Reuniting Perception and Conception

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Research Notes:

1)      Image Schemas: Image schemas are schematic, embodied representation within the brain that are pre-conceptual, non-representational, non-propositional entities that accumulate to provide a base for concepts.

a.       The Image Schema BALANCE is created by the embodied experience of balancing for an individual. The experience of balancing provides a pre-conceptual notion of balance that can be used later, after many trials of balance, to provide a polysemic ( multiple meaning) understanding of the notion of balance in the world. Such as the balance of good and evil. Or a fair trade, the situation has balanced giving and taking and it is dictated as fair. This concept derived from a bodily experience of balancing.

b.      Schematic: Image Schemas are not holistic image representations of the event experienced. They are schematic, partly constructed, patterns of interactions of the experience within the world. After many schematic representations have been accrued a solid base for the concept of balance will be formed.

c.       Embodied: Image Schemas are body based. They are dependant upon how the body interacts with the world. The schema BALANCE depends upon how the body controls its muscles in response to a feedback from the nervous system and input from the environment. They cannot be separated from the environment because they stem from it.

d.      Pre-Conceputal: Image Schemas are present before concepts are formed. They provide a base for concepts to be built upon later. They are not conscious images because this would imply a concept. But rather they are patterns of interactions of embodied interaction with the world that predates concepts. Hence, they are preconceptual.

e.       Non-representational: There is no duality between the subject and the activity. The activity is not being represented within the mind of the individual. Image schemas are patterns of interaction that include both the activity and the subject in an interwoven experience that gives rise to schematic structures.

f.       Non-propositional- they are non-linguistic, as in pre-conceptual. They also do not employ any language of thought.

g.      Image schemas are formed through a process called perceptual analysis. This is the process that the mind goes through in order to take sensory input and construct a schematic representation of the object that includes the multimodal/kinesthetic response that the object evoked. The representation does not resemble the object that it encoded, but the individual is able to apply the perceptually processed object in order to have an understanding of it.

                                                            i.      The information processed is transformed from a perceptual input to a non-perceptual form that represents a meaning. It differs from normal perception because it only occurs with the attention of the individual. These representations are crude analogues to the information it stems from.

                                                          ii.      Mandler puts forth this theory and this theory of concept formation is the opposite of what Piaget proposes. Piaget thinks that imitation produces imagery that enables thought. Mandler, with perceptual analysis, thinks that image schemas stemming from the perceptual analysis of perceptual information provide the meaning that enables imitation to take place.