Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea Page 25
Though the author mentions that the suit is part of the culture wars, it is never explained what the culture wars are centrally about and exactly why and how freedom has become the central values issue in this suit.
This is the kind of understanding required by a higher rationality. It is a high standard for journalism and the media to meet. But ultimately, informed public discourse will require such a standard. Now is the time to start. There is a lot of cognitive work to do, not just among ordinary citizens, but also among the journalists, political leaders, educators, and clergy who shape public discourse.
THE CHALLENGE
Higher rationality is hard to achieve. It is hard to go beyond the Punch-and-Judy journalism where people with different world-views scream past each other. It is hard to go beyond the Punch-and-Judy show of everyday life, at the office, at the holiday dinner table, with neighbors, hard not to feel anything more than frustration and anger at people you find immoral, irrational, and uninformed—and proud of it, proud of their patriotism and their common sense. It is hard to recognize that what passes for common sense can be terribly mistaken.
We were raised to think that words are transparent, that they have single simple meanings that directly fit reality. We were not raised to think in terms of contested concepts that have uncontested cores and virtually opposite extended meanings. We were not raised to think in terms of frames and metaphorical ideas. And we were not raised to think in terms of alternative world-views—that our countrymen and even our next-door neighbors might see the world in a radically different way. In short, we were not raised to see certain deep truths that are essential to our freedom. Transcending the ideas that we were raised with—growing to see more—is the cognitive work of achieving freedom.
SUGGESTED READING
These references allow the reader to enter the literature; they are not exhaustive. They are divided into the following areas: Web sites, contemporary politics, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics, and freedom/philosophy.
WEB SITES
MAJOR WEB CITATIONS
George W. Bush’s Second Inaugural Address can be found at www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural.
Bill Clinton’s address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention can be found at
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/26/politics/main632008.shtml.
PROGRESSIVE WEB SITES USED
Alternet, an online magazine and blog: www.alternet.org
Daily Kos, the blog of blogs: www.dailykos.com
Huffington Post, an online magazine and blog: www.huffingtonpost.com
Media Matters, David Brock’s Web site: www.mediamatters.org
Sirota Blog: www.davidsirota.com
Rockridge Institute: www.rockridgeinstitute.org (The main site for postings relevant to the topics of this book)
CONSERVATIVE WEB SITES USED
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty: www.acton.org
American Enterprise Institute: www.aei.org
Catholic Community Forum: www.catholic-forum.com
Cato Institute: www.cato.org
Claremont Institute: www.claremont.org
Dial-a-Truth Ministries: www.av1611.org/wwjd.html Focus on the Family: www.family.org
The Free Market, the Mises Institute monthly: www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=432&sortorder=articledate>
Global Catholic Network: www.ewtn.com
Heritage Foundation: www.heritage.org
Ludwig von Mises Institute: www.mises.org
National Review Online: www.nationalreview.com
BOOKS AND OTHER SOURCES
This book is about ideas. There are many excellent books on the facts relevant to these ideas. Some first-rate places to start are John Schwarz’s Freedom Reclaimed, Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas?, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s Off Center, and David Sirota’s Hostile Takeover.
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
Moral Politics provides a much more detailed view of the strict father and nurturant parent models than was possible here.
Don’t Think of an Elephant!, is the easiest place to start reading about framing.
Metaphors We Live By (with Mark Johnson) offers an easy and enjoyable introduction to the theory of metaphorical thought, as does Zoltán Kövecses’s introductory text Metaphor.
Philosophy in the Flesh (with Mark Johnson) is a useful reference for the theory of conceptual metaphor, for philosophical issues in general, and for philosophical topics like causation, essence, teleology, and morality.
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things is an introduction to basic findings about concepts in cognitive science. It also contains a detailed survey of basic results on categorization and multiple word meanings.
More Than Cool Reason (with Mark Turner) is a survey of types of poetic metaphors that shows how poetic uses of metaphor depend on everyday metaphorical thought.
Where Mathematics Comes From (with Rafael Núñez) demonstrates that higher mathematics is both embodied and makes essential and very extensive use of metaphorical thought.
My paper with Vittorio Gallese, “The Brain’s Concepts,” shows, on the basis of mirror neuron research, what a possible neural mechanism might be for the instantiation of frames in the physical brain.
CONTEMPORARY POLITICS
Armstrong, Jerome, and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga. Crashing the Gates: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of the People-Powered Politics. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2006.
Bartkowski, John P. The Promise Keepers: Servants, Soldiers, and Godly Men. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.
____. Remaking the Godly Marriage: Gender Negotiation in Evangelical Families. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.
Carter, Jimmy. Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005.
Court, Jamie. Corporateering: How Corporate Power Steals Your Personal Freedom—and What You Can Do About It. New York: Jeremy Tarcher, 2003.
Domke, David. God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the “War on Terror” and the Echoing Press. Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2004.
Feldman, Noah. Divided by God: America’s Church-State Problem—and What We Should Do About It. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
Frank, Thomas. What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.
Hacker, Jacob S., and Paul Pierson. Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
Hannity, Sean. Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.
Lerner, Michael. The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005.
Loehr, Davidson. America, Fascism, and God: Sermons from a Heretical Preacher. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2005.
Micklethwait, John, and Adrian Wooldridge. The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America. New York: Penguin, 2004.
Mooney, Chris. The Republican War on Science. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Packer, George. The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
Santorum, Rick. It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2005.
Schwarz, John E. Freedom Reclaimed: Rediscovering the American Vision. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
Sirota, David. Hostile Takeover: How Big Business Bought Our Government and How We Can Take It Back. New York: Crown, 2006.
Wallis, Jim. God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005.
Wirthlin, Dick, with Wynton C. Hall. The Great Communicator: What Ronald Reagan Taught Me About Politics, Leadership and Life. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2004.
COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS
Boroditsky, Lera. “Evidence
for Metaphoric Representations: Perspective in Space and Time.” In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, edited by Pat Langley and Michael G. Shafto. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997.
Churchland, Patricia Smith. Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986.
____, and Terrence J. Sejnowski. The Computational Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.
Churchland, Paul. The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.
Crick, Francis. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. New York: Scribner, 1994.
Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam, 1994.
Dehaene, Stanislas. The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
De Valois, Russell L., and Karen K. De Valois. “Neural Coding of Color.” In Handbook of Perception. Vol. V, Seeing, edited by Edward C. Careterette and Morton P. Friedman. New York: Academic Press, 1975.
Edelman, Gerald M. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of Mind. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
Fauconnier, Gilles. Mappings in Thought and Language. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
____. Mental Spaces: Aspects of Meaning Construction in Natural Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985.
Feldman, J., and S. Narayanan. “Embodied Meaning in a Neural Theory of Language.” Brain and Language 89 (2004): 385–92.
Feldman, Jerome A. From Molecule to Metaphor: A Neural Theory of Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.
Fillmore, Charles J. “Semantics.” In Linguistics in the Morning Calm, edited by the Linguistic Society of Korea, 111–38. Seoul: Hanshin, 1982.
____. “Frames and the Semantics of Understanding.” Quaderni di Semantica 6 (1985): 222–53.
____. Lectures on Deixis. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 1992.
Gallese, Vittorio. “Being Like Me: Self-Other Identity, Mirror Neurons and Empathy.” In Perspectives on Imitation: From Cognitive Neuroscience to Social Science, edited by Susan Hurley and Nick Chater. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
____. “Embodied Simulation: From Neurons to Phenomenal Experience.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (2005): 23–48.
____, and George Lakoff. “The Brain’s Concepts: The Role of the Sensory-Motor System in Reason and Language.” Cognitive Neuropsychology 23, nos. 3–4 (May–June 2005): 455–79.
Gallie, W. B. “Essentially Contested Concepts.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 167 (1956).
Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: Essays on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper, 1974.
Grady, Joseph. “Foundations of Meaning: Primary Metaphors and Primary Scenes.” PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1997.
Holland, Dorothy, and Naomi Quinn, eds. Cultural Models in Language and Thought. New York: Cambridge University Pres, 1987.
Hubel, David H. Eye, Brain, and Vision. New York: Scientific American Library, 1988.
Jeannerod, Marc. The Cognitive Neuroscience of Action. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1997.
Johnson, Christopher R. “Constructional Grounding: The Role of Interpretational Overlap in Lexical and Constructional Acquisition.” PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1999.
Johnson, Mark. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
____. Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
____, ed. Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981.
Kahneman, Daniel, ed. “A Perspective on Judgment and Choice: Mapping Bounded Rationality.” American Psychologist 58, no. 9 (September 2003): 697–720.
____. “A Psychological Perspective on Economics.” American Economic Review 93, no. 2 (May 1, 2003): 162–68.
____, and Amos Tversky, eds. Choices, Values and Frames. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000.
Kay, Paul, and Chad K. McDaniel. “The Linguistic Significance of the Meanings of Basic Color Terms.” Language 54 (1978): 610–46.
Kövecses, Zoltán. Emotion Concepts. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990.
____. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
____. Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Lakoff, George. “The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor.” In Metaphor and Thought, 2d ed., edited by Andrew Ortony, 202–51. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
____. Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2004.
____. Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don’t. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
____. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
____. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
Lakoff, George, and Rafael E. Núñez. Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Turner. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Mervis, Carolyn B., and Eleanor Rosch. “Categorization of Natural Objects.” Annual Review of Psychology 32 (1981): 89–115.
Narayanan, Srinivas. “Talking the Talk Is Like Walking the Walk: A Computational Model of Verbal Aspect.” Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (1997).
Regier, Terry. The Human Semantic Potential: Spatial Language and Constrained Connectionism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.
Rizzolatti, Giacomo, and Laila Craighero. “The Mirror Neuron System.” Annual Review of Neuroscience 27 (July 2004): 169–92.
Rosch, E. “Human Categorization.” In Studies in Cross-Cultural Psychology, edited by Neil Warren. New York: Academic Press, 1977.
____. “Principles of Categorization.” In Cognition and Categorization, edited by E. Rosch and B. B. Lloyd, 27–48. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1978.
____, C. B. Mervis, W. Gray, D. Johnson, and P. Boyes-Braem. “Basic Objects in Natural Categories.” Cognitive Psychology 8 (1976): 382–439.
Schank, Roger C., and Robert P. Abelson. Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1977.
Sweetser, Eve. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Taylor, John R. Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. “Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions.” In Decision Making: Descriptive, Normative, and Prescriptive Interactions, edited by David E. Bell, Howard Raiff, and Amos Tversky, 167–92. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Winter, Steven L. A Clearing in the Forest: Law, Life, and Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Zeki, Semir. A Vision of the Brain. Boston: Blackwell, 1993.
FREEDOM / PHILOSOPHY
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. W. D. Ross. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon. New York: Random House. 1941.
Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.
Berlin, Isaiah. Liberty. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.