Metaphors, politics, and religion

[dougo]

An interesting debate about politics and cognitive science:

Stephen Pinker reviews and rebuts George Lakoff's Whose Freedom?
George Lakoff responds
Stephen Pinker responds (subscription only, unfortunately, and I don't plan to subscribe to the New Republic any time soon)

I don't have the energy right now to add my own thoughts, so I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader (that is, feel free to post your own thoughts, and/or guess why my thoughts are). But I thought it was worth passing on. We report, you decide!

I found this via a longish sequence of links starting with memegarden's post about an essay by Doug Muder about thiesm and atheism. He echoes my thoughts about operational definitions: he classifies people as "functional theists" and "functional atheists", which gets rid of the need for an "agnostic" category—either your actions are affected by the idea of God, or they aren't. The rest of the essay (actually a Unitarian sermon) is a little too relativistic for me, but it's an interesting read.

Anyway, Muder also writes about Lakoff's ideas, as well as those of James Ault and Thomas Frank (What's the Matter with Kansas?—and, anyone here remember The Baffler?), synthesizing them into a different model of contrasting kinds of families. libertarianhawk points out that this is conflating views about the family metaphor of government with views of actual families, and refines the model into two dimensions (rather like other two dimensional ideological graphs). My eyes kind of glazed over halfway through these essays, but it's worth skimming at least.

Comments

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

i agree with lakoff that pinker mischaracterizes lakoff's position.

in general i have problems with pinker in that in pursuing his theory of language and mind that he tends to poopoo phenomena that his theory isn't so good at explaining.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Do you have any examples? (I'm reading The Blank Slate at the moment.)

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

1) the dog bit the man.
2) the man bit the dog.
3) the man hit the dog.
*4) the dog hit the man.
5) the man hit the dog with the stick.
**6) the dog hit the man with the stick.

4 can be ungrammatical, but it's easy to imagine the dog bounding down the street and running into the man.

but 6 is hard to make into a grammatical because of semantic implications.

pinker's theory doesn't deal with this well. it appears that a more general/cognitive element is needed beyond a language module/instinct.

there's a much better example of this but i can't remember it off the top of my head. i'll see if i can find it.

* * *

also he doesn't (or didn't) address the issue that primary language (language learned while young) seems to be in the language part of the brain he proposes, but that secondary language (language learned around or after the teen years) seems to be in a different part of the brain (not part of the brain specialized to language).

* * *

it isn't that so much that he's wrong about what his theory does explain, but he every so often attacks things that this theory doesn't explain and/or attack things that do not support (but do not necessarily attack) his theory.

in general what this theory covers does seem to be quiet good/correct. but he makes the (implicit) egotistical error that his theory explains everything that matters.

he takes the position that language is "an "instinct" or biological adaptation shaped by natural selection rather than a by-product of general intelligence." he often writes as if general intelligence doesn't get involved in the language process at all.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I don't understand how "the dog hit the man" is ungrammatical at all.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

depends how it's used. hit often implies hands.

also, the better example i don't remember is a series of sentences all of which are grammatical alone, but when in strung together thet last sentence sounds ungrammatical.

its the opposite of:
1) beans i like.

which on the surface looks ungrammatical. however, in context it makes sense.

a) i hate peas.
b) i hate celery.
1) beans i like.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

As a political scientist, Lakoff is an excellent linguist.

[jodiamonds.livejournal.com]

I've often said that "I live my life as if it doesn't matter if there's a god."

I like the terms 'function theist' and 'functional atheist', as far as they go. The sermon is as you say -- interesting, if with a perspective or bent that doesn't necessarily speak to me.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

one of the problems with lakoff's theory is that he's a fine cognitive scientist, but he's not as good as social psychology. the actions of an individual and the actions of a group do not always align. he implicitly uses the theory that groups tend to act like prototypical, archetypical, or stereotypical individuals.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

I think he saw an easy, compelling, and completely wrong connection between his research and his politics, and fell in love with it.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

i don't think it's completely wrong. but it is very incomplete in the last step.

he understands a lot about how to get individuals to think certain things.
he understands a bit less about how thoughts lead to action in individuals.

his big gap is that he's not so good at getting from individual action to collective action.

most of his unsupported conjecture is how individual though becomes action of the electorate.

* * *

can you point out where it is completely wrong?

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

Well, ruining the project from square one is the fact that (as Pinker points out in some detail) Lakoff grasps conservative psychology and ideology(-ies) about as well as Jack Chick grasps Islam¹. Conservatives get that way because they worship the Devil Moon God Strict Father. It's a ludicrously reductionistic, distorted, and (because of this) fundamentally unserious stance from which to purport to explain political psychology, and suggests that any valid insights in the rest of his theory are of the stopped-clock variety.


1: Speaking as neither a fan of conservatism nor Islam here.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

having heard the argument lakoff makes in person, pinker seriously misconstrues what lakoff is saying.

so what pinker says lakoff says is ludicrous and distorted.

what lakoff has to say is better grounded than what pinker misunderstands.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

ps have you read lakoff's book?

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

Read some of his articles on his current theory, and Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (which I liked) years ago. I don't see any reason to read the book; his errors are up front.

[stoneself.livejournal.com]

his errors are up front

they are. but not the ones you've mentioned so far.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

Uhhh yeah, you have fun with that.