Bill Pirkle wrote:

>Jim Paterson mentioned that the vocabulary of one art form is often used
>to express something in another art form by way of metaphor and I agree.
>...  When we observe some phenomenon, the brain trys to match it with
>stored phenomenon and say this is kind of like, say "harmony".  Metaphors
>and not well understood in terms of how the brain generates them.  Why
>would Shakespeare say "the winter of our discontent" or we may talk about
>"the shape of a melody".  (How can sounds occuring in time have a shape,
>which is a visual concept.)

If I may assume what you are trying to do: to reduce art form into an
abstract yet understandable language?

This has been attmpted, but only in spoken word text.  Carnap attempted
to form a new language in his 'Aufbau' but he failed.  I don't know how
relevant this is to what you are trying to do, but it seems like you are
generalizing a whole lot of important matters.  For instance, how you say
that a 'word' is a concept is somewhat fallacious.  Frege, Quine and other
language philosophers have dealt with the matter and to my knowledge they
come up with no such conclusion.

In any case, you are taking the reductionist/empiricist view of the world
where all concepts/ideas/whatever can be based/found in everyday experience
- or thorough investigation I suppose ['the brain has stored phenomenon].
I always believed that one of the greatest things about art is that it
appeals to the imagination, that it disregards the living world.  As for
the brain/mind assigning a word to a set of phenomenon that defines the
word - you must consider what you call define.  Are you speaking of a
synonym? If so, that does not really give us a clear idea, still, of what
you may be witnessing [you are saying a word defines a word because, as you
stated, 'concepts are words'].

It seems that your central question is 'why does the brain chose a
specific word/assigns a word to express something (metaphorically or
whatever)'.  A brain chooses a particular word within the boundaries of its
known vocabulary given to it by outside circumstance - eg.  the culture in
which the person is living - to whatever the human feels, understands, etc.

As to the metaphor and the Shakespeare example, Frege, and other logicians
 [I'm sure Russell included], always came to a consensus about analyzing the
form of words and sentences when it comes to poetry or any written work
whose characteristics are primarily artistic: DON'T!!!!!!

Anyway, I don't understand really what you are trying to achieve here,
and I don't see why it needs t be achieved.  I haven't been following the
thread from where you started.

-Mark Knezevic
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http://www.iinet.net.au/~dydx/