Reminder that “struggle for existence” is a conceptual metaphor.
In the November, 2009 edition of Nature (available only to subscribers online) Daniel Todes has written an article entitled "Global Darwin: Contempt for Competition." Todes points out that although Darwin's idea of a "struggle for existence" made sense to his English peers, other biologists from other countries rejected this metaphor. Todes focuses on the alternative viewpoint embraced by many Russian biologists. In On the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin noted that "there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms." Through this quote, Darwin recognized that he was using "struggle for existence" in a metaphorical sense. Darwin had been urged to adopt this metaphor by Russel Wallace, who feared that natural selection "seemed to personify a perceptive and forward thinking selector, or god." Todes holds that Darwin's metaphor was common sense to those "who were living on a crowded island with a capitalist economy and highly individualist culture." Russian biologists lived in a very different place, however, which led them to "reject Darwin's Malthusian metaphor." Russians did not tend to explore densely populated tropical environments. Rather, they tended to investigate "a vast underpopulated continental plain . . . it was largely empty Siberian expanse in which overpopulation was rare and only the struggle of organisms against a harsh environment was dramatic." Todes points out the Russian political system also contrasted sharply with that of Darwin's England. In Russia, capitalism was only weakly developed, and the social classes stressed cooperation rather than individual struggle, one against the other. In fact, many Russian political commentators "reviled Malthus as an apologist for predatory capitalism and the soulless individualism." This context for the Russian research led to (many successful) studies in which the focus was "mutual aid" more than "struggle for existence." [more . . . ]
Metaphors at work: the connection between warm temperature and warm personality
I've previously posted on the work of Mark Johnson and George Lakoff, who have argued that human thought is often metaphorical. Johnson and Lakoff have used numerous examples of our use of language to demonstrate that human cognition is often a metaphorical extension of sensorimotor experience. I've been collecting experimental…
It’s time to ditch all forms of un-embodied conscious objectivism.
When developing buildings or ideas, it is critical to start with a good solid foundation. In fact, when people fail to build with a solid foundation, is usually not even worth one's while to correct the work. It's best to trash the entire project and start over with a worthy foundation. When it comes to ideas, there are three intellectual foundations that become indispensable. These three foundational ideas were set forth in the opening words of Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1999):
Based upon evidence proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (and numerous other cognitive scientists), the battle over these ideas is utterly over. To argue otherwise is, in fact, to argue foolishly. Yet, for many, these three principles have not soaked in. There is constant deep resistance to these ideas among many of the people who present themselves as today's premier philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, theologians, teachers, and political leaders. As to why these ideas are so often ignored, there could be many potential explanations. I suspect that many people fear each of these principles because they suggest that we humans lack complete power and control over our lives. That thought makes all of us uncomfortable, of course, though a few of us are willing to take our harsh medicine to heart. Most people, however, are not willing to re-conceptualize traditional accounts of what it means to be human. They are not willing to dispense with a believe that each of us has an ethereal soul that is "free" to think any thought, a soul that is unencumbered by our clunky, fallible, poop and saliva-laden bodies. They like to believe that our conscious thoughts fully capture the full importance of every moment and every drop of sentience and proto-sentience. They prefer to believe that when it comes to words, Humpty Dumpty correctly declared: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less." They want to believe that humans have the power to speak forcefully without first having to develop a coherent theory of language, as though words serve as infallible conduits for transporting our purified ideas from here to there. [more . . . ]
- The mind is inherently embodied.
- Thought is mostly unconscious.
- Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.
The joy of subsumption
All my life I’ve been suspicious of the alleged power of syllogisms. Here is an often-cited syllogism:
• All men are mortal
• Socrates is a man
• Therefore Socrates is mortal
Syllogisms can be expressed in this logical form:
• All B’s are C
• A is a B
• Therefore, A is C
The above example is a perfect syllogism: the conclusion naturally follows from the premises. Syllogisms constitute deductive reasoning (from a given set of premises the conclusion must follow).
Many excellent thinkers and writers have stressed the need to present one’s arguments in terms of syllogisms. For example, in his excellent book on legal writing, The Winning Brief, Bryan Garner advises lawyers to frame every legal issue as a syllogism (see p. 88).
But what is really behind the power of syllogisms? It turns out that they are actually based on a metaphor—the metaphor of objects in a box. Consider this diagram in tandem with the classic syllogism (“All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal”)
As Judge Posner points out (in “The Jurisprudence of Skepticism,” 86 Mich L. Rev 827, 830 (1988)), the first premise presents a box labeled “all men,” in which each of the contents are each labeled “mortal” and one of those objects is labeled “Socrates.” Posner notes,
…“The second premise tells us that everything in the box is tagged with a name and that one of the tags says “Socrates.” When we pluck Socrates out of the
