The word concept is defined variously by different sources. Philosophers and others generally agree that concepts are formed from experience and other pre-existing mental content by abstraction and other operations in the brain.

Notable definitions[link]

John Locke's description of a general idea corresponds to a description of a concept. According to Locke, a general idea is created by abstracting, drawing away, or removing the uncommon characteristic or characteristics from several particular ideas. The remaining common characteristic is that which is similar to all of the different individuals. For example, the abstract general idea or concept that is designated by the word "red" is that characteristic which is common to apples, cherries, and blood. The abstract general idea or concept that is signified by the word "dog" is the collection of those characteristics which are common to Airedales, Collies, and Chihuahuas.^{[citation needed]}

John Stuart Mill argued that general conceptions are formed through abstraction. A general conception is the common element among the many images of members of a class. "...[W]hen we form a set of phenomena into a class, that is, when we compare them with one another to ascertain in what they agree, some general conception is implied in this mental operation" (A System of Logic, Book IV, Ch. II). Mill did not believe that concepts exist in the mind before the act of abstraction. "It is not a law of our intellect, that, in comparing things with each other and taking note of their agreement, we merely recognize as realized in the outward world something that we already had in our minds. The conception originally found its way to us as the result of such a comparison. It was obtained (in metaphysical phrase) by abstraction from individual things" (Ibid.).

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued that concepts are "mere abstractions from what is known through intuitive perception, and they have arisen from our arbitrarily thinking away or dropping of some qualities and our retention of others." (Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, "Sketch of a History of the Ideal and the Real"). In his On the Will in Nature, "Physiology and Pathology," Schopenhauer said that a concept is "drawn off from previous images ... by putting off their differences. This concept is then no longer intuitively perceptible, but is denoted and fixed merely by words." Nietzsche, who was heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, wrote: "Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept 'leaf' is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions..."^[1]

By contrast to the above philosophers, Immanuel Kant held that the account of the concept as an abstraction of experience is only partly correct. He called those concepts that result from abstraction "a posteriori concepts" (meaning concepts that arise out of experience). An empirical or an a posteriori concept is a general representation (Vorstellung) or non-specific thought of that which is common to several specific perceived objects (Logic, I, 1., §1, Note 1).

A concept is a common feature or characteristic. Kant investigated the way that empirical a posteriori concepts are created.

The logical acts of the understanding by which concepts are generated as to their form are:

1. comparison, i.e., the likening of mental images to one another in relation to the unity of consciousness;
2. reflection, i.e., the going back over different mental images, how they can be comprehended in one consciousness; and finally
3. abstraction or the segregation of everything else by which the mental images differ ...

In order to make our mental images into concepts, one must thus be able to compare, reflect, and abstract, for these three logical operations of the understanding are essential and general conditions of generating any concept whatever. For example, I see a fir, a willow, and a linden. In firstly comparing these objects, I notice that they are different from one another in respect of trunk, branches, leaves, and the like; further, however, I reflect only on what they have in common, the trunk, the branches, the leaves themselves, and abstract from their size, shape, and so forth; thus I gain a concept of a tree.

— Logic, §6

Kant's description of the making of a concept has been paraphrased as "...to conceive is essentially to think in abstraction what is common to a plurality of possible instances..." (H.J. Paton, Kant's Metaphysics of Experience, I, 250). In his discussion of Kant, Christopher Janaway wrote: "...generic concepts are formed by abstraction from more than one species."^[2]

Issues in concept theory[link]

A priori concepts[link]

Kant declared that human minds possess pure or a priori concepts. Instead of being abstracted from individual perceptions, like empirical concepts, they originate in the mind itself. He called these concepts categories, in the sense of the word that means predicate, attribute, characteristic, or quality. But these pure categories are predicates of things in general, not of a particular thing. According to Kant, there are 12 categories that constitute the understanding of phenomenal objects. Each category is that one predicate which is common to multiple empirical concepts. In order to explain how an a priori concept can relate to individual phenomena, in a manner analogous to an a posteriori concept, Kant employed the technical concept of the schema.

Origin[link]

Carl Jung argues that concepts may be attributed to space other than within the inside boundaries of any body or mass or material formation of living creatures.^{[citation needed]}

Embodied content[link]

In cognitive linguistics, abstract concepts are transformations of concrete concepts derived from embodied experience. The mechanism of transformation is structural mapping, in which properties of two or more source domains are selectively mapped onto a blended space (Fauconnier & Turner, 1995; see conceptual blending). A common class of blends are metaphors. This theory contrasts with the rationalist view that concepts are perceptions (or recollections, in Plato's term) of an independently existing world of ideas, in that it denies the existence of any such realm. It also contrasts with the empiricist view that concepts are abstract generalizations of individual experiences, because the contingent and bodily experience is preserved in a concept, and not abstracted away. While the perspective is compatible with Jamesian pragmatism (above), the notion of the transformation of embodied concepts through structural mapping makes a distinct contribution to the problem of concept formation.^{[citation needed]}

Ontology[link]

Plato was the starkest proponent of the realist thesis of universal concepts. By his view, concepts (and ideas in general) are innate ideas that were instantiations of a transcendental world of pure forms that lay behind the veil of the physical world. In this way, universals were explained as transcendent objects. Needless to say this form of realism was tied deeply with Plato's ontological projects. This remark on Plato is not of merely historical interest. For example, the view that numbers are Platonic objects was revived by Kurt Gödel as a result of certain puzzles that he took to arise from the phenomenological accounts.^[3]

Gottlob Frege, founder of the analytic tradition in philosophy, famously argued for the analysis of language in terms of sense and reference. For him, the sense of an expression in language describes a certain state of affairs in the world, namely, the way that some object is presented. Since many commentators view the notion of sense as identical to the notion of concept, and Frege regards senses as the linguistic representations of states of affairs in the world, it seems to follow that we may understand concepts as the manner in which we grasp the world. Accordingly, concepts (as senses) have an ontological status (Morgolis:7).

According to Carl Benjamin Boyer, in the introduction to his The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development, concepts in calculus do not refer to perceptions. As long as the concepts are useful and mutually compatible, they are accepted on their own. For example, the concepts of the derivative and the integral are not considered to refer to spatial or temporal perceptions of the external world of experience. Neither are they related in any way to mysterious limits in which quantities are on the verge of nascence or evanescence, that is, coming into or going out of existence. The abstract concepts are now considered to be totally autonomous, even though they originated from the process of abstracting or taking away qualities from perceptions until only the common, essential attributes remained.

Etymology[link]

The term "concept" is traced back to 1554–60 (Latin conceptum - "something conceived"),^[4] but what is today termed "the classical theory of concepts" is the theory of Aristotle on the definition of terms.^{[citation needed]} The meaning of "concept" is explored in mainstream information science,^[5][6] cognitive science, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. In computer and information science contexts, especially, the term 'concept' is often used in unclear or inconsistent ways.^[7]

See also[link]

References[link]

1. ^ "On Truth and Lie in an Extra–Moral Sense," The Portable Nietzsche, p. 46
2. ^ Christopher Janaway, Self and World in Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Ch. 3, p. 112, Oxford, 2003, ISBN 0-19-825003-7
3. ^ 'Godel's Rationalism', Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
4. ^ http://www.bartleby.com/61/49/C0544900.html%7CThe American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.
5. ^ Stock, W.G. (2010). Concepts and semantic relations in information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(10), 1951-1969.
6. ^ Hjørland, B. (2009). Concept Theory. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(8), 1519–1536
7. ^ Smith, B. (2004). Beyond Concepts, or: Ontology as Reality Representation, Formal Ontology and Information Systems. Proceedings of the Third International Conference (FOIS 2004), Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2004, 73–84.

A concept is a system of general ideas targeting the multilateral treatment/interpretation of economic, social, legal, scientific, technical and other problems, and reflecting the manner of perception or the multitude of opinions, ideas regarding problems associated with to the development of one or several fields or sectors as a whole.

Publications[link]

• The History of Calculus and its Conceptual Development, Carl Benjamin Boyer, Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-60509-4
• The Writings of William James, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-39188-4
• Logic, Immanuel Kant, Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-25650-2
• A System of Logic, John Stuart Mill, University Press of the Pacific, ISBN 1-4102-0252-6
• Parerga and Paralipomena, Arthur Schopenhauer, Volume I, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-824508-4
• What is Philosophy?, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
• Kant's Metaphysic of Experience, H. J. Paton, London: Allen & Unwin, 1936
• Conceptual Integration Networks. Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, 1998. Cognitive Science. Volume 22, number 2 (April–June 1998), pages 133-187.
• The Portable Nietzsche, Penguin Books, 1982, ISBN 0-14-015062-5
• Stephen Laurence and Eric Margolis "Concepts and Cognitive Science". In Concepts: Core Readings, MIT Press pp. 3–81, 1999.
• Birger Hjørland. (2009). Concept Theory. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(8), 1519–1536
• Georgij Yu. Somov (2010). Concepts and Senses in Visual Art: Through the example of analysis of some works by Bruegel the Elder. Semiotica 182 (1/4), 475–506.
• Daltrozzo J, Vion-Dury J, Schön D. (2010). Music and Concepts. Horizons in Neuroscience Research 4: 157-167. [1]

External links[link]

Look up concept in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Concept.

• E. Margolis and S. Lawrence (2006), Concepts entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Blending and Conceptual Integration
• Conceptual Science and Mathematical Permutations
• Concept Mobiles Latest concepts
• v:Conceptualize: A Wikiversity Learning Project
• Concept simultaneously translated in several languages and meanings
• Product Research and Conceptualization

"Lakoff" and "Professor Lakoff" redirect here. For the sociolinguist, see Robin Lakoff.

George Lakoff
Professor George Lakoff
Born	(1941-05-24) May 24, 1941 (age 71) Bayonne, New Jersey
Residence	Berkeley, California, USA
Nationality	United States
Fields	Cognitive linguistics Cognitive science
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley
Alma mater	Indiana University MIT
Known for	Conceptual metaphor theory Embodied cognition
Spouse	Robin Lakoff (divorced)
Website
georgelakoff.com

George P. Lakoff ( /ˈleɪkɒf/, born May 24, 1941) is an American cognitive linguist and professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. Although some of his research involves questions traditionally pursued by linguists, such as the conditions under which a certain linguistic construction is grammatically viable, he is most famous for his ideas about the centrality of metaphor to human thinking, political behavior and society. He is particularly famous for his concept of the "embodied mind", which he has written about in relation to mathematics. In recent years he has applied his work to the realm of politics, exploring this in his books. He is a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, Spain's Socialist Party's think tank. He was the founder of the now defunct progressive think tank the Rockridge Institute.^[1][2]

Reappraisal of metaphor[link]

Lakoff began his career as a student and later a teacher of the theory of transformational grammar developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky. In the late 1960s, however, he joined with others to promote generative semantics as an alternative to Chomsky's generative syntax. In an interview he stated:

During that period, I was attempting to unify Chomsky's transformational grammar with formal logic. I had helped work out a lot of the early details of Chomsky's theory of grammar. Noam claimed then — and still does, so far as I can tell — that syntax is independent of meaning, context, background knowledge, memory, cognitive processing, communicative intent, and every aspect of the body...In working through the details of his early theory, I found quite a few cases where semantics, context, and other such factors entered into rules governing the syntactic occurrences of phrases and morphemes. I came up with the beginnings of an alternative theory in 1963 and, along with wonderful collaborators like "Haj" Ross and Jim McCawley, developed it through the sixties.^[3]

Lakoff's claim that Chomsky asserts independence between syntax and semantics has been rejected by Chomsky, who has given examples from within his work where he talks about the relationship between his semantics and syntax. Chomsky goes further and claims that Lakoff has "virtually no comprehension of the work he is discussing" (the work in question being Chomsky's).^[4] His differences with Chomsky contributed to fierce, acrimonious debates among linguists that have come to be known as the "linguistics wars".

Lakoff's original thesis on conceptual metaphor was expressed in his book with Mark Johnson entitled Metaphors We Live By in 1980.

Metaphor has been seen within the Western scientific tradition as purely a linguistic construction. The essential thrust of Lakoff's work has been the argument that metaphors are primarily a conceptual construction, and indeed are central to the development of thought. He says, "Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature." Non-metaphorical thought is for Lakoff only possible when we talk about purely physical reality. For Lakoff the greater the level of abstraction the more layers of metaphor are required to express it. People do not notice these metaphors for various reasons. One reason is that some metaphors become 'dead' and we no longer recognize their origin. Another reason is that we just don't "see" what is "going on".

For instance, in intellectual debate the underlying metaphor is usually that argument is war (later revised as "argument is struggle"):

• He won the argument.
• Your claims are indefensible.
• He shot down all my arguments.
• His criticisms were right on target.
• If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out.

For Lakoff, the development of thought has been the process of developing better metaphors. The application of one domain of knowledge to another domain of knowledge offers new perceptions and understandings.

Lakoff's theory has applications throughout all academic disciplines and much of human social interaction. Lakoff has explored some of the implications of the embodied mind thesis in a number of books, most written with coauthors.

Embodied mind[link]

When Lakoff claims the mind is "embodied", he is arguing that almost all of human cognition, up through the most abstract reasoning, depends on and makes use of such concrete and "low-level" facilities as the sensorimotor system and the emotions. Therefore embodiment is a rejection not only of dualism vis-a-vis mind and matter, but also of claims that human reason can be basically understood without reference to the underlying "implementation details".

Lakoff offers three complementary but distinct sorts of arguments in favor of embodiment. First, using evidence^[which?] from neuroscience and neural network simulations, he argues that certain concepts, such as color and spatial relation concepts (e.g. "red" or "over"; see also qualia), can be almost entirely understood through the examination of how processes of perception or motor control work.

Second, based on cognitive linguistics' analysis of figurative language, he argues that the reasoning we use for such abstract topics as warfare, economics, or morality is somehow rooted in the reasoning we use for such mundane topics as spatial relationships. (See conceptual metaphor.)

Finally, based on research in cognitive psychology and some investigations in the philosophy of language, he argues that very few of the categories used by humans are actually of the black-and-white type amenable to analysis in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. On the contrary, most categories are supposed to be much more complicated and messy, just like our bodies.

"We are neural beings," Lakoff states, "Our brains take their input from the rest of our bodies. What our bodies are like and how they function in the world thus structures the very concepts we can use to think. We cannot think just anything — only what our embodied brains permit."^[5]

Lakoff believes consciousness to be neurally embodied, however he explicitly states that the mechanism is not just neural computation alone. Using the concept of disembodiment, Lakoff supports the physicalist approach to the afterlife. If the soul can not have any of the properties of the body, then Lakoff claims it can not feel, perceive, think, be conscious, or have a personality. If this is true, then Lakoff asks what would be the point of the afterlife?

Many scientists share the belief that there are problems with falsifiability and foundation ontologies purporting to describe "what exists", to a sufficient degree of rigor to establish a reasonable method of empirical validation. But Lakoff takes this further to explain why hypotheses built with complex metaphors cannot be directly falsified. Instead, they can only be rejected based on interpretations of empirical observations guided by other complex metaphors. 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. The bias he's referring to is the set of conceptual metaphors governing how people interpret observations.

Lakoff is, with coauthors Mark Johnson and Rafael E. Núñez, one of the primary proponents of the embodied mind thesis. Lakoff discussed these themes in his 2001 Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow, published as The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding.^[6] Others who have written about the embodied mind include philosopher Andy Clark (See his Being There), philosopher and neurobiologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela and his student Evan Thompson (See Varela, Thompson & Rosch's "The Embodied Mind"), roboticists such as Rodney Brooks, Rolf Pfeifer and Tom Ziemke, the physicist David Bohm (see his Thought As A System), Ray Gibbs (see his "Embodiment and Cognitive Science"), John Grinder and Richard Bandler in their neuro-linguistic programming, and Julian Jaynes. All of these writers can be traced back to earlier philosophical writings, most notably in the phenomenological tradition, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. The basic thesis of "embodied mind" is also traceable to the American contextualist or pragmatist tradition, notably John Dewey in such works as Art As Experience.

Mathematics[link]

According to Lakoff, even mathematics is subjective to the human species and its cultures: thus "any question of math's being inherent in physical reality is moot, since there is no way to know whether or not it is." By this, he is saying that there is nothing outside of the thought structures we derive from our embodied minds that we can use to "prove" that mathematics is somehow beyond biology. Lakoff and Rafael E. Núñez (2000) argue at length that mathematical and philosophical ideas are best understood in light of the embodied mind. The philosophy of mathematics ought therefore to look to the current scientific understanding of the human body as a foundation ontology, and abandon self-referential attempts to ground the operational components of mathematics in anything other than "meat".

Mathematical reviewers have generally been critical of Lakoff and Núñez, pointing to mathematical errors. (Lakoff claims that these errors have been corrected in subsequent printings.) Their book has yet to elicit much of a reaction from philosophers of mathematics, although the book can be read as making strong claims about how that philosophy should proceed. The small community specializing in the psychology of mathematical learning, to which Núñez belongs, is paying attention.

Lakoff has also claimed that we should remain agnostic about whether math is somehow wrapped up with the very nature of the universe. Early in 2001 Lakoff told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): "Mathematics may or may not be out there in the world, but there's no way that we scientifically could possibly tell." This is because the structures of scientific knowledge are not "out there" but rather in our brains, based on the details of our anatomy. Therefore, we cannot "tell" that mathematics is "out there" without relying on conceptual metaphors rooted in our biology. This claim bothers those who believe that there really is a way we could "tell". The falsifiability of this claim is perhaps the central problem in the cognitive science of mathematics, a field that attempts to establish a foundation ontology based on the human cognitive and scientific process.

Political significance and involvement[link]

Lakoff's application of cognitive linguistics to politics, literature, philosophy and mathematics has led him into territory normally considered basic to political science.

Lakoff has publicly expressed both ideas about the conceptual structures that he views as central to understanding the political process, and some of his particular political views. He almost always discusses the latter in terms of the former.

Moral Politics (1996, revisited in 2002) gives book-length consideration to the conceptual metaphors that Lakoff sees as present in the minds of American "liberals" and "conservatives". The book is a blend of cognitive science and political analysis. Lakoff makes an attempt to keep his personal views confined to the last third of the book, where he explicitly argues for the superiority of the liberal vision.^[2]

Lakoff argues that the differences in opinions between liberals and conservatives follow from the fact that they subscribe with different strength to two different metaphors about the relationship of the state to its citizens. Both, he claims, see governance through metaphors of the family. Conservatives would subscribe more strongly and more often to a model that he calls the "strict father model" and has a family structured around a strong, dominant "father" (government), and assumes that the "children" (citizens) need to be disciplined to be made into responsible "adults" (morality, self-financing). Once the "children" are "adults", though, the "father" should not interfere with their lives: the government should stay out of the business of those in society who have proved their responsibility. In contrast, Lakoff argues that liberals place more support in a model of the family, which he calls the "nurturant parent model", based on "nurturant values", where both "mothers" and "fathers" work to keep the essentially good "children" away from "corrupting influences" (pollution, social injustice, poverty, etc.). Lakoff says that most people have a blend of both metaphors applied at different times, and that political speech works primarily by invoking these metaphors and urging the subscription of one over the other.^[7]

Lakoff further argues that one of the reasons liberals have had difficulty since the 1980s is that they have not been as aware of their own guiding metaphors, and have too often accepted conservative terminology framed in a way to promote the strict father metaphor. Lakoff insists that liberals must cease using terms like partial birth abortion and tax relief because they are manufactured specifically to allow the possibilities of only certain types of opinions. Tax relief for example, implies explicitly that taxes are an affliction, something someone would want "relief" from. To use the terms of another metaphoric worldview, Lakoff insists, is to unconsciously support it. Liberals must support linguistic think tanks in the same way that conservatives do if they are going to succeed in appealing to those in the country who share their metaphors.^[8]

Lakoff has distributed some much briefer political analyses via the Internet. One article distributed this way is "Metaphor and War: The Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf", in which Lakoff argues that the particular conceptual metaphors used by the first Bush administration to justify American involvement in the Gulf ended up either obscuring reality, or putting a spin on the facts that was accommodating to the administration's case for military action.

Between 2003 and 2008, Lakoff was involved with a progressive think tank, the Rockridge Institute, an involvement that follows in part from his recommendations in Moral Politics. Among his activities with the Institute, which concentrates in part on helping liberal candidates and politicians with re-framing political metaphors, Lakoff has given numerous public lectures and written accounts of his message from Moral Politics. In 2008, Lakoff joined Fenton Communications, the nation's largest public interest communications firm, as a Senior Consultant.

One of his political works, Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate, self-labeled as "the Essential Guide for Progressives", was published in September 2004 and features a foreword by former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean.

Disagreement with Steven Pinker[link]

In 2006 Steven Pinker wrote an unfavorable review ^[9] of Lakoff's book Whose Freedom? The Battle over America's Most Important Idea. Pinker's review was published in The New Republic. Pinker argued that Lakoff's propositions are unsupported and his prescriptions a recipe for electoral failure. He wrote that Lakoff was condescending and deplored Lakoff's "shameless caricaturing of beliefs" and his "faith in the power of euphemism". Pinker portrayed Lakoff's arguments as "cognitive relativism, in which mathematics, science, and philosophy are beauty contests between rival frames rather than attempts to characterize the nature of reality". Lakoff wrote a rebuttal to the review ^[10] stating that his position on many matters is the exact reverse of what Pinker attributes to him. Lakoff explicitly rejected, for example, the cognitive relativism and faith in euphemism described above, arguing in favor of a deeper understanding of rationality that discards the modal logic conceptualization of rational thought in favor of the better supported frame interpretation.^[10]

Works[link]

• 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-46804-6.
• 1989 with Mark Turner. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-46812-9.
• 1996. Moral politics : What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don't. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-46805-1.
  • 2001 Edition. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-46771-9.
• 1999 (with Mark Johnson). Philosophy In The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books.
• 2000 (with Rafael Núñez). Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-03771-2.
• 2003 (1980) with Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press. 2003 edition contains an 'Afterword'. ISBN 978-0-226-46800-6.
• 2004. Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. Chelsea Green Publishing. ISBN 978-1-931498-71-5.
• 2005, "A Cognitive Scientist Looks at Daubert", American Journal of Public Health. 95, no. 1: S114.
• 2006. Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-15828-6.
• 2008. The Political Mind : Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. Viking Adult. ISBN 978-0-670-01927-4.

Videos[link]

• How Democrats and Progressives Can Win: Solutions from George Lakoff DVD format. OCLC 315514475
• C-Span program online, The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain

See also[link]

• Code word (figure of speech)
• Cognitive linguistics
• Cognitive science of mathematics
• Conceptual metaphor
• Embodied philosophy
• Framing (social sciences)
• Invariance principle
• Language and thought
• Metaphor
• Metonymy

References[link]

1. ^ "George Lakoff". Rockridge Institute. http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/people/lakoff. Retrieved 2007-06-13. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Lakoff, George (2002). Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-46771-6. 
3. ^ John Brockman (03/09/99), Edge.org, "Philosophy In The Flesh" A Talk With George Lakoff [1]
4. ^ The New York Review of Books, Chomsky Replies, 1973 20;12
5. ^ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lakoff/lakoff_p1.html
6. ^ ed. Anthony Sanford, T & T Clark, 2003. Summary at giffordlectures.org by Brannon Hancock.
7. ^ Lakoff, George (2002). Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 143–176. ISBN 0-226-46771-6. 
8. ^ Lakoff, George (2002). Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 415–418. ISBN 0-226-46771-6. 
9. ^ "Block that Metaphor!", New Republic.
10. ^ ^{a b} "When cognitive science enters politics", rockridgeinstitute.org, 12 October 2006.

Further reading[link]

• Harris, Randy Allen (1995). The Linguistics Wars. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509834-X. (Focuses on the disputes Lakoff and others have had with Chomsky.)
• Haser, Verena (2005). Metaphor, Metonymy, and Experientialist Philosophy: Challenging Cognitive Semantics (Topics in English Linguistics), Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-018283-5 (A critical look at the ideas behind embodiment and conceptual metaphor.)
• Kelleher, William J. (2005). Progressive Logic: Framing A Unified Field Theory of Values For Progressives. La CaCañada Flintridge, CA: The Empathic Science Institute. ISBN 0-9773717-1-9.
• McGlone, M. S. (2001). "Concepts as Metaphors" in Sam Glucksberg, Understanding Figurative Language: From Metaphors to Idioms. Oxford Psychology Series 36. Oxford University Press, 90–107. ISBN 0-19-511109-5.
• O'Reilly, Bill (2006). Culture Warrior. New York: Broadway Books. ISBN 0-7679-2092-9. (Calls Lakoff the guiding philosopher behind the "secular progressive movement".)
• Renkema, Jan (2004). Introduction to Discourse Studies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN 1-58811-529-1.
• Rettig, Hillary (2006). The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way. New York: Lantern Books. ISBN 1-59056-090-6. (Documents strong parallels between Lakoff's nurturant parent model of progressive thought and psychologist Abraham Maslow's model of the self-actualized individual. Also discusses framing in the context of marketing and sales with the aim of bolstering progressive activists' persuasive skills.)
• Richardt, Susanne (2005). Metaphor in Languages for Special Purposes: The Function of Conceptual Metaphor in Written Expert Language and Expert-Lay Communication in the Domains of Economics, Medicine and Computing. European University Studies: Series XIV, Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature, 413. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. ISBN 0-8204-7381-2.
• Soros, George (2006). The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror. ISBN 1-58648-359-5. (discusses Lakoff in regard to the application of his theories on the work of Frank Luntz and with respect to his own theory about perception and reality)
• Winter, Steven L. (2003). A Clearing in the Forest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-90222-6. (Applies Lakoff's work in cognitive science and metaphor to the field of law and legal reasoning.)
• Dean, John W. (2006), Conservatives without Conscience, Viking Penguin ISBN 0-670-03774-5.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: George Lakoff

• georgelakoff.com
• University of California, Berkeley department of Linguistics page on George Lakoff
• Edge bio of Lakoff
• "Metaphor and War" (1991)
• "Metaphor and War, Again" (2003)
• "Thinking of Jackasses: the grand delusions of the Democratic Party", a critical review by Marc Cooper in Atlantic Monthly
• "The Extended Mind" Radio interview on Philosophy Talk
• "Empathy is the New Black" Radio interview with Dr. George Lakoff on Liberadio(!) with Mary Mancini an Freddie O'Connell
• "The Political Mind" a talk by George Lakoff recorded June 28, 2008 in Sacramento, CA
• George Lakoff Proposes Ballot Measure to End 2/3 Rule in State Legislature - video report by Democracy Now!
• Biography and summary of Gifford Lectures (University of Glasgow, 2001) by Brannon Hancock

Charles Tilly (May 27, 1929 – April 29, 2008^[1]) was an American sociologist, political scientist, and historian who wrote on the relationship between politics and society. He was the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University.

Personal life and education[link]

Tilly was born on May 20, 1929, in Lombard, Illinois (near Chicago). He graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude in 1950 and completed Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in 1958.

Charles Tilly died on April 29, 2008 from lymphoma. As he was fading in the hospital, he got one characteristic sentence out to early student Barry Wellman: "It's a complex situation."^[2] In his obituary, Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger stated that Tilly "literally wrote the book on the contentious dynamics and the ethnographic foundations of political history".^[1] Adam Ashforth, of Northwestern University, described Tilly as "the founding father of 21st-century sociology".^[3]

Academic career[link]

Charles Tilly taught at the University of Delaware, Harvard University, the University of Toronto, the University of Michigan, The New School, and Columbia University. At Columbia, he was the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science. Over the course of his career, Tilly wrote more than 600 articles and 51 books and monographs.^[1]

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Sociological Research Association and the Ordre des Palmes Academiques.^[4]

Academic work[link]

Tilly's academic work covered multiple topics in the social sciences and influenced scholarship in disciplines outside of sociology, including history and political science. He is considered a major figure in the development of historical sociology, the early use of quantitative methods in historical analysis, the methodology of event cataloguing, the turn towards relational and social-network modes of inquiry, the development of process- and mechanism-based analysis, as well as the study of: contentious politics, social movements, the history of labor, state formation, revolutions, democratization, inequality, and urban sociology.

State formation[link]

Examining political, social, and technological change in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present, Tilly attempted to explain the unprecedented success of the nation-state as the dominant polity on Earth.^[5] According to his theory, military innovation in pre-modern Europe (especially gunpowder and mass armies) made war extremely expensive. As a result, only states with a sufficient amount of capital and a large population could afford paying for their security and ultimately survive in the hostile environment. Institutions of the modern state (such as taxes) were created to allow war-making.

Contentious politics[link]

In opposition to individualistic, dispositional analyses of contentious politics, Tilly's work emphasizes how dynamics of social protest are tied to their political, social and economic context. Where previous studies of collective violence had argued their atypical nature, Tilly amassed a battery of evidence to show that they typically arise from the organization of normally non-violent political contentions.

Tilly's work has had considerable influence on the study of social movements. Ironically, Charles Tilly was initially reluctant to tackle social movements. “I avoided writing about social movements for about twenty years because I felt that the term had become swollen and imprecise,” he said in a 2007 interview. “The phenomenon of the social movement looked to me like a historically specific form of politics parallel to the electoral campaign and the collective seizure of food, not a universal category of human action.”^[6]

The notion of locating the birth of the social movement in a specific time and place occurred to Tilly while he was writing his pathbreaking work on the transformation of British popular politics, Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834.^[7] In the process of collating and analyzing the 8,088 contentious gatherings (CGs) that form the basis of the book, Tilly noticed that one momentous change in how ordinary people made collective claims on public authorities turned out to be the invention of what we now call the social movement. “I couldn’t help seeing that in Britain, at least, social movements didn’t exist in the mid-18th century but had become a dominant form of popular politics by the 1830s. That started me writing about the history of social movements, first in Western Europe, then finally across the world as a whole.”^[6]

Instead of defining all forms of social protest as social movements, Tilly uses a narrower definition. Conceptually, he argues that social movements share some elements with other forms of political contention such as coups, electoral campaigns, strikes, revolutions, and interest-group politics, but have their own distinct characteristics. He argues that the social movement developed in the West after 1750 and spread throughout the world through colonialism, trade and migration. Local populations are more likely to experiment with the social movement with democratization, and when successful, are more likely to incorporate it into their political struggles.

Tilly argues that social movements combine:

1. A sustained, organized public effort making collective claims on target audiences: let us call it a campaign;
2. Employment of combinations from among the following forms of political action: creation of special purpose associations and coalitions, public meetings, solemn processions, vigils, rallies, demonstrations, petition drives, statements to and in public media, and pamphleteering; call the variable ensemble of performances the social-movement repertoire. and
3. Participants' concerted public representations of worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment (WUNC) on the part of themselves and/or their constituencies: call them WUNC displays.^[8]

A campaign always links at least three parties: a group of claimants, some object(s) of claims, and a public of some kind. Social movement repertoires are the context-specific, standard operating procedures of social movements, such as: public meetings, solemn processions, vigils, rallies, special-purpose associations and coalitions, demonstrations, petition drives, and pamphleteering. As for WUNC displays, Tilly writes, “The term WUNC sounds odd, but it represents something quite familiar.”^[9] Social movements’ displays of worthiness may include sober demeanor and the presence of clergy and mothers with children; unity is signaled by matching banners, singing and chanting; numbers are broadcast via signatures on petitions and filling streets; and commitment is advertised by braving bad weather, ostentatious sacrifice, and/or visible participation by the old and handicapped. WUNC matters because it conveys crucial political messages to a social movement’s targets and the relevant public.

Tilly distinguishes between three sorts of claims advanced by social movements:

1. Identity claims declare that “we”—the claimants—constitute a unified force to be reckoned with. Such claims commonly include a name for “us,” such as “Cherokees,” “Diamond Cutters,” or “Citizens United against X.”
2. Standing claims assert ties and similarities to other political actors, for example as excluded minorities, established traders, properly constituted citizens' groups, or loyal supporters of the regime.
3. Program claims involve stated support for or opposition to actual or proposed actions by the objects of movement claims. The relative salience of identity, standing, and program claims varies significantly among social movements, among claimants within movements, and among phases of movements.^[10]

Tilly locates the origin of social movement repertoires in the national regime within which they operate. Defining regimes as the degree of governmental capacity and democracy within a given polity, Tilly argues that contentious repertoires are shaped by regimes in three ways: regimes control claim-making repertoires—determining zones of prescribed, tolerated, and forbidden repertoires; regimes constitute potential claimants and potential objects of claims; and regimes produce streams of issues, events, and governmental actions around which social movements rise and fall.^[11]

Tilly also argues that there exists a complex relationship between social movements and democratization. Democratization promotes the formation of social movements, but by no means do all social movements advocate or promote democracy. The distinction is crucial. Tilly cautioned against the illusion that social movements themselves promote democracy by analytically separating movement claims from movement consequences. A pro-democracy movement may lead to anti-democratic consequences, he argued; an example would be anarchists ultimately promoting the fragmentation of democracy-seeking coalitions. Conversely, an anti-democracy movement may promote democratic outcomes by stimulating democratic counter-action by other citizens or self-serving countermeasures by public officials; an example would be unsuccessful anti-immigrant movements.^{[citation needed]}

However, democratization always promotes the formation of social movements because each of its elements contributes to social movement activity. Democratization’s formation of more regular and categorical relations between governments and subjects renders the making of rights-based claims feasible, visible, and attractive. The broadening of rights and obligations within public politics promotes participation in campaigns, social movement performances, and WUNC displays. The equalization of rights and obligations within public politics strengthens cross-category coalitions and the assertion of new identities. And increases in binding consultation of subjects with regard to government policy hold out the prospect of movements acquiring some say in governmental decision making.^{[citation needed]}

In sum, social movements thrive on the secure rights of assembly, association, and collective voice granted by democracy.

Urban sociology[link]

In the 1960s and 1970s, Tilly also studied migration to cities, and was an influential theorist about urban phenomena and treating communities as social networks. In 1968 Tilly presented his report on European collective violence to U.S. 1968 Kerner Commission, a body formed under the Johnson administration to assess urban unrest amidst the Civil Rights movement. As informed by his studies of contentious politics in 19th century Europe, and the present violence in the U.S., his interest in cities and communities became closely linked with his passion for the study of both social movements and collective violence.^[12]

Honours[link]

Tilly received several awards including the Common Wealth Award in sociology in 1982, the Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences in 1994, the Eastern Sociological Society's Merit Award for Distinguished Scholarship in 1996, the American Sociological Association's Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award in 2005, the International Political Science Association's Karl Deutsch Award in Comparative Politics in 2006, the Phi Beta Kappa Sidney Hook Memorial Award in 2006 and the Social Science Research Council's Albert O. Hirschman Award in 2008. He also received honorary doctorates from Erasmus University of Rotterdam in 1983, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of University of Paris in 1993, the University of Toronto in 1995, the University of Strasbourg in 1996, the University of Geneva in 1999, the University of Crete in 2002, the University of Quebec at Montreal in 2004 and the University of Michigan in 2007.^[13] In 2001, Columbia’s sociology graduate students named Tilly the Professor of the Year.

Partial bibliography[link]

• The Vendée: A Sociological Analysis of the Counter- revolution of 1793. (1964)
• "Clio and Minerva." Pp. 433–66 in Theoretical Sociology, edited by John McKinney and Edward Tiryakian. (1970)
• "Collective Violence in European Perspective." Pp. 4–45 in Violence in America, edited by Hugh Graham and Tedd Gurr. (1969)
• "Do Communities Act?" Sociological Inquiry 43: 209–40. (1973)
• An Urban World. (ed.) (1974).
• The Formation of National States in Western Europe (ed.) (1975)
• From Mobilization to Revolution (1978)
• As Sociology Meets History (1981)
• Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (1984)
• The Contentious French (1986)
• Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 (1990)
• Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992 (1992)
• European Revolutions, 1492–1992 (1993)
• Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, A.D. 1000 to 1800 (1994)
• Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758–1834 (1995)
• Roads from Past to Future (1997)
• Work Under Capitalism (with Chris Tilly, 1998)
• Durable Inequality (1998)
• Transforming Post-Communist Political Economies (1998)
• Dynamics of Contention (with Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow) (2001)
• The Politics of Collective Violence (2003)
• Contention & Democracy in Europe, 1650–2000 (2004)
• Social Movements, 1768–2004 (2004)
• From Contentions to Democracy (2005)
• Identities, Boundaries, and Social Ties (2005)
• Trust and Rule (2005)
• Why? (2006)
• Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis (2006)
• Contentious Politics (with Sidney Tarrow) (2006)
• Regimes and Repertoires (2006)
• Democracy (2007)
• Credit and Blame (2008)
• Contentious Performances (2008)
• Social Movements, 1768–2008, 2nd edition (with Lesley Wood, 2009)

References[link]

External links[link]

Social movements portal

• Annotated Links to Charles Tilly Resources
• Tributes to Charles Tilly written by his colleagues
• Albert O. Hirschman Prize (2008)
• Hirschman Prize Ceremony Speeches and Memorial Conference Papers
• Charles Tilly and Louise Tilly Fund for Social Science History
• Newspaper Obituaries to Charles Tilly
• Interactive Version of "Memorials to Credit & Blame" (2008)
• Tilly’s Writings on Methodology
• 'Mechanisms in Political Processes', 2000 article, PDF online
• 'War Making and State Making as Organized Crime, In Bringing the State Back In, edited by Peter Evans, et al., 169–87. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985, PDF Online
• Charles Tilly's Change Theory
• Ideas The ideas interview: Charles Tilly, in The Guardian
• Violence, Terror, and Politics as Usual, Boston Review
• Predictions: a series of three emails written by Professor Tilly in the week following September 11
• Social Scientist Charles Tilly Joins Columbia Faculty, Columbia Press Release
• "How I Work" by Charles Tilly
• video interview with Chuck Tilly on his work

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (February 2011)

Simon Munnery
Birth name	Simon Douglas Munnery
Born	1967 Middlesex, England
Medium	Stand up, television, radio
Nationality	English
Genres	Alternative comedy, satire, surreal comedy
Subject(s)	Politics

Simon Munnery, also known by his stagenames of Alan Parker: Urban Warrior and The League Against Tedium, is an English comedy writer and experimental standup comedian. He performs mainly to an alternative audience but has pierced the mainstream both with his BBC Radio 1 show in 1997 and his BBC2 television series Attention Scum! in 2001.^[1] His stand-up is often satirical and political and almost always surreal, his act also contains harmonica playing.

Munnery's experimental style is reflected in his on-stage appearance: his unfashionable glasses, homemade clothes (or clothes apparently donated to him by comedian Jeff Green), makeshift props, and dramatic facial hair. As 'The League' he often wears a hat crafted from a kettle, and one of his stand-up shows has a character who performs with a metal bucket over his head.

Early Life[link]

Born in Middlesex (now part of London), Munnery grew up in Bedmond, Hertfordshire^[2] and Watford and was educated Watford Grammar School for Boys, where he earned four A Levels.^[3] He read natural sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge but soon lost interest in science and joined the Footlights. In 1987, he became vice-president with Peter Bradshaw as president.^[4] After graduating with "a very high third", he did various menial jobs before making his big break into comedy.^[5]

Career[link]

Stand-up comedy[link]

While at university, Munnery took part in a stand-up double-act called God and Jesus with Stephen Cheeke. He also worked (along with Steve Coogan, Patrick Marber, Richard Herring and Stewart Lee) at the Edinburgh Festival in a piece called The Dum Show.

Munnery was brought to the attention of a comedy community as the compere of a post-alternative comedy cabaret called Cluub Zarathustra performed originally in London and later at the Edinburgh Festival. Cluub Zarathustra featured the talents of Stewart Lee, Kevin Eldon, Sally Phillips, Johnny Vegas, Julian Barratt, Roger Mann, Jason Freeman and the music of Richard Thomas and Lori Lixenberg. A television pilot was made of Cluub Z for Channel 4 in 1996, but was never broadcast.

Some recent Munnery Edinburgh Fringe shows include Trilogy, Buckethead and Simon Munnery's Annual General Meeting. Also, Munnery can still be seen at small venues, where his poetry usually takes precedence.

His 2006 Edinburgh Fringe show, AGM, includes the opportunity for the audience to raise questions to discuss as group (such as "is there a God?"). The experience often continues after the show, when he takes the audience on tours around town, taking in art galleries, drinks and visits to other shows. He describes such events as jumping the divide between "unfunny comedy" and "shit art".

In 2010, Munnery hosted a Bright Club event at the Bloomsbury Theatre.^[6]

Television[link]

Futurtv ("Not 'Future TV', oh no. It can't be 'Future TV' - it's right now!") was a BBC production for UK Play from 1999. There were 13 15-minute episodes. As well as Simon Munnery it included Kombat Opera Presents (Lori Lixenberg and Richard Thomas) and a selection of pop videos.

Munnery wrote and hosted the 1999 TV comedy game show, Either/Or.

Attention Scum! was a television series produced for the BBC and directed by Stewart Lee, which aired from February 2001. It starred Munnery as 'The League Against Tedium', a character who drove around the United Kingdom in an adapted transit van, preaching to the masses with the help of an opera singer (Lori Lixenberg), a sedated vampire (Richard Thomas), and a monkey (Munnery's wife Janet).

Munnery also appeared in sketches in the first series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle in 2009.

Radio[link]

During the 1990s he made several series for BBC Radio 1, one based on his League Against Tedium character. Others were based on his Alan Parker character, including Alan Parker, Alan Parker's 29 Minutes of Truth, and Alan Parker, Road Warrior.

Recently, Munnery has returned to radio, hosting Simon Munnery's Experimental Half Hour ("experimental in that it lasts an hour") and "Simon Munnery Weakly Chats' on Resonance FM. He also wrote and performed two four-part Radio 4 series called "Where Did It All Go Wrong?", which were broadcast in the summer of 2003 and the spring of 2005. His latest television appearance was on the BBC Three show, The Comic Side of 7 Days.

Munnery also was the special guest on the pilot episode of a new BBC Radio 4 show called New World Order, which was recorded at the BBC Radio Theatre in June 2008. In the show Munnery took on the role of the Supreme Leader of the new world. During the show, he was interviewed by Danny Wallace about his 3 commandments. These were, 1. Wash, 2. Talk to people, not about them, 3. Love One Another.

Munnery featured as a genius on Dave Gorman's Genius show on Radio 4.

Books[link]

• Sit-Down Comedy (contributor to anthology, ed Malcolm Hardee & John Fleming) Ebury Press/Random House, 2003. ISBN 0-09-188924-3; ISBN 978-0-09-188924-1
• How To Live, P.O.W, 2005. ISBN 0-9551946-2-8; ISBN 978-0-9551946-2-7
• Wall & Piece, (contributor), by Banksy, Century, 2006. ISBN 1-84413-787-2; ISBN 978-1-84413-787-9

Other works[link]

Munnery has several CDs available: Alan Parker - Blast From The Past (featuring Stewart Lee on guitar and Al Murray on drums), Simon Munnery's Experimental Half Hour (2 CD's from the Resonance FM radio show of the same name), AGM recorded live at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2003, and BucketHead: Phenomenon Anon And On.

Munnery had a short lived career as a video game programmer. His most famous title was a version of Asteroids for the Commodore International VIC 20 (a game that Jeff Minter once described as a "pile of wank"). He also authored several games for the ZX81. The ZX81 games he wrote : Road Race, Breakout and Space Invaders. The Vic 20 games he wrote : Asteroids, Cosmiads and Scramble.

In 2007, Simon appeared as Alan Parker on a music track by The Orb called Grey Clouds, a take off of their earlier track Little Fluffy Clouds. It features on the Annie Nightingale album called Y4K on Distinct'ive Records.

Two DVDs of his work were released in 2007 - the first IAMTV, covering his the Perrier Award Nominated show from the 1999 Edinburgh Fringe, was closely followed by Hello produced by gofasterstripe.com, a more recent stand-up performance.

In 2009, Munnery starred in an award-winning animated rotoscope short, titled 'Yellow Belly End', co-written and directed by Philip Bacon, a student of the National Film and Television School. In the 9 minute film, Munnery appears in a bird costume and contemplates a cliff. He is credited as 'Bird'.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Simon Munnery

• Simon Munnery - official site
• League Against Tedium - semi-official site
• New Statesman Blog - Munnery's blog at The New Statesman.
• Simon Munnery's Comedy CV
• Resonance FM
• How to Live - Munnery's book at First Against the Wall.
• CERN Podcast - Simon Munnery and Kevin Eldon visit CERN