Is all language metaphor? 🧐

https://philosophics.blog/2026/03/04/when-everything-is-metaphor-nothing-is/?utm_source=masto

I posted this last night. A follower chimed in. His speciality is anthropology.

Philippe Descola’s framework in Beyond Nature and Culture outlines four ontological regimes:

• Naturalism (the modern Western default)
• Animism
• Totemism
• Analogism

#philosophy #psychology #anthropology #cognitivescience #cognition #worldview #ontology #grammar #metaphor #Lakoff #Wittgenstein #languagegames #blog #podcast #anthropology

Canviem el llenguatge per afavorir l'interès general.

Impost = contribució
Paradís fiscal = sangonera fiscal

Les paraules canvien les percepcions.

Si pagues una quota al gimnàs perquè cal mantenir-lo, per què no has de contribuir a invertir en i mantenir els serveis públics?

Un gran article d'en @carlesp al @diarilaveu_bot.

I com diu un economista amic meu: l'important no és pagar contribucions (imposts), sinó com s'utilitzen.

#Lakoff #Llengua #Economia
https://www.diarilaveu.cat/opinio/els-impostos-son-una-bona-inversio-per-al-futur-589983/

Un excel·lent article del #Lakoff asturià

SPXM. Contra las naciones y la democracia.

Allí, en casa de Trump, se creó estos días un nuevo fondo de inversión llamado Azoria.

https://www.nortes.me/2024/12/07/spxm-contra-las-naciones-y-la-democracia/

Es ist sehr ermüdend dem linken #Glaubenssatz „Fakten machen Menschen links“ immer und immer wieder zu begegnen. #Lakoff behält auch 30 Jahre später Recht mit seiner Forschung.

Besonders die weiter fortschreitende Institutionalisierung dieses linken Dogmas durch Organisationen und Prozesse ist erschreckend in Anbetracht der konträren und wissenschaftlich fundierten Strategie der Gegenseite.

Menschen sind keine Roboter. Unser Gehirn ist fehlbar. Wir alle haben Biases, Bedürfnisse und Emotionen.

Nach allem was ich bisher so mitbekomme, werden #SPD und #Grüne die "erfolgreiche" Wahlkampfstrategie von Harris fahren und sich bei Konservativen mit konservativen Positionen anbiedern. Das zeigen die neusten Beschlüsse der Parteien vor der Wahl und die Kommunikation, die bisher eingeschlagen wird.

Vermeintlich linke Parteien werden also erneut aktiv den Diskurs nach rechts verschieben. Warum das fatal ist?

„Moving to the right only convinces voters that the right has better ideas.“ — #Lakoff

💥“Motivated ignorance,” 💥refers to willfully blinding oneself to facts.
It’s choosing not to know.
In many cases, for many people, knowing the truth is simply too costly, too psychologically painful, too threatening to their core identity.
Nescience is therefore incentivized; people actively decide to remain in a state of ignorance.
If they are presented with strong arguments against a position they hold, or compelling evidence that disproves the narrative they embrace, they will reject them.
Doing so fends off the psychological distress of the realization that they’ve been lying to themselves and to others.

This is why, as cognitive scientist George #Lakoff suggests, the truth (facts) will not set them free.
Or as his former student, Anat Shenker-Osorio, quips,
truth for some people is more an “I’ll see it when I believe it” proposition
and not the other way around.
Motivated cognition, she told Lawrence O’Donnell, “is a helluva drug.”

Motivated ignorance is a widespread phenomenon; most people, to one degree or another, employ it.
What matters is the degree to which one embraces it, and the consequences of doing so.
In the case of #MAGA world, the lies that Trump supporters believe, or say they believe, are obviously untrue and obviously destructive.
Since 2016 there’s been a ratchet effect, each conspiracy theory getting more preposterous and more malicious.
Things that Trump supporters wouldn’t believe or accept in the past have since become loyalty tests.
Election denialism is one example.
The claim that Trump is the target of “lawfare,” victim to the weaponization of the justice system, is another.

In an Atlantic article Wehner struggles, as do I, with how to assess the moral character of people who may otherwise present as decent people yet celebrate Trump’s lies and “defend his lawlessness and undisguised cruelty.”
Political opinions are but one area of people’s intellectual lives. It’s one thing to embrace a conspiracy theory about faked moon landings that has little real-world impact.
But it’s another “if the falsehood you’re embracing and promoting is venomous, harming others, and eroding cherished principles, promoting violence and subverting American democracy.” And getting people terrorized and killed.

Wehner cites the cases of two pro-segregation Baptist ministers from the 1950s and 60s.
Now ask yourself this:
Did the fierce advocacy on behalf of segregation, and the dehumanization of Black Americans, reflect in any meaningful way on the character of those who advanced such views,
even if, say, they volunteered once a month at a homeless shelter and wrote a popular commentary on the Book of Romans?

Readers can decide whether MAGA supporters are better or worse than Albert Garner and Carey Daniel.
My point is that all of us believe there’s some place on the continuum in which the political choices we make reflect on our character.
Some movements are overt and malignant enough that to willingly be a part of them becomes ethically problematic.
If not “grievously wrong,” perhaps as in joining Trump’s MAGA movement.

Many, Wehner adds, “are self-proclaimed evangelicals and fundamentalists,
and they are also doing inestimable damage to the Christian faith they claim is central to their lives.
That collaboration needs to be named.
A generation from now, and probably sooner, it will be obvious to everyone that Trump supporters can’t claim they didn’t know.”
They will have ash in their feather dusters:

The villagers, he said, knew about the camp, and watched daily as thousands of prisoners would arrive by rail car,
herded like cattle into the camp.
Even though the camp never could have held the vast numbers of prisoners who were brought in,
the villagers knew that no one ever left.
They also knew that the smokestack of the camp’s crematorium belched a near-steady stream of smoke and ash.
Yet the villagers chose to remain ignorant about what went on inside the camp.
No one inquired, because no one wanted to know.

“But every day,” he said, “these people, in their neat Germanic way, would get out their feather dusters and go outside.
And, never thinking about what it meant, they would sweep off the layer of ash that would settle on their windowsills overnight.
Then they would return to their neat, clean lives and pretend not to notice what was happening next door.”

“When the camps were liberated and their contents were revealed, they all expressed surprise and horror at what had gone on inside,” he said.
“But they all had ash in their feather dusters.”
MAGA cult members will too,
let’s hope only figuratively.

Vote like your safety depends on it.

https://digbysblog.net/2024/06/17/motivated-unreasoning/

Wer sich damit auseinandersetzen will, dem sei "Moral Politics" von George #Lakoff wärmstens empfohlen!

Wer gegen einen Mitbewerber bestehen möchte, der sollte ihn zuerst verstehen.

Das Video ist auch ein guter Startpunkt:

3/x

https://youtu.be/5f9R9MtkpqM