notes-cog-metaphor-conceptualBlending

" Fauconnier and Turner (2002) explain Conceptual Blending Theory in terms of “mental spaces,… small conceptual packets” connected to “long-term schematic knowledge called ‘frames,’” as well as to “long-term specific knowledge” (p. 40). The mental spaces are illustrated by circles, with relevant contents either displayed iconically or listed in abbreviated form (see Figure 1). The model posits a minimum of four mental spaces: Two input spaces, a generic space that contains what the two inputs have in common, and a blended space that contains some elements from each input space. The blended space may also contain additional elements (“emergent structure”) that can include new elements retrieved from long-term memory or resulting from comparison of elements drawn from the separate inputs, or from elaboration on the elements in the blended space (“running the blend”).

Example: A monk climbing a mountain. Fauconnier and Turner (2002) frequently return to a logical puzzle drawn from Koestler, in which a monk climbs a mountain on one day, beginning at dawn and arriving at sunset, then returns down the mountain on a subsequent day, again beginning at dawn and arriving at sunset. The task is to show that there is some place along the path that the monk occupies at the same hour of the day on the different journeys. The solution preferred by Fauconnier and Turner is to imagine the monk walking both up and down on the same day, a scenario constructed by taking elements of two separate input spaces, one for the monk walking up the mountain on one day and one for the monk walking down the mountain on a different day, and “blending” them into a single image (blended space). A “generic space,” containing everything the two “input spaces” have in common (the monk, the mountain path, and a day beginning at dawn and ending at sunset), is required to support the blend (Figure 1). In the blend, the mountain slope and the two separate days are fused into a single mountain slope and a single day, but the two monk images cannot be fused, because they move in opposite directions, so they map into the fourth, “blended space,” as two separate individuals. When we “run the blend,” by imagining the two individual monks progressing along the path, we see that they must inevitably meet. "

-- http://web.pdx.edu/~cgrd/Metaphors%20of%20Conceptual%20Integration.html