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.
Schrodinger’s Cat (12:27:31) :
Could not agree more. Well said!
Chris
With the coming chill, will enlightened warmists be sufficiently smart and capable to write their names in the snow without the govt shaking their pencils for them?
This is clear evidence that AGW has morphed into Lysenkoism.
Like many others on this site, I was convinced AGW was real, reading books by Lovelock (still an admirer on a personal level), John Gribben, Monbiot and Pearce among others. How wrong I was!
I find the labels Right and Left wing unhelpful, preferring to view each issue on its merits. Individual responsibility being the cornerstone of my political view.
Love to hear about Anthony’s Damascene conversion.
Dirk, I think it’s obvious to all that there is a division over acceptance of AGW along political lines, so people ARE assessing AGW according to their politics rather than an objective assessment of the science.
To me the obvious argument against Lakoff is that he and other liberals are also influenced by their politics, while I personally accept that AGW is happening, the evidence that it’ll be “catastrophic” under BAU is, I think, not conclusive, (though if we get anywhere near 1000ppm CO2 we should be worried) many liberals are certain that AGW will be catastrophic under BAU without (in my opinion) having the science supporting that claim.
IPCC reviewer predicts 30 years of cold, read a mini ice age!
He must must suffer from “cognitive” brain function as well other wise he would make such irresponsible remarks jeopardizing his professional career and all!
The climate nuts want us to look crazy! FAT CHANCE.
“In the country of the blind, the one eyed man will be king.” Oh no, as H.G. Wells showed in his short story: The man who can “see” must be a defective. He is a threat to our society. His eyes must be immediately removed or he must be killed.
“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.
So, debunking an argument by showing the science is flawed is really only a political opinion, and the scientific method of testing a hypothesis is really just a witch hunt then?
“1. capitalism is evil
2. nature is good
3. oil is bad
4. government should have more power
5. people should have less freedom
6. mankind is a bunch of polluters
7. we need government to protect us
8. meat is unhealthy
9. everyone should be vegetarians
10. fewer humans on this planet would be a good thing”
———
Hey, that Hitler fella believed in 9 out of 10 of those! He had no problem with number 3 (oil) at the time because he had no choice.
Jim Steele (12:13:18) :
Such blind self-righteousness has always been the seed of totalitarianism.
Agreed, but the people here need to understand those seeds are planted with the left hand and the right hand. Totalitarianism be it “Communism” or “Fascism” is totalitarianism. The right v. left construct is a false box that keeps lots of good people at each others’ throats. Those at the top just keep winking and nodding at the ruckus they can create.
Most people, on both sides, follow their leaders blindly; that is the problem.
When all else fails, descend into false and utterly simplistic comparisons.
This ‘scientific’ branding of the heretics is just a taste of what is to come from the Church of AGW.
In the USSR they routinely branded dissidents as being paranoid or having mental problems. This is just one step away from that.
And the AGW gang has been building its squads of young brainwashed greenshirts, all taught that all their problems are due to older and of course much dumber generations, and they will be unleashed to ‘save the planet.’ This is going to get very, very strange, in a 1930s Germany kind of way.
These studies ( this is not the first) are an attempt to dehumanize everyone not willing to play progressive ball. If those who are not leftists are sub-human, then there really don’t have any rights and they can be safely ignored and, if they get to be a bother, eliminated. This is plain old pregame propaganda and its existence should be taken as a sign of what is to come.
“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.
That’s the argument the Dems used to foist health care “reform” on us.
But I digress. I propose an experiment.
Doc Lakoff, I really, *really*, reeeeaalllly believe you can fly.
Take a hike off the roof of a five-story building and we’ll see how belief stacks up against fact.
In the interest of full disclosure, I neither own, nor am I employed by, a sidewalk-repair contractor.
peterhodges (12:33:22) :
“umm, i’m liberal, a philosopher to boot, and do not believe in AGW
hypothesis FALSIFIED”
I can’t accept that any competent philosopher could make a statement so lacking in logic.
The return of communism’s Lysenkoism.
…-
“What are science’s benefits?
Earlier this month five Dutch scientific organisations responsible for administering funding presented a method for determining the societal benefits research would offer. The method is supposed to replace the widely used – and controversial – method of measuring publications’ impact through the number of times it is referred to by peers. The new method tries to take into account whether research may be of use to business or help solve problems in society. The proposed new measure has proven controversial in itself, with scientists claiming research’s benefit is impossible to quantify in advance. Others claim the method is part of a trend in which garnering positive publicity is becoming more important than getting results.”
“Ask not what science can do for you”
[…]
“I have limited myself to the retrospective usefulness of the pure science of Huygens, Einstein and their colleagues, stretched out over four centuries of ‘pointless’ research. Because science is about finding facts, I could tell a similar story of any discipline. Even so, society’s demands for usefulness to be proven in advance grow ever louder. The tragedy here is that any system that demands usefulness be proven in advance, will never lead to ground-breaking findings that future generations will be able to use. But as long as free science takes care of the proofs, the products will take care of themselves.”
http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2509715.ece/Ask_not_what_science_can_do_for_you
“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,”
Aha, so thats why Bastardi is saying what he is saying here;
http://www.accuweather.com/video/68856143001/global-warmth-getting-ready-to-collapse.asp?channel=vblog_bastardi
Yes, the Professors argument is very logical…..
The idea that “liberals” are open-minded about their beliefs based on science, while “conservatives” are not, in intriguing as I find the more conservative group is the more science-based. Liberals have a philosophy that people are inherently good and corrupted or let down by circumstance, while conservatives tend to see people as inherently flawed and let down by weaknesses in their talents, their ability to recognize elements undesirable to their lives, or corruption through vanities or personal rewards. Liberals, I find, use authority figures such as doctors, “scientists”, pastors etc. to determine what is or is not, giving them the benefit of the doubt if questions arise. Conservatives, I find want to see for themselves. Authority figures – such as Aristotle, the Pope or Al Gore – tend to make conservatives nervous. It seems counter-intutitive to those of us who grew up with liberal conspiracy theories of the “military-industrial complex”, but the liberal seems to take more comfort in giving control to the state or appointees of the “common good” than do conservatives. A case in point: the $33million Exxon is said to have paid to the climate skeptic movement, including the Heartland Institute, is seen by them as corruptive, while the $79billion various governments have given to the warmist NGOs, researchers and their own departments, creates no conflict of interest. Al Gore is recognized positively for becoming the first Green billionaire; his words are gospel. Someone like me, a self-employed geologist in the oil and gas business, somehow is a shill for dirty oil, even though I drive a 10-year old Jeep and anticipate retiring to a trailer in the backwoods of Mexico on my savings after 31 years in the biz.
The paradigm break is like this: The Liberal believes in the wisdom of the social organism; the conservative, in the individual’s ability to determine truth and virtue. Open-mindedness and scientific merit are not issues in this conflict. The importance of determining for oneself what is and is not going on is the fundamental issue. Skepticism on AGW is greeted with questions of personal morality, integrity and motive by the warmists, not the science. Belief in AGW is greeted by questions of gullibility, ignorance, laziness and agenda by the skeptics. One defends conclusions, the other questions data. Belief in AGW is inextricably bound up in the notion that humankind is harmful, not just to itself but to life itself. This is a difficult notion to deny by anyone who has even experienced the cruelty of the grade school playground. How to come to a common ground and plan to action is indeed a headscratcher. If wild-eyed extremists like Paul Ehrlich can be maintained as “honorary” directors of the David Suzuki Foundation, there is little room for reasonableness; his fanaticism is viewed as a zealousness created by a hostile capitalist society, a necessary trait in the struggle for the Good. The good professor of this article cannot see but through his own eyes. He is not a sociologist of society, but a sociologist of his own society.
Wren (11:32:46) :
Slabadang (10:44:05) :
Lakoff hahahaha!
Hes is in person another proof of what happens with science when left wings becomes Professors.
I wonder what diagnos he gives.
Lindzen
Spencer
Singer
Pielke
Ball
Carter
Armstrong
McIntyre
Mcitirick
Christy
The man is an embarrassment for science! [snip]
=====
That’s not many people.
“Do any scientific societies of standing dismiss the threat of CAGW?”
Wren, you’re a little backward in your thinking, basically asking to disprove a negative. My understanding of real scientific work is that one doesn’t dismiss anything until proven. In regards to CAGW, the question/problem was posited that the earth is getting warmer, that warmer will be disastrous and that man’s carbon emissions were primarily the cause. It isn’t up to anyone to give attention to nor dismiss, nor to prove anything other than the “scientists” that made such ridiculous assertions. It would be a mistake for anyone calling themselves a scientist to dismiss out of hand any postulation without looking at the facts first. Of course, the more facts that get revealed the more it seems that science will in the end dismiss it as a hoax abetted by bad math masquerading as science.
I heard Lakoff give a talk about 15 years ago. Essentially, his thesis was that metaphors are reflections of the “embodied mind” and just about every aspect of human psychology can be explained in these terms. By the end of the talk, he seemed to me to be getting completely out of control in his attempt to expound his grand ‘theory’. I remember that there was a family metaphor that ‘explained’ the difference between conservatives and liberals. Mathematics could be ‘explained’ in terms of embodied metaphors like the real number line (so there were no univeral truths in mathematics). And so forth.
I came away from the talk with a much greater appreciation for his nemesis, Aristotle, who helped us clamber out of the sump known as the “metaphorical mind”. Which people like Lakoff would like us to dive back into.
A final irony. If you look at the last chapter of his book, “Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things”, (I think it’s the last) you will find a rather inept attempt to lay out the thesis in more concrete terms – by listing metaphors or words with figurative force. The irony is that the whole exercise sounds like it was done by a computer. This is because Dr. Lakoff doesn’t have an ounce of artistic motherwit. Instead, he’s just another dry-as-dust pedant, who in this case doesn’t have the merit to accept his limitations. Which may explain some of his antics.
This is more fun than I’ve had throughout a long, long, long (did I say long?) winter.
WUWT has the funniest, classiest, smartest commentators in the known universe.
I’m just going to sit back and smile, smile, smile.
Now you know what kind of medicine and medical research we’re gonna get from Obamacare.
Expect him to be referenced in one of the IPCC chapters of WG1 in the AR5!
postscript:
After “dry-as-dust pedant”, I forgot to add parenthetically, “just like Aristotle”
[snip]
I was thinking in national-socialism (Nazism) more than Lysenkoism. CAGWers really believe that they are better than the rest, and the reason they give is that they have a brain that ‘understands science’ whereas the rest of us don’t.
That scares me a lot.