The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language by Mark Turner

Author:Mark Turner [Turner, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Mind & Body, Psychology, Cognitive Psychology & Cognition, Neuropsychology
ISBN: 9780195126679
Google: 6PWewxndYgIC
Publisher: OxfordUP
Published: 1998-12-17T23:14:30.849043+00:00

THE UBIQUITY OF BLENDED SPACES

There is a certain way of thinking about thought that has kept blended spaces from being detected. It begins with the ostensibly reasonable assumption that inference and truth go together. On this assumption, central meanings and crucial inferences that guide our action come from what we believe to be true, not from fantasy constructions like Bertran de Born in Dante’s Inferno. To get over this blindness to blended spaces requires separating belief from the construction of meaning. It is often the case that central inferences for a “real-world” space are in fact constructed in a blended space that we do not believe to be true or real. The truth of an input space can comefrom a blended space that we do not believe to be true or real. This sounds paradoxical, but there is no reason it should, once we draw a distinction between the construction of meaning and the adoption of belief.

For example, personification—or even the minimal projection of intentionality according to EVENTS ARE ACTIONS—results in a blended space whose “truth” we hold quite distinct from the “truth” of the target space, yet inferences are clearly projected from the blended space to the all-important target space. In Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the fisherman’s hand cramps. He speaks to his hand as if it is his enemy in the struggle to bring in the fish. He taunts it. The fisherman is not demented. He does not for a moment actually believe that his hand is an intentional adversarial agent. Relative to the blended space, it is true that his hand is an intentional adversarial agent. Relative to the target space of his fishing and the work of his body in that scenario, it is not true that his hand is an intentional adversarial agent, and he has not the slightest confusion regarding the difference. He keeps the two spaces quite distinct. Nonetheless, there are certain inferences from the blended space that he does project to the target space and believe of that target space, most salient among them that he will do best to adopt the emotions and strategy of the blended space. This is an inference that bears on the target space: He, the undemented fisherman, should in the target space of what he actually believes apply himself to dealing with his hand as if it were his intentional opponent while understanding fully the weight of as if. He should work to an extent in the blended space, without believing it. Useful construction of meaning is not the same as adoption of belief.

This is the stance we all take when we are dealing with a recalcitrant problem or task and construct the extraordinarily useful blended space in which this problem or task is our opponent—a tax fiddle to be worked, a tire to be changed, a tent to be staked down. If in analyzing the construction of inference we restrict our focus to what we really believe to be true, we will be blind to the indispensable blended spaces in these cases.

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