Monday, April 6, 2009

Monday's reading

I find it a little difficult to connect the three texts we read for todays class, but I guess and underlying theme would be the idea of metaphor and experience as an important part of human cognitions. For a teacher, in the Embodied Knowledge article, her personal practical knowledge is a combination of three things (1)teachers personal past history, understanding of human affairs, and cultural understanding(2)teachers aesthetic, her mode of perceiving and interacting withthe enviroment and with other people(3)view a persons understanding as their mode of being in,or having, a world. These three aspects are not static, concrete things, but rather everchanging ideas which grow as her experience of the world grows. Also it is important to point out that her experience of the world is shaped by her past, her aesthetic, and her mode of being. Johnson states that, "Knowledge is an activity by means of which we are able to transform our experiences." I think that this is a viable definition for knowledge. Knowledge is a process, and a way of driving and achieving understanding of our expereinces. In additions, knowledge and useful interpretation of metaphors are an important part of cognitive experience. In Lakoff's article, he claims that cognition is a metaphorical experience and that by describing abstract concepts in non-abstract and definable terms, we can better understand these concepts. However, it is also difficult to unravel these terms without first having a knowledge of what each overlapping metaphor means and how its many parts can make up and relate to the abstract concept. He uses the example of IDEA as a person, a plant, a product, a cutting object, a resource, etc. These metaphors are related, a person and a plant both can die for example, but not directly related. A person is not a cutting object. It is important to understand these relationships to understand the concept of IDEA.
Nussbaum introduces another form of metaphor into the mix with fiction. Fiction and novels are important aspects of cognition.Ppeople care for the books they read, they are changed by what they care for. This is something which we have discussed in class before. When reading a certain book, you can change the way you look at and percieve the world around you.

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