Author: people.george_lakoff Title: Women, Fire and Dangerous Things
Recommended by people.maggie_appleton
- Preface This is a book about epistemology - and specifically how the old answers see knowledge and reason as literal and objective, whereas the new view takes the imagination seriously - seeing metaphor and mental imagery as central to reason.
The traditional view is hanging on, even with plenty of evidence against it. Two main reasons why - the 2,000 yo status quo and no well thought out alternative.
The traditional view says that thought is abstract and objective - it exists independently of the one who has the thought. Machines, therefore, as they manipulate data are capable of thought.
We group things into categories - the objectivist (traditional) will group if, and only if, things have certain properties in common.
Conceptual categories are very different. Thought is embodied, imaginative (particular for those concepts which are not grounded in experience), thought has gestalt properties (this supports thinking in more connected ways). This is a much more organic and evolutionary way of considering thought and thinking - less certain, more room for interpretation, each embodied understanding will be different.
The new view is being referred to as experientialism. This is based on a commitment that the real world exists, that reality places constraints on concepts, that truth is more than formal logic.
Experience is everything that goes to make up the individual - both senses and genetic legacy.
So, do meaningful thought exist merely in the abstract or does it only exist in the embodied experience?
And why does it matter? Because it affects how we view and value humans, humanity and human experience.
It also means we recognise that learning goes beyond the rote and mechanical - it impacts how we see how human minds can and should be deployed for their flourishing and for that of all society.
This book brings together some of the evidence for this view - the embodied, experiential view and particularly the ways in which we categorize. Are we Platonic? Or is there more to it?
** Summary: Why should we care about experience? Is it relevant to knowledge and learning? Is thought only abstract or is it embodied? How does our view of humanity shift based on the answer to that question?
- Book 1 - The Mind Beyond the Machine ** Part I - Categories and Cognitive Models
- Chapter 1 - The Importance of Categorization Does the title of this book make us jump to discuss why all three things are listed together? To think of categories that might fit them all and try them on for size?
=Prototype Theory= Human categorization is based on principles that extend beyond those envisioned in classical theory. Categories have =best= examples, called prototypes.
Categorizing is how we get through life - we categorize words, speech, sounds and actions. These shortcuts help us to get survive but it is important we think about how and why we categorize.
=Eleanor Rosch= - her research has made categorization something that is thought and wrestled with rather than something that exists in the background.
Traditionally, reason is seen as the manipulation of abstract symbols that, in themselves, have no meaning but derive meaning from how they refer to things in the actual world.
This is where the mind-as-computer metaphor has grown out of.
Contemporary prototype theory challenges this perspective.
This theory encompasses those parts of categorization and thinking that can be represented abstractly, but also contains those parts that are overlooked - perception, culture, metaphor and mental imagery, for example.
This is a more humane approach to considering thought but also a more accurate one.
The =scientific method= is grounded in the traditional form of thinking and so can't be used to assess whether that form of thinking is right or wrong. A new from of empirical study needs to be applied. [See Chapter 17].
Using the scientific method to study reason leads to conclusions that disregard anything beyond the traditional view of thought and abstract thinking as =recalcitrant= phenomena.
The premise of this book is that there exist more =recalcitrant= phenomena than those that work by the classical view.
-
Summary: Categories are more important than first thought - how we categorize and decide what fits in those categories - can help us have a fuller understanding of reality.
-
Chapter 2: From Wittgenstein to Rosch An overview of all of the themes that are going to be explored in the book. Reading over the list it all looks like common sense - interesting that these are all things that I take for granted.
A list of the research development that have brought about the paradigm shift.
=Family resemblance= - things that are similar to each other in a wide variety of ways but have no single collection of properties that they share (e.g. games)
=Extendable Boundaries= - categories that are based on family resemblance can extend. New types of games (or numbers) can be added to the category if they are similar in the right ways.
=Central and Noncentral Members= - with numbers, integers are central. Dice games are not a good generalised example. There can be members that are central and ones that are non-central. THis is similar to Austin's =primary nuclear sense=.
=Gesalt= - a holistic structure
Wittgenstein saw the problems with conceptual categories, Austin applied similar thinking to words.
=Fuzzy set= - something things are in the middle - men who are neither tall or short but in the middle.
This was a long and abstract literature review. There were some interesting things in it and I'll probably come back and read this after I've finished the book.