We can't communicate without metaphors. Etymologically, buried
within our very languages themselves, are metaphors. There's
sometimes called "dead metaphors" but I don't think they're dead
at all.*
Concept. Conceiving ideas. Once a literal old-science view of
the brain-as-womb from the best of 18th century Science. Good
stuff. Things match up. Even the functional purposes between
embryo and brain match up in a broad way in some places. [the
part that looks like a mouth that swallows, actually performs a
similar function for cerebral spinal fluid for example - like a
throat running down your spine instead of your esophagus)
Of course it makes sense they'd be similar; they're effective
mechanisms for their purposes. Affordances as it were.
Yet we still have words like concepts. Conceiving ideas. Birth
of ideas.*
Are ideas born? Well, they're there. But are they born?
Or even the idea of ideas. Is there really a "world of ideas?"
Idea = Platonism. Separate realm from this realm?
Maybe. Maybe not. But the idea of the idea influences our very
way of thinking about the world.
Or even thinking.
What's think?
think is egymologically related to thing. What's a thing? An
assembly of people who meet together to discuss an issue behind
closed doors, often with great debate. Medieval Germany I think.
Thing. Think. Assembly. All this stuff influences how we put
together our understandings of our world.
Is it possible to remove all of it? Well, it's the Ship of
Theseus. We can replace the planks as we go along and still stay
afloat. It's still us. We didn't get a second boat in the
process.
