Posted by
Steve Smith on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Theory-and-Why-It-s-Time-Psychology-Got-One-tp6988785p6990627.html
I find all of Lakoff's writing difficult and most of it equally rewarding.
Lakoff's work in politics does not impress me nearly so much as his
other work. I actually agree with his basic tenet of nurturant parent
vs authoritarian parent but only as a first order approximation. I
think he beats the dead horse beyond recognition much less utility.
I disagree that Lakoff's publisher was responsible for the problems with
Moral Politics.... Complicit, yes! But the responsibility lies with
Lakoff and I suspect the shadow of Chomsky that he must live in. Most
of the subtleties of the war between generative syntax (Chomsky) and
generative semantics (Lakoff) are over my head.
I sympathise with Nick in his question of "where else would it come
from?", referring to "embodied cognition". That said, I have to say
that Lakoff and Nunez kicked my ass pretty well with their "Where
Mathematics Comes From". Before reading them, I had, somehow imagined
that cognition *did* come from somewhere else... though I don't believe
I'd ever really considered where.
Perhaps this was a hazard of coming to linguistics and psychology with a
strong CS and Math background and with the ever present overlay of
"emergence" on the tip of every apparently complex phenomenon. I admit
to having accepted Mathematics as a Platonic Truth to be discovered, not
invented (or contrived/devised?).
I now realize how anthropocentric even mathematics is... the duality
of invented/discovered is still open for me, but it has a new flavor.
If we had 4 rather than 5 digits on each appendage, surely we would
prefer an octal over decimal number system (to start with the simpler
concepts of mathematics).
I'm a deep proponent of Lakoff's idea of our conceptual systems as being
fundamentally metaphorical, and am in fact seeking (very lazily) to
relate semantic networks to layered metaphor complexes and to perhaps
find examples of autocatalytic networks therein. Meme complexes if you
will that maintain their own coherence. Big Ideas within religion,
politics, even art and science would seem to fit that pattern.
I *like* the idea that all thinking ultimately grounds out in
experience, even if we have false ground-planes based in various
inherited memes, paradigms, etc.
- Steve
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