“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

[coberst]

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”--Psalm 23:4

‘Yea, though I walk trough the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for my Basic-Level Categorizations and Kinesthetic Image-Schemas form reality for Me.’--coberst

Experience is structured in a fundamental way before any concepts, invigorated by sense data, are constructed. Existing preconceptual structures affect newly developing structures of what we experience.

We have preconceptual structures that await any new experience and perhaps the most fundamental of these is the container schema. This container schema has a boundary that distinguishes the container’s interior from the exterior.

With a little thought we can find dozens of instances during the day when we distinguish in-out activities. We emerge out of a deep sleep and into the morning sunlight; we get out of bed and go to the kitchen to take the bread from the bread box and place the slices into the toaster.

The CONTAINER SCHEMA:

We conceptualize an enormous number of activities in CONTAINER terms. The container schema (a mental codification of experience that includes a particular organized way of perceiving cognitively) is a spatial-relations concept that all advanced neural creatures impose upon acts of perception and conception.

There is a spatial logic inherent in the container schema; it is axiomatic that given two containers, A and B, and an object, X, if A is in B and X is in A, then X is in B. The container schema like all image schemas can be imposed on what we hear, on what we see, and on our motor movements; such schemas are cross-modal.

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.”

The PART-WHOLE Schema:

We conceptualize our self as a whole with parts. Families are conceptualized as a whole with parts. “The general concept of structure itself is a metaphorical projection of the CONFIGURATION aspect of PART-WHOLE STRUCTURE. When we understand two things as being isomorphic, we mean that their parts stand in the same configuration to the whole.”

Basic Logic: If the WHOLE exists then the PARTS exist. The PARTS can exist while the WHOLE may not exist. “We have evolved so that our basic-level perception can distinguish the fundamental PART-WHOLE structure that we need in order to function in our physical environment.”

There are a few more but this gives you an idea of how SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) claims that we structure our reality.

Quotes from “Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind” by George Lakoff