Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Imagery

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Imagery

Imagery of sight

The narrator uses the mirror depict the sense of sight to readers. The narrator writes, "If we have a Wittgensteinian notion of language as tool rather than mirror, we will not look for necessary conditions of the possibility of linguistic representation. If we have a Heideggerian conception of philosophy, we will see the attempt to make the nature of the knowing subject a source of necessary truths as one more self-deceptive attempt to substitute a "technical" and determinate question for that openness to strangeness which initially tempted us to begin thinking.

The Imagery of analytic philosophy

The narrator engages readers to visualize the similarity and distinction between Cartesian and Kantian patterns of philosophy. The narrator says, “One way to see how analytic philosophy fits within the traditional Cartesian-Kantian pattern is to see traditional philosophy as an attempt to escape from history-an attempt to find nonhistorical conditions of any possible historical development.”

The imagery of feeling

The imagery of feeling is portrayed when the narrator says, “We seem to have no doubt that pains, moods, images, and sentences which "flash before the mind," dreams, hallucinations, beliefs, attitudes, desires, and intentions all count as "mental" whereas the contractions of the stomach which cause the pain, the neural processes which accompany it, and everything else which can be given a firm location within the body count as nonmental. The imagery is vital in triggering the reader’s feeling and concentration while reading the book.

The imagery of touch

One of the best ways of engaging readers is triggering their emotions and connectivity to the subject under discussion. The narrator excels in this by telling readers what went through the ancient philosophers as they made their conclusions. The narrator writes, “They had notions like wanting to and intending to and "believing that" and "feeling terrible" and "feeling marvelous." But they had no notion that these signified mental states-states of a peculiar and distinct sort--quite different from "sitting down," "having a cold," and "being sexually aroused.”

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