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Where would we be sans ‘container schema’?

‘Container’ is a ubiquitous (constantly encountered) metaphor in the cognitive sciences.

A single cell creature, such as the amoeba, is not merely alive but has the urge to stay alive. This creature knows nothing of intentionality; nevertheless such a form exists and expresses itself in the manner by which it maintains the chemical balance within its enclosing membrane.

The urge to stay alive exists in most living organisms. This urge is not a modern phenomenon but exists in degrees throughout living creatures. Life is carried out within a boundary. Life needs a container with an interior, a boundary, and an exterior.

The internal milieu, as named by French biologist Claude Bernard, is largely characterized by stability and sameness. Internally there exists an ability to maintain the stability required by life. This internal stability necessitates some form of sensing, some form of memory, and some form of controlling activity within the container. One might compare this internal system as having, to some very small degree, the same ingredients as does a neural network like a brain.

Humans and I suspect all creatures navigate in space through spatial-relations concepts, i.e. schema. These concepts are the essence of our ability to function in space. These are not concepts that we can sense but they are the forms and inference patterns for our movement in space that we utilize unconsciously. We automatically perceive an entity as being on, in front of, behind, etc., another entity.

The container schema is a fundamental spatial-relations concept that allows us to draw important inferences. This natural container format is the source for our logical inferences that are so obvious to us when we view Venn diagrams. If container A is in container B and B is in container C, then A is in C.

A container schema is a gestalt (a functional unit) figure with an interior, an exterior, and a boundary—the parts make sense only as part of the whole. Container schemas are cross-modal—“we can impose a conceptual container schema on a visual scene…on something we hear, as when we conceptually separate out one part of a piece of music from another…This structure is topological in the sense that the boundary can be made larger, smaller, or distorted and still remain the boundary of a container schema.”

“Image schemas have a special cognitive function: They are both perceptual and conceptual in nature. As such, they provide a bridge between language and reasoning on the one hand and vision on the other.”

A common conception that has become a commonplace metaphor is ‘category is container’. We can thus image categories as a bounded region with members of the category as being objects inside that region. A subcategory is another bounded region, another container, within the original category container.

‘Logic’ is a word with more than one meaning; but it, like ‘science’, ‘Kleenex’ etc, has become a word with a common usage. In our common mode of speaking ‘logic’ means Aristotelian Formal Logic.

Aristotle said “A definition is a phrase signifying a thing’s essence.” Essence is the collection of characteristics that makes a thing a kind of thing. Such a definition expresses what is called a concept.

Aristotle equates predication (all men are mortal, I am a man) with containment. Predication is containment. To make a predication is to create a ‘container’ that contains the essence of a thing being predicated.

This containment leads us to the obvious logic (formal principles of a branch of knowledge) of containers. If container A is in container C and container B is in A then B is in C. This container schema is where all of these Latin terms, such as Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens, come from. This is, I think, the source of all of the principles for syllogisms. In other words just imagine containers and various juxtapositions of these will lead one to the principles of Aristotelian logic. I suspect many Greeks scratched their heads and wondered “why didn’t I think of that?”

Is there a demarcation boundary between instinct and reason? Is there a demarcation boundary between anything between here and the Big Bang? Is demarcation boundary a part of nature or is it just a necessity of human comprehension? Is category a fact of nature or is category a necessity of human comprehension? Is anything different in kind from anything else? Is everything different only in degree from everything else?

I conclude that demarcation boundary is not an essential characteristic of nature but is an essential characteristic of human comprehension. Everything is a seamless flow from the Big Bang to now. Only in our mind do we have a difference in kind.

Reality is a rainbow but we humans perceive reality as a myriad of containers! We perceive reality as containers because our “gut” tells us so and because classical metaphysics tells us so. Reality without demarcation boundaries means that everything is a seamless reality from everything else. It means that everything is not a kind of thing with its own necessary and sufficient nature but that all reality runs together and it is only in our minds that these containers exist.

This is kind of a synthesis of ideas and quotes contained in The Feeling of What Happens by Antonio Damasio and Where Mathematics Comes From by Lakoff and Nunez.

Sorry, but this is simplistic nonsense.

The only modern biologist I am aware of who attempts to tackle the definition and operation of "life" is Maturana. (Bernard was 19th century). Life is a combination of structure and process. It does not "need a container", it defines a membrane across which dynamic interactions occur geared to its organizational maintenance. (see autopoiesis). The simplest "life structure" is a single cell, but boundary concepts can be extended to whole organisms or even to social colonies (as in insects).There is no general requirement for "neural" or "perceptual systems" in the basic definition of life, only for a dynamic system of organizational maintenance which adjusts to perturbation (whether "internal" or "external"). Concepts of "processing sense data" are mechanistic speculations based on machine analogies.

coberst-- This is a very odd theory. We, as humans, would surely be represented more accurately as a melded schema as we are more than a collection of parts, and each bit of the collection is unable to function independently in any meaningful way. And I feel that this is the same organisation that allows us to appreciate for eg. beauty. We allow previous and present experiences to flow together to perceive clearly.

There just seems to be something here that is not the way humans do, in fact, function

These are theories much different from theories to which we have grown accustomed. The theories of SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) challenge the fundamental philosophical ideas of our a priori objectivism.

No they don't because "embodiment" presupposes that bodily actions are "objective". All they do is attempt to reduce mentalism to a form of physicalism.

coberst wrote;
" The theories of SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) challenge the fundamental philosophical ideas of our a priori objectivism."

Why bother? The challenge does not work. Our bodies and minds are interactive and inter-dependent. Compartmentalisation does not result in quality thought or action. Are you suggesting that our behaviours are governed by objective decisions and actions?

“It is our organic flesh and blood, our structural bones, the ancient rhythms of our internal organs, and the pulsating flow of our emotions that give us whatever meaning we can find and that shape our very thinking.”

Our Western philosophical culture and our Christian religion deny this very obvious fact. We try desperately to think of our selves as gods with minds that float above our body with its nasty old anus.

Descartes, one of the first philosophers that the young philosophy student learns about, informs us that “my essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking being…I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing; and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing.”

Our Christian culture, our Western philosophical tradition, and our naïve common sense perceptions all seem to work in concert to instill this erroneous mind/body dichotomy upon our comprehension of reality. All of these factors lead us to place a positive evaluation upon freeing our self from our body. When we die and our mind/soul/spirit goes to heaven our body decays into dust where it came from. And we are forever free of its unpleasant burden.

SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) challenges this traditional and common sense inherited duality of mind/body. This new paradigm for cognitive science targets the disembodied view of meaning that results from our objectivist philosophy.

Traditionally, meaning is associated with words and sentences. Meaning in this traditional sense is about propositions and words, but SGCS considers this a very limited view of meaning; this disembodied view is far too narrow. “Meaning traffics in patterns, images, qualities, feelings, and eventually concepts and propositions.”

Objectivist philosophy recognizes two fundamentally different kinds of meaning: descriptive and emotive meaning. This is an illusory demarcation that led certain philosophers of language to retain focus upon the conceptual/propositional as the only meaning that mattered and that emotive meaning had no meaning in rigorous testable modes of knowing.

This dream of “freeing oneself from the body” reinforces the erroneous idea that is buried deeply within our psyche by our Western Christian philosophical inheritance the dangerous idea that a person’s “true” self is not of this world but abides in some transcendent kingdom. These kinds of ideas lead us into ignoring our situation on this planet because it is of small consequence when we spend eternity in some heavenly bliss. Such thoughts make it possible for people to strap bombs upon their person and go strolling in the mall on the way to heaven.

SGCS argues “for the central role of emotion in how we make sense of our world. There is no cognition without emotion, even though we are often unaware of the emotional aspects of our thinking.”

Quotes from The Meaning of the Body by Mark Johnson