Abstract

The chapter discusses the concepts of focus, viewpoint, role, and character and their role in providing connections between mental spaces and enabling people to transcend singularities. The singularity of human life and its impact on perception and understanding is discussed. Despite this singularity, humans are able to have multiple spatial and temporal viewpoints, as well as focus. A person's ability to assume multiple roles and characters throughout his life is also tackled. These concepts allow the construction of constancy across variation. However, humans and their lives present inconstancies and variations. The concept of blended spaces addresses this dilemma by their inherent ability to absorb incompatibilities. The notion of blended characters is then introduced, which involves identity and metaphoric projection. The last section discusses the GREAT CHAIN METAPHOR which is a model for projecting conceptual structures across the many levels of the Great Chain — the hierarchy of attributes by types.