8 Answers sorted by
50
Feeling pain after hearing a bad joke. "That's literally painful to hear" is self-reportedly (I say in the same way I, without a mind's eye, would say about mind's-eye-people) actually literal for some people.
731
these might all be relatively obvious but here are some I've found nice to notice
- brain waves are actual waves of activation that pass through the brain
- our neurons have actual literal weights, having more weight means having more stuff, physically. AI "weights" are named after that
- in relativity, spacetime is actually one thing. saying "space and time" is missing the point. though of course until we get a ToE unclear if that model is physically true - but it sure seems like a hint to me
- loud sounds are air smashing your ears
- "I didn't hear that" when people's low level processing fails to parse words someone said despite being perfectly able to receive the audio. not usually playing fool, in my experience
30
My example is when people say "I enjoy life" they mean actually enjoying life-as-whole and not like "I'm glad my life is net-positive" or whatever.
30
I also was kind of surprised when it turned out 'gut feeling' actually meant a feeling in your belly-area.
Added: I wonder if the notion of 'having a hunch' comes from something that causes you to hunch over?
20
For most forms of exercise (cardio, weightlifting, HIIT etc.) there's a a spectrum of default experiences people can have from feeling a drug-like high to grindingly unpleasant. "Runner's high" is not a metaphor, and muscle pump while weightlifting can feel similarly good. I recommend experimenting to find what's pleasant for you, though I'd guess valence of exercise is, unfortunately, quite correlated across forms.
Another axis of variation is the felt experience of music. "Music is emotional" is something almost everyone can agree to, but, for some, emotional songs can be frequently tear-jerking and for others that never happens.
10
This feels closely related to Alexithymia or emotion blindness
Extremely common in: people with ADHD / Autism (potentially over half)
Fairly common in: people who have PTSD, people with substance abuse issues (possibly causal, alexithymia -> drugs to feel something), and men (male-normative alexithymia)
People with alexithymia often identify their emotions primarily through physical sensations
For me (a male with autism, ADHD and PTSD) I can tell I'm feeling scared or anxious if my legs get cold (I believe this is a common form)
10
Sorry, I'm being very pedantic, but how are "picturing" and "mind's eye" not metaphorical? It's not like there's an actual picture or an actual eye anywhere, in fact that's the whole point
There is (for me) an actual experience of a picture. It seems only slightly metaphorical to call the faculty of experiencing such pictures “seeing” by an “eye”.
One test for the possession of such a faculty might be to count the vertexes of some regular (not necessarily Platonic) polyhedron, given only a verbal description.
People with aphantasia typically think that when someone says to "picture X in your mind", they're being entirely metaphorical. If you don't have a mind's eye, that's a super reasonable thing to think, but it turns out that you'd be wrong!
In that spirit, I recently discovered that many expressions about "feelings in your body" are not metaphorical. Sometimes, people literally feel a lump in their throat when they feel sad, or literally feel like their head is hot ("hot-headed") when they're angry.
It seems pretty likely to me that there are other non-metaphors that I currently think are metaphors, and likewise for other people here. So: what are some things that you thought were metaphors, that you later discovered were not metaphors?