"The Stuff of Thought"

Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor at the Psychology Department in Harvard will be talking on Tuesday 9 October 2007 in the Robert Emmet Theatre, Arts Building, TCD 8.00 p.m.

"In his new book, The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker analyses what words actually mean and how we use them, and he reveals what this can tell us about ourselves. He shows how we use space and motion as metaphors for more abstract ideas, and uncovers the deeper structures of human thought that have been shaped by evolutionary history. He also explores the emotional impact of language, from names to swear words, and shows us the full power that it can have over us."

In Philosophy in the Flesh Lakoff and Johnson advocate an approach to understanding the mind as inherently embodied, conceives of thought as mostly unconscious, and abstract concepts as largely metaphorical. There seems to be a good deal of commonality between this approach and that proposed by Pinker and it will be interesting to see where they diverge.

Lakoff & Johnson view abstract concepts as rooted in concrete, low-level, sensorimotor and emotional processes. In particular, it is argued that more sophisticated concepts are built from base spatial relational processes. In behavioural economics Loewenstein has used the concept of stimulus proximity to signify its importance for discounting. This can be spatial, temporal, hypotheticality etc so if an apple is concrete, close at hand, at this moment in time it has close proximity and is more likely to induce discounting. The spatial and temporal relationship is particularly important as our understanding of time has been shown to be based in our concepts about space. Linking this back to Pinker's work how we organise our experience and language around layers of space, time, and force concepts may provide insight into how we perceive of and represent the future. It will definitely make for an interesting talk.

Review of The Stuff of Thought