Cultural image schemata

Per the last post, nirvana is not the same for everyone. I also like the 'not thinking' inference, as if that is the ultimate in meditation experience. And that if it's non-conceptual it must therefore be the same experience. Balder replied in this post that this is one of Ferrer's criticisms.

Recall this post and several following. (The link to the book for that post is a couple posts up.) It seems that even pre-linguistic image schemata, which I've argued are the medium through which we contact non-conceptual awareness, have cultural differences. Yes, we share some universal features of embodiment, but even those are tweaked by particular environments and the cultures that grow up adapting to them. There is valid criticism about L&J's over-emphasis on embodied individual universalism which I related to Piaget, versus the more contingent and social constructivism of schemas more in line with Vygotsky. Hence from a broader cognitive linguistic paradigm even non-conceptual experience is not only not the same for everyone but it some cases quite different.


Btw Kimmel, the author of the first linked reference in the last post, has an article in the latest Integral Review per this post and following, covering some of the same ground on how the universal and contextual mix and match. Also see this Kimmel article.