the rules by which we use blends to understand ideas that are new to us. The result is a bold, exciting, and accessible new view of how the mind works.
466 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 3, 2010
This is a lovely book that investigates language and thought from a philosophical and literary stance. It convincingly demonstrates some fascinating phenomena, but it has serious lacunae and begs many difficult questions. I liked it more for the questions it raises than for the answers it gives. What it emphatically does not do is marshal the machinery of modern brain science, including anatomy and physiology, toward an understanding of mind. As a linguist trained in Chomsky's approach to syntax, but very skeptical of it, I was frequently delighted by the book's many examples of the complexity of linguistic understanding. Fauconnier and Turner are strongly opposed to the view that meaning can be derived from syntactic structure. They insist that words and sentences do not have meanings, but that they prompt meanings which must then be constructed by acts of interpretation and imagination.
They attribute much of human language and intelligence to what they call "double-scope conceptual blending." This consists of creating a new concept by blending together two pre-existing concepts in such a way that the blend inherits some of its properties from each of the inputs, and usually has emergent properties of its own. For example the English noun "jail bait" blends together the ideas of crime and incarceration (inherited from "jail") and temptation (inherited from the bait used in fishing). However, an attractive woman below the legal age of consent ("jail bait") is neither an instance of crime nor an instance of fishing.
The authors show convincingly that many commonplaces of linguistic expression are, when unpacked, enormously complicated conceptual blends, borrowing extensively from many kinds of understanding. For example, the sentence, "The Rocky Mountains run northward across the United States from Mexico to Canada" employs a language of fictive motion to blend together facts of geography with metaphorical imagery of a traveler traversing a course. The motion is fictive because mountains do not run.
They emphasize repeatedly that concepts that arise by blending involve compressions and omissions from the concepts that provide input to the blend. In that respect, the blend may depart from reality. For example, they imagine a contemporary philosopher saying: "I claim that reason is a self-developing capacity. Kant disagrees with me on this point. He says it's innate, but I answer that that's begging the question, to which he counters, in Critique of Pure Reason, that only innate ideas have power. But I say to that, What about neuron group selections? And he gives no answer." They claim that such an imaginary debate is immediately comprehensible to the philosopher's audience and helps their understanding, despite the fact that it couldn't occur in the real world, because Kant is long dead.
What they do not sufficiently emphasize is that the "real" situations that they see interpreted metaphorically in blends are themselves complex constructs derived by the same kinds of metaphorical processes as the blends. For example, the notion of a stationary object (such as a mountain) is as much a cultural and psychological construct as the fictive motion of a the Rocky Mountains across the North American continent. We have no direct perception of stationary objects. Experiments with images fixated on the retina show that any object whose image fails to move across our retinas (such as the shadows cast by our retinal blood vessels) soon (within a matter of seconds) fades from view. Our visual systems detect motion, not stasis, and more generally our entire sensory apparatus detects not stasis but change. We are always in motion relative to the world in which we live, even if the motion arises only from breathing or from moving our eyes in their sockets, and our brains perceive a world in relative motion with respect to ourselves. The notion of stationary object is an elaborate psychological and cultural construct derived from sense impressions of objects in motion relative to ourselves.
The authors are, I am sure, well aware of this point, but I think they should have kept it more to the fore. They clearly understand that we take many complex constructs so much for granted that the hard problem of exposition is not to explicate them, but to make us aware that there is anything to explicate. Much of the book takes for granted very subtle and complex ideas, such as enduring physical objects, identity, cause and effect, and time, which, from the book's own point of view, are complex cultural and psychological constructs. The entire argument of the book is therefore an exercise in lifting oneself up by one's bootstraps, and more attention needs to be given to the fact that there is no solid ground on which the bootstrapper can stand.
A major claim of the book is that the ability to form double-scope conceptual blends originated with humans some 50,000 years ago, and that this ability, once humans had it, gave rise to human language, intellect and culture. In particular, they assert as fact that non-human animals do not form double-scope blends. As far as I can see, these claims are not supported by any convincing evidence. Although Fauconnier and Turner show convincingly that we do a lot of double-scope blending, I saw no convincing argument that apes don't, no convincing argument that our ancestors didn't do double-scope conceptual blending 1,000,000 years ago, and no convincing evidence that double-scope conceptual blending is the essential ingredient that makes possible human language, intellect and culture.
The authors claim that human infants do double-scope conceptual blending before they can speak. In recent decades, a number of techniques have been developed to explore behavior and cognition in pre-linguistic infants, based on such methods as tracking their eye movements or their sucking reflexes in response to various stimuli. These same methods can be used to explore cognition in other species. In order to support a claim that infants do double-scope conceptual blending but non-human species do not, one would want some such experimental technique that can convincingly demonstrate the presence of double-scope conceptual blending in infants before they can speak, and which can be applied to other species. I saw no discussion in this book of what such non-verbal experimental techniques might be, not any evidence that such non-linguistic methods had been employed, either with human infants or with apes.
As a result, I was completely unconvinced by the unsupported assertion that double-scope conceptual blending originated with cognitively modern humans some 50,000 years ago and gave rise to the efflorescence of human language and culture.
Fauconnier and Turner simply take it for granted that our brains execute subroutines which will accept variables as input, that they link disparate concepts, that they form wide-ranging generalizations. In view of their attention to the notion that we think in culturally transmitted concepts that are formed out of metaphors, they might reasonably wonder whether such received concepts as subroutines, links and generalizations are really the best tools for exploring our minds. Isn't something lacking in a set of concepts that make no visible connection with what we know about the anatomy and physiology of brains? If these concepts are really to be fruitful for understanding how we think, shouldn't we be able to come up with some plausible story about how they could be implemented in wetware?
They attribute much of human language and intelligence to what they call "double-scope conceptual blending." This consists of creating a new concept by blending together two pre-existing concepts in such a way that the blend inherits some of its properties from each of the inputs, and usually has emergent properties of its own. For example the English noun "jail bait" blends together the ideas of crime and incarceration (inherited from "jail") and temptation (inherited from the bait used in fishing). However, an attractive woman below the legal age of consent ("jail bait") is neither an instance of crime nor an instance of fishing.
The authors show convincingly that many commonplaces of linguistic expression are, when unpacked, enormously complicated conceptual blends, borrowing extensively from many kinds of understanding. For example, the sentence, "The Rocky Mountains run northward across the United States from Mexico to Canada" employs a language of fictive motion to blend together facts of geography with metaphorical imagery of a traveler traversing a course. The motion is fictive because mountains do not run.
They emphasize repeatedly that concepts that arise by blending involve compressions and omissions from the concepts that provide input to the blend. In that respect, the blend may depart from reality. For example, they imagine a contemporary philosopher saying: "I claim that reason is a self-developing capacity. Kant disagrees with me on this point. He says it's innate, but I answer that that's begging the question, to which he counters, in Critique of Pure Reason, that only innate ideas have power. But I say to that, What about neuron group selections? And he gives no answer." They claim that such an imaginary debate is immediately comprehensible to the philosopher's audience and helps their understanding, despite the fact that it couldn't occur in the real world, because Kant is long dead.
What they do not sufficiently emphasize is that the "real" situations that they see interpreted metaphorically in blends are themselves complex constructs derived by the same kinds of metaphorical processes as the blends. For example, the notion of a stationary object (such as a mountain) is as much a cultural and psychological construct as the fictive motion of a the Rocky Mountains across the North American continent. We have no direct perception of stationary objects. Experiments with images fixated on the retina show that any object whose image fails to move across our retinas (such as the shadows cast by our retinal blood vessels) soon (within a matter of seconds) fades from view. Our visual systems detect motion, not stasis, and more generally our entire sensory apparatus detects not stasis but change. We are always in motion relative to the world in which we live, even if the motion arises only from breathing or from moving our eyes in their sockets, and our brains perceive a world in relative motion with respect to ourselves. The notion of stationary object is an elaborate psychological and cultural construct derived from sense impressions of objects in motion relative to ourselves.
The authors are, I am sure, well aware of this point, but I think they should have kept it more to the fore. They clearly understand that we take many complex constructs so much for granted that the hard problem of exposition is not to explicate them, but to make us aware that there is anything to explicate. Much of the book takes for granted very subtle and complex ideas, such as enduring physical objects, identity, cause and effect, and time, which, from the book's own point of view, are complex cultural and psychological constructs. The entire argument of the book is therefore an exercise in lifting oneself up by one's bootstraps, and more attention needs to be given to the fact that there is no solid ground on which the bootstrapper can stand.
A major claim of the book is that the ability to form double-scope conceptual blends originated with humans some 50,000 years ago, and that this ability, once humans had it, gave rise to human language, intellect and culture. In particular, they assert as fact that non-human animals do not form double-scope blends. As far as I can see, these claims are not supported by any convincing evidence. Although Fauconnier and Turner show convincingly that we do a lot of double-scope blending, I saw no convincing argument that apes don't, no convincing argument that our ancestors didn't do double-scope conceptual blending 1,000,000 years ago, and no convincing evidence that double-scope conceptual blending is the essential ingredient that makes possible human language, intellect and culture.
The authors claim that human infants do double-scope conceptual blending before they can speak. In recent decades, a number of techniques have been developed to explore behavior and cognition in pre-linguistic infants, based on such methods as tracking their eye movements or their sucking reflexes in response to various stimuli. These same methods can be used to explore cognition in other species. In order to support a claim that infants do double-scope conceptual blending but non-human species do not, one would want some such experimental technique that can convincingly demonstrate the presence of double-scope conceptual blending in infants before they can speak, and which can be applied to other species. I saw no discussion in this book of what such non-verbal experimental techniques might be, not any evidence that such non-linguistic methods had been employed, either with human infants or with apes.
As a result, I was completely unconvinced by the unsupported assertion that double-scope conceptual blending originated with cognitively modern humans some 50,000 years ago and gave rise to the efflorescence of human language and culture.
Fauconnier and Turner simply take it for granted that our brains execute subroutines which will accept variables as input, that they link disparate concepts, that they form wide-ranging generalizations. In view of their attention to the notion that we think in culturally transmitted concepts that are formed out of metaphors, they might reasonably wonder whether such received concepts as subroutines, links and generalizations are really the best tools for exploring our minds. Isn't something lacking in a set of concepts that make no visible connection with what we know about the anatomy and physiology of brains? If these concepts are really to be fruitful for understanding how we think, shouldn't we be able to come up with some plausible story about how they could be implemented in wetware?
January 28, 2009
I was hugely disappointed by this book. One of the authors is Mark Turner, who had written an earlier seminal book on how the mind works, The Literary Mind. The current book promised to revolutionize the way we look at our minds, our thinking, and our behavior. And yet this lengthy tome has only one insight: that we think with metaphors. The authors call it 'blending' but it's essentially metaphor. The idea is that we're remarkable because we can think or say something like, "I've got nothing" where we 'blend' the concept of having something with the concept of nothing. Nothing becomes a 'thing' if you see what I mean. That's it. The authors argue that this kind of blending is central to all our thinking, and they argue this point at enormous length. This book should have been a brief article in some linguistic journal. A tragic waste of trees.
September 23, 2017
The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities offers a very exciting and intuitive premise. The way we humans think is due to an underlying capacity to blend concepts together, concepts that often seem disparate and unrelated on the surface. This “blending ability” underlies our capacity for language and many other mental operations. It is the basis of human thought.
And we do it all the time, unceasingly, and in large measure, unconsciously. And at different levels of complexity, one of which, double-scope blending, is posited to be the crucial step that allowed human symbolic thought and precipitated language, art, and symbolic representation of all types.
I love the idea here, and in a very general way, it must be true, right? The very definition of thought by many is the combining of concepts. (In this view, even the exclamation Bear! Is really the implicit form of: It’s a bear!) But the real center of this work is the way the authors have brought to light in detail the many varieties and types of conceptual blending.
The concepts that are brought to bear in any argument or theory are a good place to begin examining that theory.
In the language acquisition process, many would say the conceptual blending is accomplished by syntax.
Susan Carey, in The Origin of Concepts, describes Quinean bootstrapping as a process where new symbols are sometimes used as placeholders with little or no meaning; then, as the particular new conceptual system is mastered, meaning is gradually gained through integration and interpretation with the other concepts in that system.
Terrence Deacon, in The Symbolic Species, describes symbolic takeoff in humans as a process, first outlined by Charles Peirce, involving 3 stages. First, there is the process of iconicity, in which we recognize objects as being the same or similar. (I take this to be a close approximation to identity in The Way We Think.)
Secondly, there are indexical relationships in which one thing signals another by being contiguous in time or space or correlation. (Smoke and Fire)
Thirdly, there is a point in time when these earlier relationships of iconicity and association are temporarily set aside, as in the apes learning symbols; new unifying concepts are learned, and it is realized that the symbols have relationships with each other that encompass and direct the iconic and indexical relationships.
My intuition is that these are all different descriptions of the same process, to wit, symbolic takeoff.
But the idea that these prior iconic and indexical relationships must be mastered before a symbolic system can be achieved grounds the process in the physical world, and leads me to one opposite conclusion than that of the authors. They believe that the ability to blend conceptually precipitated language, art, and all our other symbolic activities. According to the models up above, especially Deacon’s, I think it more likely the other way around: our symbolic use in language precipitated advanced conceptual blending. As also mentioned above, this symbolic use would entail syntax to be truly symbolic, and this sets aside, for present purposes, whether gesture or some type of proto language existed prior, though my feeling, due to tool use, anatomy, and other evidence, is that one did.
Now, because of the dearth of direct evidence I could certainly be wrong, and this is not a critical point for the authors’ enterprise. I also believe that the processes of metaphor play a more important and central part in our thought than they represent. Language expands into abstraction largely through metaphor.
The conceptions, descriptions, and elaboration of the different types of conceptual blends and their use in human thought is a truly amazing pioneering effort, however, and I have the feeling it will be remembered and studied as long there are those who study these things. The Way We Think is an original work both breathtaking and audacious in scope.
Note: My reviews are generally 5 star reviews, not because I am undiscriminating, but because I only review books that I really like and consider valuable. Otherwise, for me personally, I have better ways to spend the time.
And we do it all the time, unceasingly, and in large measure, unconsciously. And at different levels of complexity, one of which, double-scope blending, is posited to be the crucial step that allowed human symbolic thought and precipitated language, art, and symbolic representation of all types.
I love the idea here, and in a very general way, it must be true, right? The very definition of thought by many is the combining of concepts. (In this view, even the exclamation Bear! Is really the implicit form of: It’s a bear!) But the real center of this work is the way the authors have brought to light in detail the many varieties and types of conceptual blending.
The concepts that are brought to bear in any argument or theory are a good place to begin examining that theory.
In the language acquisition process, many would say the conceptual blending is accomplished by syntax.
Susan Carey, in The Origin of Concepts, describes Quinean bootstrapping as a process where new symbols are sometimes used as placeholders with little or no meaning; then, as the particular new conceptual system is mastered, meaning is gradually gained through integration and interpretation with the other concepts in that system.
Terrence Deacon, in The Symbolic Species, describes symbolic takeoff in humans as a process, first outlined by Charles Peirce, involving 3 stages. First, there is the process of iconicity, in which we recognize objects as being the same or similar. (I take this to be a close approximation to identity in The Way We Think.)
Secondly, there are indexical relationships in which one thing signals another by being contiguous in time or space or correlation. (Smoke and Fire)
Thirdly, there is a point in time when these earlier relationships of iconicity and association are temporarily set aside, as in the apes learning symbols; new unifying concepts are learned, and it is realized that the symbols have relationships with each other that encompass and direct the iconic and indexical relationships.
My intuition is that these are all different descriptions of the same process, to wit, symbolic takeoff.
But the idea that these prior iconic and indexical relationships must be mastered before a symbolic system can be achieved grounds the process in the physical world, and leads me to one opposite conclusion than that of the authors. They believe that the ability to blend conceptually precipitated language, art, and all our other symbolic activities. According to the models up above, especially Deacon’s, I think it more likely the other way around: our symbolic use in language precipitated advanced conceptual blending. As also mentioned above, this symbolic use would entail syntax to be truly symbolic, and this sets aside, for present purposes, whether gesture or some type of proto language existed prior, though my feeling, due to tool use, anatomy, and other evidence, is that one did.
Now, because of the dearth of direct evidence I could certainly be wrong, and this is not a critical point for the authors’ enterprise. I also believe that the processes of metaphor play a more important and central part in our thought than they represent. Language expands into abstraction largely through metaphor.
The conceptions, descriptions, and elaboration of the different types of conceptual blends and their use in human thought is a truly amazing pioneering effort, however, and I have the feeling it will be remembered and studied as long there are those who study these things. The Way We Think is an original work both breathtaking and audacious in scope.
Note: My reviews are generally 5 star reviews, not because I am undiscriminating, but because I only review books that I really like and consider valuable. Otherwise, for me personally, I have better ways to spend the time.
July 10, 2016
There is a lot of repetition in this book, and this detracted 2 stars from a 5 star rating. The book deals with the idea of "conceptual blending". The author delves into it using diagrams and drawings as well as many words. Was it an interesting book? Yes. Do I recommend it? No, unless you are really interested in how the mind works. There were good things I took away from it, however I have a feeling that there are better books on the subject.
July 17, 2013
Dense and challenging to read, this book is fascinating.
Want to read
April 22, 2013This will be updated with a brief review upon completion. Below my quick reflection, you'll find my detailed notes/comments. Enjoy as much as you'd like.
-----
Preface:
-innovation/invention is what sets humans apart (p v)
-work has been done studying detail areas of creativity, but little done on the entire entity (p v)
Ch. 1: The Age of Form and the Age of Imagination
-"Form does not present meaning but instead picks out regularities that run throughout meanings." (p 5)
-Three key terms: Identity, Integration, & Imagination (p 6)
-Identity: the recognition of sameness or equivalence
-Integration: associating identities & oppositions
-Imagination: what power identification & integration. constantly at work, beyond what is normally considered "imaginative"
-----
Preface:
-innovation/invention is what sets humans apart (p v)
-work has been done studying detail areas of creativity, but little done on the entire entity (p v)
Ch. 1: The Age of Form and the Age of Imagination
-"Form does not present meaning but instead picks out regularities that run throughout meanings." (p 5)
-Three key terms: Identity, Integration, & Imagination (p 6)
-Identity: the recognition of sameness or equivalence
-Integration: associating identities & oppositions
-Imagination: what power identification & integration. constantly at work, beyond what is normally considered "imaginative"
March 5, 2013
It's an interesting book that will challenge your thinking about you think and relate to different concepts in the world. At times, I think the authors stretch their theory, but overall I found this to be a solid book with good examples being used to illustrate what they meant by conceptual blending. I found the focus on language and metaphor to be particularly fascinating. With that said, this is a book best read slow and considered carefully. The concepts are complex and will challenge your thinking.
July 28, 2011
I was a little disappointed with this book, the title should have been Cognitive Behavior for Idiots. His theory of the origin of languages was different but definitely needed to support the opening supposition more. Though I can respect the notion of Conceptual Integration I though a lot of what was said mirrored Lakoff's, Minsky's, and Carbonell's work in a forced class 101 sort of way. If you are new to Cognitive blending or just want to get the basic principles, it is a OK place to start.
December 30, 2010
For anyone who wants to understand where all those thoughts come from, or are they words? Technical linguistics riffing outside of the normal science (Kuhn) but inside the brain...least that's the implication if you squint the right way.
December 5, 2009
"The way we think is not the way we think we think." Fascinating but dense; I returned this book to the library after getting about halfway through it.
April 26, 2014
Lots of information. It honestly wasn't the most entertaining book I've ever read but it was interesting. I much prefer Steven Pinker's style.
July 5, 2018
Like the proverbial curly-haired girl, when this book is good, it is very very good — but when it's bad, it's awful.
As an exploration of human language and the primary role of conceptual blending in everything from grammatical construction to literary metaphor, this text is foundational reading. Turner elaborates on ideas presented in his earlier books (such as The Literary Mind and More Than Cool Reason) and in collaboration with Fauconnier digs deeper into the constitutive and governing principles of conceptual blending.
Key chapters for understanding their theory include:
- Chp. 3: The Elements of Blending (introduces the constitutive principles),
- Chp. 6: Vital Relations and Their Compressions (discusses the basic set of relations in human cognition and how conceptual blending makes use of compression),
- Chp. 7: Compressions and Clashes (elaborates a topology of network types, including simplex, mirror, single-scope and double-scope networks), and
- Chp. 16: Constitutive and Governing Principles (revisits the constitutive principles and adds to them governing principles in a systematic survey of how blending is both motivated and constrained).
Also of interest are the chapters on Cause and Effect, Identity and Character, and Multiple Blends.
Where this book falls flat is in its attempt to claim that human language and thought are unique and qualitatively different from other non-human animal intelligence and communication. This is especially unfortunate because none of their theories *depend* upon humans being the only species capable of language, and in fact many of their theories could be used to point the way towards further research into animal cognition and consciousness. Instead, the desire to prove human specialness seems motivated either by some prejudice on the part of the authors, or some desire on their part (or their editor's) to make sure the more technical/academic aspects of the book are grounded in the "bigger" questions that a lay reader would presumably find more interesting. ("This is all very interesting for nerds," you can practically hear the marketing department saying dismissively, "but why would the average reader care?")
As a result, there is a serious disconnect between the linguistic arguments laid out in the rest of the text, and the claims asserted in Chapter 9: The Origin of Language, which is by far the most muddled and least supported chapter in the entire book. The argument here primarily rests on (a) asserting that the lack of evidence for certain types of animal cognition is therefore evidence of absence (rather than, say, a dearth of adequate research in the field), and (b) a handful of muddled analogies that conflate chemical, biological and cultural change and so obscure the differences between them.
This insistence on the absolute difference between human and non-human animal cognition is a stumbling block for later chapters. It's not clear, for instance, why a pigeon finding its way from Point A to Point B for the first time using its knowledge of having traveled to both points from Point C does *not* count as double-scope blending…. whereas human navigators *do* apparently use double-scope blending when they do the same. Nor is it clear why an elephant returning to the bones of a dead family member and caressing them affectionately is doing something qualitatively different from humans using double-scope blending to construct meaningful mourning rituals at a gravesite. Or why humans differentiating between "small" and "large" requires double-scope blending, but crows making the same distinction in experiments do not. In short: much of Fauconnier's and Turner's claims seem to be based on a basic ignorance about the latest research into animal intelligence, rather than any conclusion they've reached perforce in their own research.
However, precisely because the argument against animal intelligence is nowhere supported or even suggested in the rest of their theories, you can easily edit out and ignore references to it and find a lot worthwhile in the rest of the text.
As an exploration of human language and the primary role of conceptual blending in everything from grammatical construction to literary metaphor, this text is foundational reading. Turner elaborates on ideas presented in his earlier books (such as The Literary Mind and More Than Cool Reason) and in collaboration with Fauconnier digs deeper into the constitutive and governing principles of conceptual blending.
Key chapters for understanding their theory include:
- Chp. 3: The Elements of Blending (introduces the constitutive principles),
- Chp. 6: Vital Relations and Their Compressions (discusses the basic set of relations in human cognition and how conceptual blending makes use of compression),
- Chp. 7: Compressions and Clashes (elaborates a topology of network types, including simplex, mirror, single-scope and double-scope networks), and
- Chp. 16: Constitutive and Governing Principles (revisits the constitutive principles and adds to them governing principles in a systematic survey of how blending is both motivated and constrained).
Also of interest are the chapters on Cause and Effect, Identity and Character, and Multiple Blends.
Where this book falls flat is in its attempt to claim that human language and thought are unique and qualitatively different from other non-human animal intelligence and communication. This is especially unfortunate because none of their theories *depend* upon humans being the only species capable of language, and in fact many of their theories could be used to point the way towards further research into animal cognition and consciousness. Instead, the desire to prove human specialness seems motivated either by some prejudice on the part of the authors, or some desire on their part (or their editor's) to make sure the more technical/academic aspects of the book are grounded in the "bigger" questions that a lay reader would presumably find more interesting. ("This is all very interesting for nerds," you can practically hear the marketing department saying dismissively, "but why would the average reader care?")
As a result, there is a serious disconnect between the linguistic arguments laid out in the rest of the text, and the claims asserted in Chapter 9: The Origin of Language, which is by far the most muddled and least supported chapter in the entire book. The argument here primarily rests on (a) asserting that the lack of evidence for certain types of animal cognition is therefore evidence of absence (rather than, say, a dearth of adequate research in the field), and (b) a handful of muddled analogies that conflate chemical, biological and cultural change and so obscure the differences between them.
This insistence on the absolute difference between human and non-human animal cognition is a stumbling block for later chapters. It's not clear, for instance, why a pigeon finding its way from Point A to Point B for the first time using its knowledge of having traveled to both points from Point C does *not* count as double-scope blending…. whereas human navigators *do* apparently use double-scope blending when they do the same. Nor is it clear why an elephant returning to the bones of a dead family member and caressing them affectionately is doing something qualitatively different from humans using double-scope blending to construct meaningful mourning rituals at a gravesite. Or why humans differentiating between "small" and "large" requires double-scope blending, but crows making the same distinction in experiments do not. In short: much of Fauconnier's and Turner's claims seem to be based on a basic ignorance about the latest research into animal intelligence, rather than any conclusion they've reached perforce in their own research.
However, precisely because the argument against animal intelligence is nowhere supported or even suggested in the rest of their theories, you can easily edit out and ignore references to it and find a lot worthwhile in the rest of the text.
March 19, 2020
Wordy and repetitive, I don't like the Question-Answer format the authors chose to write this in. (Is it supposed to be a teacher-student blend? Anyway it's a poor rhetoric.) There is also a lack of examples -- graphics especially are sparse. So it reads neither like a clear-structured textbook nor a well-written monograph.
And it's a shame, really, because it could be so much more, but I'm struggling to make it through the book.
I suggest two papers as an introduction to conceptual blending instead (both freely available):
- Metaphor and Meaning in Early China (Slingerland, Edward) 2011
A brief introduction to conceptual blending (four or more mental spaces: two inputs, one generic and one blend), conceptual metaphor (two mental spaces: source and target domain), and rounds it out with somatic markers (memory of embodied experiences) for a theory on how we think, complete with a short case in the Mencius.
- Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression (Turner, M; Fauconnier, G -- the authors of this book) 1995
Provides an explanation for the conceptual blend with four or more mental spaces, in no more than 30 pages!
And it's a shame, really, because it could be so much more, but I'm struggling to make it through the book.
I suggest two papers as an introduction to conceptual blending instead (both freely available):
- Metaphor and Meaning in Early China (Slingerland, Edward) 2011
A brief introduction to conceptual blending (four or more mental spaces: two inputs, one generic and one blend), conceptual metaphor (two mental spaces: source and target domain), and rounds it out with somatic markers (memory of embodied experiences) for a theory on how we think, complete with a short case in the Mencius.
- Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression (Turner, M; Fauconnier, G -- the authors of this book) 1995
Provides an explanation for the conceptual blend with four or more mental spaces, in no more than 30 pages!
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