Xref: utzoo comp.ai:8384 sci.lang:8581 sci.psychology:4088 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!umich!yale!quasi-eli!cs.yale.edu!mcdermott-drew From: mcdermott-drew@cs.yale.edu (Drew McDermott) Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.lang,sci.psychology Subject: Re: Metaphors, Information and War Summary: Peace, yes, silly theories, no Keywords: metaphor, analogy Message-ID: <28045@cs.yale.edu> Date: 14 Jan 91 17:24:12 GMT References: <26303@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> <26304@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> Sender: news@cs.yale.edu Followup-To: comp.ai Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2158 Lines: 26 Nntp-Posting-Host: aden.ai.cs.yale.edu Originator: dvm@aden.CS.Yale.Edu Let me begin by saying that I agree completely with George Lakoff's political conclusions in his recent postings. We are rushing headlong into a bloody war that is unlikely to gain us much, basically to avoid a humiliation that George Bush's unnecessary rhetoric has made inevitable. We should all be screaming at our leaders to stop this madness. Having said that, I would like to argue that Lakoff's argument from his "theory of metaphor" is just silly. Simplified, it comes down to this: (a) All human thought is mediated by metaphor (b) The metaphors of people who disagree with Lakoff are bad. I am inclined to agree with (a), without necessarily acknowledging its cosmic significance. However, if all thought is indeed mediated by metaphor, that leaves us in the position of having to use metaphor as we carry on with our arguments about war and peace. Arguing that our opponents' thought processes are warped by metaphor is pseudoscientific twaddle. It may be wrong to bomb Iraqis, and part of the problem may be our lumping all Iraqis together, but the fault would lie in nationalism and racism, not in the metaphor of "nations as persons." The latter is simply one of the ways we think about the former. If we didn't use this metaphor, we'd use another one. -- Drew McDermott