Talk:George Lakoff

message: There is a difference between saying that 
* 1) the human mind is produced by physical brain processes 
and saying that 
* 2) a human-like mind could be implemented in computer hardware. 
Saying #1 does not automatically rule out #2. Some people may have suggested that it might be possible to understand human-like minds as a general phenomenon by making AI with human-like mental abilities, but it is not clear to me that even this claim need be rejected by someone who is a mind-brain monist.
Does anyone have a source that illustrates rejection of a version of strong AI by Lakoff? JWSchmidt 04:20, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: "Lakoff would strongly reject a number of formulations of the Strong AI position"

message: I think the "his book isn't unique" thesis is a bit strongly presented here and not terribly correct. Lakoff's analysis of language and framing goes a bit beyond what Orwell had in mind (and Orwell was not exactly the first person to argue that language determined quite a lot of thought, I am fairly sure) and is quite different from an Orwellian take in many respects (Orwell's position seems to be to have been that language can be used to frame things, Lakoff's is that language is always used to frame things). Jane Jacob's "guardian moral syndrome" and "commercial moral syndrome" looks only superficially like the sort of thing that Lakoff argues in Moral Politics, which is about metaphor analysis. To say that Lakoff is just derivative/duplicative of these works is incorrect and POV at the very least -- you can of course read similarities into all sorts of works (Thomas Kuhn's idea of a paradigm, Foucault's idea of the episteme, etc. etc.) if you want to. Here is seems to serve the point of trying to criticize Lakoff in a not very NPOV way. If these are specific criticisms which have been put forth by prominent critics, then they should be attributed to those critics. Otherwise they should be deleted, if they are just the opinion of a Wikipedia editor. --Fastfission 01:28, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Moral Politics

message: I'm pretty sure his name is pronounced "Lay-koff". I say this as someone who has taken a class from him, know a number of his close friends, and once organized a talk by him. I've never heard anybody pronounce it otherwise. Any reason to suspect I'm wrong on this? (It would be somewhat mortifying if I was, since I've addressed him as such many times). --Fastfission 20:05, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You're quite right. In IPA his name would be rendered . — mark ✎ 11:48, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Pronunciation

message: An anon added the paragraph:
:Lakoff's concept of generative semantics may end up being an instance of generative orthogonal dimensionality, the notion that when a changee has sufficiently gone away from a state of origin, a successor state emerges as a sequential consequence of that going away from process. If so, it may turn out that the ritual of stone-raising as found in many ancient cultures will end up being recognized as a metaphor revealing why it is that conclusions, terminations, endings... always "end up" even when they end up down.
Now I consider myself somewhat proficient in Lakoff's version of linguistics, but that paragraph makes so little sense to me that my general suspicion is that it is a parody of academic jargon. If I'm wrong, could somebody please render it into something which can be understood by a nonspecialist (even a highly educated one!)? --Fastfission 21:51, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have the same suspicion. — mark ✎ 16:28, 19 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Added para

message: I deleted the italicized phrase from the passage below:
:"Mathematics may or may not be out there in the world, but there's no way that we scientifically could possibly tell." This claim bothers a number of people, some because they think there really is a way we could "tell", others, presumably, because it implies that mathematics involves a good deal less certainty than one might expect.
I think the deleted phrase is redundant. There's no real difference between saying "there is a way we could tell" and saying that mathematics involves "certainty." Also, the deleted phrase has an oddly contradictory POV quality to it. First, it states that "one might expect" something; then it "presumes" to deduce that Lakoff's theories "imply" otherwise. Who is the "one" who "might expect" this, and who is "presuming" that Lakoff's theory implies otherwise? --Sheldon Rampton 13:58, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleted phrase 

message: I had added
:In essence, what Lakoff states is that, "conservatives want the government to be your daddy and liberals want the government to be your mommy." Many libertarians feel that "government should treat you like an adult," and argue that this is the more healthy dynamic of a mature family.
It was removed for being POV and without external references.  I totally understand the need for external references but POV?  It's a criticism section and almost by definition has to be POV.  I don't want to do a bunch of research for external references if its just going to be deleted because  someone doesn't agree with it.  Can someone clarify? -- Lawyer2b 16:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticisms of Lakoff 

message: Shouldn't a search for 'Lakoff' also come up with Robin Tolmach Lakoff who is also an important linguist?--81.202.229.64 10:41, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I created Lakoff (disambiguation) and added  to George's page. This puts a link at the top of the page that says "'Lakoff' redirects here. For other uses, see Lakoff (disambiguation)". If Robin's page ever gets expanded into anything substantial, the Lakoff redirect can be changed to point at Lakoff (disambiguation). As it is, 99.9% of people who link to Lakoff intend for it to mean George Lakoff, and I expect 90% of the searches are looking for him too. Mike Dillon 17:01, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I was in the 10%, then- can't say I've heard of George Lakoff before stumbling across this article, but I certainly know Robin and her work. Guess I've got some very selective feminist professors. Not that I disagree with the situation as it stands, but out of curiosity, what percentage of people searching for Robin do you believe would be enough to warrant a 'Lakoff' search to redirect to the disambig page? --Lawlore 18:25, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Are they in any way connected? Or is the similarity in lastname and profession pure coincidence? --Kaffeeringe.de 10:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  And Robin 

message: Someone appears to think that he is the owner of this article, but he fails to understand the purpose of wikipedia.  He removes criticisms of Lakoff so as to keep up an image of a prophet above criticism.  In fact, this is a whitewash, hero-worshipping image of George Lakoff.  That violates the rule against POV.  If he continues to remove the criticism section of the Lakoff article, that could constitute vandalism.  For that offense he could lose his wikipedia privileges.Wjkellpro 06:00, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Since you're referring to me, I suppose I should respond. No, the issue is that you, the author of the criticism in question, are adding your own original research to the Lakoff article. Your additions also have a POV-ish slant themselves, for example "one political scientist, William J. Kelleher [you], cirticizes [sic] Lakoff's metaphor thesis as more pop psychology than political science". The thing is, Lakoff doesn't claim in his work on political metaphors that it is a work of political science. Moral Politics is distinctly a work of congitive science, applying the theory of conceptual metaphor to politics. What's more, what you're calling "criticisms of Lakoff" is really one weak criticism that oversimplifies his work. I kind of doubt you've even read Moral Politics. Mike Dillon 06:39, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticisms of Lakoff, revisited (William Kelleher original research)

message: In the section on the embodied mind, there is a reference to a work called "The Embodied Mind": "This is what he means when he says, in "The Embodied Mind", that falsifiability itself can never be established by any reasonable method that would not rely ultimately on a shared human bias."  What is this work, and shouldn't a full cite be provided somewhere?  Does this actually refer to Philosophy in the Flesh (which is already included in the selected bibliography)? Schi 07:46, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Embodied Mind"

message: This is a general concern I've had for quite awhile now.  Any link to any article on The New Republic leads to a 404 error--as is the case with the link to Nunberg's reply to the Pinker-Lakoff debate.  Is there any way these links can be recovered?   72.130.89.63 21:35, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The New Republic 

message: Lakoffs strict father type appears to be modeled on the Authoritarian Personality as described by Theodor W. Adorno, who, btw, also worked at Berkeley
85.242.253.238 (talk) 14:45, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Drawing from Adorno? 

message: I removed the claim that Chomsky was Lakoff's supervisor at MIT. I forget who his supervisor was, but Lakoff did his PhD at Indiana University. Here are a few citations:
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=21
http://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=102657  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.25.68.16 (talk) 12:57, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Academic background 

message: In all sections of the article are some quatations lacking reference.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.163.51.160 (talk) 16:50, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: Hmm. Almost no mention of the book for which Lakoff is most famous for, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. I just finished this book and it cites his core linguistic theories and how he was originally inspired by the original work of anthropologist Eleanor Rosch. Seeing how this article talks extensively about Lakoff's linguistics theories, I find the omission in the main body of the text of Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things and of Rosch's contributions to his theories as curious. Perhaps it is because this book is now considered dated? (It was published in 1986.) Am I to assume that Lakoff has moved on in a different direction? If so why is his book still widely available? This book can be found at almost any nationwide bookstore chain in the philosophy or linguistics section. Anyone care to comment? Aletheia (talk) 17:41, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: My guess would be no one who has edited the article read it. ;-) --Falcorian (talk) 18:19, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That's my suspicion also. Perhaps I will have time to correct that oversight in the near future? Aletheia (talk) 23:19, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things 

message: I've moved this sentence, from the article to here:
Geoffrey Nunberg, linguist, UC Berkeley professor and author of Talking Right, weighed in on Lakoff vs Pinker in a post on The New Republic's web site."Frame Game"
It was a paragraph, on it's own.  It says nothing.  Was Nunberg for or against Lakoff?  If he added something new, what was it?  I should have just deleted it, but it's a good example of useless text.
Maybe there's something useful that could be said about Nunberg's article (I don't know, I've never heard of this guy or read anything by him), but nothing in the removed sentence gives any substantial information about the topic of this article (George Lakoff). Gronky (talk) 22:36, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Did Geoffrey Nunberg say anything interesting? 

message: There is no mention of Lakoff's first book in the list of writings. Should it be added?
The link to Embodied Philosophy leads to Embodied Cognition. Is the naming intentional or should it be corrected? Wikikrax (talk) 10:44, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Metaphors we live by 

message: She's mentioned in both the infobox here and the one in Robin Lakoff, but only the latter article mentions her marriage to George in the text; this seems to be because her article has a biography section and George's does not.  Shouldn't this be fixed?  I'd do it but I'm not sure how.  Also, the wikiproject tags disagree on whether this is start-class or C-class -- which is it?  ekips39❀talk 16:21, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Robin Lakoff 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified