Piece 2: Conceptual Metaphor Theory

A central theme in Wittgenstein’s work is metaphors — either as an object of investigation or as a philosophical and investigative method to convey his messages to his readers. Despite his elaborate use of metaphors, according to Wittgenstein, the cause for the profound confusions caused by our words are misleading metaphors and analogies. Gill (1979) skillfully summarises Wittgenstein’s thoughts regarding the function and role of metaphors across the Tractatus, Philosophical Investigations, and On Certainty:
“Not only does he maintain that metaphoric expression runs deeper than propositional expression, but his method of presentation is itself metaphorical in nature. In a word, he doesn’t present ‘knock-down, drag-out arguments’ for his view, because his view is that such arguments do not cut deep enough.” (Gill, 1979, p.284)
Most readers of Wittgenstein are familiar with these deep-cutting metaphors that he loves to use in his prose. If one takes Wittgenstein’s opinion about the epistemic value of metaphors into account, one can see that this style of writing is intended to be more than just elaborate and figurative speech. Rather, Wittgenstein tries to appeal to the foundation of our experience with the metaphoric mode “as it constitutes the heart of everyday speech because it is at the practical level of existence that we are closest to the bedrock of our form of life” (ibid., p.284). Gill thus concludes that any abstract thought consists of and must be evaluated by metaphors.
Despite accounting such a fundamental role to metaphors in our language and existence, Wittgenstein never set out to construct a systematic theory of metaphors. In contrast, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson wrote extensively about the cognitive function and workings of metaphors. They argue that metaphors structure our everyday experience and accordingly those “metaphors we live by” are more than simple linguistic expressions. It is interesting to note that the authors only mention Wittgenstein once; a brief acknowledgement of the concept of family resemblance. This limited recognition and investigation of Wittgenstein’s work is also addressed by Rogers (2015), while Martins (2010) notes that a fundamental difference between Wittgenstein and Lakoff and Johnson might be regarding the aim of philosophy. In Philosophy in the Flesh Lakoff and Johnson (1999, p.4) pose the question if one could take these findings “about the nature of mind and constructed philosophy anew?”. An idea that doesn’t go well with Wittgenstein’s thought, who, in his earlier writings, suggests that philosophy is like a ladder. The successful practitioner “must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it” (Wittgenstein, 1994, 6.54). Nevertheless, while they may disagree about the nature of philosophy, both theories seem to place metaphors at a central location within the human existence.
The reason why I am introducing Lakoff & Johnson is that their systematic and detailed account of the mechanics of our metaphoric understanding might give some hints on how to overcome the problems that the same metaphors cause in modern scholarly communication.
“Because so many of the concepts that are important to us are either abstract or not clearly delineated in our experience (the emotions, ideas, time, etc.), we need to get a grasp on them by means of other concepts that we understand in clearer terms (spatial orientations, objects, etc.)” (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, 115).
In their seminal work Metaphors we live by Lakoff & Johnson (2003) then continue to further classify the kind of metaphors that our mind deploys:
  1. Structural Metaphors use one concept to structure another concept. Lakoff & Johnson use the example of ‘argument as war’ to illustrate the metaphorical structures that we use in our everyday language.
  2. Orientational Metaphors exploit the fact that humans are physical beings with a certain orientation and direction in space. Concepts are put into relation to each other using orientations based on our experience (e.g., up/down as upright bipedal beings, in/out as our physical bodies are distinct from the outer environment).
  3. Ontological Metaphors are finally those metaphors that help to understand our experiences in terms of other objects and substances. This mode of thought is again based
    in
    our very experience as physical beings. A special kind of ontological metaphor that the authors bring up is the container metaphor which is specified by their attribution of a territory or boundary.
According to the
authors
all metaphors have a grounding in our physical and cultural experience. An important detail as the embedding of our most basic mode of cognition, the metaphoric mode, in our culture makes our cognition itself a socially rooted one. This is compatible with Wittgenstein’s notion of language-games and forms of life. They further note that purely intellectual concepts such as concepts in scientific theories are almost always based on metaphors with a physical/cultural basis (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003, p.19).

Piece 3: Technology Games

Coeckelbergh identifies a variety of potentially fruitful points of departure for an investigation of Wittgenstein’s understanding of language and the philosophy of technology, but focuses on a very specific case: He suggests to reverse the famous metaphor of language as a toolbox (Wittgenstein, 1953, §11) and think about technology in terms of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, understood as a tool. What seems to be starting off as a mundane use-oriented understanding of technology — as Coeckelbergh notes others have also proposed similar ideas (e.g., Ihde, 1990; Franssen and Koller, 2016) — is then further developed into an interesting account of technology grounded in what he calls technology games.
This embedding of technology in a cultural, social, and historical context proves to have an additional advantage as Coeckelbergh continues to extend Wittgenstein’s notion of grammar to a surface grammar and depth grammar of technology. While the surface grammar can be understood as the immediate syntax of technology usage (i.e., instructions on how to use an appliance), the depth grammar refers to those rules which are not easily expressed or recorded by looking at individual cases of technology or its usage. Rather one has to take the pre-existing activities and technologies into account. Coeckelbergh gives the example of a social robot which comes with the basic operating instructions needed to use it. But to fully grasp the usage of such a robot is to grasp the “deeper” grammar which is grounded in the social rules and forms of life. The “social” robot would not be much of a social technology if “social games” wouldn’t be part of our human existence:
“The technology grammar is related to wider social and cultural grammars, which clearly have a normative dimension. Like our use of language, our use of technology enters and follows a river-bed that was already there before us and before our particular use.” (Coeckelbergh, 2017, p.13)
I want to further use the concepts of surface and depth grammar of technology to examine the confusions that are brought about by technology. Unsurprisingly wrong instructions or faulty execution can lead to confusion when technology is used. Syntactical errors in the surface grammar of technology are those mistakes and bugs in technology which can be spotted by a systematic comparison of the ideal and actual state. On the other hand, the confusion caused by the depth grammar of technology are more subtle and harder to spot. A user interface designed for a Japanese audience might be confusing to the European user simply because of the different reading directions. Similarly, technology and its design might be historically influenced, e.g., the concept of pagination, which makes sense in the case of static written text (printed books, standard PDFs) but can equally be confusing in other cases (eBook readers that reflow the text based on screen and font size). Coeckerlbergh's concept of technology games constitute a novel and potentially very useful tool to capture the kinds of confusions that might arise from technology and its use.
Coeckelbergh (2017, p.15) identifies three tasks for a “Wittgensteinian holistic, transcendental, and critical phenomenology and hermeneutics of technology”: (1) disclose both surface and depth grammar of technology, (2) reveal the normativity of those technology grammars, and (3) make us aware of the active, “game-changing” nature of technology and forsake the idea of the neutral tool. Coeckelbergh concludes that “thinking about technology is also thinking about the ways we do things, and ultimately about our world and an entire form of life.”
It is interesting to note that while this way of thinking might be novel in the context of the philosophy of technology, engineers and designers have adopted a similar way of thinking and conceiving technology many years ago. User-centric design, soft ergonomics, or human-computer interaction are a few examples of technology design strategies that were immensely popularised by works such as User Centered System Design: New perspectives on human-computer interaction (Donald and Draper, 1986) or the more recent Designing with the mind in mind: simple guide to understanding user interface design guidelines (Johnson, 2010). Awareness for the cultural, social, and historical embedding of users of technology have been part of software development and engineering for some time and an extensive investigation of interface design strategies might be an interesting future task in the context of technology games.