From CNSNews.com – Proponents of human-caused global warming claim that “cognitive” brain function prevents conservatives from accepting the science that says “climate change” is an imminent threat to planet Earth and its inhabitants.
George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California-Berkeley and author of the book “The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics,” says his scientific research shows that how one perceives the world depends on one’s bodily experience and how one functions in the everyday world. Reason is shaped by the body, he says.
Lakoff told CNSNews.com that “metaphors” shape a person’s understanding of the world, along with one’s values and political beliefs — including what they think about global warming.
“It relates directly (to global warming) because conservatives tend to feel that the free market should be unregulated and (that) environmental regulations are immoral and wrong,” Lakoff said.
“And what they try to do is show that the science is wrong and that the argument is wrong, based on the science. So when it comes back to science, they try to debunk the science,” Lakoff said.
On the other hand, he added, liberals’ cognitive process allows them to be “open-minded.”
“Liberals say, ‘Look seriously at the science and look at whether people are going to be harmed or not and whether the world is going to be harmed,’” Lakoff said.
In a Feb. 23 report on National Public Radio, reporter Christopher Joyce began his story by stating that recent polls show that fewer Americans believe humans are making the planet dangerously warmer, despite “a raft” of contradictory reports.
“This puzzles many climate scientists, but not social scientists, whose research suggests that facts may not be as important as one’s beliefs,” Joyce said.
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Read the entire piece here
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The explanations are getting desperate. I wonder then how Dr. Lakoff explains people like myself, who once accepted the scientific arguments presented on global warming, but who now reject most of the hype and urgency attached to it? Believe it or not, in the early 90’s I used to be a global warming activist. But that’s another story.
This paper is akin to Phrenology. What a load of utter bollocks!
Remember “rotten ice”, “flowers losing scent”, “global warming leads to more violence”, “edible pets”, “give up meat” etc.? The alarmists are really desperate now as the warmth slips from their fingers and brings a chill down their spines [pun intended].
For more media alarmist desperation reports see:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Yeah, yeah, the reactionary leftist hatred for conservatives, classical liberals and libertarians is an old story, they’ve been peddling this same line of cr@p for years.
“Mari Warcwm (15:36:11) :
[…]
How much more intelligence was displayed there than by this California-Berkeley Professor. Cut off their taxpayer funded salaries!”
He’d still have the Fenton money. I herewith declare the discovery of a new species of invertebrate: The Bearded Western Mock Scientist.
(And no, it still has nothing to do with left or right but with being corruptible.)
Oh, yeah, it’s an desperate adaptation of the despicable communist claims about so-called “false conciousness”.
lakoff, v. To rub the deep structure of a sentence until it expresses its logical form. “Too much laking off can cause insanity.”
The Philosophical Lexicon, 2008 edition.
http://www.philosophicallexicon.com/
Keeping an open mind. What does it mean? Does it mean that we continued to accept that the Sun goes round the Earth? Ulcers are mostly caused by food / stress and not by a bacterium? The Earth’s continents are static? If we all went along with the above consensuses by keeping an open mind where would science be today?
“And what they try to do is show that the science is wrong and that the argument is wrong, based on the science. So when it comes back to science, they try to debunk the science,” Lakoff said.
Huh? And this guy is supposed to be a professor of linguistics? Beyond the garbled language though, it sounds like he’s bashing skeptics for being skeptical, for having the audacity to try to debunk “the science”, which is what scientists are supposed to do to begin with.
““Liberals say, ‘Look seriously at the science and look at whether people are going to be harmed or not and whether the world is going to be harmed,’”
Substitute “Alarmists” for the word Liberals, and his statement begins to make sense, because for Alarmists, the focus really is on the harm they imagine will happen due to mankind, if he doesn’t mend his ways. The science is secondary, and is just a means to an end. The thought that the science could be faulty doesn’t enter their tiny brains, or if it does, it is quickly banished. Any facts or science refuting Alarmist “science” is automatically rejected.
His descriptions of how “Liberals” and “Conservatives” think are laughable. I feel sorry for his students.
Total BS and completely offensive!!! Conservatives cant be open minded scientists????? Only Liberals have the capacity for open minded scientific thought and care about the world???? BS. BS. BS!!!!
I and many of my PhD friends are conservative, went to the best graduate schools, have very successful scientific careers, and completely disagree with the AGW data.
“Proponents of human-caused global warming claim that “cognitive” brain function prevents conservatives from accepting the science that says “climate change” is an imminent threat to planet Earth and its inhabitants.”
“It relates directly (to global warming) because conservatives tend to feel that the free market should be unregulated and (that) environmental regulations are immoral and wrong,” Lakoff said.
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What has this to do with science? No way I’m a conservative, which is a particular socioecophilosophical view of the human condition and morals.
His words are those of a desperate cadre who realise that they have no real scientifically significant support for the climate system that they crave as justification for their view of the anthroposphere and hence they spout this drivel in a desperate attempt to achieve some sort of moral high ground (or immoral high temperature).
It just gets more and more pathetic!
Liberal cognitive dissonance = self perpetuating phalicies.
Pun intended.
Along with a good many of the other commenters here, I was a socialist for most of my life.
I did, however, retain an open mind and gradually and painfully became conservative.
I am absolutely in favour of sensible and verifiable environmental legislation.
I am totally opposed to enforced use of CFLs, especially in Canada where the heat from the incandescents has to be replaced by peak generation. Typically, this means using coal to replace hydro.
“Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise”.
Burt Rutan, Freeman Dyson, Ray Kurzweil. I mean, how closed-minded can you get, as opposed to those free thinkers at Berkeley?
From the posted paper: “On the other hand, he added, liberals’ cognitive process allows them to be “open-minded.”
This is the biggest fallacy and insult.
Objective scientists and/or scientific observers apply BOTH reasonable scepticism AND an open-mind to evidence offered in support of a scientfic proposition or against a scientific proposition as the case may be.
But where the fallacy and insult come into play is to assume that conservatives don’t have an open-mind to evidence.
No political persuasion has a monopoly on having an open-mind.
Are there closed minds? Of course there are, but an analogy is to alcoholism: Alcoholism knows no class, political persuasion, race, philosophy, or creed.
So, too, the same is true for having an closed-mind.
Or the reverse, having an open-mind is not the monopoly of any political persuasion, class, race, philosophy, or creed.
It is the conceit of George Lakoff to postulate that one political persuasion is more open-minded than another.
There are liberals that reject AGW based on the science just as there as conservatives that reject AGW based on the sience, and every political stripe in between.
One can only shake their heads when somebody projects their personal assumptions (and political assumptions) into the shape of a supposedly scientific paper.
George Lakoff is wrong — and, frankly, I think he hurts his cause by making such foolish statements and then pretends science backs him up.
“Trust but verify.” -Ronaldus Maximus Or, put that another way, “Verify.”
Oh so they don’t have that in cognitive and linguistic science.
He would really be shocked at the incredible parallel computing abilities of my conscious and inmost minds!
Steve Goddard said:
“Most people reject CAGW because they see that the catastrophic predictions are not happening.”
________
Correction, MOST people don’t care one way or another..they neither reject nor accept CAGW. They simply want to live their lives, make a living, raise their famiiles, etc. It is only the “freaks” (and I include myself in this group) who frequent web sites like WUWT, and like to talk about this sort of thing and spend any time at all even thinking about it. MOST people don’t really care one way or another. The only way MOST people will ever car about AGW (or any issue outside their direct daily life) is if it actually starts to really impact their lives in some meaningful direct way. Unfortunately, if AGW is a real effect, if it ever really starts to impact people’s daily lives in a negative way…it will be too late. On the flip side, it could impact their lives in a positive way (i.e. greater crop yields, new places to take an ocean cruise in the arctic, etc.) and they still wouldn’t care much about the actual phenomenon. Bottom line– most people don’t care about anything other than that which immediately and directly impacts their daily life and convenience.
Paraphrasing here, can’t remember the exact quote….
“Those who do not believe in the Truth are defective. They must accept the guidance of those who know the Truth. For the good of all, they must be brought to the path of Truth though they may resist this for being defective.”
Who? Lakoff? No, I was paraphrasing Osama bin Ladin. Who is Lakoff?
So that makes an immediate and false assumption that ‘conservatives’ do not believe in any AGW threat. I fail to see how such a false polarisation of the issue is in any way intelligent or constructive.
So we are talking about ‘Metaphors’ here. That is appropriate, because nothing in the AGW argument is based on any tangible reality. Calling the arguments ‘metaphors’ works, so does ‘parables’ in my book.
OK, so I can see a small piece of logic. Conservatives don’t believe in regulations, AGW sceptics don’t believe in CO2 regulations, ipso facto, sceptics are conservatives. Well, it must be said that correlation does not equal causation. Oh, and I think we pointed that out about the whole AGW argument too.
Yup!
Oh? What is it about being a ‘liberal’ that makes it easier to be ‘open minded’? Just about every single AGV web site I have ever seen displays an incredible reluctance to ‘open’ their minds. I think you are making that one up out of thin air, perhaps even CO2?
As do sceptics, yes.
Yup. That could be because of the ‘raft’ of evidence that the ‘raft’ of contradictory reports have been largely made up. The increasing stupidity of new reports tells us the same thing, only more so.
Well, we are seeing that all over in the AGW crowd, aren’t we?
Show me. Go, on, show me. I promise to believe there is a problem if you can show it to me.
While roundly attacking sceptics for being conservatives, and conservatives for being ‘closed minded’ (by implication as the liberals are able to be ‘open minded’ of course), he can really say that with a straight face? I’m impressed!
Could not agree more, except I would substitute “our economy” for “the Earth”.
This is so funny! He should do stand-up!
Yup, a definite talent there. I’m just trying to figure out where I am in his boxed-in world view. Life is so much more complicated than that simplistic puerile scenario, sorry. I think you may be able to figure out what his childhood was like though, as I suspect he is projecting. If he has children of his own, and I doubt it from this statement, it will not end well, I think.
Quoting:
“Liberals say, ‘Look seriously at the science and look at whether people are going to be harmed or not and whether the world is going to be harmed,’”
Commenting:
Nope. Liberals say, “What can we hate today? Oh, yes, Conservatives. What don’t they like? Oh, yes, pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo that says natural climate variation is Man’s fault. Let’s take them out back and beat them senseless! …Hey, where’d everybody go?”
Just say if it’s too late for me
Steve Goddard said:
“Hope you are prepared to cope when summer extent in the Arctic ends up close to normal this year.”
_________
Not sure what you mean by this, but I will find it fascinating iff arctic summer sea ice ends up close to normal, considering it has been so far below “normal” (in terms of anomalies) since 2004. I was actually surprized it did not peak into the positive anomaly range this spring already. (but there is still time). I would have thought the prolonged solar minimum might have kicked it over. Either way, one spring or one season of ice melt does not a climate make. For example, if we get a really big volcanic eruption in Iceland, this could cool things off for a year or two, just as Pinatubo did in 1991. And so, I am more interested in what the long term trends are for sea ice (both arctic and antarctic) between now and 2015. If arctic sea ice goes through a 4 or 5 year growing trend between now and then…without a major volcanic eruption, well, I’ll begin to have my serious doubts about the accuracy of AGW models. As it stands today (again, short of a major volcanic eruption), I still think 2010 will be the warmest year on instrument record, and the arctic sea ice will have a summer low less than 2009 or 2008, but not quite as low as 2007. So I am excited to see if my “guess” holds up– but I have no vested interest other than that.
There are many philosophical liberals who reject global warming alarmism because we’ve examined the scientific claims and they don’t stack up.
But this is exactly what happened during the Lysenko era – Mendelian biologists were pilloried as mental defectives by other scientists.
Laughable are Lakoff’s thoughts.
But ignore his philosophical errors at your own risk. They are pandemic.
Point 1 – If human thoughts are subjective, as he suggests, then since he is human his thoughts are subjective and we can just disregard his thoughts as no more valid than those he disagrees with. This is the inherent subjectivist dilemma. Politically this means anything goes, there is no fact/knowledge/truth.
Point 2 – At root, both major American political parties are philosophical similar in their premise. That premise is man’s mind and his the product of his thoughts are secondary to some higher authority. One says that higher authority is the state, the other says it is the teachings of some diety belief system. Same coin, different sides. Surprisingly, the beliefs within each party are a bewildering array of inconsistencies. It is like they were made up at the spur of the moment on a random basis.
Point 3 – If you want idependent knowledge, facts and consistency . . . the political parties aren’t going to provide it. You must provide it yourself with rational, logical, consistent application of your mental capabilities.
John
Looking at that last bit, I think I am in both camps, although I cannot see how. I am strict when important (to me – I’m not reading from anyone else’s book on that one) lines are transgressed, even to the point of ‘smacking’ (oh the horror) our children when I think it is required. But I also nurture them, and pretty much let them do what they like as long as it is not harmful or dangerous. I would even let them believe in AGW, although I’d try to convince them otherwise. And I do let them know the world is a dangerous place. It really is. Children need to be told about the dangers of drugs and even STD’s, as they are a reality (even at 12). There are also naste dangerous people about and knowing they are can help should you come across them (luckily this is far less often than parents imagine).
The world is also full of nasty people who would like to steal money from you. By taxing you with false premises, for example.
I pretty much adhere to the Terry Pratchett school of thought as to bringing up kids, you look after them, try to stop them killing themselves, and hope they don’t catch anything fatal. I mean, what more can you really do? I also encourage them to have as much fun as possible, as long as it is not at anyone else’s expense.
What does that make me? I think a liberal in his book, although not as foolish a one as to believe the world is a warm confortable cosy place. I’ve seen enough of it no know the reality is so different, unless you perhaps happen to be a ‘rich liberal’ (which maybe I am). By rich, I mean those able to afford food, clothes, hot water, heating and education for their children, along with a luxury or two like a computer, or a car.
OMG, I’ll start believing in AGW next!
R. Gates (16:49:34) :
The reason that concern for global warming has collapsed in the polls is because nobody sees it happening.
Three years ago global warming was worth a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award. This year it is less valuable than Charmin. Very few people take it seriously any more outside of the Obama administration.
DirkH (14:30:09) :
Oh looky here what our friend the wikipedia has to say about recent activities of Mr. Lakoff: “In 2008, Lakoff joined Fenton Communications, the nation’s largest public interest communications firm, as a Senior Consultant.”
Fenton Communications must be getting desperate if they’re paying good money for Lakoff.
I’d like to look at the acknowledgements in Lakoff’s book to see who he thanked for paying him for the time he spent writing it. Fodor always had to thank the NSF because they would fund anything by a philosopher who argued he had the key to the language of thought; what a con. I wonder who Lakoff had to thank.