All,
Peter, thanks for the link. For those interested make sure to go on from
page 1 using the link at the bottom of the page. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lakoff/lakoff_p2.html
Below are some of the choice quotes which relate to the points I was
trying to make to Glen and which Hamish commented on [the capital
emphasis is mine]:
********
<3WD>But over the course of the last 2000 years rather than philosophy
performing this integrating function it has pursued ever narrowing, more specialized,
<HAMISH> Disagree - 'twas not till the European Renaissance that
Philosophy dared poke its head above the theological parapets
LAKOFF: The idea of disembodied reason was an apriori philosophical
idea. It lasted 2500 years. I can't imagine it lasting another 30 years
in serious scientific circles.
LAKOFF: For two millenia, we have been progressively deVALUING human
life by underestimating the VALUE of human bodies. We can hope that the next
millenium, in which the embodiment of mind will come to be fully
appreciated, will be more humanistic.
3WD:It is generally agreed Western philosophy, as Lakoff noted
above, emerged 2500 to 2000 years ago and while it may have been
dominated by theology until the Renaissance it was by no means without
influence prior to then. They both were/are evolving patterns of
value, often conflicting, sometimes complementary, each challenging and
changing the other over time. This is manifest in the changing of the
Gospel accounts over time and surely there would have been no need for
Aquinius's work without the pressure of this philosophical point of view.
*********
PETER:
> So generating an underlying "philosophical attitude" which ordinary people
> can use in ordinary, everyday life, seems a goal well worth pursuing; but
> has Pirsig acheived this, or just started this?
3WD: I think Pirsig is one of a number of thinkers who emerged at the
fringes in the late 60's and early 70's arriving at similar conclusions
from vastly different backgrounds and paths. Has he had the impact of
Jesus or a Buddha, or even a Marx or Hitler? No. Will he ever? No, but
it seems inevitable that these numerous paths will converge and
something good will emerged from them all. I find these quotes from
Lakoff's article leading in that same direction.
JB: Where does this leave philosophy?
LAKOFF: In a position to start over from an EMPIRICALLY responsible
position. Young philosophers should be thrilled. Philosophy is
anything but dead. It has to be rethought taking the EMPIRICAL results
about the embodied mind into account. Philosophy considers the
deepest questions of human existence. It is time to rethink them and
that is an exciting prospect.
LAKOFF: But if you use that metaphor, then interesting mathematics
results. There is a third less well-known metaphor for numbers, that
Numbers Are VALUES of Strategies in combinatorial game theory. So which
is it? Are numbers
points? Are they sets? Are numbers fundamentally just VALUES of
strategies in combinatorial games?
LAKOFF: These metaphors for numbers are part of the mathematics, and you
make a choice each time depending on the kind of mathematics you
want to be doing. The moral is simple: Conceptual metaphor is central
to conceptualization of number in mathematics of any complexity at
all. It's a perfectly sensible idea. Conceptual metaphors are
cross-domain mappings that preserve inferential structure.
LAKOFF: What we conclude is that mathematics as we know it is a product of
the human body and brain; it is not part of the OBJECTIVE structure of
the universe - this or any other. What our results appear to disprove is
what we call the Romance of Mathematics, the idea that mathematics
exists independently of beings with bodies and brains and that
mathematics structures the universe independently of any embodied
beings to create the mathematics. This does not, of course, result in the
idea that mathematics is an arbitrary product of culture as some
postmodern theorists would have it. It simply says that it is a STABLE
product of our brains, our bodies, our experience in the world, and
aspects of culture. [ A STABLE BUT EVOLVING PATTERN OF VALUES]
JB: Where does morality come into all this?
LAKOFF: One of the most satisfying set of results is the collection of
metaphors governing moral thought. We found that they all seem to
arise naturally in an embodied way from forms of well being - health,
wealth, uprightness, light, wholeness, cleanliness, and so on. A
particularly interesting result is that moral systems as a whole seem to
organized metaphorically around alternative models of the family.
Again, this should not be surprising, since it is in our families that we
learn what we take as moral behavior.
3WD
PS: <Hamish> <Spot on, geezer.>
I guess being a "geezer" automatically qualifies me as "sexist."
Unlearning all gender references at my age even by deliberately
unconscious methods is fruitless. "It" just don't get it.
Indubitably ironic, huh?
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