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The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain
In What's the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank pointed out that a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests. In The Political Mind, George Lakoff explains why. As it turns out, human beings are not the rational creatures we've so long imagined ourselves to be. Ideas, morals, and values do not exist somewhere outside the body, ready to be examined and put to use. Instead, they exist quite literally inside the brain and they take physical shape there. For example, we form particular kinds of narratives in our minds just like we form specific muscle memories such as typing or dancing, and then we fit new information into those narratives. Getting that information out of one narrative type and into another or building a whole new narrative altogether can be as hard as learning to play the banjo. Changing your mind isn't like changing your body it's the same thing. But as long as progressive politicians and activists persist in believing that people use an objective system of reasoning to decide on their politics, the Democrats will continue to lose elections. They must wrest control of the terms of the debate from their opponents rather than accepting their frame and trying to argue within it. This passionate, erudite, and groundbreaking book will appeal to readers of Steven Pinker and Thomas Frank. It is a fascinating read for anyone interested in how the mind works, how society works, and how they work together.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published May 29, 2008
About the author
George Lakoff
45 books798 followersGeorge Lakoff is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at UC Berkeley and is one of the founders of the field of cognitive science.
He is author of The New York Times bestseller Don't Think of an Elephant!, as well as Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, Whose Freedom?, and many other books and articles on cognitive science and linguistics.
He is author of The New York Times bestseller Don't Think of an Elephant!, as well as Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, Whose Freedom?, and many other books and articles on cognitive science and linguistics.
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August 9, 2012
I was drawn to this book mostly because I knew of the author’s reputation as a cognitive scientist and as someone who was known for spelling out how cognitive science overlaps with, and largely explains, many of the phenomena that we recognize as falling along the left-right spectrum of political ideologies. And Lakoff certainly does offer some insights into how thinking occurs, and what in particular is unique about the way we think about political issues.
Lakoff’s main idea, which should be apparent to anyone who watches endless hours of cable hours in rapture as I do, is that whoever controls the narrative frames of a debate controls the issue itself, and therefore always wins. How is this the case? Lakoff says that our view of rationality is largely, and erroneously, informed by the Enlightenment, which assumed it was conscious, universal, disembodied, logical, unemotional, value-neutral, interest-based, and literal. He shows several reasons why almost none of these are actually true. For example, we make decisions, to help others perhaps, that don’t actually maximize our own self-interest, and that are tied up with value and emotional content.
He claims that Democrats - very often with a grating, whiny tone - remain stuck in this view of rationality. Because of this, they are still in the habit of trying to lasso the facts, build charts and models, and explain why Republicans are simply wrong on many of the issues. Lakoff claims that this just isn’t enough. Evidence, reason, facts, and figures won’t win debates, he claims. But Republicans have learned how human reason really works – that it is in fact couched in tropes, metaphors, emotional phrases and associations – and they use them to their advantage in shaping political issues and talking points. Republicans just couch the issue in the terms that will helps them (their “narrative frames”), and then repeat that frame over and over again until it sticks in the minds of the public. Once stuck, it’s difficult, but not impossible, to dislodge. But doing so would just be a matter of finding the right frame that speaks to your political basis, and saying it repeatedly.
For example, conservatives have controlled the ideological frame regarding the “war on terror” for the last decade, and therefore they control many of the issues that we associate with “homeland security” (another phrase unused unquestioningly, according to Lakoff, that plays into Republican and neoconservative hands). Instead of accepting the frames of questions like “Do you think we should continue to fight the war on terror, or pull out?” or “Should middle class tax cuts be extended, or should they get a tax hike?” the issues need to be reformulated to emphasis what Lakoff thinks are the values of liberals and progressives: fairness, equality, and government accountability. In other words, re-frame the issues in such a way that benefits your own positions. And then repeat that framing. Over and over and over and over again – because, according to him, that’s the only way you’re going to win the debate.
There are a lot of problems with this book, though. With an objective-sounding title like ��The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics,” I didn’t really want any of Lakoff’s partisan comments. I knew before opening the book that he’s a committed liberal (many of my own sympathies, too, are very much left of center), but he spends too much time demonizing one political perspective, glorifying another, and too little time providing details and supporting evidence for the claims that he’s making. I feel that this saps the book of almost all of its credibility. In order to have a book be a powerful explanatory tool, instead of a passing as a fat pamphlet for the Obama campaign, it should stick to the facts of the matter accompanied, perhaps, with some reasonable inductions, predictions, and details of methodological practice. Calling President Bush a “traitor” (which he actually does) accomplishes nothing. Furthermore, it made me realize more and more as I read it that this book is simply an example of what he was talking about: a successful example of framing issues in an advantageous way. Of course, he would be the last person to actually bring that to the reader’s attention.
I think the book may have suffered from being written for too popular an audience, too. It seems that the political potshots were filler for an audience who was more eager to see their opponent trashed than to actually read something about how cognitive science can help us better understand how we think metaphorically about political issues. I came really close to giving this two stars, which I almost never do, but thought there were a couple of insights that salvaged it from being a total loss, so I opted for three stars instead. For someone interested in this topic, I suggest looking elsewhere.
Lakoff’s main idea, which should be apparent to anyone who watches endless hours of cable hours in rapture as I do, is that whoever controls the narrative frames of a debate controls the issue itself, and therefore always wins. How is this the case? Lakoff says that our view of rationality is largely, and erroneously, informed by the Enlightenment, which assumed it was conscious, universal, disembodied, logical, unemotional, value-neutral, interest-based, and literal. He shows several reasons why almost none of these are actually true. For example, we make decisions, to help others perhaps, that don’t actually maximize our own self-interest, and that are tied up with value and emotional content.
He claims that Democrats - very often with a grating, whiny tone - remain stuck in this view of rationality. Because of this, they are still in the habit of trying to lasso the facts, build charts and models, and explain why Republicans are simply wrong on many of the issues. Lakoff claims that this just isn’t enough. Evidence, reason, facts, and figures won’t win debates, he claims. But Republicans have learned how human reason really works – that it is in fact couched in tropes, metaphors, emotional phrases and associations – and they use them to their advantage in shaping political issues and talking points. Republicans just couch the issue in the terms that will helps them (their “narrative frames”), and then repeat that frame over and over again until it sticks in the minds of the public. Once stuck, it’s difficult, but not impossible, to dislodge. But doing so would just be a matter of finding the right frame that speaks to your political basis, and saying it repeatedly.
For example, conservatives have controlled the ideological frame regarding the “war on terror” for the last decade, and therefore they control many of the issues that we associate with “homeland security” (another phrase unused unquestioningly, according to Lakoff, that plays into Republican and neoconservative hands). Instead of accepting the frames of questions like “Do you think we should continue to fight the war on terror, or pull out?” or “Should middle class tax cuts be extended, or should they get a tax hike?” the issues need to be reformulated to emphasis what Lakoff thinks are the values of liberals and progressives: fairness, equality, and government accountability. In other words, re-frame the issues in such a way that benefits your own positions. And then repeat that framing. Over and over and over and over again – because, according to him, that’s the only way you’re going to win the debate.
There are a lot of problems with this book, though. With an objective-sounding title like ��The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics,” I didn’t really want any of Lakoff’s partisan comments. I knew before opening the book that he’s a committed liberal (many of my own sympathies, too, are very much left of center), but he spends too much time demonizing one political perspective, glorifying another, and too little time providing details and supporting evidence for the claims that he’s making. I feel that this saps the book of almost all of its credibility. In order to have a book be a powerful explanatory tool, instead of a passing as a fat pamphlet for the Obama campaign, it should stick to the facts of the matter accompanied, perhaps, with some reasonable inductions, predictions, and details of methodological practice. Calling President Bush a “traitor” (which he actually does) accomplishes nothing. Furthermore, it made me realize more and more as I read it that this book is simply an example of what he was talking about: a successful example of framing issues in an advantageous way. Of course, he would be the last person to actually bring that to the reader’s attention.
I think the book may have suffered from being written for too popular an audience, too. It seems that the political potshots were filler for an audience who was more eager to see their opponent trashed than to actually read something about how cognitive science can help us better understand how we think metaphorically about political issues. I came really close to giving this two stars, which I almost never do, but thought there were a couple of insights that salvaged it from being a total loss, so I opted for three stars instead. For someone interested in this topic, I suggest looking elsewhere.
December 2, 2014
I read this book because it was chosen by a (face-to-face) book club I belong to, and I believed it to be a science read. My initial response was great disappointment, because this is very much a book of politics rather than science. So you know where I'm coming from, I should explain that I am a biomedical engineer working in the field of magnetic resonance imaging. Going back to childhood, my favorite subjects were math and art, and I began eschewing social studies in high school. At this point, I have a considerable gap regarding current thought in psychology/sociology. However, this book does briefly touch on MRI and on Artificial Intelligence, both of which I have background in, from one time or another in my career.
Part 1 is "How the Brain Shapes the Political Mind". The substance of the book is explained here - namely that progressive and conservative political thought in the US is rooted in a pair of interfering fundamental neural frames. Diverse progressive political positions are associated with empathy, while diverse conservative political positions are associated with authority. It is much more complex than that, but I just want to give the gist of it here. What little there is of science in the book, is explained in this section.
Lakoff identifies himself as a progressive, and the book is heavily slanted that way. In fact, a lot of it consists of recommendations on how to sway conservatives to progressive positions. He goes so far as to label "biconceptuals" like me as "confused" and "hypocritical". His own views are the "New Enlightenment" and quite glorious.
Part 2 is "Political Challenges for the Twenty-first Century Mind". This part was somewhat repetitive, but clearly uses examples to explain how progressive and conservative political frames operate. It is very specific on US national political issues of 2008, most of which are still with us in new form. The civil war in Iraq and now Syria has moved on to a whole new scenario since then. But the coverage of health care and the role of government is quite relevant.
Part 3 is "The Technical is the Political" This part was a hodge-podge of additional topics or expansions of earlier topics. In "Exploring the Human Brain" he briefly and accurately gives the reasons fMRI is of limited utility in his field. Unfortunately, this means that the majority of his research is done using word association tests of human subjects and the like. In "The Metaphors Defining Rational Action" he ventures into logic and decision trees. Probably this is an issue in his own field, but somewhat trivial and off topic from this book, in my opinion. In "Language in the New Enlightenment" he gives some of the academic background for his work, touching on AI, which I enjoyed and would have appreciated much earlier.
Apparently, this is not his first book on the subject, but I am unfamiliar with the others. I feel that this book covers important material, but that it does not cover it effectively. In particular, I think it descends into overblown claims of importance, name calling, and villianization, thereby undermining its own credibility. I downloaded a sample of one book he referenced - The Political Brain, by Drew Westen - and in its beginning at least, it seems more to my liking.
Part 1 is "How the Brain Shapes the Political Mind". The substance of the book is explained here - namely that progressive and conservative political thought in the US is rooted in a pair of interfering fundamental neural frames. Diverse progressive political positions are associated with empathy, while diverse conservative political positions are associated with authority. It is much more complex than that, but I just want to give the gist of it here. What little there is of science in the book, is explained in this section.
Lakoff identifies himself as a progressive, and the book is heavily slanted that way. In fact, a lot of it consists of recommendations on how to sway conservatives to progressive positions. He goes so far as to label "biconceptuals" like me as "confused" and "hypocritical". His own views are the "New Enlightenment" and quite glorious.
Part 2 is "Political Challenges for the Twenty-first Century Mind". This part was somewhat repetitive, but clearly uses examples to explain how progressive and conservative political frames operate. It is very specific on US national political issues of 2008, most of which are still with us in new form. The civil war in Iraq and now Syria has moved on to a whole new scenario since then. But the coverage of health care and the role of government is quite relevant.
Part 3 is "The Technical is the Political" This part was a hodge-podge of additional topics or expansions of earlier topics. In "Exploring the Human Brain" he briefly and accurately gives the reasons fMRI is of limited utility in his field. Unfortunately, this means that the majority of his research is done using word association tests of human subjects and the like. In "The Metaphors Defining Rational Action" he ventures into logic and decision trees. Probably this is an issue in his own field, but somewhat trivial and off topic from this book, in my opinion. In "Language in the New Enlightenment" he gives some of the academic background for his work, touching on AI, which I enjoyed and would have appreciated much earlier.
Apparently, this is not his first book on the subject, but I am unfamiliar with the others. I feel that this book covers important material, but that it does not cover it effectively. In particular, I think it descends into overblown claims of importance, name calling, and villianization, thereby undermining its own credibility. I downloaded a sample of one book he referenced - The Political Brain, by Drew Westen - and in its beginning at least, it seems more to my liking.
July 28, 2009
Lakoff, a cognitive scientist, looks at 30 years of scientific research on the human brain, and asks some political questions. What he finds is the political divide is “not just in geography, religion or even power”, it in our heads (no pun intended).
Our country was born from the age of Enlightenment when reason was king, and emotion was irrelevant. Emotions were seen as just cluttering the issue at hand. The idea an educated, well informed, rational society will make rational, logical, fact based decisions and be able to adequately self govern. Rational being making rational decisions is an underlying foundation of our society, from the judicial system to the nightly news. Lakoff shows us that we do not act rationally, and asks why.
Science tells us that 98% of our thought is unconscious. We are only aware of 2% of our thoughts. Lakoff demonstrates that this heavily impacts our society through word choice, metaphors, and the framing of issues.. A good example is when the Republicans discussed the Democrats plan of a timeline to exit Iraq. Republicans used the term “cut and run.” A person can’t hear “cut and run” without the feeling of cowardness or surrendering . Another good example is using the term “surge” in the Iraq war, as opposed to using the word “escalation.”
Lakoff offers some constructive criticism for the “liberal” thought process. Liberals argue by listing of facts like an encyclopedia and expecting people to digest them like a machine and arrive at logical, rational conclusions. Sound familiar? It did to me. “Conservative” thought prefer to use emotions over lists of facts. Now you’ll have to read the book, because the liberal thought process is not just used by liberals, and vice versa, with the conservative thought process. Lakoff argues against the metaphor of politics being described as right and left.
Lakoff tempers the science of the brain with bits with pop culture, which keeps the reader interested and makes them aware of the ingrained nature of what Lakoff is discussing. He brings in the Anna Nicole saga, Reagan’s fictional “Welfare Queen”, the latest in neural science, and a analysis of framing and metaphors, to provide insight as to why reason alone is ineffective, that we need emotion, and new enlightenment.
Hands down this was the best book I read all year. It taught me to listen to what people are saying during a politcal conversation, instead of thinking of what I will say next to refute what I think they are saying. We all have more in common than we are lead to believe; that commonality should be the starting point for change, not the places where we differ. This book will help you be a better communicator, listener, and thinker.
Our country was born from the age of Enlightenment when reason was king, and emotion was irrelevant. Emotions were seen as just cluttering the issue at hand. The idea an educated, well informed, rational society will make rational, logical, fact based decisions and be able to adequately self govern. Rational being making rational decisions is an underlying foundation of our society, from the judicial system to the nightly news. Lakoff shows us that we do not act rationally, and asks why.
Science tells us that 98% of our thought is unconscious. We are only aware of 2% of our thoughts. Lakoff demonstrates that this heavily impacts our society through word choice, metaphors, and the framing of issues.. A good example is when the Republicans discussed the Democrats plan of a timeline to exit Iraq. Republicans used the term “cut and run.” A person can’t hear “cut and run” without the feeling of cowardness or surrendering . Another good example is using the term “surge” in the Iraq war, as opposed to using the word “escalation.”
Lakoff offers some constructive criticism for the “liberal” thought process. Liberals argue by listing of facts like an encyclopedia and expecting people to digest them like a machine and arrive at logical, rational conclusions. Sound familiar? It did to me. “Conservative” thought prefer to use emotions over lists of facts. Now you’ll have to read the book, because the liberal thought process is not just used by liberals, and vice versa, with the conservative thought process. Lakoff argues against the metaphor of politics being described as right and left.
Lakoff tempers the science of the brain with bits with pop culture, which keeps the reader interested and makes them aware of the ingrained nature of what Lakoff is discussing. He brings in the Anna Nicole saga, Reagan’s fictional “Welfare Queen”, the latest in neural science, and a analysis of framing and metaphors, to provide insight as to why reason alone is ineffective, that we need emotion, and new enlightenment.
Hands down this was the best book I read all year. It taught me to listen to what people are saying during a politcal conversation, instead of thinking of what I will say next to refute what I think they are saying. We all have more in common than we are lead to believe; that commonality should be the starting point for change, not the places where we differ. This book will help you be a better communicator, listener, and thinker.
January 6, 2015
This is a very important book for progressives to read. Cognitive sciences are showing how our brains organize concepts results in consequences for politics. Most people's brains have developed in ways that can respond to terminology in a way that can activate emotional responses either consistent with conservative attitudes or progressive attitudes. The more times one version is activated by terminology, the more the strength of the structures supporting that view become. Therefore, the terminology progressives choose and implement affects whether listeners actually have their conservative or progressive structures activated and strengthened.
Lakoff explains how progressives tend to work under the assumption that political discourse is only a matter of facts, figures and unemotional logic. But that's not how the brain works. Terminology has associations with brain organization built up during our childhood and otherwise as an individual's brain attempts to make sense of personal experiences. Brain mechanisms relevant to politics are associated with feelings of right and wrong, fair and unfair, desirable and undesirable. Those are linked to emotions and emotion-related chemicals. Unemotional facts and figures just aren't as effective by themselves as the emotional terminology and approaches used by conservatives. Terminology that results in emotional activity in the brain is not necessarily blatantly emotional. But taking care to use wording that elicits empathy and other forms consistent with progressive thought will activate and strengthen brain structures that support progressive attitudes in your listeners.
This book is not presented as merely being a science popularization on cognitive theory affecting political thought. It's intended to educate people on incorporating scientific findings into practical political expression. Lakoff uses more scientific jargon in the practical political parts of the book than would be ideal. However, that shouldn't prevent you from getting the essential ideas.
Cognitive Policy Works makes available a free PDF download of Thinking Points. This is supposed to be more oriented to practical political applications, but I haven't read it yet.
http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/w...
Lakoff explains how progressives tend to work under the assumption that political discourse is only a matter of facts, figures and unemotional logic. But that's not how the brain works. Terminology has associations with brain organization built up during our childhood and otherwise as an individual's brain attempts to make sense of personal experiences. Brain mechanisms relevant to politics are associated with feelings of right and wrong, fair and unfair, desirable and undesirable. Those are linked to emotions and emotion-related chemicals. Unemotional facts and figures just aren't as effective by themselves as the emotional terminology and approaches used by conservatives. Terminology that results in emotional activity in the brain is not necessarily blatantly emotional. But taking care to use wording that elicits empathy and other forms consistent with progressive thought will activate and strengthen brain structures that support progressive attitudes in your listeners.
This book is not presented as merely being a science popularization on cognitive theory affecting political thought. It's intended to educate people on incorporating scientific findings into practical political expression. Lakoff uses more scientific jargon in the practical political parts of the book than would be ideal. However, that shouldn't prevent you from getting the essential ideas.
Cognitive Policy Works makes available a free PDF download of Thinking Points. This is supposed to be more oriented to practical political applications, but I haven't read it yet.
http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/w...
February 13, 2023
I was expecting a science book that explained the political choices made by the human mind. Instead, what I got was a political book with a bit of science thrown in. Quite a bit of this book focuses solely on demonizing the author's political opponents. I think this book would've been so much stronger had he taken a more objective approach and left the political rants to the news talk shows.
This is quite an old book from the George Bush era, and the political misbehavior of that time seems almost adorable when you contrast it to the egregious political antics we are experiencing in the current day. :)
All that being said, there is still some good solid science insights inside of this book. I took away from this book some really helpful understanding of the worldview and mindset of those on those with primarily conservative beliefs, and those with primarily progressive beliefs.
I’m glad I read it, but this book could have been so much more had he backed off the vilifying and condescension. It had me seriously questioning the truth of his science.
This is quite an old book from the George Bush era, and the political misbehavior of that time seems almost adorable when you contrast it to the egregious political antics we are experiencing in the current day. :)
All that being said, there is still some good solid science insights inside of this book. I took away from this book some really helpful understanding of the worldview and mindset of those on those with primarily conservative beliefs, and those with primarily progressive beliefs.
I’m glad I read it, but this book could have been so much more had he backed off the vilifying and condescension. It had me seriously questioning the truth of his science.
November 16, 2022
This book is quite striking--both in its claims and its tone. Lakoff, a champion of progressive values, is under the impression that the conservative model of thought has completely dominated American culture for the past 35 years (at the time of publishing in 2008). Conservatives, he believes, expertly harness the power of narrative, symbols, and stories to quite literally change the brains of American citizens. Conservatives prove more effective than liberals in their persuasion power because they do not share an “enlightenment” view of the reason which understands rationality to be ultimately universal, literal, and cognitive. Instead, conservative talk heads provoke the imagination with crafted metaphors ("nation as a family"), narrative frames ("terrorists as villains"), psychological framing ("Avoid a nanny state"), political symbolism ("American exceptionalism"), and many more subtle language games for imprinting a conservative frame. The damage, Lakoff fears, undermines the crucial value underpinning American Democracy--empathy. He hopes to convince his liberal compatriots to follow him in a New Enlightenment view of the brain, one which acknowledges the power of unconscious reasoning, the intermingling of emotion, and the power of imagination. His resources promise a guide for how to better frame progressive values in the public square.
An impression a reader gets from Lakoff’s urgency is that conservatives are dominating all aspects of American life—media, politics, entertainment, and academics. But are conservatives really winning the culture war? This sentiment does not seem to be shared by even the most nominal conservative even if asked from the perspective of 2008! Here it is probably wise to drastically expand the lexical range of Lakoff’s view of conservatism. For him, the winner of a culture war is not calculated by counting how many Rs or Ds control the senate and house but is fundamentally connected to the use of language. By-and-large Lakoff argues that the American citizenry uses metaphorical structures in their political talk which is most associated with conservativism. Regardless of this expansive definition, he still believes conservatives have mostly achieved cultural and political control. For example, he states, “conservatives have an easier time constructing effective slogans and message. In addition to having a better message machine and more radio and TV stations, they got the public first, instilling their worldview and their deep framing over thirty-five years.” (239) This dramatic historical analysis appears extremely narrow and disconnected from the felt experience of many. Still, Lakoff is very brilliant and his study on metaphors is eye-opening. Thus, he is worth considering. Lakoff does well to highlight the prevalence of metaphorical/symbolic thinking but his empiricist metaphysics leaves many questions unanswered and makes his moral claims less convincing.
It could be said that metaphors are a way of linking physical/primal experiences with the imagination. The concept of "imagination" proves difficult to explain empirically but Lakoff believes its contours can at least be mapped. Similar, perhaps, to draping a sheet over an object--the content of the object underneath disappears from sight but you can at least determine its shape. Similarly, the use of language, brain activity, and neuroscience serves as an observable phenomenon for understanding the unconscious (or the “self” underneath the physical phenomena). But Lakoff's crucial miscalculation is to mistake the mapping for the thing itself. His emphasis on metaphors may explain how the imagination gets used in everyday life but offers no real explanation for what the imagination is and its qualities. Looking at brain activity alone cannot provide answers to what makes a "self" a "self."
If this critique is warranted, then Lakoff loosely follows in the epistemological quandaries of Kant. Like Kant, problems arise regarding individual consciousness and selfhood. If the “self” is situated in the physical world, then it too must obey the blind and determined laws of nature. On the other hand, if the “self” is immaterial and transcends these physical forces then it fundamentally loses its ability to perceive and act within the world. Ironically, Lakoff falls in a similar trap as the Old Enlightenment. He somewhat notices this problem at the end of chapter 13 when he admits the difficulty in explaining the substance of “personality” from the perspective of neuroscience alone. Thus, everything in the world can be explained comfortably within his system except the "self" itself.
Lakoff's moral urgency also seems woefully unfounded due to his near epistemological relativism. He uses strong language condemning the conservative program and presents his political philosophy as more Democratic. "Democracy" he cries, "is too important to leave the shaping of the brains of Americans to authoritarians." (120). The basic and obvious assumption here is that his conception of a Democratic nation is "good." But I am not sure what his tools and resources are for evaluating why this "good" is superior to other visions of the good. What makes progressivism a better "worldview" than conservatism? He makes lots of moral claims--sometimes subtly with his chosen language--but I just do not discern how he derived these moral claims beyond just decrying that views are either democratic or anti-democratic.
One can get the impression that a view is “right” if it can be shown to produce activity in a certain portion of the brain. A worldview or pattern of thought which happens to fire more neurons in the correct portions of the frontal cortex can be measured as more morally substantive (or visa versa). Studying the brain can equally signal the existence of moral deficiencies. For example, “Conservatives show less ability to respond to complex and potentially conflicting situations as measured by the [anterior cingulated cortex] response.” (198) Consequently, the morality of Lakoff’s political philosophy seems to hinge on whether someone possesses enough mirror neuron circuitry to be deemed sufficiently “empathetic” and “cooperative.” Empathy is of more moral worth, Lakoff believes, because it proved to be an evolutionary advantage (“because cooperators do better than hermits or misanthropes”) and thus is a more “natural” state than compared to the disposition of competitiveness.
Making what is deemed “natural” or “evolutionarily advantageous” the calculous for virtue creates horrendous moral ambiguities—it is merely Old-Enlightenment pragmatism under a Darwinian garb. The scaffolding of this kind of morality is built firmly in the air. Evil, for this kind of pragmatic liberal, has no substance but would be defined by privation of evolutionary benefits. Human behavior is explained primarily through empirical analysis and as author Lewis Mumford would starkly remind us: “For this kind of liberal, the most heinous fact about a war is not the evil intentions and purposes that one or both sides may disclose: it is mainly the needless waste of material, the unbearable amount of human suffering, the premature deaths.” And in the face of such tragedy, it is a sufficient theodicy for Lakoff to remind the sufferer that the cruelties of the gulags were ultimately due to a deficiency of brain activity in the mind of a totalitarian. This explanation also conveniently ignores that fact that scientific pragmatists could easily justify their own use of brutal eugenics in the first place using evolutionary language.
Whenever Lakoff does try to explain moral behaviors he ends up making some bizarre assumptions. For example, he admits he once struggled to explain how political conservatism could end up advocating for so many seemingly unrelated topics. For example, what does abortion have to do with gun rights? What does the free market have to do with traditional family values? What do proposals about lowing taxes have to do with the war on terror? When explained in isolation, these claims can sometimes even appear contradictory! His solution is to believe that an overarching metaphorical structure supersedes over all of these issues. He further theorizes that the mind of a conservative is situated under the metaphorical sub-structure of a "strict family." Like a strict father, the government must protect the family against threats. Like a strict father, vested authorities must be obeyed. Like a strict father, discipline and responsibility are rewarded. And because things like sexual promiscuity disappoint a strict father, so sex must be regulated in a culture. And because a strict father necessary assumes strong gender-specific responsibilities in the home, so LGBT rights must be limited due to their effect of flattening gender roles. The list goes on and Lakoff is convinced this metaphorical structure explains the conservative web of behaviors . (True progressives, by the way, use the “family as nurturing” metaphor where empathy is the supreme virtue.)
A superimposing metaphor does not eradicate political contradictions in policy, Lakoff readily admits. Any instance of dissonance is mostly caused by a lack of reflection. This lack of reflection explains why people can so readily vote against their own best interests or adopt a more moderate position. In the end, Lakoff’s psychological explanations seem entirely farfetched. For example, which is easier to believe and prove at face value (1) someone is against abortion because their brain structure is so severely altered due to using a repeated metaphorical sub-structure in which the powers-to-be are imagined as a "strict father" and he alone is to determine whether his wife gives birth so any extramarital behaviors must be punished (See page 78-79). Or (2) someone is against abortion because their moral conviction about life beginning at conception naturally leads them to have empathy for the unborn. Lakoff's near-Freudian psychoanalysis of human behaviors is at least creative. While Lakoff is free to have empathy for ecological environments, those who share a concern over the unborn are considered victims of faulty brain structure and need reprogramming. I suppose it is only the enlightened like Lakoff who determine who or what should be recipients of empathy.
Lakoff's view that progressivism and conservativism can be distinguished not through undergirding principles but with metaphors also makes him oblivious to some crucial biconceptualism of his own. For example, he makes comments in passing that "changes [regarding metaphorical structures] will be hard to reverse. It is easier to dismantle a civil service built over a century than to put one together." (90). Later he encourages his liberal friends to take the long-view of history: "It also takes patience. Change does not come overnight." (116). Sentiments like this guide his progressive program. He understands, according to his own system, that changing brains is more important than bursts of political power or temporary revolution. And I am sure the giant of modern conservatism Roger Scruton would readily agree with him out of principle, for it was him who noted, "Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created." At least this aspect of Lakoff’s politics appeared rather conservative in principle.
Being someone who literally wrote the book on metaphors, I am sure Lakoff chose his words carefully when describing his relationship to conservatism. In this book, he goes to great lengths to warn his readers that slight language changes can plunge oneself into a web of predetermined metaphorical structures. A recent political example would be Bush's “war” on terrorism in the Middle East. In chapter 6 he writes: "'War on terror' means war without end. It was used by the Bush administration as a ploy to get virtually unlimited war powers--and further domestic influence...because the mention of "terror" activates a fear response, and fear activates a conservative worldview." Later he observes how this language can conveniently squelch alternative opinions since "being against war as a response was to be unpatriotic" (we should note a similar phenomenon occurring with the term “progressive” since to challenge its values would mean being labelled anti-progress). Two lines down Lakoff then states: "The war metaphor put progressives on the defensive." The word “defensive” sticks out vividly! It is as if this episode of American history was yet another instance of the ongoing culture “war” between conservatives and progressives. Lakoff would go on for several pages detailing how the Bush’s administration’s "war" against the enemies of American democracy justified morally reprehensible political policy in the Middle East due to it's carefully chosen language alone. Lakoff's solution is to summon others to "war" against the conservatives (who coincidently also threaten democracy). But as Lakoff is careful to show, even the metaphor of “war” can be easily weaponized for political gain. This incongruity is especially obvious. Maybe Lakoff should take Lakoff's warnings more seriously.
Throughout this book, Lakoff presents a method for how to continue the trajectory of progress and lead the way to a “New Enlightenment” which takes into account new scientific discoveries about mankind and incorporate them into American Democracy in a reflective manner. This anthropology—unlike the old way—reflects intensely on the unconscious forces which precede Rationality itself. If symbolism, imagination, emotion, metaphor, and narrative represent the scaffolding of thoughts then they become powerful tools for aligning the imaginations of citizens. Indeed, Lakoff credits the vicious left-right schism of modern-day as a conflict of imaginations rather than principles; metaphors rather than facts. But Lakoff’s new enlightenment project, though it shares in its predecessor’s optimism for society, ironically denigrates man in the process. Indeed, his orotundity reveals a strain of pragmatism backed by extreme empiricism and thus replaces any semblance of truth, goodness, and beauty with the ebb-and-flow of an evolutionary calculus. Lakoff feels satisfied in communicating the moral superiority of his position by simply showing its supposed evolutionary advantages. But if there is one lesson Lakoff wished to tell throughout it is that the world of political action must transcend the rational man: it must be as large as the human imagination itself. Unfortunately, his analysis fails to reach this height. His scientific investigation is tainted with bombast while his attempt at metaphorical reconstruction adopts the very structures he wishes to eliminate. In the end, the political mind of Lakoff seems immutable and his capacity for empathy for those who disagree leaves a lot to be desired.
An impression a reader gets from Lakoff’s urgency is that conservatives are dominating all aspects of American life—media, politics, entertainment, and academics. But are conservatives really winning the culture war? This sentiment does not seem to be shared by even the most nominal conservative even if asked from the perspective of 2008! Here it is probably wise to drastically expand the lexical range of Lakoff’s view of conservatism. For him, the winner of a culture war is not calculated by counting how many Rs or Ds control the senate and house but is fundamentally connected to the use of language. By-and-large Lakoff argues that the American citizenry uses metaphorical structures in their political talk which is most associated with conservativism. Regardless of this expansive definition, he still believes conservatives have mostly achieved cultural and political control. For example, he states, “conservatives have an easier time constructing effective slogans and message. In addition to having a better message machine and more radio and TV stations, they got the public first, instilling their worldview and their deep framing over thirty-five years.” (239) This dramatic historical analysis appears extremely narrow and disconnected from the felt experience of many. Still, Lakoff is very brilliant and his study on metaphors is eye-opening. Thus, he is worth considering. Lakoff does well to highlight the prevalence of metaphorical/symbolic thinking but his empiricist metaphysics leaves many questions unanswered and makes his moral claims less convincing.
It could be said that metaphors are a way of linking physical/primal experiences with the imagination. The concept of "imagination" proves difficult to explain empirically but Lakoff believes its contours can at least be mapped. Similar, perhaps, to draping a sheet over an object--the content of the object underneath disappears from sight but you can at least determine its shape. Similarly, the use of language, brain activity, and neuroscience serves as an observable phenomenon for understanding the unconscious (or the “self” underneath the physical phenomena). But Lakoff's crucial miscalculation is to mistake the mapping for the thing itself. His emphasis on metaphors may explain how the imagination gets used in everyday life but offers no real explanation for what the imagination is and its qualities. Looking at brain activity alone cannot provide answers to what makes a "self" a "self."
If this critique is warranted, then Lakoff loosely follows in the epistemological quandaries of Kant. Like Kant, problems arise regarding individual consciousness and selfhood. If the “self” is situated in the physical world, then it too must obey the blind and determined laws of nature. On the other hand, if the “self” is immaterial and transcends these physical forces then it fundamentally loses its ability to perceive and act within the world. Ironically, Lakoff falls in a similar trap as the Old Enlightenment. He somewhat notices this problem at the end of chapter 13 when he admits the difficulty in explaining the substance of “personality” from the perspective of neuroscience alone. Thus, everything in the world can be explained comfortably within his system except the "self" itself.
Lakoff's moral urgency also seems woefully unfounded due to his near epistemological relativism. He uses strong language condemning the conservative program and presents his political philosophy as more Democratic. "Democracy" he cries, "is too important to leave the shaping of the brains of Americans to authoritarians." (120). The basic and obvious assumption here is that his conception of a Democratic nation is "good." But I am not sure what his tools and resources are for evaluating why this "good" is superior to other visions of the good. What makes progressivism a better "worldview" than conservatism? He makes lots of moral claims--sometimes subtly with his chosen language--but I just do not discern how he derived these moral claims beyond just decrying that views are either democratic or anti-democratic.
One can get the impression that a view is “right” if it can be shown to produce activity in a certain portion of the brain. A worldview or pattern of thought which happens to fire more neurons in the correct portions of the frontal cortex can be measured as more morally substantive (or visa versa). Studying the brain can equally signal the existence of moral deficiencies. For example, “Conservatives show less ability to respond to complex and potentially conflicting situations as measured by the [anterior cingulated cortex] response.” (198) Consequently, the morality of Lakoff’s political philosophy seems to hinge on whether someone possesses enough mirror neuron circuitry to be deemed sufficiently “empathetic” and “cooperative.” Empathy is of more moral worth, Lakoff believes, because it proved to be an evolutionary advantage (“because cooperators do better than hermits or misanthropes”) and thus is a more “natural” state than compared to the disposition of competitiveness.
Making what is deemed “natural” or “evolutionarily advantageous” the calculous for virtue creates horrendous moral ambiguities—it is merely Old-Enlightenment pragmatism under a Darwinian garb. The scaffolding of this kind of morality is built firmly in the air. Evil, for this kind of pragmatic liberal, has no substance but would be defined by privation of evolutionary benefits. Human behavior is explained primarily through empirical analysis and as author Lewis Mumford would starkly remind us: “For this kind of liberal, the most heinous fact about a war is not the evil intentions and purposes that one or both sides may disclose: it is mainly the needless waste of material, the unbearable amount of human suffering, the premature deaths.” And in the face of such tragedy, it is a sufficient theodicy for Lakoff to remind the sufferer that the cruelties of the gulags were ultimately due to a deficiency of brain activity in the mind of a totalitarian. This explanation also conveniently ignores that fact that scientific pragmatists could easily justify their own use of brutal eugenics in the first place using evolutionary language.
Whenever Lakoff does try to explain moral behaviors he ends up making some bizarre assumptions. For example, he admits he once struggled to explain how political conservatism could end up advocating for so many seemingly unrelated topics. For example, what does abortion have to do with gun rights? What does the free market have to do with traditional family values? What do proposals about lowing taxes have to do with the war on terror? When explained in isolation, these claims can sometimes even appear contradictory! His solution is to believe that an overarching metaphorical structure supersedes over all of these issues. He further theorizes that the mind of a conservative is situated under the metaphorical sub-structure of a "strict family." Like a strict father, the government must protect the family against threats. Like a strict father, vested authorities must be obeyed. Like a strict father, discipline and responsibility are rewarded. And because things like sexual promiscuity disappoint a strict father, so sex must be regulated in a culture. And because a strict father necessary assumes strong gender-specific responsibilities in the home, so LGBT rights must be limited due to their effect of flattening gender roles. The list goes on and Lakoff is convinced this metaphorical structure explains the conservative web of behaviors . (True progressives, by the way, use the “family as nurturing” metaphor where empathy is the supreme virtue.)
A superimposing metaphor does not eradicate political contradictions in policy, Lakoff readily admits. Any instance of dissonance is mostly caused by a lack of reflection. This lack of reflection explains why people can so readily vote against their own best interests or adopt a more moderate position. In the end, Lakoff’s psychological explanations seem entirely farfetched. For example, which is easier to believe and prove at face value (1) someone is against abortion because their brain structure is so severely altered due to using a repeated metaphorical sub-structure in which the powers-to-be are imagined as a "strict father" and he alone is to determine whether his wife gives birth so any extramarital behaviors must be punished (See page 78-79). Or (2) someone is against abortion because their moral conviction about life beginning at conception naturally leads them to have empathy for the unborn. Lakoff's near-Freudian psychoanalysis of human behaviors is at least creative. While Lakoff is free to have empathy for ecological environments, those who share a concern over the unborn are considered victims of faulty brain structure and need reprogramming. I suppose it is only the enlightened like Lakoff who determine who or what should be recipients of empathy.
Lakoff's view that progressivism and conservativism can be distinguished not through undergirding principles but with metaphors also makes him oblivious to some crucial biconceptualism of his own. For example, he makes comments in passing that "changes [regarding metaphorical structures] will be hard to reverse. It is easier to dismantle a civil service built over a century than to put one together." (90). Later he encourages his liberal friends to take the long-view of history: "It also takes patience. Change does not come overnight." (116). Sentiments like this guide his progressive program. He understands, according to his own system, that changing brains is more important than bursts of political power or temporary revolution. And I am sure the giant of modern conservatism Roger Scruton would readily agree with him out of principle, for it was him who noted, "Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created." At least this aspect of Lakoff’s politics appeared rather conservative in principle.
Being someone who literally wrote the book on metaphors, I am sure Lakoff chose his words carefully when describing his relationship to conservatism. In this book, he goes to great lengths to warn his readers that slight language changes can plunge oneself into a web of predetermined metaphorical structures. A recent political example would be Bush's “war” on terrorism in the Middle East. In chapter 6 he writes: "'War on terror' means war without end. It was used by the Bush administration as a ploy to get virtually unlimited war powers--and further domestic influence...because the mention of "terror" activates a fear response, and fear activates a conservative worldview." Later he observes how this language can conveniently squelch alternative opinions since "being against war as a response was to be unpatriotic" (we should note a similar phenomenon occurring with the term “progressive” since to challenge its values would mean being labelled anti-progress). Two lines down Lakoff then states: "The war metaphor put progressives on the defensive." The word “defensive” sticks out vividly! It is as if this episode of American history was yet another instance of the ongoing culture “war” between conservatives and progressives. Lakoff would go on for several pages detailing how the Bush’s administration’s "war" against the enemies of American democracy justified morally reprehensible political policy in the Middle East due to it's carefully chosen language alone. Lakoff's solution is to summon others to "war" against the conservatives (who coincidently also threaten democracy). But as Lakoff is careful to show, even the metaphor of “war” can be easily weaponized for political gain. This incongruity is especially obvious. Maybe Lakoff should take Lakoff's warnings more seriously.
Throughout this book, Lakoff presents a method for how to continue the trajectory of progress and lead the way to a “New Enlightenment” which takes into account new scientific discoveries about mankind and incorporate them into American Democracy in a reflective manner. This anthropology—unlike the old way—reflects intensely on the unconscious forces which precede Rationality itself. If symbolism, imagination, emotion, metaphor, and narrative represent the scaffolding of thoughts then they become powerful tools for aligning the imaginations of citizens. Indeed, Lakoff credits the vicious left-right schism of modern-day as a conflict of imaginations rather than principles; metaphors rather than facts. But Lakoff’s new enlightenment project, though it shares in its predecessor’s optimism for society, ironically denigrates man in the process. Indeed, his orotundity reveals a strain of pragmatism backed by extreme empiricism and thus replaces any semblance of truth, goodness, and beauty with the ebb-and-flow of an evolutionary calculus. Lakoff feels satisfied in communicating the moral superiority of his position by simply showing its supposed evolutionary advantages. But if there is one lesson Lakoff wished to tell throughout it is that the world of political action must transcend the rational man: it must be as large as the human imagination itself. Unfortunately, his analysis fails to reach this height. His scientific investigation is tainted with bombast while his attempt at metaphorical reconstruction adopts the very structures he wishes to eliminate. In the end, the political mind of Lakoff seems immutable and his capacity for empathy for those who disagree leaves a lot to be desired.
July 1, 2017
So Lakoff, writing in early 2008, seems to think the Democrats have a messaging problem. Prescient guy! He beats on about liberals' failure to weaponize empathy, and to claim that progressivism is American. Perhaps it is the Reaganaut decade I was born into and the imitators that followed, but this seems like too simplistic a take.
Americans seem different--not because of some demented pathogen or hideous mutation we carry within us, but because we've been "#1" for so long that, rather than change course and admit defeat as anomie and decay spread, we double down and our most self-destructive, short-sighted qualities grow concentrated and magnified. Lakoff does talk about the powerful sway of risk aversion, but rather than characterize it as something that Americans of all political persuasions might feel because of our declining grandeur and collapsing arcs of progress, he imputes it to conservatives only.
I feel like he misses his own point.
Americans seem different--not because of some demented pathogen or hideous mutation we carry within us, but because we've been "#1" for so long that, rather than change course and admit defeat as anomie and decay spread, we double down and our most self-destructive, short-sighted qualities grow concentrated and magnified. Lakoff does talk about the powerful sway of risk aversion, but rather than characterize it as something that Americans of all political persuasions might feel because of our declining grandeur and collapsing arcs of progress, he imputes it to conservatives only.
I feel like he misses his own point.
Currently reading
October 14, 2018
Lakoff is a cognitive scientist in Berkeley, "an American cognitive linguist and philosopher" and, apparently, a Democrat, or a progressive. Maybe a liberal. He believes Democrats can do better (after the presidential loss in 2016). Midterm elections are around the corner, and back in 2016 he wrote a piece* on how to understand Trump and "How Can Democrats Do Better". Have the Democrats followed his advice?
*https://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/...
September 17, 2015
I was first introduced to George Lakoff through his work in 2nd language acquisition. His thoughts and work in that area was quite impressive, so when I ran across this book I was eager to look into it.
First let me say that this book isn't really academic. Yes, it is written by an academic, but it's also meant for general consumption. I didn't read the reviews below before reading this book, but in skimming them, I am surprised by how people had to mention how academic it was or how technical it is. Honestly, I wish it was more technical.
Also, I had a hard time starting this book because it sounded too much like a liberal griping about conservatives. The way the book eased into framing really annoyed me, because it read too much like loose rhetorical/discourse analysis. I didn't care about discourse analysis, since I've read much more substantial ones... but then surprise: Lakoff made a claim about cognition in terms of discourse.
Suddenly things were not words anymore. He was talking about not only how we think with regular structures, but how invoking those internal structures through language was how people got to emphasize different aspects of cognition.
There are three takeaways for me.
The first is simply that arranging words in ever new ways allows people to process things differently. Providing substantial framing through the use of culturally familiar metaphors isn't simply window dressing to invoke stolid logical relations... those metaphors also allow the speaker/writer to slip into other arguments by analogy. Lakoff has obviously first worked this out in more academic ways, which would be very interesting to look at... but then, rhetorical analysis has always taken the approach of analysing metaphors and reoccurring tropes as how writing and communication are structured. And the use of rhetoric in this fashion was well documented since early orators from the beginning of human history. Only because of the age of Enlightenment have we instead thought that somehow pure thought was only relational, devoid of excess entanglements... and that understanding supersedes the actual differences in types of expression or kinds of anything... that the categories themselves are more real than the expressions... but really this can't be true since anything that is the same as anything else is simply the same thing, unable to be distinguished... from itself. By tossing out information or being reductionist, we lose part of the picture. The question of course, is always what context, which part is itself the operant part?
The second takeaway from this book is itself rhetorical, in a way. Lakoff insists that the beyond of language lies solely within the cognitive structures of our neurons... while he seems to imply that such structures are too difficult to decode (neurons fire too quickly, and are too small and numerous to keep track of) He calls quite often, mostly in the latter third of the book, for a New Enlightenment, one that at first, seeks to find the deeper structures of our minds through the use of framing... that we can get at these deeper cognitive structures through intensive rhetorical analysis, much like Chomsky's deep structure of grammar. I understand this book is not academic, so I am left understandably, a little vague as to how this would exactly work. He dismissing Noam Chomsky's Universal Grammar (UG) project as constrained by "Old Enlightenment" thinking... although he highlights UG's project structure as a model for a new field of study.
Lakoff is serious about merging discourse analysis with cognitive computation. He cites numerous thinkers like Charles Fillmore and the school of the Neural Theory of Language. With this, Lakoff is, in a way, still working within old Enlightenment aesthetics of thought. If language itself is how we process thoughts (which I think him correct), there can be no real deeper structure to thoughts since they pick the expression that is best suited to being what it is. I am not saying that this area of study isn't worth studying -- it is -- but people can think in Math symbols, in body movements, in melodies... in other kinds of directly encoded formula instead of just language. Furthermore, tropes and metaphors are specific to groups. The study of such fields will inevitably change them. As memes come and go, so will the study itself always shadow the area of study. To codify those areas of study with academic jargon, which is also inevitable, will inevitably introduce distortion as frames used to discuss those areas themselves formulate the field of study... this is of course, start of a different discussion: the philosophy of science and justificationism, which is beyond the point of this review.
The third takeaway, which I find very invigorating is that poetry and philosophy, through this field, will be seen again as socially valid. Both of these areas have been somewhat repressed by our current capitalist frame, as neither directly contributes to producing or retaining wealth. Yet the deeper reasons for such repression may very well be that such fields of semiotic slippage are also fields which revolutionize and alter perception ever so slightly... loss of these areas of the language arts amounts to a loss of our ability to step out of much of our framing. People can't rebel against what they can't see. And people can't effectively rebel if they do not realize a way out. I don't mean to suggest that bands of poets or bands of philosophers rove downtown office buildings across first world nations to "blow people's minds". And even if they could, there isn't any reason to do that. After all, people who do want to see alternatives will eventually find them. It's just that there's a reason why much of these two areas is difficult to comprehend. The transformative power of both poetry and philosophy have been well documented throughout history even if today they are often dismissed as being irrelevant by "serious professionals". Lakoff dismisses classical philosophers as "Old Enlightenment" and perhaps they should be dismissed in that way, but the Cliff Note's version is only our socially accepted "conclusion" of what amounts to lifetime upon lifetime of work by society's best and brightest. As one who reads Enlightenment thinkers, I must say that their writing does often leave one to see how they turn around objects, create auxilitary objects and speculate the pure relations between collected bundles in an attempt to make sense of the world... In effect, you can learn from their learning... You can make better sense of the world through watching others attempt the same thing. The lesson here isn't always the content itself, but how the content is formulated... while not itself a matter of "Framing" very much a matter of the creation of context and structure, roots of framing.
Lakoff's book can be read as a call to action against stolid ways of thinking, against conventionally tried methods of making sense. How much sense do things make now? We race our cars around polluting the planet, we spend our health and our youth to make wealth, only to spend that wealth to try to regain youth. We make tons of waste every year, from products that historically wouldn't be looked on as trash. And we bury this stuff in our own backyards. Yes it's true that Lakoff prizes being a progressive against being a conservative. But even those progressive frames are the products of the very systems that compel us to behave the way we do. I understand, one step at a time. But all the same...
Perhaps it's time for us to return to such areas, in an attempt to find our own freedom, so we won't simply be money spending-money making machines.
All in all, you can tell that Lakoff is just getting warmed up. He very obviously intended progressives and progressive strategists to take into account cognition in politics, not as a call to step out of thinking in old familiar frames. Instead, let's use the ones we have to push forward progress. After all, Lakoff did after all help find the now defunct liberal thinktank Rockridge institute. Even at the end of this book, you can tell that he will write another.
First let me say that this book isn't really academic. Yes, it is written by an academic, but it's also meant for general consumption. I didn't read the reviews below before reading this book, but in skimming them, I am surprised by how people had to mention how academic it was or how technical it is. Honestly, I wish it was more technical.
Also, I had a hard time starting this book because it sounded too much like a liberal griping about conservatives. The way the book eased into framing really annoyed me, because it read too much like loose rhetorical/discourse analysis. I didn't care about discourse analysis, since I've read much more substantial ones... but then surprise: Lakoff made a claim about cognition in terms of discourse.
Suddenly things were not words anymore. He was talking about not only how we think with regular structures, but how invoking those internal structures through language was how people got to emphasize different aspects of cognition.
There are three takeaways for me.
The first is simply that arranging words in ever new ways allows people to process things differently. Providing substantial framing through the use of culturally familiar metaphors isn't simply window dressing to invoke stolid logical relations... those metaphors also allow the speaker/writer to slip into other arguments by analogy. Lakoff has obviously first worked this out in more academic ways, which would be very interesting to look at... but then, rhetorical analysis has always taken the approach of analysing metaphors and reoccurring tropes as how writing and communication are structured. And the use of rhetoric in this fashion was well documented since early orators from the beginning of human history. Only because of the age of Enlightenment have we instead thought that somehow pure thought was only relational, devoid of excess entanglements... and that understanding supersedes the actual differences in types of expression or kinds of anything... that the categories themselves are more real than the expressions... but really this can't be true since anything that is the same as anything else is simply the same thing, unable to be distinguished... from itself. By tossing out information or being reductionist, we lose part of the picture. The question of course, is always what context, which part is itself the operant part?
The second takeaway from this book is itself rhetorical, in a way. Lakoff insists that the beyond of language lies solely within the cognitive structures of our neurons... while he seems to imply that such structures are too difficult to decode (neurons fire too quickly, and are too small and numerous to keep track of) He calls quite often, mostly in the latter third of the book, for a New Enlightenment, one that at first, seeks to find the deeper structures of our minds through the use of framing... that we can get at these deeper cognitive structures through intensive rhetorical analysis, much like Chomsky's deep structure of grammar. I understand this book is not academic, so I am left understandably, a little vague as to how this would exactly work. He dismissing Noam Chomsky's Universal Grammar (UG) project as constrained by "Old Enlightenment" thinking... although he highlights UG's project structure as a model for a new field of study.
Lakoff is serious about merging discourse analysis with cognitive computation. He cites numerous thinkers like Charles Fillmore and the school of the Neural Theory of Language. With this, Lakoff is, in a way, still working within old Enlightenment aesthetics of thought. If language itself is how we process thoughts (which I think him correct), there can be no real deeper structure to thoughts since they pick the expression that is best suited to being what it is. I am not saying that this area of study isn't worth studying -- it is -- but people can think in Math symbols, in body movements, in melodies... in other kinds of directly encoded formula instead of just language. Furthermore, tropes and metaphors are specific to groups. The study of such fields will inevitably change them. As memes come and go, so will the study itself always shadow the area of study. To codify those areas of study with academic jargon, which is also inevitable, will inevitably introduce distortion as frames used to discuss those areas themselves formulate the field of study... this is of course, start of a different discussion: the philosophy of science and justificationism, which is beyond the point of this review.
The third takeaway, which I find very invigorating is that poetry and philosophy, through this field, will be seen again as socially valid. Both of these areas have been somewhat repressed by our current capitalist frame, as neither directly contributes to producing or retaining wealth. Yet the deeper reasons for such repression may very well be that such fields of semiotic slippage are also fields which revolutionize and alter perception ever so slightly... loss of these areas of the language arts amounts to a loss of our ability to step out of much of our framing. People can't rebel against what they can't see. And people can't effectively rebel if they do not realize a way out. I don't mean to suggest that bands of poets or bands of philosophers rove downtown office buildings across first world nations to "blow people's minds". And even if they could, there isn't any reason to do that. After all, people who do want to see alternatives will eventually find them. It's just that there's a reason why much of these two areas is difficult to comprehend. The transformative power of both poetry and philosophy have been well documented throughout history even if today they are often dismissed as being irrelevant by "serious professionals". Lakoff dismisses classical philosophers as "Old Enlightenment" and perhaps they should be dismissed in that way, but the Cliff Note's version is only our socially accepted "conclusion" of what amounts to lifetime upon lifetime of work by society's best and brightest. As one who reads Enlightenment thinkers, I must say that their writing does often leave one to see how they turn around objects, create auxilitary objects and speculate the pure relations between collected bundles in an attempt to make sense of the world... In effect, you can learn from their learning... You can make better sense of the world through watching others attempt the same thing. The lesson here isn't always the content itself, but how the content is formulated... while not itself a matter of "Framing" very much a matter of the creation of context and structure, roots of framing.
Lakoff's book can be read as a call to action against stolid ways of thinking, against conventionally tried methods of making sense. How much sense do things make now? We race our cars around polluting the planet, we spend our health and our youth to make wealth, only to spend that wealth to try to regain youth. We make tons of waste every year, from products that historically wouldn't be looked on as trash. And we bury this stuff in our own backyards. Yes it's true that Lakoff prizes being a progressive against being a conservative. But even those progressive frames are the products of the very systems that compel us to behave the way we do. I understand, one step at a time. But all the same...
Perhaps it's time for us to return to such areas, in an attempt to find our own freedom, so we won't simply be money spending-money making machines.
All in all, you can tell that Lakoff is just getting warmed up. He very obviously intended progressives and progressive strategists to take into account cognition in politics, not as a call to step out of thinking in old familiar frames. Instead, let's use the ones we have to push forward progress. After all, Lakoff did after all help find the now defunct liberal thinktank Rockridge institute. Even at the end of this book, you can tell that he will write another.
October 3, 2021
Autor zbyt jednoznacznie opowiada się po jednej stronie politycznej, żebym mogła zaufać jego opiniom nt. umysłu. Moje opinie polityczne pokrywają się w dużej mierze z tymi Lakoffa i wiem, że jest gigantem badań nad umysłem, ale ton tej książki jest nieznośny, co potwierdza chyba, że ksiazki czytam plytko i powierzchownie, a lewaków nikt nie lubi nie tylko dlatego, że są przesadnie racjonalni, ale też dlatego, że boy are they annoying.
September 18, 2011
(audio book) First off, I can't recommend this book as an audio book. Its densely academic writing style requires way too much brain power to process, especially while driving. But if I hadn't been listening to the audio book, I probably wouldn't have finished the book. What the book has in academic writing style, it seems to lack in academic proof. Perhaps the print copy has citations, but mostly what I heard was a complex narrative based on unproven axioms.
Here's what I did get out of the book, and it's a reminder of what I learned from a linguistics course in college: our thinking is shaped by our language and we don't realize it most of the time.
Taking to heart Lakoff's points about metaphors and the unconscious connotations they bring into our thought-process is a mental diet for me. It helped me be more aware of the use of underlying metaphors in political sound bites and helped me hear them with more detachment. It's also helped me take political rhetoric less personally, which is a godsend right now.
I can't recommend the book because the noise-to-insight factor was just too high for me. So to help out, I'll include the list of 7 biases that we as humans should be aware of in our thinking, according to Lakoff. You can look up the background research on your own if you're inspired.
1. Optimism bias - We don't like to plan on worse-case scenarios
2. Control bias - That we have more control over the situation than we do.
3. Reactive devaluation - If our opponent presents an idea, we automatically think it's bad
4. Fundamental attribution error - Other people's bad behavior or opinions are because they are bad people; our bad behavior or opinions are based on our circumstances
5. Loss aversion bias - We will do more to avoid loss than chase gains. We'll avoid certain loss for uncertain gain
6. A specific example is taken as the average example - If you only hear one example, you don't assume it's the best or the worse, but rather, the most common
7. We always think rationally and are aware of anything influencing our thoughts
Here's what I did get out of the book, and it's a reminder of what I learned from a linguistics course in college: our thinking is shaped by our language and we don't realize it most of the time.
Taking to heart Lakoff's points about metaphors and the unconscious connotations they bring into our thought-process is a mental diet for me. It helped me be more aware of the use of underlying metaphors in political sound bites and helped me hear them with more detachment. It's also helped me take political rhetoric less personally, which is a godsend right now.
I can't recommend the book because the noise-to-insight factor was just too high for me. So to help out, I'll include the list of 7 biases that we as humans should be aware of in our thinking, according to Lakoff. You can look up the background research on your own if you're inspired.
1. Optimism bias - We don't like to plan on worse-case scenarios
2. Control bias - That we have more control over the situation than we do.
3. Reactive devaluation - If our opponent presents an idea, we automatically think it's bad
4. Fundamental attribution error - Other people's bad behavior or opinions are because they are bad people; our bad behavior or opinions are based on our circumstances
5. Loss aversion bias - We will do more to avoid loss than chase gains. We'll avoid certain loss for uncertain gain
6. A specific example is taken as the average example - If you only hear one example, you don't assume it's the best or the worse, but rather, the most common
7. We always think rationally and are aware of anything influencing our thoughts
December 31, 2018
Lakoff goes on throughout the book about how progressives are stuck in the old style enlightenment view (of reason), while conservatives have used a batch of Jedi Mind tricks over the past three decades to replace analytical reasoning decisions with emotions. I’d say the starting point is that people think the brain is basically like a computer that runs calculations and from those evaluations people make decisions that will best serve them. HOWEVER from his studies he says people are nothing like that, and any kind of rational decision has an emotional component.
Politics has its power because it is really our morals writ large (“That is why government budgets are moral documents...”). People arrive at political/moral views from an emotional starting point and these views are held with the same strength as personal morality. Plus the way the brain works means political, personal morality is tied by our own brain circuitry to emotions and narratives we live by.
So the worldviews people have are arrived at by accessing parts of the mind that house fundamental emotions that are linked to other more conceptual parts of the brain through “neural bindings”. Or something like that, I got a little lost on some of it. But from a practical view it is important to remember that as we grow up we develop “primary metaphors”, maybe hundreds of them. And these metaphors bring meaning and emotion to our lives, but since they are not logical they can only be accessed by binding them to narratives (stories) and frames (I think of this along the lines of how you frame a question can lead to the answer)
Framing comes before policy
If health care is framed as “health insurance” then it will be seen through an insurance frame, and the policy will fit that frame: it will be a business, with profits…..When health care is seen as a protection – on par with police and fire protection...- then it becomes part of the moral mission of government. Pg. 67.
- One can see in scripts, the link between frames and narratives. Narratives are frames that tell a story. They have semantic roles...What makes it a narrative – a story – and not just a mere frame? A narrative has a point to it, a moral. It is about how you should live your life – or how you shouldn’t. It has emotional content: events that make you sad or angry or in awe Pg. 250.
All this action is similar to how habits are formed, in that the more re-enforcement there is the stronger the psychological bond is.
In addition, neural binding can create emotional experiences. In the area of the limbic system, the oldest part of the brain in terms of evolution, there are two emotional pathways with different neurotransmitters: once for positive emotions – the dopamine circuit – and one for negative emotions – the norepinephrine circuit. There are pathways in the brain linking these emotional pathways to the fore brain, where dramatic structure circuitry seems most likely to be located.
Activations of such convergent pathways are called “somatic markers” In that they neurally bind the emotions to event sequences in a narrative, apparently in the prefrontal cortex. Pg. 27-28
He has some suggestions on how progressives should use the same technique to promote their ideas. And I guess they are OK, but overall seem pretty unexciting.
To get the public to adopt progressive moral positions you have to activate progressive moral thought in them by openly – and constantly – stressing morality, not just the interests of demographic groups. Focusing on interests rather than empathy plays in to the hands of conservatives. Pg 53
Anyway, this all goes into his explanation how the conservative movement changed the metaphor of government as a helpful construction into government as something hurtful. They use language to get the brain to connect the angry emotions to disliking government and happy feelings get tied to “small government”. And this is all wrapped up in peoples own sense of the moral.
In general he paints the conservative views in a poor light and progressive ideas as the natural nature of man, and yes I know I am using metaphors to describe this book about metaphors. And that may be one of my quibbles with this book, he says even rational thinking has to access some emotion but when talking about any progressive viewpoint describes it using the same old school enlightenment reasoning that is full of facts that should convince. I guess I am trying to say he recognizes the emotional metaphor in the conservative side but minimizes the emotion in the progressive worldview. Of course I think the facts matter, but basically we are back at the beginning and losing ground again.
Another problem I had was he kept going back to conservatives using the strict daddy metaphor for government, and I just suspect it is more complicated than that. He wrote this 10 years ago so it really shows how off he was about what a conservative is, in that he assumed they believed what they said they believed.
Take the concept of character. Why do conservatives dote on it? Pg. 79.
Well recent elections have shown character has no real pull on conservative thought when “push comes to shove”
Final thoughts: Well as of today it looks like “conservatives” will pass the US budget that cuts a bunch of taxes (in my frame it cuts taxes mainly for the rich), and I am confident the resulting budget deficit will cause a horrible clamor to cut spending. And since “conservatives” will never cut defense they will slash Medicare and social security…and my pessimistic apocalyptic worldview (not sure which narrative/metaphor library I am pulling that from) make me think it will all come to a head right about the time I will be wanting to take advantage of both of those social programs.
Oh, reasoning and facts won't change anybody's mind, and with social media these frames and narratives have a faster way to burrow into our brains (this is my thinking and not in the book).
Yep, I’m screwed, we’re screwed. And the narrative, or metaphor, or whatever it is, springing to mind is the scene from Aliens 2 with the frantic, and wonderful, Bill Paxton screaming “Game Over, Man. Game Over”
And it is all due to neural bindings in our brain, like a version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", except it wasn't aliens, it was just our own dumb selves. Maybe a saucer will land in D.C. and Klaatu from "the Day the Earth Stood Still" will give us an ultimatum. Narratives in my head, my noggin is just full of 'em.
Politics has its power because it is really our morals writ large (“That is why government budgets are moral documents...”). People arrive at political/moral views from an emotional starting point and these views are held with the same strength as personal morality. Plus the way the brain works means political, personal morality is tied by our own brain circuitry to emotions and narratives we live by.
So the worldviews people have are arrived at by accessing parts of the mind that house fundamental emotions that are linked to other more conceptual parts of the brain through “neural bindings”. Or something like that, I got a little lost on some of it. But from a practical view it is important to remember that as we grow up we develop “primary metaphors”, maybe hundreds of them. And these metaphors bring meaning and emotion to our lives, but since they are not logical they can only be accessed by binding them to narratives (stories) and frames (I think of this along the lines of how you frame a question can lead to the answer)
Framing comes before policy
If health care is framed as “health insurance” then it will be seen through an insurance frame, and the policy will fit that frame: it will be a business, with profits…..When health care is seen as a protection – on par with police and fire protection...- then it becomes part of the moral mission of government. Pg. 67.
- One can see in scripts, the link between frames and narratives. Narratives are frames that tell a story. They have semantic roles...What makes it a narrative – a story – and not just a mere frame? A narrative has a point to it, a moral. It is about how you should live your life – or how you shouldn’t. It has emotional content: events that make you sad or angry or in awe Pg. 250.
All this action is similar to how habits are formed, in that the more re-enforcement there is the stronger the psychological bond is.
In addition, neural binding can create emotional experiences. In the area of the limbic system, the oldest part of the brain in terms of evolution, there are two emotional pathways with different neurotransmitters: once for positive emotions – the dopamine circuit – and one for negative emotions – the norepinephrine circuit. There are pathways in the brain linking these emotional pathways to the fore brain, where dramatic structure circuitry seems most likely to be located.
Activations of such convergent pathways are called “somatic markers” In that they neurally bind the emotions to event sequences in a narrative, apparently in the prefrontal cortex. Pg. 27-28
He has some suggestions on how progressives should use the same technique to promote their ideas. And I guess they are OK, but overall seem pretty unexciting.
To get the public to adopt progressive moral positions you have to activate progressive moral thought in them by openly – and constantly – stressing morality, not just the interests of demographic groups. Focusing on interests rather than empathy plays in to the hands of conservatives. Pg 53
Anyway, this all goes into his explanation how the conservative movement changed the metaphor of government as a helpful construction into government as something hurtful. They use language to get the brain to connect the angry emotions to disliking government and happy feelings get tied to “small government”. And this is all wrapped up in peoples own sense of the moral.
In general he paints the conservative views in a poor light and progressive ideas as the natural nature of man, and yes I know I am using metaphors to describe this book about metaphors. And that may be one of my quibbles with this book, he says even rational thinking has to access some emotion but when talking about any progressive viewpoint describes it using the same old school enlightenment reasoning that is full of facts that should convince. I guess I am trying to say he recognizes the emotional metaphor in the conservative side but minimizes the emotion in the progressive worldview. Of course I think the facts matter, but basically we are back at the beginning and losing ground again.
Another problem I had was he kept going back to conservatives using the strict daddy metaphor for government, and I just suspect it is more complicated than that. He wrote this 10 years ago so it really shows how off he was about what a conservative is, in that he assumed they believed what they said they believed.
Take the concept of character. Why do conservatives dote on it? Pg. 79.
Well recent elections have shown character has no real pull on conservative thought when “push comes to shove”
Final thoughts: Well as of today it looks like “conservatives” will pass the US budget that cuts a bunch of taxes (in my frame it cuts taxes mainly for the rich), and I am confident the resulting budget deficit will cause a horrible clamor to cut spending. And since “conservatives” will never cut defense they will slash Medicare and social security…and my pessimistic apocalyptic worldview (not sure which narrative/metaphor library I am pulling that from) make me think it will all come to a head right about the time I will be wanting to take advantage of both of those social programs.
Oh, reasoning and facts won't change anybody's mind, and with social media these frames and narratives have a faster way to burrow into our brains (this is my thinking and not in the book).
Yep, I’m screwed, we’re screwed. And the narrative, or metaphor, or whatever it is, springing to mind is the scene from Aliens 2 with the frantic, and wonderful, Bill Paxton screaming “Game Over, Man. Game Over”
And it is all due to neural bindings in our brain, like a version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", except it wasn't aliens, it was just our own dumb selves. Maybe a saucer will land in D.C. and Klaatu from "the Day the Earth Stood Still" will give us an ultimatum. Narratives in my head, my noggin is just full of 'em.
December 29, 2018
this book just changed my ideas about politics. although throughout most of it, i kept thinking, "yeah, of course conservatives manipulate language," Lakoff really dug deeper into things i had never thought about.
there's not a whole lot of science in this book, but that's okay because it makes it easy for all the lib arts majors like me to read. and we understand ideas like framing concepts and reflexive thought. hurray! i feel like i know some science now.
there's not a whole lot of science in this book, but that's okay because it makes it easy for all the lib arts majors like me to read. and we understand ideas like framing concepts and reflexive thought. hurray! i feel like i know some science now.
September 15, 2020
Anyone who is willing to question their views on politics, no matter the country, should read this. Such an eye opener! All scientific, and brilliantly written. I will admit, I did feel that the author was pushing his views on the reader at first, but as one progresses through the book and understand the context and the part of history he is writing from, one does realise his absolute views. But the best part is one does not have to agree with it. Read it, and form your own views of society in general, as well as politics, while tearing away all the unconscious thoughts that you might have collected over the years.
June 7, 2017
The book was a bit dated being written back in 2008. We get to read about a simpler time when everyone thought Karl Rove was a genius and America was in disbelief in have George W Bush as president. It's still relevant with today's politics. Though it would really help if this book got an update in both the politics and the social science.
July 10, 2017
George Lakoff's; The Political Mind. The most important book on politics over the last 20 years. Progressive's unite and read this treatise on how to take back our democracy.
December 26, 2016
Says that once upon a time, we reasoned our way from our hypotheses about reasonable people to our conclusions about the best way to structure government:
• Since all people have the capacity for reason, we can govern ourselves, without bowing to higher authorities like kings or popes or oligarchs.
• Reason makes us equal, and so the best form of government is a democracy.
• We use reason to serve our interests, and so an optimal government would serve the interests of all.
• Since we all have he same reason, the same laws can apply to all; this we can be governed by general, rational laws, not individual whims.
• Our inherent rational nature accords us inherent rights and freedoms.
• Government should be dedicated to the rational interests of all citizens, and must be structured so that no authority an overwhelm them.
• Reason contrasts with blind faith, and so government should be separate from, and independent of, religion.
• Science is based on reason, and so our government should recognize, honor, and develop scientific knowledge.
• Therefore, a government committed to reason will be a democratic government.
• When democratic values are violated, it is reason that must be restored.
(6). Then he explains why he doesn’t think people make decisions on this basis, which I suspect is true. Also talks about “neural binding,” which I don’t know what is.
He says a lot of things that make me feel good, like, “Behind every progressive policy lies a single moral value: empathy, together with the responsibility and strength to act on that empathy,” (47) and “Conservative thought . . . begins with the notion that morality is obedience to an authority – assumed to be a legitimate authority who is inherently good, knows right from wrong, functions to protect us from evil in the world, and has both the right and duty to use force to command obedience and fight evil.” (60). He equates hierarchy, punishment, discipline.
I liked it. Didn’t feel like I knew enough to judge a lot of what he was saying. The idea that metaphors are ultimately physical (he suggests we say a loving person is warm because we remember being cuddled; we say prices are rising because we saw water rising) is a little beyond my competence. But the basic notion that 18th century nation building had a certain conception of the human mind that has not stood the test of time – that seems dead on to me. That the republicans figured out how to take advantage of that before the democrats? Yeah, probably. That the reason some folks freaked out about gay marriage had to do with the threat to their own identity? I just don’t know.
Certainly he’s dead on that we fail when we accept our opponent’s framing of the case. But that’s first year lawyering.
Is he right in a deep level? Again, he might be, but he didn’t persuade me, and I’m pretty sympathetic to his politics. Glad I read it, not sure I’ll read it again.
• Since all people have the capacity for reason, we can govern ourselves, without bowing to higher authorities like kings or popes or oligarchs.
• Reason makes us equal, and so the best form of government is a democracy.
• We use reason to serve our interests, and so an optimal government would serve the interests of all.
• Since we all have he same reason, the same laws can apply to all; this we can be governed by general, rational laws, not individual whims.
• Our inherent rational nature accords us inherent rights and freedoms.
• Government should be dedicated to the rational interests of all citizens, and must be structured so that no authority an overwhelm them.
• Reason contrasts with blind faith, and so government should be separate from, and independent of, religion.
• Science is based on reason, and so our government should recognize, honor, and develop scientific knowledge.
• Therefore, a government committed to reason will be a democratic government.
• When democratic values are violated, it is reason that must be restored.
(6). Then he explains why he doesn’t think people make decisions on this basis, which I suspect is true. Also talks about “neural binding,” which I don’t know what is.
He says a lot of things that make me feel good, like, “Behind every progressive policy lies a single moral value: empathy, together with the responsibility and strength to act on that empathy,” (47) and “Conservative thought . . . begins with the notion that morality is obedience to an authority – assumed to be a legitimate authority who is inherently good, knows right from wrong, functions to protect us from evil in the world, and has both the right and duty to use force to command obedience and fight evil.” (60). He equates hierarchy, punishment, discipline.
I liked it. Didn’t feel like I knew enough to judge a lot of what he was saying. The idea that metaphors are ultimately physical (he suggests we say a loving person is warm because we remember being cuddled; we say prices are rising because we saw water rising) is a little beyond my competence. But the basic notion that 18th century nation building had a certain conception of the human mind that has not stood the test of time – that seems dead on to me. That the republicans figured out how to take advantage of that before the democrats? Yeah, probably. That the reason some folks freaked out about gay marriage had to do with the threat to their own identity? I just don’t know.
Certainly he’s dead on that we fail when we accept our opponent’s framing of the case. But that’s first year lawyering.
Is he right in a deep level? Again, he might be, but he didn’t persuade me, and I’m pretty sympathetic to his politics. Glad I read it, not sure I’ll read it again.
September 11, 2009
This is one of those books that sets off conflicting emotions and thoughts. The application of knowledge of the brain sciences to political debate is absolutely fascinating, and much good information is presented. Another part of the thesis--that "progressives" or liberals use an "Enlightenment" model of discourse (emphasizing the use of logic and reason to advance their points) whereas conservatives use a more powerful approach, wedding emotion to thought. Hence, conservatives have an advantage over liberals, because their view of "human nature" is more accurate.
The book shows that Lakoff is fully able to wed the study of cognition with our knowledge of the brain. This part of his analysis is very readable and provides lots of information.
I must say, though, that the liberal versus conservative thesis is improbable. There are plenty of liberals who use emotional appeals (Teddy Kennedy when given a script could raise goose bumps); there are Republicans who are professorial and more Enlightenment oriented, speaking to logic and reason (e.g., Jack Kemp). Enlightenment thinkers were not abstract thinkers devoid of passion. The attack on Enlightenment thinking has been ongoing over a long period of time, and much of this debate is missing from Lakoff's discussion (read Derrida, for example, who engaged in a one person Postmodern assault on Enlightenment thought).
Still the book is useful by providing entree to a fascinating literature on human cognition and the brain.
The book shows that Lakoff is fully able to wed the study of cognition with our knowledge of the brain. This part of his analysis is very readable and provides lots of information.
I must say, though, that the liberal versus conservative thesis is improbable. There are plenty of liberals who use emotional appeals (Teddy Kennedy when given a script could raise goose bumps); there are Republicans who are professorial and more Enlightenment oriented, speaking to logic and reason (e.g., Jack Kemp). Enlightenment thinkers were not abstract thinkers devoid of passion. The attack on Enlightenment thinking has been ongoing over a long period of time, and much of this debate is missing from Lakoff's discussion (read Derrida, for example, who engaged in a one person Postmodern assault on Enlightenment thought).
Still the book is useful by providing entree to a fascinating literature on human cognition and the brain.
Read
March 31, 2010This book is a poisonous screed. I felt sick to my stomach reading it. I had hoped to learn something from what the author had to say about how the brain works, but there was so much propaganda, lies, leaps of illogic, and smug assumption of unsupported and unsupportable statist political theories that I couldn't get through it. It presents the state as the only moral agent and individual rights as worthless except to be subverted. American history is rewritten from whole cloth on every page.
Some of the few good things are the concepts of framing, some examination of metaphor (e.g., of morality being beauty, fairness, light. etc.), and of psychological decision-making, near the end, however, Dan Ariely's treatment in Predictably Irrational is much better. The fact that people don't act rationally, however, is a powerful indictment against democracy or any sort of system where the choices of the masses legitimize violence controlled by the few.
A massive false dichotomy permeates the book, itself composed of two straw men: "progressive" morality is about empathy and responsibility, conservative morality is about authority. Of course, both are about authority, historically "progressives" have authored the most rigidly and disastrously authoritarian regimes, and it is neither empathic nor responsible to bribe the irresponsible with other people's money. Furthermore, no room at all is left for individual freedom - libertarians, voluntaryists, anarchists, and small
Some of the few good things are the concepts of framing, some examination of metaphor (e.g., of morality being beauty, fairness, light. etc.), and of psychological decision-making, near the end, however, Dan Ariely's treatment in Predictably Irrational is much better. The fact that people don't act rationally, however, is a powerful indictment against democracy or any sort of system where the choices of the masses legitimize violence controlled by the few.
A massive false dichotomy permeates the book, itself composed of two straw men: "progressive" morality is about empathy and responsibility, conservative morality is about authority. Of course, both are about authority, historically "progressives" have authored the most rigidly and disastrously authoritarian regimes, and it is neither empathic nor responsible to bribe the irresponsible with other people's money. Furthermore, no room at all is left for individual freedom - libertarians, voluntaryists, anarchists, and small
May 24, 2011
Rantings of a flaming liberal. I didn't expect this to be an agenda-driven book. I've finished two chapters, and I guess since he's addressing a liberal readership he doesn't feel much of a need to defend his beliefs. Plus he doesn't believe in the universality of logic (outdated, First Enlightenment assumption) he thus doesn't use logic to make his case, he just structures the debate in his own favor.
So he is practicing what he is preaching. He cherry-picks Adam Smith (he is the revisionist, not Burke) and criticizes the only progressive who hasn't been a wuss, Bill Clinton, incorrectly (NAFTA didinclude labor and environmental standards).
I hope in the remaining chapters I can learn something useful about cognitive science.
So he is practicing what he is preaching. He cherry-picks Adam Smith (he is the revisionist, not Burke) and criticizes the only progressive who hasn't been a wuss, Bill Clinton, incorrectly (NAFTA didinclude labor and environmental standards).
I hope in the remaining chapters I can learn something useful about cognitive science.
December 10, 2019
My sad and depressing takeaway is that conservatives are much more effective at messaging. I read this book at the exact moment the Democratic speaker of the house has drawn up articles of impeachment on one of the most controversial (wasn't that generous of me?) modern presidents, when I read one person on twitter say that if the shoe were on the other foot we'd be hearing conservatives refer to the person as Impeached President __ every time. I can't argue with it.
This book was written a lifetime (11 years) ago, juuuuust before the rise of the Tea Party, which likely gave way to our current situation. It's a strange, strange time capsule and quite disorienting for anyone trying to make sense of our current state.
This book was written a lifetime (11 years) ago, juuuuust before the rise of the Tea Party, which likely gave way to our current situation. It's a strange, strange time capsule and quite disorienting for anyone trying to make sense of our current state.
September 20, 2023
Wow, I wish everyone in the country could read this book. Or, at least about 3/4 of it. Some of it I'll admit got a little Charlie Brown adult voice on me (game theory, and Chomsky's linguistics). But truly, I think this is the key to saving our Democracy. Reframing and not hiding from the progressive values of empathy and empowerment. Amazing stuff. It also helped me understand some people I know who think in the strict father model (as I'm about 100% nurturing parent model). I loved learning about the brain functions, though some of it was pretty complicated. I liked it when he gave examples followed by the "of course, this is greatly oversimplified" apology. Those always made sense.
May 17, 2011
You know, I think I lost this book. I was about 7/8 of the way through it, and I think I left it somewhere. It's either on an airplane or in my childhood bedroom in MN where I spent a night in April.
Oh well, I hope someone else reads it because it was great! It was helpful for understanding how and why people vote the way they do(often against their own economic interests).
I studied metaphor in professional writing for part of my thesis, and this book helped me understand how metaphor works at the cognitive level in the brain. Fascinating stuff.
Oh well, I hope someone else reads it because it was great! It was helpful for understanding how and why people vote the way they do(often against their own economic interests).
I studied metaphor in professional writing for part of my thesis, and this book helped me understand how metaphor works at the cognitive level in the brain. Fascinating stuff.
December 13, 2021
I've read two other Lakoff titles and really enjoyed them, especially Moral Politics. This felt like a rehash of stuff that I've already read, and somehow less compelling than the other two. Still, I think Lakoff's work is important in helping us to understand how American political discourse is polarizing, and what we can do to mend fences.
October 16, 2020
There are couple of useful parts dealing with framing, metaphores and naratives, that could basically fit into one or two chapters. The rest is a neverending rant about conservatives. In the end, the book feels more like a partisan opinion piece.
July 29, 2018
Friend suggested I read this. While I disagree with the author's attempts at rebuking the use of game theory in economics, it was otherwise an insightful read
August 1, 2016
Great work connecting modern brain science to human political behavior.
January 25, 2020
This book is worth reading, if at all, mainly for the way in which it demonstrates the rank hypocrisy of the left and the prostitution of science, history, and everything else for leftist political aims that passes for woke writing. This book was written in the immediate aftermath of Obama's victory and it reads like the author was of the belief that the victory of Obama heralded a triumph of progressive politics over Enlightenment liberalism or conservatism. Rarely has a book so demonstrated the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of its author and simultaneously discredited the point of view that the author was trying to promote. To be sure, the author was certainly not intending this to be the case. He probably meant the book to be encouraging to fellow Progressive activists in encouraging them to frame political matters for their own political advantage while demonizing supposedly radical conservatives for having the gall to undo progressive gains of the past, as if that was a horrifying thing. The book though, demonstrates that it is Democrats who deny reality and seek to reframe it away when it does not please them and that all of the accusations that the author makes against conservatives are the regular way that leftists operate, and that all of the restraint and decorum that the author claims for the left is in fact the regular behavior of most conservatives, except perhaps for book reviewers.
This book is almost 300 pages long and is divided into three parts and eighteen chapters along with other material. The author reflects upon the limits of the plasticity of the brain and social change in an introduction after the preface. The first part of the book looks at how the brain shapes the political mind (I) in four chapters that deal with the various narratives that Anna Nicole Smith could fit (1), the political unconscious that hinders rationality (2), the brain's role in family matters (3), and the brain's role in political ideologies (4). The second book looks at the political challenges for the contemporary mind (II), with chapters on the author's goal of a new consciousness (5), the traumatic ideas of the war on terror (6), the framing of reality (7), the supposed fear of framing on the part of the left (8), the confrontation of negative truths/stereotypes (9), as well as the claim that leftists aim above bad apples (10), cognitive dissonant policies (11), and the contesting of concepts (12). The third part of the book then discusses the technical as the political (III), with chapters on the exploration of the political brain (13), the problem of self-interest (14), metaphors and rational action (15), the success of hawks (16), the brain's language (17), and the author's ideas on the new enlightenment (18) and expectations of success, after which there are the usual acknowledgements, notes, and an index.
This book is a fascinating game of opposites. Where the author refers to the leftist family as nurturing and leftist values as life-affirming, one looks in vain for the lack of nurturing that results from the abuse that leftist thinking inflicts on children and the lack of stability that results from leftist models of relationships tied to emotionality, to say nothing of the life-affirming nature of abortion or the gulag or laogai. The author repeatedly claims that leftists are empathetic of others who are suffering and claims this as an aspect of superiority for leftists over conservatives, forgetting that empathy requires people having experienced what others have, something that is quite notably absent from most of the coercive politics of dependence that leftists demonstrate. The fact that the author is rampantly biased only makes this particular book all the more entertaining because it shows the way that bias is a bad thing when one is writing books of science. The author should stick to writing agenda pieces for appreciative leftist hack editorials rather than trying to write books that purport to be nonfiction.
This book is almost 300 pages long and is divided into three parts and eighteen chapters along with other material. The author reflects upon the limits of the plasticity of the brain and social change in an introduction after the preface. The first part of the book looks at how the brain shapes the political mind (I) in four chapters that deal with the various narratives that Anna Nicole Smith could fit (1), the political unconscious that hinders rationality (2), the brain's role in family matters (3), and the brain's role in political ideologies (4). The second book looks at the political challenges for the contemporary mind (II), with chapters on the author's goal of a new consciousness (5), the traumatic ideas of the war on terror (6), the framing of reality (7), the supposed fear of framing on the part of the left (8), the confrontation of negative truths/stereotypes (9), as well as the claim that leftists aim above bad apples (10), cognitive dissonant policies (11), and the contesting of concepts (12). The third part of the book then discusses the technical as the political (III), with chapters on the exploration of the political brain (13), the problem of self-interest (14), metaphors and rational action (15), the success of hawks (16), the brain's language (17), and the author's ideas on the new enlightenment (18) and expectations of success, after which there are the usual acknowledgements, notes, and an index.
This book is a fascinating game of opposites. Where the author refers to the leftist family as nurturing and leftist values as life-affirming, one looks in vain for the lack of nurturing that results from the abuse that leftist thinking inflicts on children and the lack of stability that results from leftist models of relationships tied to emotionality, to say nothing of the life-affirming nature of abortion or the gulag or laogai. The author repeatedly claims that leftists are empathetic of others who are suffering and claims this as an aspect of superiority for leftists over conservatives, forgetting that empathy requires people having experienced what others have, something that is quite notably absent from most of the coercive politics of dependence that leftists demonstrate. The fact that the author is rampantly biased only makes this particular book all the more entertaining because it shows the way that bias is a bad thing when one is writing books of science. The author should stick to writing agenda pieces for appreciative leftist hack editorials rather than trying to write books that purport to be nonfiction.
April 9, 2023
While reading the book, "Win Every Argument," by Mehdi Hasan, the author referenced the book, "The Political Brain, The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," by Drew Westen. What made the book of interest to me is that, in my limited political experience, I've always tried to navigate from a point of logic and information instead of passion. Passion is all well and good, but I've seen too much go wrong in politics when the electorate are encouraged by politicians to engage in passion over intellect.
Additionally, while I do not claim any particular expertise in scripture, and I'm certainly no paragon of virtue where it is concerned, I do find my understanding of The Holy Bible leading me in the direction of dispassion - thought over emotion - by no means to any extreme, but definitely more Stoic than Epicurean. Such verses as Colossians 3:5 which states, "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry," and James 4:1 which says, "What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 are at war within you?" It is possible that the passions spoken of here include sexual passions, but other verses in other books talk about types of passion - envy, boasting, arrogance, etc - that contribute to my tendency to prefer stoic non-passion to just blasting off like a rocket over every passion-inducing event that comes along.
So it came as a bit of a shock (and will lead to a need to rework my personal methodology where politics is concerned) that passion rules in politics. The trick is to be the politician to wield this weapon for good, not ill.
The author writes, "The dispassionate vision of mind and brain takes as axiomatic a trickle-up theory of politics, which assumes that voters start by evaluating policy positions, and that the results of these evaluations gradually trickle up into voting decisions (Chapter 16, page 418 of 479)." This is the approach I use. Apparently, though, for the vast majority of you, my fellow citizens, this is not how you operate. The author points out that most victorious candidates have the ability to, "...move people to tears, laughter, compassion, anger, and feelings of sanctity. They tell compelling stories. They speak at the level of principled stands. They provide emotionally compelling examples of the ways they would govern, signature issues that illustrate their principles and foster identification [with their electorate] (Chapter 16, page 418-419 of 479)."
This does not mean a candidate has to lie. But s/he needs to connect at the level of passion, emotion, because only a small subset of us exist in a realm of stoicism. If you do not meet people where they are at, then you are not meeting them at their point of need. The responsibility is to never take advantage of their emotions. Using emotions to make connection is honorable. Using emotion to take control is not.
If you plan to run for anything, you may want to consider getting a copy of this book. It was enlightening.
Additionally, while I do not claim any particular expertise in scripture, and I'm certainly no paragon of virtue where it is concerned, I do find my understanding of The Holy Bible leading me in the direction of dispassion - thought over emotion - by no means to any extreme, but definitely more Stoic than Epicurean. Such verses as Colossians 3:5 which states, "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry," and James 4:1 which says, "What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 are at war within you?" It is possible that the passions spoken of here include sexual passions, but other verses in other books talk about types of passion - envy, boasting, arrogance, etc - that contribute to my tendency to prefer stoic non-passion to just blasting off like a rocket over every passion-inducing event that comes along.
So it came as a bit of a shock (and will lead to a need to rework my personal methodology where politics is concerned) that passion rules in politics. The trick is to be the politician to wield this weapon for good, not ill.
The author writes, "The dispassionate vision of mind and brain takes as axiomatic a trickle-up theory of politics, which assumes that voters start by evaluating policy positions, and that the results of these evaluations gradually trickle up into voting decisions (Chapter 16, page 418 of 479)." This is the approach I use. Apparently, though, for the vast majority of you, my fellow citizens, this is not how you operate. The author points out that most victorious candidates have the ability to, "...move people to tears, laughter, compassion, anger, and feelings of sanctity. They tell compelling stories. They speak at the level of principled stands. They provide emotionally compelling examples of the ways they would govern, signature issues that illustrate their principles and foster identification [with their electorate] (Chapter 16, page 418-419 of 479)."
This does not mean a candidate has to lie. But s/he needs to connect at the level of passion, emotion, because only a small subset of us exist in a realm of stoicism. If you do not meet people where they are at, then you are not meeting them at their point of need. The responsibility is to never take advantage of their emotions. Using emotions to make connection is honorable. Using emotion to take control is not.
If you plan to run for anything, you may want to consider getting a copy of this book. It was enlightening.
April 7, 2023
I read this book for a neuroscience book club I co-run. Message me if you want our book report :)
I was not familiar with Lakoff's work before reading this book, or most of the topics he covers, and I found the book pretty interesting. First of all, the book is completely unreadable if you identify as conservative. Lakoff hates you and thinks you're not only stupid, but also manipulative and immoral. Sorry about that. To use Lakoff's nomenclature, the book is framed as: conservatives have way too much power in this country because they understand the tools I'm about to tell you about. Lets start using these tools dear liberal comrades so that we can defeat the enemy. It's actually a smart strategy on his part because it would be hard for a conservative reader to gain knowledge from this book while being constantly attacked, thus leaving all the learning for liberals, Lakoff's true desire :p
As a neuroscientist, I didn't think the neuroscience really added much in this book, other than lending a general air of "this isn't made up it's in your actual brain" which is a tired Cartesian trope we need to retire already anyway. Kind of ironic given that Lakoff is explicitly fighting "an old enlightenment" idea of the brain in this book.
Lakoff brought to my attention lots of interesting ways of packaging information to hit better and be more memorable. One is to be mindful of the frame. The neural circuitry needed to create frame structures is relatively simple and so frames tend to structure a huge amount of our thought. Words are defined in terms of frames, and when used, the words activate those frames, whether negated or not (e.g, don’t think of an elephant). So, for example, asking if someone is in favor of tax relief activates a frame in which taxes are an affliction not a way for the government to empower and protect citizens. Conservatives tend to have a strict father frame, and progressives tend to have a nurturant parent frame for thinking about government. Another interesting idea was biconceptual thought: We all have both progressive and conservative worldviews, applied in different areas and in different ways. Neural binding—the binding of a general worldview to a specific issue area—makes this possible. This is what Lakoff calls being a biconceptual, which he thinks is actually what political moderates are. The brain mechanism of biconceptual thought is mutual inhibition, where both worldviews exist in the same brain but are linked to nonoverlapping areas of life. The activation of one worldview naturally inhibits the other.
Overall, interesting book that has stuck with me in terms of how I present issues in conversation, how I probe my own thinking (change the frame, see if it changes your opinion), and how I absorb the diction of others who are trying to convince me of something. For someone who stays out of politics as much as possible because 99.9% of the discourse on it is circular twaddle, I enjoyed reading something substantive about not only politics, but the transfer of information generally.
I was not familiar with Lakoff's work before reading this book, or most of the topics he covers, and I found the book pretty interesting. First of all, the book is completely unreadable if you identify as conservative. Lakoff hates you and thinks you're not only stupid, but also manipulative and immoral. Sorry about that. To use Lakoff's nomenclature, the book is framed as: conservatives have way too much power in this country because they understand the tools I'm about to tell you about. Lets start using these tools dear liberal comrades so that we can defeat the enemy. It's actually a smart strategy on his part because it would be hard for a conservative reader to gain knowledge from this book while being constantly attacked, thus leaving all the learning for liberals, Lakoff's true desire :p
As a neuroscientist, I didn't think the neuroscience really added much in this book, other than lending a general air of "this isn't made up it's in your actual brain" which is a tired Cartesian trope we need to retire already anyway. Kind of ironic given that Lakoff is explicitly fighting "an old enlightenment" idea of the brain in this book.
Lakoff brought to my attention lots of interesting ways of packaging information to hit better and be more memorable. One is to be mindful of the frame. The neural circuitry needed to create frame structures is relatively simple and so frames tend to structure a huge amount of our thought. Words are defined in terms of frames, and when used, the words activate those frames, whether negated or not (e.g, don’t think of an elephant). So, for example, asking if someone is in favor of tax relief activates a frame in which taxes are an affliction not a way for the government to empower and protect citizens. Conservatives tend to have a strict father frame, and progressives tend to have a nurturant parent frame for thinking about government. Another interesting idea was biconceptual thought: We all have both progressive and conservative worldviews, applied in different areas and in different ways. Neural binding—the binding of a general worldview to a specific issue area—makes this possible. This is what Lakoff calls being a biconceptual, which he thinks is actually what political moderates are. The brain mechanism of biconceptual thought is mutual inhibition, where both worldviews exist in the same brain but are linked to nonoverlapping areas of life. The activation of one worldview naturally inhibits the other.
Overall, interesting book that has stuck with me in terms of how I present issues in conversation, how I probe my own thinking (change the frame, see if it changes your opinion), and how I absorb the diction of others who are trying to convince me of something. For someone who stays out of politics as much as possible because 99.9% of the discourse on it is circular twaddle, I enjoyed reading something substantive about not only politics, but the transfer of information generally.
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