Working With "Human-centered Metaphor"

Humans are evolved animals. In order to produce not only a deeper understanding of humans, but also to produce a deeper understanding as humans, this must be taken as a given. What this means is that humans are situated, involved beings, who don't simply come to the world around them as tabula rasae, directly connecting with things as they are, or even with themselves as they are. Humans are part of the world, dependent on it, tasked with navigating it to survive, and as a result, their representation of the world will be geared for navigating and surviving. We enter the world with an understanding designed for use. This representation, opaque as it is as a result of being the product of investment, is further complicated and obscured by the fact that we are not just evolved animals, but evolved social animals. This means that our representations are further situated, not only in what we naively refer to as the natural world, but also the social world, the world of culture and civilization. As animals, this is of course of great benefit to us. Not only does it allow us to learn from those around us, but indirectly, from all of those who came before us and who are out there not but to whom we do not have direct access.

As a result of our evolved nature, our thought and our language are structured around what we need to know, and do, to survive in the world, in culture, in civilization, etc. Our minds are usage-based and usage-built. Whatever they don't need, they discard, and whatever they do need, they need for a reason, which is to say, there's some environmental cause for its necessity, its existence, and its persistence. There is no escaping this: no matter how hard we try to refine language, to clarify it and rigorize it, as science and positivism have tried to do, the beings who are representing, comprehending, and understanding it will still be beings with minds built for use. There is no ideal language, because there is no ideal mind, and without minds, there is no language.

The upside of all of this is that any human endeavor, be it cooking, passing laws, building bridges, carrying out scientific investigations, or doing philosophy, is valuable only to the extent that it helps us to better navigate the world. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is pointless, because there is no such thing as knowledge for knowledge's sake. The more we try to abstract knowledge from our situatedness, and therefore our humanness, the more we remove knowledge from anything like understanding. Knowledge just becomes a mere play thing, an object of entertainment, and as such, paradoxically, the sort of knowledge most connected to our humanness.

In one sense, then, our situatedness privileges what we would generally think of as the practical knowledge of the sciences and engineering over the, let's say, more mediate knowledge of philosophy or art. What we usually think of as practical knowledge is more directly involved with navigating the world. It puts bridges over rivers, makes farms more productive, cures diseases, etc. But philosophy and the arts have their roles as well, and whether we like it or not, their knowledge is ultimately practical knowledge as well. They help us to navigate the world of concepts, the world of representations, the world of emotions and expression and symbols better. They impart knowledge and experience indirectly, often, at least when compared to the sciences, but one of the consequences of being human is that all knowledge in some ways indirect, or mediated, and some things -- at least for now -- have to be approached more indirectly, more mediately, than others.

I bring all of this up because I recently came across the following quote from this site, at this site, via this one (speaking of the indirect):

Vernacular language is simply too infused with human-centered metaphor to ever be useful in talking about how bridges are when no one is looking [my example of the task of speculative realism, which had Latour and Harman in mind, though the latter especially shows how this gets much more complex]. So while I agree that onticology is not a priori a materialistic ontology, nevertheless, mathematical-physical discourse is arguably more useful than philosophical language when it comes to discussing bridges. Afterall, to paraphrase Dretske, engineering discourse will actually allow you to construct a bridge whereas object-oriented “philosophy” will not. Which one then is more truly object-centered

This in the context of a critique, or at least a criticism, of speculative realism.

To which Mike Johnduff (second link) replies:

When you say “Vernacular language is simply too infused with human-centered metaphor to ever be useful in talking about how bridges are when no one is looking,” I think a speculative realist or OOP [Object-Oriented Philosophy] person would say that this proves their point exactly: we need to change vernacular language to bring it away from its use-function, or that which actually ties it to a scientific language that is based, ultimately, on use.

And continues:

Of course the "change" involved is not primarily changing language itself, but rather changing how we see what language (among other things) is already doing.

As the preceding probably makes clear, this last bit is something with which I could not agree more. The purpose of any philosophy that takes language seriously as a problem should recognize that it's not a problem to be overcome, but simply one to be understood. What is language doing? It's doing something related to our situatedness, to our needs as determined by our situatedness. If it weren't, we wouldn't have language. As such, it will always be dominated by human-centered metaphors, and it should be, because that's what makes language valuable: it's being centered around us.

Furthermore, a good philosophy will recognize that there's something to these metaphors. We understand and talk about things metaphorically, or analogically, or however you want to describe it. Good, now what? There must be a reason why particular metaphors/analogies/whatever stick. Maybe a good way at getting at objects, as the object-oriented philosopher and speculative realist seem to want to do, would be to analyze these metaphors and figure out what aspects of the world, and our being in it, they capture for us (and the for us is important: "for whom is it?" is almost always a better question than "what is it?"). What is it that thinking about X in terms of Y, or as related to Y, buys us? And what does that say about our understanding of X and Y? Or about the way in which X and Y relate to us? This is of course easier said than done, because our metaphors don't just reflect our relations to the things that comprise them, but also social and cultural relations, and which metaphors stick are in large part a result of culture. Still, if we're stuck with language as it is, and we are so stuck, then wouldn't it be smart to learn as much as we can about what that language is doing for us, and by extension, what it says about our relations with the things we use language to talk about?