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Forum nameGeneral Discussion
Topic subjectRE: My gut reaction
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=13132117&mesg_id=13132158
13132158, RE: My gut reaction
Posted by double 0, Mon Mar-06-17 11:44 AM
Not at all...

Lakoff wants the left to get better at its use of language...

"Can you talk a little about progressives who are surprised that rational arguments don't win elections?

Cognitive scientists study how people really think - how brains work, how we get ideas out of neurons, how framing and metaphorical thought work, the link between language and thought, and so on.

But other academic fields have not been using these results, especially, political science, public policy, law, economics, in short, the main areas studied by progressives who go into politics. As a result, they teach an inadequate view of reason and "rationality." They miss the fact that our brains are structured by hundreds of conceptual metaphors and frames early in life, that we can only understand what our brains allow, and that conservatives and progressives have acquired different brain circuitry with the consequence that their normal modes of reason are different.

What progressives call "rational arguments" are not normal modes of real reason. What counts as a "rational argument" is not the same for progressives and conservatives. And even the meaning of concepts and words may be different. Cognitive linguists have learned a lot about how all this works, but few progressives have studied cognitive linguistics. For a thorough review of such differences, take a look at my book Whose Freedom?, which shows how reasoning about freedom can take two utterly different forms for progressives and conservatives."

http://www.truth-out.org/progressive-picks/item/27576-george-lakoff-progressives-cannot-succeed-without-expressing-respect-values