Create a new, empirically responsible philosophy-George Lakoff

[Teo1]

The very existence of the cognitive unconscious, a fact fundamental to all conceptions of cognitive science, has important implications for the practice of philosophy. It means that we can have no direct conscious awareness of most of what goes on in our minds. The idea that pure philosophical reflection can plumb the depths of human understanding is an illusion. Traditional methods of philosophical analysis alone, even phenomenological introspection, cannot come close to allowing us to know our own minds.

There is much to be said for traditional philosophical reflection and phenomenological analyses. They can make us aware of many aspects of consciousness and, to a limited extent, can enlarge our capacities for conscious awareness. Phenomenological reflection even allows us to examine many of the background prereflective structures that lie beheath our conscious experience. But neither method can adequately explore the cognitive unconscious-the realm of thought that is completely and irrevocably inaccessible to direct conscious introspection. It is this realm that is the primary focus of cognitive science, which allows us to theorize about the cognitive unconscious on the basis of evidence. Cognitive science, however, does not allow us direct access to what the cognitive unconscious is doing as it is doing it.

-from Philosophy In The Flesh, by George Lakoff

 

[hypnagogue]

Teo1, when quoting from a source, you should limit yourself to two or three paragraphs at most. What you posted originally is too much, so I've edited out most of the content. Also, it would be nice if you could provide some discussion or questions about the material instead of just posting it in this bare form.

 

[Teo1]

Look what they've done to my song, Ma!

Teo1, when quoting from a source, you should limit yourself to two or three paragraphs at most. What you posted originally is too much, so I've edited out most of the content. Also, it would be nice if you could provide some discussion or questions about the material instead of just posting it in this bare form.

There is so much in the 95% that we don't know about in our thinking that we need to redefine philosophy taking this into consideration, not acting like we consciously know everything.

I can't quote the sections of the writings that say this because the text has been reduced to LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR 14 year old attention span media byte size quip...

Lakoff makes excellent argument that Cognative Science takes the logical and scientific view of how our thinking is not complete to start from, so our philosophy needs to take this into consideration to be scientific.

Of course to many people it is obvious that philosophy doesn't start with scientific logic, but many people haven't heard concrete reasons that philosophy needs a general rethinking and reworking. I was trying to share this type of scientific information about exactly why from a scientific point of view philosophy needs to be re-thought. But if I am allowed only the media sized, attention disorder co-depending small quote then no one will hear Lakoff's point with the scientific proofs and examples that he shows so I guess our philosophy will never improve.

Now I risk being criticized because I have elaborated too long on this subject. I can not reduce myself to dumb simplicity like TV commercials. If this is what this discussion forum requires, I guess I will have to find a place with people who really want to learn, evolve, scientifically analyse things, not make cute simplistic answers - that is the whole problem with how we are given information. Cute sound-byte form. The dumbing down of the worldl.

One can only go so far, when they devote their free time, to share wisdom that helps people rethink the un-scientific basis' of their philosophy. If one is also to cater to the general media's short sound-byte type of sharing information we have already lost the battle and decided to use the least of our brains instead of truly learning anything.

I made a valiant effort to help peole philosophize better, for the good of all people not any greed on my part. I am not paid to share these readings and scientific proofs that we should change, and how. How should I feel when what is written is censored down to something useless? I guess I should give up, think minimilastic thoughts like "who cares, people don't need scientific information to improve philosophy, the world is fine and people have whatever philosophy they want, why try and help them evolve to more scientific?"

 

[loseyourname]

Teo, nobody is asking you to dumb it down for those with short attention spans. You're just not allowed to post large amounts of copyrighted material. If its online somewhere, post a link to it. If not, summarize the arguments the best you can and suggest a direction for discussion. That's just the way this format works. If you get quippy about it, you're just going to get yourself in trouble.

Also, if all you're trying to do is expose people to Lakoff, just post a book review in the book review forum and recommend that people read it. Nobody is going to read an entire book copied into a thread, and it's illegal to do so besides.

 

[hypnagogue]

Teo, I apologize for not articulating more clearly my reason for editing your post, but loseyourname has done a nice job of it. To reiterate, the editing of your post had nothing to do with the length and depth of ideas presented and everything to do with copyright laws. See this link for more on this. You should feel free to make posts that are as long and in-depth as you like, but it's unacceptable to simply copy large portions of text from a book.