60 Quotes by George Lakoff

...[P]hilosophical theories are structured by conceptual metaphors that constrain which inferences can be drawn within that philosophical theory. The (typically unconscious) conceptual metaphors that are constitutive of a philosophical theory have the causal effect of constraining how you can reason within that philosophical framework.

Metaphorically, tall buildings are people standing erect. As each [NY twin] tower fell, it became a body falling. We are not consciously aware of the metaphorical images, but they are part of the power and the horror we experience when we see them.

You can't understand Twenty-first-Century Politics with an Eighteenth-Century Brain.

If we are to know ourselves, philosophy needs to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the sciences of mind.

For real human beings, the only realism is an embodied realism.

Reason is not "universal" in the transcendent sense; that is, it is not part of the structure of the universe. It is universal, however, in that it is a capacity shared universally by all human beings. What allows it to be shared are the commonalities that exist in the way our minds are embodied.

Reason is not completely conscious, but mostly unconscious.Reason is not purely literal, but largely metaphorical and imaginative.Reason is not dispassionate, but emotionally engaged.

...[T]he whole undertaking of philosophical inquiry requires a prior understanding of the conceptual system in which the undertaking is set. That is an empirical job for cognitive science and cognitive semantics. ... Unless this job is done, we will not know whether the answers philosophers give to their questions are a function of the conceptualization built into the questions themselves.

It is a common folk theory of progressives that ‘the facts will set you free.’ If only you can get all the facts out there in the public eye, then every rational person will reach the right conclusion. It is a vain hope. Human brains just don’t work that way. Framing matters. Frames once entrenched are hard to dispel.