a joke about two psychoanalysts

[Abdiel OAbdiel]

--- Keith McMullen <keithsz at concentric.net> wrote:
> >>>If you are knowledgeable on this subject, by all
> means don't keep it to
> yourself.<<<
> 
> I can't figure it out. 
> 

What's to figure out? 


 "We are neural beings," states Berkeley cognitive
  scientist George Lakoff.

No kidding. Humans have a complex nervous system. No
great shakes. 


 "Our brains take their input from the rest of our
bodies." 

The brain is part of the nervous system. The fact that
the brain is connected to the rest of the body and
receives messages or input is well known.   No great
shakes. 


"What our bodies are like and how they function in the
world thus structures the
  very concepts we can use to think."

Again, this is obvious. The fact that humans are the
size that they are, shape that they are, have two eyes
in the front of their heads, so on…. and how our
bodies move and function (i.e., walking) have
structured the concepts we use.  No great shakes. 

"We cannot think just anything - only what our
embodied brains permit."

Unless we are scarecrows, we have brains. Our brains
are not separate from our bodies. We can't think or
live or do much of anything without our brains. No big
deal.  



" His new book Philosophy In The Flesh, coauthored by 
Mark Johnson, makes the following points: "The mind is
 inherently embodied. Thought is mostly unconscious. 
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical."

Brains don't grow on trees. They don't spring up in a
corn field or a pumpkin patch. They are embodied in
living creatures.  No big deal. How is thought
quantified? How can we measure so-called unconscious
thoughts and compare them with conscious ones?
Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. This is
also quite obvious. However, why we communicate
abstract concepts with metaphor is a more important
question. Moreover, that we know that the metaphors
are insufficient and therefore misleading and yet we
understand them and communicate with them is even more
interesting. More interesting by far, because it is
one of the subjects of TSI, is how we communicate with
metaphor and humor when words get in the way and fall
back on words when metaphor and humor fail. 

Good Morning. 

 


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