Thanks!

I have often wondered about my very well educated conservative colleagues who will see no fact that refutes their positions. Whereas, on the contrary, I see many of my very well educated liberal colleagues give ground when confronted with facts that refute their positions.

http://explainer.net/2011/01/george-lakoff/

'You can’t reason directly about the world—because you can only conceptual what your brain and body allow, and because ideas are structured using frames.” Lakoff says. “As Charles Fillmore has shown, all words are defined in terms of conceptual frames, not in terms of some putative objective, mind-free world.”

“People really reason using the logic of frames, metaphors, and narratives, and real decision making requires emotion, as Antonio Damasio showed in Descartes’ Error.”

“A lot of reason does not serve self interest, but is rather about empathizing with and connecting to others.”'

The author's conclusion is that wider dissemination of the facts about issues like anthropogenic global warming will not necessarily move public opinion in the direction of recognizing what scientists have actually determined.

The linked piece is a strong critique of the "Enlightenment" idea of improving policymaking through education. Unfortunately, the piece comes up short on presenting and defending an effective alternative strategy. There's some intimation that spreading information might be more effective with less-educated conservatives, but even that point isn't developed in any detail.

It's possible that the author would respond that, alas, there is no effective strategy. That the conclusion is depressing doesn't mean that it's wrong.

That’s because it forges a stronger bond between our emotions and identities on the one hand, and a particular body of facts on the other."


K& R> Very interesting article. Thanks for posting.

I suppose it has only been three hours, though.

And I don't know about "liberals", but most of the progressives I like to hang out with actively value diversity to the point of not just refusing to forge an identity from political opinions, they pride themselves on forming multiple contradictory "identities"

And I think he's wrong about how you defeat that mindset. I don't think that you CAN work with it. What successful societies do is refuse to give positions of power or authority with that mindset. If a conservative can't look at three programs and rationally pick the most economically profitable, they aren't a conservative, but a reactionary, and it's right for the conservatives to want them out of conservative politics. Likewise mainstream liberals tend to want inflexible liberals, whether political ideologues or spiritually motivated activists, whether leftist radicals or inflexible DLCers, out of liberal politics. America's bizarrely twisted version of "conservative" is so dysfunctional that I don't think it's fair to judge conservatism by it.

The nuclear power example is a funny one because back in the seventies many people opposing nuclear power argued on the grounds that no matter how safe you made it, it would require an authoritarian military-industrial complex to run it and keep it safe, and that that alone was sufficient argument against it. Obviously they were right, on both counts.