I. Taylor’s Structural Templates

A certain type of metaphor has its roots in experiences we have as embodied beings in space from the day of our birth and even before. Taylor gives several examples: human beings learn to stand upright and climb on chairs and thereby also learn the concept of up and down, higher and lower. Kids fill and empty mugs and bowls, thereby investigating the concepts of full and empty as well as the concept of containers. They run around just to exercise a new ability, but with this ability they can also go somewhere with a purpose, ingraining the idea of a goal and a path. They balance themselves on rims and tree trunks and thereby develop the mental concept of balance. These multitudinous experiences create a kind of basic sensorimotor knowledge and memory. These bodily and spatial experiences are “a kind of … understanding of our world.” ^{Footnote 1} The term Taylor uses, “structural template,” ^{Footnote 2} is expressive in that it conveys that these experiences shape the experiences that follow. It is hard to imagine what it would feel like to live in a different world in which space is not three-dimensional or one that lacks gravity. It is equally hard to imagine living in a different kind of body. If my eyes were differently situated in my scull, for instance, it might mean not having simple notions such as in-front-of-me and behind-me. We would have a different perspective on the relative closeness or farness of things from the one we have. It would be equally difficult to imagine our interaction with the world if we were endowed with different kinds of faculties, such as, for instance, a different sense of balance or the complete lack of one, or different kinds of enervations of our muscles which would feed other information to the brain than which they do, in fact, now. ^{Footnote 3} Structural templates are what the cognitive linguists Mark Johnson and George Lakoff call “conceptual metaphors.” ^{Footnote 4} They ascribe conceptual metaphors an indispensable role for thinking; they even posit that they “govern our thoughts” [my emphasis] and “everyday functioning,” ^{Footnote 5} and that thinking does not take place outside of these kinds of metaphors. Taylor takes this up as follows: “Meanings in this sense are primary and inescapable. And that is because the know-how that makes them figure in our world is in a certain sense in the body.” ^{Footnote 6} But he also takes it further than Johnson and Lakoff. Where the latter refer to thought processes in general, Taylor refers to meanings. He links meaning with embodiment and experience of space. His reference to Lakoff and Johnson presents a novelty in that it is a reference to cognitive scientists. He had hitherto in these contexts referred to philosophers, like Ludwig Wittgenstein and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. This is remarkable, given Taylor’s longstanding critique of explaining human behaviour scientifically. Meaning seems to attain some materiality in that it is partly rooted in bodily experiences.

Taylor, together with Lakoff and Johnson, follows the thesis that human thinking is structured by metaphors in a tacit way. But even if these metaphors are tacit, they find their way into language, albeit without necessarily being recognizable as metaphors at first sight in the way that conventional metaphors are: ‘Her idea of an enjoyable holiday is very close to his,’ pertaining to spatial distance; ‘If I learn too many of the wrong things, there won’t be enough room for the right things,’ pertaining to containers; ‘We will reach the end of the workshop by 4pm,’ pertaining to paths and goals.

II. Why Taylor needs Structural Templates

Unlike ‘ordinary’ metaphors, structural templates are not applied to an existing concept or term. Rather, they are primary to the term or the concept. We understand something in a basic way because of our physical engagement with the world. Our spatial experience allows an intuitive access to the meaning of expressions of this kind. The language animal has a natural “sense of analogy.” ^{Footnote 7} She or he has a sense of what makes a word the right word. ^{Footnote 8} This linguistic ability is even more astonishing when one domain is “figured in terms of another.” ^{Footnote 9} It is apparently part of this capacity to convey and understand meaning even although ‘designative correct’ words have not been used. This conveying or understanding is, of course, fragile; it can go wrong, like all understanding can go wrong. The ability to take one thing for another and the attention Taylor gives to it underscore, to my mind, what Johann Gottfried Herder means by ‘Besonnenheit.’ Taylor defines ‘Besonnenheit,’ or ‘reflection,’ as being able “to grasp something as what it is.” ^{Footnote 10} That the reflective ability is primary to the ability of matching words becomes even more pronounced when metaphors are used because taking one thing for another in this way, and thereby understanding something as what it is, presupposes reflection. That even children are already able to take one thing for another using metaphors underscores this ability. ^{Footnote 11} With this particular kind of metaphor, it is the universally equal embodiment of human beings that serves for understanding. What Taylor defends here is a much richer attribution of linguistic capabilities to human beings than is held by those philosophers whom Taylor calls the HLC theorists, after Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Étienne Bonnet de Condillac.

III. Structural Templates and Paradigms

I agree with Taylor’s thoughts on metaphors and language for many reasons, which I cannot recount here. There is only one point that I would like to question, which is Taylor’s comparison of structural templates with scientific paradigms. ^{Footnote 12} It is a plausible comparison as they have much in common. Scientific paradigms structure our thinking in a similar manner as do structural templates, working pervasively and mostly below the level of conscious attention. All we perceive in connection with a situation or a problem is influenced, if not limited, by our embodiment and by valid paradigms: what we notice, how we notice what we notice, and how we act on these perceptions is already determined by both. Also, how we evaluate a situation, whether and in what way we define it as problematic or advantageous, and so on is shaped by them. Both can bring new aspects into sight but they can, at the same time, hide others. In the following example the structural template of a container applied to the brain transmits a view on learning, which probably leads to the limiting of one’s efforts. ‘If I learn too many of the wrong things, there won’t be enough room for the right things’ pictures knowledge as collected in a container. A network as a metaphor invokes an altogether different notion of learning. Bits of knowledge are committed to memory by connecting them to existing knowledge. The more knowledge someone already has to which new knowledge can be connected, the easier the whole process of learning becomes. In other words, in that picture, more knowledge would be easier to memorize than less. The ensuing learning strategy would be to learn many interconnected things rather than a few well-chosen ones. Isaac Newton’s theory on light provided new insights about waves and thereby became a scientific paradigm. But this paradigm was unable to account for phenomena that later came to the attention of scientists. These in turn were resolved by Albert Einstein’s theories, resulting in a new paradigm replacing the old one. Interestingly, the notions of structural templates and paradigms share at least some little bit of common history. Thomas Kuhn was influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea of the ‘form of life,’ not least because of his intensive contact with Stanley Cavell. ^{Footnote 13} Wittgenstein in turn was influenced by Wolfgang Köhler and the approach of Gestalt-psychology. The work of Lakoff and Johnson, on the other hand, was influenced, by Merleau-Ponty, who had adopted ideas of the Gestalt-psychologists.

But there are important differences between paradigms and structural templates. A structural template of the kind Taylor describes is relatively stable across cultural differences and historical change: “structural templates cannot go fully dead.” ^{Footnote 14} The cognitive linguist Joseph Grady expresses a similar thought. ^{Footnote 15} They are ‘primary metaphors’ in his nomenclature, first because they are shared across communities of different times and places and secondly because they are the basic components from which more complex metaphors are composed. They are a special subcategory within what Johnson and Lakoff call ‘concept metaphors.’ Taylor describes structural templates as though they are identical with primary metaphors. Our embodied and spatial experiences are not restricted to certain historical periods.

The basic conditions of embodiment and space remain the same throughout history and all over the world. Paradigms, on the other hand, do change. Indeed, it was the changing nature of paradigms that led Kuhn to develop the concept in the first place. A paradigm emerges at a particular historical point in time as an answer to a particular scientific question and is paradigmatic only until an event or anomaly occurs that exceeds its explanatory power and demands that a new solution be put forward. One might consider these differences to be negligible for the main thrust of Taylor’s argument and that the commonalities are more important in this context. But the difference offers a possibility that we should not ignore. The possibility can be seen by examining one of Taylor’s examples.

IV. ‘Time Is a Resource’ as Structural Template

I stumbled over Taylor’s comparison of structural templates and paradigms because of the example he uses: “Time Is a Resource.” ^{Footnote 16} Johnson and Lakoff, as well as Grady, take this for a structural template or, in their words, a “metaphor.” ^{Footnote 17} Their argument for time as a resource being a metaphor is that we experience time in the movement of objects relative to us, our movement relative to objects, and the experiences of changes in substances. ^{Footnote 18} Seen like this, time induces the idea of not wasting time and prompts behaviour oriented towards maximum efficiency, so that even leisure time is degraded to the purpose of replenishing one’s energy. If time as a resource were indeed a structural template as claimed, it would be difficult to imagine its change or to take a critical stance towards this conception of time as, indeed, Taylor himself does. He points out that this schema has “inhuman and destructive” effects. ^{Footnote 19} Taylor’s argument for it being a structural template in spite of the critique is that a metaphor accentuates some aspects and hides others and in this case the pernicious side is hidden.

Let us consider first whether this metaphor really is a structural template. For it to be so, it would need to have its roots in our embodiment, shaping our experience in a way similar to that in which we experience the ‘up-and-down’ schema. It would need to conform to the criteria of a “primary metaphor.” ^{Footnote 20} In the case of the primary metaphor, the content of the source domain, the domain from which an expression is drawn, consists of cognitive associations resulting from the sensory motor experiences and perceptions mentioned above. Grady calls them ‘simple’ experiences. Their target domain, the domain to which the metaphor is applied, is more abstract than their source domain. It is “not sophisticated like justice,” but consists in experienced everyday concepts like, for instance, weather. ^{Footnote 21} The question arises as to whether time can be experienced in such a basic way and consequently whether and how time can find its way into structural templates. Vyvyan Evans poses this question in his, rather ambitious, quest for the nature of time. ^{Footnote 22} Evans argues that experience of time is too complex for it to be a primary metaphor. He also argues that time is experienced rather as duration. However that may be, it means neither the source nor the target domain are as simple and sensuously perceptible as a primary metaphor would demand.

Can the complex models of temporality, which appear in our everyday figurative speech and which express this concept of time, be taken to be a kind of paradigm? If ‘Time Is a Resource’ were a paradigm, it would, during its phase of general acceptance, provide the general model for thinking about time. This model would not be questioned. It would, on the contrary, be taken for granted that this just is what time is. It would determine convictions and expected behaviour. Those experiences with time that failed to fit the paradigm would escape notice and explication. ^{Footnote 23}

V. ‘Time Is a Resource’ as a Paradigm

The differences between metaphors and paradigms can be found on several levels, as we have seen above. I want to posit that viewing time as a resource as a paradigm rather than a metaphor is clarifying. I want to first ask whether and how this particular paradigm could change and secondly scrutinize a bit more thoroughly the question of whether and what is hidden.

Sheldon Wolin has reconceptualised Kuhn’s ideas of paradigms for social contexts. ^{Footnote 24} He concludes that social paradigms change when crises arise. Taylor himself discusses changes of social paradigms in Explanation and Practical Reason. ^{Footnote 25} He uses the example of punishment and explicates how it is not a changed perception of pain that leads to new views on punishment but, rather, a different concept of the world: “If the whole outlook which justifies trumping the principle of minimizing suffering—which involves seeing the cosmos as a meaningful order in which human society is embedded as a microcosm or mirror—comes to be set aside, then it is rational to be concerned above all to reduce suffering.” ^{Footnote 26} This means no less than a given practice changes when the overall worldview changes. How does this pertain to ‘Time Is a Resource’? The phrase invokes a conception of time as a neutral means, which can be deployed at one’s discretion but also with economical care. The historian Edward Palmer Thompson, in a much quoted study on the changes of the understanding of time from the 14^th century onwards, narrates the ‘paradigm change’ towards an understanding of time that implies that it should not be wasted. He points to parallel historical developments of an increasing distribution of timepieces and the necessity of measuring time in order to synchronize workers in ever more complex working processes. ^{Footnote 27} This necessity increases with the introduction of production machinery. He explicitly opposes pinning these changes down to causes that can be investigated by one discipline, meaning there cannot be a single cause for this development. He argues instead that the change must be described as a cultural one, which in the phraseology of this piece can be called a ‘paradigm’: “It is also that there has never been any single type of ‘the transition.’ The stress of the transition falls upon the whole culture ….” ^{Footnote 28} A paradigm entails a set of norms and practices. And indeed that one ought not to waste time is quite a strong normative demand.

One of the commonalities between metaphors and paradigms is that they show up certain aspects and hide others. But what follows out of invisibility of the hidden aspects is quite different in both cases. It particularly has consequences for the way in which paradigms change and arguably in which one could critique them if need be. Taylor says that the “inhuman and destructive … behavior” induced by this “structuring metaphor” is hidden. ^{Footnote 29} Let us look at a problem arising from the way structural templates hide aspects and at what can be done about it. Because of their nature, limitations of a structural template are less likely to show up in everyday life. But in scholarly contexts they can cause problems. An example is the everyday grasp of climate change. Structural templates are applied to subject matters of this abstract kind, and they do provide a first inkling of these rather difficult topics, but without further input they lead to a reduced or even wrong understanding. Studies analyzing how researchers master the understanding of climate change show that they combine several basic structural templates and metaphors. ^{Footnote 30} Kai Niebert tells us how basic metaphors are crucial in facilitating understanding of abstract topics outside the range of everyday experience but are also, at the same time, limiting. A deeper understanding of complex contents needs to surpass what the structural template shows. The interesting point in this context is that the problem is solved by more detailed explanations. In a way, this is an interplay between structural templates and the kind of explanatorily correct use of language advocated by the HLC theorists. Taylor endorses the utilization of this kind of language but points out that its applicability is limited to certain fields. ^{Footnote 31}

In the case of paradigms, this ‘invisibility problem’ is of quite a different nature. Sociologist, Hartmut Rosa, ^{Footnote 32} like Taylor, says that time norms are behind our backs and invisible. A paradigm does make some things invisible during the phases of normal science. ^{Footnote 33} Its foundations are invisible as well. Indeed, a ruling paradigm itself is so taken for granted that it escapes notice and explication. Critique presupposes visibility. So, although not the invisibility Taylor had in mind, there are hidden aspects within paradigms. But it is arguable whether the “destructive and inhumane” aspects of this particular paradigm are invisible. Many people do complain about the obligation to use all time efficiently and/or effectively in everyday conversations, in the media, and so on. Furthermore, many scholars, including Rosa, critically discuss this attitude. ^{Footnote 34} The crisis is obvious for everyone to notice. It is noticeable, for instance, that people suffer from burnout and depression. The “destructive and inhumane” aspects of this particular paradigm are, in fact, quite visible but all the same do not seem to lead to change. I want to posit a different reason for the difficulty to critique this understanding of time or to bring about change. Other social paradigms, political or moral or religious, induce, or can induce, conflict between them due to not being universally held. ^{Footnote 35} ‘Time Is a Resource’ may not have this potential for being a target because of its ‘nature.’ We have seen above that it acquired its present, almost ubiquitous, status partly because of the necessity of organizing more complex work processes. In an analogous way, time as a neutral, empty resource serves to organize a more densely knit, more fragmented, and plural society. On a personal level, we plan how to sequence or combine our different spheres of life, our wishes, needs, and obligations, by allotting time correspondingly. This is possible only with a concept of time that views time as a neutral resource that is independent of what happens within it. On social levels of a different scale, it is this paradigm that allows the organization and management of the plurality of possible conflicts between different persons or groups holding different values. Niklas Luhmann has written about a connection between time, complexity, and values, claiming that time understood in this way is the means for organizing social systems so that value conflicts can be managed rather than fought. ^{Footnote 36} So, the ‘invisibility’ may be more than the normal invisibility of normal functioning paradigms. It may instead be a case of the successful pervasion of all spheres of life because this notion of time as a neutral means plays a necessary role of in our globalized and pluralistic era.