Invariance Principle

[George Lakoff]

>Iraide Ibarretxe wrote:
>>
>> Estoy trabajando con el Invariance Principle de Lakoff, y estaria muy
>> agradecida si me pudierais facilitar bibliografia que trate sobre el mismo.
>
>Se me ocurre:
>
>Brugman, Claudia. 1990. What is the Invariance Hypothesis?
>  _Cognitive Linguistics_ 1(2): 257-266.
>
>Lakoff, George. 1990. The Invariance Hypothesis: Is Abstract
>  Reasoning Based Image-Schemas? _Cognitive Linguistics_
>  1(1): 39-74.
>
>_______. 1993. The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. In
>  _Metaphor and Thought_, Andrew Ortony (ed.), 202-251.
>  Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
>
>Turner, Mark. 1990 Aspects of the Invariance Hypothesis.
>  _Cognitive Linguistics_ 1(2): 247-255.
>
>_______. 1990. Poetry: Metaphor and the Conceptual Context
>   of Invention. _Poetics Today_ 11(3): 463-482.
>
>_______. 1991. _Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age
>  of Cognitive Science_. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
>  Press.
>
>________. 1992. Language is a Virus. _Poetics Today_ 13(4):
>  725-736.
>
>________. 1996. _The Literary Mind_. Oxford: Oxford University
>   Press.
>
>Joe Hilferty
>__________________________________________________________
>Home page: http://lingua.fil.ub.es/~hilferty/homepage.html

Hi,

I recommend taking a look at Srini Narayanan's dissertation, which can be
found at the Neural Theory Of Language website, www.icsi.berkeley.edu/NTL.
The course website that Jerry Feldman and I used for teaching an
introductory course on NTL is www.icsi.berkeley.edu/mbrodsky/Cogsci110.

In NTL, the Invariance Principle is unnecessary. Its effects arise
automatically from the Neural Theory applied to metaphor. In Narayanan' s
model, metaphorical mappings are neural connections allowing source domain
inferences (acitivations in his model) to activate target domain structure.
The two parts of the Invariance Principle follow automatically. Inferential
structure is "preserved" since metaphorical inferences are done in the
source domain. And what about apparent "overrides", where inherent target
structure takes precedence when there is a possibility of contradiction? In
the neural theory, contradiction is neural inhibition. Activations
resulting from source domain inferenfces that are neurally inhibited by
target structures simply never occur because they are neurally impossible.
No extra "principle" is necessary.
        What makes the neural theory interesting is that it really uses
embodiment. The basic claims is that abstract reason IS sensory-motor
inference-done in the sensory-motor centers-with resulting activations
projected to other parts of the brain by neural connections. Narayanan
demonstrates in his dissertation that aspectual reasoning-reasoning about
event structure-has the same inferential structure as motor control. This
is about as dramatic a confirmation of the theory as neural modeling
studies allow.
        Johnson and I will be discussing Narayanan's research in our book
Philosophy In The Flesh, which will appear from Basic Books in early
November.
        By the way, the original work leading up to the Invariance
Principle was in
Chapter 4 of More Than Cool Reason (Lakoff and Turner), 1989.

Best wishes,

George Lakoff