Miller says;
Thinking that tries to achieve and identify a quality without reference to anything else in the world.(i.e. issues of similarity or stand-in-ability are irrelevant). I reply that it's not possible to achieve and identify a quality, or a quantity, without some reference to actual real-world experience, first hand, second, or hand billionth hand. Everything, even ideas as metaphors, look like something else (even other metaphors). No exceptions. Ever. Look at yourself in a mirror, Miller, and try to deny you are constructing in your brain a (very imaginative) metaphorical stand-in of yourself. Make any shape you want and it'll look like something else -- even if you don't think so. You cannot imagine or make anything that is without reference, many references. Your homework today is to take a stone and list all the other things it could stand for, what it looks like, what it could be as a stand in for something else. Try to get to 50. wc
