Grandpa, how can I remember all the things I ought to do?

[coberst]

Grandpa, how can I remember all the things I ought to do?

Darling, you will remember many of these things that you ought to do automatically without even trying. Our brains are always organizing our experiences into what we might think of as containers. Just as you keep your marbles in one container and your socks in another container your brain automatically, without your conscious effort, organizes things into containers.

For example, you felt that you ought to give a cookie to your friend. Imagine that some other children saw you do that and your behavior made them realize that you were doing the right thing. In other words, your action created an example of correct behavior for other children to see. Children see examples of such behavior constantly and it soon becomes part of their brain’s determination of something that ought to be done.

When you have an experience that pleases your parents, copies of that experience goes into your ‘ought to do container’, grown-ups call this container ‘morality’.

Grandpa, what is morality?

Darling, morality is concerned with how we feel about the well-being of others. Do you remember earlier today when you asked mommy for two cookies rather than one and when your mother asked why you said “because my friend Mary Ann gave me some of her candy yesterday and I want to give her a cookie”?

Morality is about many things and one thing morality is about is reciprocation, which means paying back to others what we owe to them because of something good they did for us. On the flip-side of that is something we call revenge. Revenge is about our feelings that if Mary Ann does something mean to me then I owe her something mean back.

Morality is partly about our moral accounting system. We seem to have a moral balance sheet in our head and we are often careful to pay back ‘good with good’ and ‘bad with bad’.

But Grandpa, mommy said that I must be strong to be good, what does this have to do with reciprocation?

Darling, morality is a complex issue and is about many different kinds of things; one of these things is that I must be strong so that I can remain upright and balanced when I face evil forces. When I am morally healthy I can best withstand the temptation to give-in to all the forces that tend to make me do bad things. Evil is strong and thus I must be morally healthy and strong if I am to overcome these forces of evil.

Moral weakness is considered by many to be an act of immortality in itself. We must develop the character traits of courage and willpower, while simultaneously fighting the inclination to self-indulgence and the deadly sins of greed, pride, and envy.

To summarize just a few of the many things that goes into the morality container:
Being upright is good
Being low is bad
Falling is evil
Strength is virtue
Weakness is evil
Returning ‘good for good’ is good
Returning ‘bad for bad’ is bad
Keep your moral balance sheet on the sunny side

Grandpa got his ideas about the relationship between morality and cognitive science from “Philosophy in the Flesh”—Lakoff and Johnson

Questions for discussion

Do you have a ‘moral balance sheet’? Is it in the red? Do you keep two sets of books?

Do you like the container metaphor?

[doucy]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you have a ‘moral balance sheet’? Is it in the red? Do you keep two sets of books?

[/ QUOTE ]

Everyone probably has some kind of 'balance sheet'. I'd like to think that I don't usually seek to exact revenge on people who wrong me. But from a game theory standpoint, you have to sometimes. If you always cooperate despite the fact that your opponent always defects, you're going to be in jail for quite a while.

[ QUOTE ]
Do you like the container metaphor?

[/ QUOTE ]

To a point. When I think of morality, I think of religion, and religion is something that is dictated to people, it's not something that people "sort out for themselves". But I've seen worse metaphors.

[coberst]

‘Container’ is a ubiquitous (constantly encountered) metaphor in the cognitive sciences.

Life needs a boundary.

A single cell creature, such as the amoeba, is not merely alive but has the urge to stay alive. This creature knows nothing of intentionality; nevertheless such a form exists and expresses itself in the manner by which it maintains the chemical balance within its enclosing membrane.

The urge to stay alive exists in most living organisms. This urge is not a modern phenomenon but exists in degrees throughout living creatures. Life is carried out within a boundary. Life needs a container with an interior, a boundary, and an exterior.

The internal milieu, as named by French biologist Claude Bernard, is largely characterized by stability and sameness. Internally there exists an ability to maintain the stability required by life. This internal stability necessitates some form of sensing, some form of memory, and some form of controlling activity within the container. One might compare this internal system as having, to some very small degree, the same ingredients as does a neural network like a brain.

Container schema (a structured framework or plan)

Humans and, I suspect, all creatures navigate in space through spatial-relations concepts, i.e. schema. These concepts are the essence of our ability to function in space. These are not concepts that we can sense but they are the forms and inference patterns for our movement in space that we utilize unconsciously. We automatically perceive an entity as being on, in front of, behind, etc., another entity.

The container schema is a fundamental spatial-relations concept that allows us to draw important inferences. This natural container format is the source for our logical inferences that are so obvious to us when we view Venn diagrams. If container A is in container B and B is in container C, then A is in C.

A container schema is a gestalt (a functional unit) figure with an interior, an exterior, and a boundary—the parts make sense only as part of the whole. Container schemas are cross-modal—“we can impose a conceptual container schema on a visual scene…on something we hear, as when we conceptually separate out one part of a piece of music from another…This structure is topological in the sense that the boundary can be made larger, smaller, or distorted and still remain the boundary of a container schema.”

“Image schemas have a special cognitive function: They are both perceptual and conceptual in nature. As such, they provide a bridge between language and reasoning on the one hand and vision on the other.”

Categories are containers

A common conception that has become a commonplace metaphor is ‘category is container’. We can thus image categories as a bounded region with members of the category as being objects inside that region. A subcategory is another bounded region, another container, within the original category container.

Container as fundamental to logic

‘Logic’ is a word with more than one meaning; but it, like ‘science’, ‘Kleenex’ etc, has become a word with a common usage. In our common mode of speaking ‘logic’ means Aristotelian Formal Logic.

Aristotle said “A definition is a phrase signifying a thing’s essence.” Essence is the collection of characteristics that makes a thing a kind of thing. Such a definition expresses what is called a concept.

Aristotle equates predication (all men are mortal, I am a man) with containment. Predication is containment. To make a predication is to create a ‘container’ that contains the essence of a thing being predicated.

This containment leads us to the obvious logic (formal principles of a branch of knowledge) of containers. If container A is in container C and container B is in A then B is in C. This container schema is where all of these Latin terms, such as Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens, come from. This is, I think, the source of all of the principles for syllogisms. In other words just imagine containers and various juxtapositions of these will lead one to the principles of Aristotelian logic. I suspect many Greeks scratched their heads and wondered “why didn’t I think of that?”

Container as an essential element of our world view

Is there a demarcation boundary between instinct and reason? Is there a demarcation boundary between anything between here and the Big Bang? Is demarcation boundary a part of nature or is it a necessity of human comprehension? Is category a fact of nature or is category a necessity of human comprehension? Is anything different in kind from anything else? Is everything different only in degree from everything else?

I conclude that demarcation boundary is not an essential characteristic of nature but is an essential characteristic of human comprehension. Everything is a seamless flow from the Big Bang to now. Only in our mind do we have a difference in kind.

Reality is a rainbow but we humans perceive reality as a myriad of containers! We perceive reality as containers because our “gut” tells us so and because classical metaphysics tells us so. Reality without demarcation boundaries means that everything is a seamless reality from everything else. It means that everything is not a kind of thing with its own necessary and sufficient nature but that all reality runs together and it is only in our minds that these containers exist.

This is kind of a synthesis of ideas contained in “The Feeling of What Happens” by Antonio Damasio and “Where Mathematics Comes From” by Lakoff and Nunez.