Metaphorical Сorrelation as a Mechanism of Thinking

Abstract

This article proposes an interpretation of the metaphorical correlation (MC) as a mechanism of thinking aimed at the search for, and development of, a thinking strategy, set down and conveyed by language, that will be most ef­fective in the given cultural and historical context. The MC mechanism is de­fined as a process by which some characteristics of an object (those selected by thinking) interact and some others are suppressed, with a chance at later actualisation. As a result, awareness of the self as an existentially non-static system bearing with it ‘the world as an accepted sense’ makes it possible to re­think the connection between language, thinking and perception. Here, a prob­lem assuming a special prominence is attaining the obviousness and veracity (a primary cohesion of experience) by possessing which cognising agents con­struct a reality for themselves. The article considers Gustav Gerber’s ideas and Hermann von Helmholtz’s definition of perception as ‘unconscious inference’, as well as Immanuel Kant’s assertion about the ‘logical tact’ lying ‘in the ob­scurity of the mind’. Metaphorical correlation is shown to be able to act as a mechanism of a sui generis intuitive logic, which marks the starting point of cognitive reflection and paves the way for linguistic reality. Metaphorical correlation is a mechanism of abstraction and conceptualisation that deter­mines the angles of cognitive reflection. The author concludes that if thinking is to be viewed as a calculus of the best possible strategy for interpreting expe­rience (this vision is reflected in language, ever illuminating the substantive aspects of an object that are existentially important for a native speaker), the MC mechanism, which is immanently intrinsic to thinking processes, makes it possible to ‘calculate’ a thinking strategy whose adaptive value lies in the pos­sibility of explicating the elements of experience for which there is a com­pelling existential need and inhibition of those whose explication is not requi­site at the moment.