Site uses cookies to provide basic functionality.

OK
Search Quotes tags
Query
Tags
Author
1 2 ▲ ▼
Link Quote Stars Tags Author
7f52f5a The biology of empathy allows us to comprehend our connection to each other, to other living things, and to the physical world that supports life. George Lakoff
c887f91 The mind is inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. George Lakoff
34bdd52 Another example of how a metaphor can create new meaning for us came about by accident. An Iranian student, shortly after his arrival in Berkeley, took a seminar on metaphor from one of us. Among the wondrous things that he found in Berkeley was an expression that he heard over and over and understood as a beautifully sane metaphor. The expression was "the solution of my problems"--which he took to be a large volume of liquid, bubbling and .. theories-of-meaning George Lakoff
52a4389 You can't understand Twenty-first-Century Politics with an Eighteenth-Century Brain. politics political-humor george-lakeoff humor-inspirational progressive political-science George Lakoff
e100ab4 one can be both free and economically secure while leading a totally meaningless and empty existence. George Lakoff
3882677 There is no such thing as a self-made man. Every businessman has used the vast American infrastructure, which the taxpayers paid for, to make his money. George Lakoff
3b45fdb We categorize as we do because we have the brains and bodies we have and because we interact in the world as we do. embodiment situated-cognition embodied-mind conceptualization limits George Lakoff
07a93a8 Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. George Lakoff
008a465 Metaphysics in philosophy is, of course, supposed to characterize what is real - literally real. The irony is that such a conception of the real depends upon unconscious metaphors. irony nature-of-reason nature-of-theory metaphysics metaphors George Lakoff
4b348df Cognitive science has something of enormous importance to contribute to human freedom: the ability to learn what our unconscious conceptual systems are like and how our cognitive unconscious functions. If we do not realize that most of our thought is unconscious and that we think metaphorically, we will indeed be slaves to the cognitive unconscious. Paradoxically, the assumption that we have a radically autonomous rationality as traditional.. metaphor self-knowledge illusion freedom reason cognitive-science embodied-mind limitation thought George Lakoff
4f34c8e Metaphor is thus imaginative rationality. George Lakoff
d34f206 Patriotism is about improving the lives of one's fellow citizens and improving one's country's contribution to the world. In the conservative moral hierarchy, our country is taken as simply better than other countries. This is jingoism, not true patriotism, which rests on progressive values. George Lakoff
b9bf5a0 The problem with classical disembodied scientific realism is that it takes two intertwined and inseparable dimensions of all experience - the awareness of the experiencing organism and the stable entities and structures it encounters - and erects them as separate and distinct entities called subjects and objects. What disembodied realism ... misses is that, as embodied, imaginative creatures, we never were separated or divorced from reality.. reason imagination science truth embodied-realism relativism George Lakoff
b1e7e22 New metaphors are capable of creating new understandings and, therefore, new realities. This should be obvious in the case of poetic metaphor, where language is the medium through which new conceptual metaphors are created. George Lakoff
72612f3 Fourth, the system of conceptual metaphors is not arbitrary or just historically contingent; rather, it is shaped to a significant extent by the common nature of our bodies and the shared ways that we all function in the everyday world. George Lakoff
9377b0d LABOR IS A RESOURCE and TIME IS A RESOURCE are by no means universal. They emerged naturally in our culture because of the way we view work, our passion for quantification, and our obsession with purposeful ends. These metaphors highlight those aspects of labor and time that are centrally important in our culture. In doing this, they also deemphasize or hide certain aspects of labor and time. We can see what both metaphors hide by examining.. George Lakoff
4c435a0 In philosophy, metaphorical pluralism is the norm. Our most important abstract philosophical concepts, including time, causation, morality, and the mind, are all conceptualized by multiple metaphors, sometimes as many as two dozen. What each philosophical theory typically does is to choose one of those metaphors as "right," as the true literal meaning of the concept. One reason there is so much argumentation across philosophical theories is.. metaphor reason philosophy concept embodied-mind logic George Lakoff
d0f4851 If you believe in the eighteenth century view of the mind, you will look and act wimpy. You will think that all you need to do is give people the facts and the figures and they will reach the right conclusion. You will think that all you need to do is point out where their interests lie, and they will act politically to maximize them. You will believe in polling and focus groups: you will believe that if you ask people what their interests .. life-and-living does-it-make-a-sound george-lakeoff humor-irony-death-zombie life-interpreting political-interpreting relationship-interpreting humor-inspirational political-philosophy political-science George Lakoff
75955cc As a consequence, it should be true that if you just get the facts out to people, they will reason to the right conclusion. And so year after year, decade after decade, liberals keep telling facts to conservative audiences without changing many minds. This behavior by liberals is itself a form of science denial--the denial of the cognitive and brain sciences. It is simply irrational behavior by many people proud of their rationality. It George Lakoff
1743ef7 People do not necessarily vote in their self-interest. They vote their identity. They vote their values. They vote for who they identify with. George Lakoff
3ba6cc3 There is nothing inherently metaphoric about such claims of basic experiential morality as "Health is good," "It is better to be cared for than uncared for," "Everyone ought to be protected from physical harm," and "It is good to be loved." However, as soon as we develop such claims into a full-fledged human morality, we find that virtually all of our abstract moral concepts-justice, rights, empathy, nurturance, strength, uprightness, and s.. George Lakoff
4065730 Deeply embedded in conservative and liberal politics are different models of the family. Conservatism, as we shall see, is based on a Strict Father model, while liberalism is centered around a Nurturant Parent model. These two models of the family give rise to different moral systems and different discourse forms, that is, different choices of words and different modes of reasoning. Once George Lakoff
8c26d37 Again, as with creating a nurturant family life, it would be unreasonable to expect that creating a nurturant society should be easy or quick. One must be patient and ready to deal with frustration. And one must bear in mind the morality of happiness and self-nurturance. In the midst of frustration, you must find a way to be basically happy and to take care of yourself. If you don't, you will become less nurturant. Women have known througho.. George Lakoff
057917b Consider a cognitive scientist concerned with the empirical study of the mind, especially the cognitive unconscious, and ultimately committed to understanding the mind in terms of the brain and its neural structure. To such a scientist of the mind, Anglo-American approaches to the philosophy of mind and language of the sort discussed above seem odd indeed. The brain uses neurons, not languagelike symbols. Neural computation works by real-ti.. George Lakoff
e8f0ca5 Conservatives have, at least since the 60s, seen their system of values under attack--from feminism, the gay rights movement, the ecological movement, the sexual revolution, multiculturalism, and many more manifestations of Nurturant Parent morality. Conservatives have seen the values of these movements taught in the schools. They are appalled that what they see as the only system of real morality is being undermined. Conservatives believe .. George Lakoff
b8fff36 1. Why should poor conservatives vote against their financial interests? Because they are voting their moral identities, not their pocketbooks. They are voting for people who believe in what they believe, and they want to see a world in which their moral principles are upheld 2. Why do Tea Party members of Congress obstruct even the workings of an overwhelmingly conservative Congress? Because they believe that compromising with progressive .. George Lakoff
9a7397f pg.90 of Philosophy in the Flesh: We are basing our argument on the existence of at least three stable scientific findings--the embodied mind, the cognitive unconscious, and metaphorical thought. Just as the ideas of cells and DNA in biology are stable and not likely to be found to be mistakes, so we believe that there is more than enough converging evidence to establish at least these three results. Ironically, these scientific results ch.. science religion-philosophy thoughts-of-the-mind western-philosophy philosophy-of-science religion-and-philoshophy philosophy-of-life thinking George Lakoff
e5ccd09 Aristotle, on the other hand, saw poetry as having a positive value: "It is a great thing, indeed, to make proper use of the poetic forms, . . . But the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor" (Poetics 1459a); "ordinary words convey only what we know already; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh" (Rhetoric 1410b)." George Lakoff
34c5f25 What have been called "women's issues" are freedom issues. Body control. The right of human beings to control their own bodies is a freedom issue. Respect. The right of human beings to be treated institutionally with respect as a human being is a freedom issue." human-rights freedom respect George Lakoff
b9e1137 If you believed in rationalism, you would believe that the facts will set you free, that you just need to give people hard information, independent of any framing, and they will reason their way to the right conclusion. We know this is false, that if the facts don't fit the frames people have, they will keep the frames (which are, after all, physically in their brains) and ignore, forget, or explain away the facts. The facts must be framed .. George Lakoff
53b3250 Progressives are constantly giving lists of facts. Facts matter enormously, but to be meaningful they must be framed in terms of their moral importance. George Lakoff
1159f3e What is meaningful are not the words, the mere sound sequences spoken or letter sequences on a page, but the conceptual content that the words evoke. Meanings are thus in people's minds, not in the words on the page. George Lakoff
07bb11f But compare this with the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has not just a practical mission but a moral mission--safeguarding the environment, which includes choosing a moral view of the environment. There is no neutral view of the environment; there are only moral views of the sort we discussed in Chapter 12. The EPA's job is not merely to carry out morally neutral functions like measuring air pollution. Its very function is a mora.. George Lakoff
ac3eadb Instead, the mission of the agency is moral, and its success must be judged in significant part on moral grounds, not cost-benefit grounds. It is the moral mission of the EPA that offends conservatives. The same is true of the moral missions of the arts and humanities endowments. One George Lakoff
d6152d8 There is still another reason for conservatives to be against what they see as a "negative" history. If conservative politics rests on Strict Father morality, the national family must be seen as a moral family and the rules by which the national family operates must be seen as moral. Otherwise, the legitimacy of all forms of governmental authority is called into question. The very foundation of Strict Father morality is the legitimacy of pa.. George Lakoff
b170377 The self-righteous person's superfluity of moral credit is the basis of his discourse. He presupposes his own moral values and his own righteousness as a condition of conversation. The effect of this is that anyone talking to a self-righteous person must either agree with his moral values and act equally self-righteous, or face being put in a morally inferior position in the discourse. This is what makes self-righteous people particularly i.. George Lakoff
de431e9 The government is commonly conceptualized as a business. If it is seen as a service industry, taxes can be seen as payment for services provided to the public. Those services can include protection (by the military, the criminal justice system, and regulatory agencies), adjudication of disputes (by the judiciary and other agencies), social insurance (as in Social Security and Medicare and various "safety nets"), and so on. Under" George Lakoff
635231e In the Strict Father model, it is the duty of the strict father to protect his family above all else. By the Nation As Family metaphor, this implies that the major function of the government is, above all else, to protect the nation. That is why conservatives see the funding of the military as moral, while the funding of social programs is seen as immoral. There George Lakoff
230bd0a Liberals: Liberty-loving liberals founded our country and enshrined its freedoms. Dedicated, fair-minded liberals ended slavery and brought women the vote. Hardworking liberals fought the goon squads and won workers' rights: the eight-hour day, the weekend, health plans, and pensions. Courageous liberals risked their lives to win civil rights. Caring liberals have made the vulnerable elderly secure with Social Security and healthy with Medi.. George Lakoff
90fd689 The authentic pragmatist realizes you can't get everything you think is right, but you can get much or most of it through negotiation. The authentic pragmatist sticks to his or her values and works to satisfy them maximally. The inauthentic pragmatist, on the other hand, is willing to depart from his or her true values for the sake of political gain. There George Lakoff
0db9c41 If the facts don't fit one's worldview, one of several things can happen: * The fact may be changed to fit your worldview. * The fact may be ignored. * The fact may be rejected and possibly ridiculed. * Or the facts, if threatening to your worldview, may be attacked. All George Lakoff
b096101 there is no real person whose embodiment plays no role in meaning, whose meaning is purely objective and defined by the external world, and whose language can fit the external world with no significant role played by mind, brain, or body. Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies. Because a vast range of our concepts are metaphorical, meaning is not entirely literal and the classica.. metaphor meaning reason truth correspondence embodied-realism embodied-mind objectivity George Lakoff
b5923c1 Discrimination is a denial of freedom. freedom George Lakoff
9d48352 Women are human beings and have a right to control their own bodies. When that is denied, they are not free. women freedom rights human-beings George Lakoff
1 2 ▲ ▼