Pinker 1, Lakoff 0 (as always)

One of the most illuminating things I've read in a long time is this exchange between Steven Pinker and George Lakoff. Pinker's piece is a review of Lakoff's new book, and Lakoff responds. I am already familiar with these two—the first is one of my favorite current thinkers—but I still think that if someone unfamiliar with either were to read the exchange, Pinker would still come out way ahead.

The problem with Lakoff is that he is exactly in tune with the modern left-wing mind. He tries to walk such a fine line towards such a vague goal that he ends up pleasing no one. Reading his response I couldn't help noticing his awkward way of making firm statements:

This is in response to Pinker's review in which he points out how awkwardly Lakoff's leftism forces him to handle the strict father vs. nurturant, uh, parent metaphor.

The mainstream Left is trying very hard to have no vision at all, or if that's not the case I don't know what else could explain it. Elements like Kos occasionally aside, the appeal of Democrats is that they are not Republicans. What Lakoff aims to do is give Democratic politicians attractive ways to package their non-ideas, and his response to Pinker shows why that doesn't work.

For instance, he resorts to the simple and obvious trick of characterizing Pinker's ideas as "the old view...from Rene Descartes's seventeenth-century rationalism" while calling his "the new view" which all modern research supports. Nevermind that there is a wealth of new research supporting and expanding "the old view," or that "the new view" has many more people supporting it for ideological reasons rather than scientific ones. (The tag under the article mentions that Lakoff is "a founding senior fellow of the Rockridge Institute, a center for research devoted to promoting progressive ideas.")

Or there's this low and scientifically misguided insult:

I can't really sum it up better than the way Pinker did:

Via Arts & Letters Daily