The Political Mind

Lakoff is a professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.

This book has two uses: first, to give the reader a deeper understanding of our political life, and second, to make progressive political advocacy more effective. Both require utilizing the new knowledge gained over the past thirty years about how the brain and the mind work.

98% of your thinking is subconscious, most of that matters for politics. Plus, conscious thought makes use of and is built on the cognitive unconscious.

Our most precious ideas - freedom, equality, fairness, opportunity - are contested. That is, they each have a very general shared version, too general to be of much use. And then they have progressive and conservative versions, which most people are unaware of.

Most of us have inherited a theory of mind dating back at least to the Enlightenment, namely, that reason is conscious, literal, logical, unemotional, disembodied, universal, and functions to serve our interests. This theory of human reason has been shown to be false in every particular, but it persists. Lakoff advocates for learning to think outside the Enlightenment - in terms of worldviews, frames, metaphors, narratives, since this is how the brain actually works.

Frame-based and metaphorical thought are largely unconscious and reflexive, while the calculative thought of the rational actor model is conscious and reflective. If you limit what you mean by “reason” to conscious reflective thought, you might very well be led to believe that the rational actor model, or something like it, might define rationality.

With an explanation of what is hidden and why, it becomes possible to consciously create a conceptual framework, a language, an imagery, and an appropriate emotional tone in which such major under-the-radar changes not only become visible, but their moral consequences become known.

Frames

The neural circuitry needed to create frame structures is relatively simple and so frames tend to structure a huge amount of our thought. Each frame has roles (like a cast of characters), relations between the roles, and scenarios carried out by those playing the roles.

We see ourselves as having only the choices defined by our brain’s frames and cultural narratives. Old Enlightenment reason says words are neutral. If you believe that, you will accept the other side’s frame. But language is far more than a means of expression and communication. It is the gateway to the mind. It organizes and provides access to the system of concepts used in thinking.

Cultural narratives are part of the permanent furniture of our brains. But in the New Enlightenment we will at least be self-aware. We will recognize that we are all living out narratives. It will be normal to discuss what they might be, to raise the question of what influence they have, and whether we can or should put them aside.

Words are defined in terms of frames, and when used, the words activate those frames, whether negated or not (e.g, don’t think of an elephant). This is important for people in politics to know. If you use the opposition’s frames, even to negate or argue against them, you are helping them because you are activating their frames in the minds of the public, and their frames in turn activate their worldview.

So, for example, asking if someone is in favor of tax relief activates a frame in which taxes are an affliction not a way for the government to empower and protect citizens.

Sometimes you have to construct a conceptual frame and a name when there are none, so that an important truth can be seen.

Neural binding:

There are theories of how binding works, but we do not know for sure. The most prominent theory is that binding is “time locking” - neurons firing simultaneously in different parts of the brain along connecting pathways. When they do, we experience simultaneous firing as characterizing the same entity.

Neural binding can associate two ideas, and can also associate emotions with ideas. Emotions (downstream, near the brain stem) are bound to event sequences in a narrative (upstream, in the prefrontal cortex, at the front and top of the brain).

The more often two things are presented together, the stronger the neural binding due to strengthened synapses. This is especially true under conditions of trauma, when binding happens more readily. Lakoff conversely states that there is no erasure in the brain (short of brain damage). To change the meaning, you have to have the neural structure to bypass it. This is not supported by neuroscience. Extinction is a well-documented phenomenon in which synaptic connections are weakened over time as one stimulus appears without a previously paired one.

Mirror neurons

A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. These neurons may play a role in empathy. The fact that we have modulatory systems for mirror neurons (super-mirror neurons) suggests that empathy is the natural state, but has to be monitored, modulated, enhanced, and sometimes shut off. If empathy is natural, then self-interest is anything but the whole story. Lakoff believes empathy is the foundation of democracy, which he seems to equate with the progressive world view and the “real America.”

Lakoff rejects the ideas that altruism is primarily self-serving (in the sense of reciprocal altruism, kin selection etc). He thinks mirror neurons are an alternative explanation for the evolution of social and moral emotions. Doing things for others is natural if you feel what they feel. Trust is natural when the self-other distinction is blurred.

Progressives vs Conservatives

Because radical conservatives have so dominated political discourse in America over the past thirty years, conservative ideas are being passed off as “mainstream” ideas, which they are not, while progressive ideas are being characterized as “leftist” and “extremist,” which they are not.

When conservatives answer liberals’ facts and figures with no facts or figures, but with their own morals-based frames presented with emotion and symbolism, their framing will win.

Progressives tend to think :It is in our political interest to help others achieve their material interests. If we do that, they’ll vote for us. The programs: reduced middle-class taxes; cheaper loans for college students; housing vouchers for the homeless etc. The intuitive impetus is the morality of empathy. But the basis of the argument is group interests, not empathy. Thus, moral frames are not activated, making the argument less effective. It also gives conservatives an opportunity to look moral, rather than just playing partisan politics.

Progressives have a nurturant parent model: two parents, with equal responsibilities, and no gender constraints - or one parent of either gender. Their job is to nurture their children and raise them to be nurturers of others. Conservatives have a strict father worldview.

Social change requires activating the nurturant, progressive worldview so that more issue areas in more brains will be bound to - and, hence, instances of - that worldview. That is the mechanism. The means are language, images, and narratives that positively activate the progressive worldview, while acting negatively to inhibit the effect of the conservative worldview.

Privateering is a special case of privatization in which the capacity of government to carry out critical moral missions is systematically destroyed from within the government itself, while public funds are used to provide capital for private corporations (often with no-bid contracts) to take over those critical functions of government and charge the public a great deal for doing so, while avoiding all accountability. Lakoff paints this as a conservative policy.

Biconceptual thought

We all have both progressive and conservative worldviews, applied in different areas and in different ways. Neural binding - the binding of a general worldview to a specific issue area - makes this possible. This is what Lakoff calls being a biconceptual, which he thinks is actually what political moderates are.

The brain mechanism of biconceptual thought is mutual inhibition, where both worldviews exist in the same brain but are linked to nonoverlapping areas of life. The activation of one worldview naturally inhibits the other.

Metaphors

The metaphors for morality arise from bodily experiences of well-being. They are not “mere” metaphors, not extraneous; they are neither arbitrary nor disposable. They tell us what the heart of morality is.

Tricks to watch out for

• Turning a salient example into a typical case (like Reagan’s Welfare Queen)

• The Bad Apple frame. In the Hero-Villain narrative, the Villain is a person, not a system, an institution, or an ideology. You can convict a person of a crime, but not an ideology or a system of operation. It is easier to imagine a person than a system. The way our brains function favors the use of the Bad Apple frame. In the New Enlightenment frame, the question would then arise: what institution or system is actually to blame?

• Hawks vs Doves: a game theory concept. hawks (selfishness) vs. doves (prosociality) are opposed, and policy makers tend to favor hawks because:

• Optimism bias: you yourself are less likely to experience an adverse event than someone else

• The fundamental attribution error: tendency to attribute another's actions to their character or personality, while attributing your own behavior to external situational factors outside of your control

• The illusion of control:

• Reactive devaluation: proposal is devalued if it appears to originate from an antagonist

• Risk aversion: tendency of people to prefer outcomes with low uncertainty to those outcomes with high uncertainty, even if the average outcome of the latter is equal to or higher in value than the more certain outcome

• The salient exemplar effect: substituting a salient exemplar as a typical case

• Other cognitive biases:

• People think in terms of gains and losses relative to a reference point

• People tend to choose frames that highlight gains rather than losses

• People tend to avoid losses more than they prefer gains. • People tend to prefer certainty to uncertainty

• People tend to think in terms of prototypical frames

• People tend to adapt to a new state and take it as a new reference point

• People tend to substitute more “accessible” frames for more accurate but less accessible frames

Examples

In a New Enlightenment, the Democrats would disrupt the link between freedom and “softness.” They would “Stand up to the President,” “Remain Strong on Liberty,” and “Say No to More Wiretapping.”

Imagine if evolution were described using the metaphor “the survival of species best nurtured by their ecological niches.” Applied to human beings, it would say that societies should be structured to nurture their citizens, that is, help them and empower them as much as possible. The message of that evolutionary metaphor would be utterly different than the survival of the fittest metaphor.

For the term “tax relief” to be meaningful, taxes have to be defined in a frame in which they are a financial loss: money earned by taxpayers and rightly belonging to them, but taken from taxpayers by the government. In addition, there has to be a metaphor in place in which Financial Loss is Pain, and Pain has to be in a frame in which an Affliction Causes Pain. Then - and only then - does adding “tax” to “relief” give rise to the metaphor Taxation is Affliction. The idea that taxation is an affliction is inconsistent with the progressive idea of the empowering role of government. Inconsistency is realized in the brain as mutual inhibition. Because “tax relief” fits with conservative ideas, and depends on them to make sense, it will automatically activate those deep conservative ideas.

So how should progressives gain power?

Whatever the topic is, bring in the progressive moral vision and what the role of government is. America is about empathy and responsibility: people caring both for themselves and for one another, and acting responsibly on that sense of care. Government has two roles: protection and empowerment for all its citizens. Nobody makes it on their own etc. And then frame whatever the issue is in these terms. Taxes pay for continued protection and empowerment, for freedom from and freedom to.

Thought questions:

1. The idea that the vast majority of our thinking is unconscious is based on the following. What do you think of this idea?

Theoretical evidence: Thoughts are non-sensory mental attitudes, such as judgments, decisions, intentions, and goals. These are amodal, abstract events, meaning that they are not sensory experiences and are not tied to sensory experiences. Thus, thoughts in this sense never figure in working memory, nor are we directly aware of them. We only ever know of them by interpreting what does become conscious, such as visual imagery and the words we hear ourselves say in our heads.

Empirical evidence: There is a great deal of experimental evidence from normal subjects, especially of their readiness to falsely, but unknowingly, fabricate facts or memories to fill in for lost ones. Moreover, if introspection were fundamentally different from reading the minds of others, one would expect there to be disorders in which only one capacity was damaged but not the other. But that’s not what we find. Autism spectrum disorders, for example, are not only associated with limited access to the thoughts of others but also with a restricted understanding of oneself. In patients with schizophrenia, the insight both into one’s own mind and that of others is distorted. There seems to be only a single mind-reading mechanism on which we depend both internally and in our social relations.