I found myself reading this book today thought I’d remembered someone on Less Wrong posting about it. So here I am.
I think your critique misses some really valid critiques provided by Lakoff of the entire rationalist project.
The sections on Quinne, Kahneman and Taversky(around p. 471) and around pages 15 and 105 are particularly good.
What your critique misses is that when you use the lens of cognitive science to critique Lakoff’s philosophy is that the body of work you are drawing on is already saturated with and informed by the assumptions you are critiquing. In Lakoffian terms, when we look at a brain scan and correlate activity in it to the words someone says, or to their selection of a set of options from a survey, the metaphor that informs and provides the interpretation for those words is already implicit in the words they say or the question asked to them. If I am already operating out of the “brain is like a computer” or “The I is the thinking I, Aristotelian, Cartesian etc metaphors then that is what I will interpret to be present in the brain.
And if I am already operating in a certain metaphor, and so are the subjects in my psychology study then that is the metaphor that will guide my questions and their answers.
Cognitive science did not spring out of a vaccum of objective anything. It arose out of a western, greek, post-enlightenment philosophy saturated people and scientists. So what they found, inevitably confirmed what they were looking for. Imagine if you will, if you were to give a tribe of Papa New Guineans, Indians, or any other culture influenced by any other philosophies the same tools of surveys, controlled experiment, and biological neuroscience. Would they have begun by asking questions that would potentially confirm the karmic nature of the mind? The God worshipping nature of the mind? Or perhaps something even more alien to us? And would they not find what they were looking for? And would they not take their findings as confirming evidence of their already present metaphors?
If the replication crisis has proved anything it’s that cognitive science is NOT an objective activity that we can conduct devoid of bias or prior interpretation.
Yes, psychology and neuroscience have something to do say about philosophy, but you are merely using the assumptions of one metaphor, interpreting the world through it’s lens, then using that lens to critique the idea of any lens other than the one you’re using. Your conclusion is inherent in your premises and you are merely confirming your biases.
I found myself reading this book today thought I’d remembered someone on Less Wrong posting about it. So here I am.
I think your critique misses some really valid critiques provided by Lakoff of the entire rationalist project.
The sections on Quinne, Kahneman and Taversky(around p. 471) and around pages 15 and 105 are particularly good.
What your critique misses is that when you use the lens of cognitive science to critique Lakoff’s philosophy is that the body of work you are drawing on is already saturated with and informed by the assumptions you are critiquing. In Lakoffian terms, when we look at a brain scan and correlate activity in it to the words someone says, or to their selection of a set of options from a survey, the metaphor that informs and provides the interpretation for those words is already implicit in the words they say or the question asked to them. If I am already operating out of the “brain is like a computer” or “The I is the thinking I, Aristotelian, Cartesian etc metaphors then that is what I will interpret to be present in the brain.
And if I am already operating in a certain metaphor, and so are the subjects in my psychology study then that is the metaphor that will guide my questions and their answers.
Cognitive science did not spring out of a vaccum of objective anything. It arose out of a western, greek, post-enlightenment philosophy saturated people and scientists. So what they found, inevitably confirmed what they were looking for. Imagine if you will, if you were to give a tribe of Papa New Guineans, Indians, or any other culture influenced by any other philosophies the same tools of surveys, controlled experiment, and biological neuroscience. Would they have begun by asking questions that would potentially confirm the karmic nature of the mind? The God worshipping nature of the mind? Or perhaps something even more alien to us? And would they not find what they were looking for? And would they not take their findings as confirming evidence of their already present metaphors?
If the replication crisis has proved anything it’s that cognitive science is NOT an objective activity that we can conduct devoid of bias or prior interpretation.
Yes, psychology and neuroscience have something to do say about philosophy, but you are merely using the assumptions of one metaphor, interpreting the world through it’s lens, then using that lens to critique the idea of any lens other than the one you’re using. Your conclusion is inherent in your premises and you are merely confirming your biases.