What is the influence of neuroscience on the common sense way we talk about behavior and mental experience? This article examines this influence and the diffusion of neuroscience terms as it appears in everyday language that reflects shared cultural knowledge. In an unsolicited collection of speech acts and metaphors I show that the word “brain” often substitutes for “mind” and brain states are often asserted as the cause of mental states. I also present several examples of visual depictions of the brain, including modern brain scans, which have become the basis for new cultural symbols that are identified with mental experience. Taken together, the linguistic and visual brain metaphors highlight the concrete nature of the brain in contrast to the abstract nature of the mind. This, in turn, provides a physical dimension to the way we conceptualize mental phenomena in ordinary language. Thus, a modern folk neuropsychology is emerging which provides an alternative, reductionist, and sometimes competing network of concepts for explaining the mind in comparison to conventional folk psychology.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Begley, S. (1995) “Gray Matters: New Brain-scanning Technologies Show Differences between Men and Women,”Newsweek125(13) (27 March): 48–54 (cover story).
2.
Begley, S. (1996) “Your Child's Brain,”Newsweek127(8) (19 February): 54–59 .
3.
Begley, S. (1997) “How to Build a Baby's Brain,”Newsweek129(Spring-Summer): 28–32 .
4.
Bennett, M.R. and Hacker, P.M.S. (2003) Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Malden, MA: Blackwell .
5.
Bogdan, R.J. (1991) Mind and Common Sense: Philosophical Essays on Commonsense Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
6.
Chang, K. (2000) “Simple Spinning Toy Poses a Mathematical Challenge,”New York Times 25 April: Section F, p. 5-5.
7.
Christensen, S.M. and Turner, D.R. (1993) Folk Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates .
8.
Christidou, V. , Dimopoulos, K. and Koulaidis, V. (2004) “Constructing Social Representations of Science and Technology: the Role of Metaphors in the Press and the Popular Scientific Magazines,”Public Understanding of Science13: 347–362 .
9.
Churchland, P.M. (1981) “Eliminative Materialism and Propositional Attitudes,”Journal of Philosophy78: 67–90 .
10.
Churchland, P.M. (1995) The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
11.
Churchland, P.M. (1998) “Folk Psychology,” in On the Contrary: Critical Essays, 1987–1997, pp. 3–15. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
12.
Churchland, P.M. and Churchland, P.S. (1996) “Future of Psychology, Folk and Scientific,” in R.N. McCauley (ed.) The Churchlands and their Critics, Part IIA, pp. 219–221. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell .
13.
Churchland, P.S. (1986) Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
14.
Clark, A. (1996) “Dealing in Futures: Folk Psychology and the Role of Representations in Cognitive Science,” in R.N. McCauley (ed.) The Churchlands and their Critics, pp. 86–104. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell .
15.
Coulson, S. and Oakley, T. (2000) “Blending Basics,”Cognitive Linguistics11: 175–196 .
16.
D'Andrade, R. (1987) “A Folk Model of the Mind,” in N. Holland and N. Quinn (eds) Cultural Models in Language and Thought, pp. 112–148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
17.
Dennett, D. (1981) “Three Kinds of Intentional Psychology,” in R. Healey (ed.)Reduction, Time, and Reality, pp. 37–61. New York: Cambridge University Press .
18.
Dufresne, C. (1998) “While Most Athletes Possess Great Physical Skills, it's the Mind that Separates the Best from the Rest,”Los Angeles Times 9 August: Section C, p. 1-1 .
19.
Dumit, J. (2004) Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
20.
Duque-Fernandez, D. and Johnson, M.L. (2002) “Cause and Effect Theories of Attention: The Role of Conceptual Metaphors,”Review of General Psychology6(2): 153–165 .
21.
Emslie, C. , Hunt, K. and Watt, G. (2003) “A Chip Off the Old Block? Lay Understandings of Inheritance among Men and Women in Mid-life,”Public Understanding of Science12: 47–65 .
22.
Eysenck, H.J. (2004) Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers .
23.
Fahrenberg, J. and Cheetham, M. (2000) “The Mind-Body Problem as Seen by Students of Different Disciplines,”Journal of Consciousness Studies7(5): 47–59 .
24.
Fauconnier, G. and Turner, M. (1998) “Conceptual Integration Networks,”Cognitive Science22(2): 133–187 .
25.
Fauconnier, G. and Turner, M. (2002) The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books .
26.
Fodor, J. (1987) “The Persistence of the Attitudes,” in Psychosemantics, pp. 1–26. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
27.
Gibbs, R.W. (1994) The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press .
28.
Goode, E. (1999) “Mozart for Baby? Some Say, Maybe Not,”New York Times 3 August: Section F, p. 1-1.
29.
Greenwood, J.D. (1991) The Future of Folk Psychology: Intentionality and Cognitive Science. New York: Cambridge University Press .
Hamel, G. (2001) “Take it Higher,”Fortune 5 February: 169–170.
32.
Hancock, L.N. (1996) “Why Do Schools Flunk Biology? Early Childhood Education and Learning,”Newsweek127(8) (19 February): 58–59 (cover story).
33.
Hannan, B. (1993) “Don't Stop Believing: The Case Against Eliminative Materialism,”Mind and Language8(2): 165–179 .
34.
Hare, M. , McRae, K. and Elman, J.L. (2004) “Admitting that Admitting Verb Sense into Corpus Analysis Makes Sense,”Language and Cognitive Processes19(2): 181–224 .
35.
Horgan, T. and Woodward, J. (1985) “Folk Psychology is Here to Stay,”The Philosophical Review94: 197–226 .
36.
James, C. (1999) “Cutups on Cable: Odd Ones In,”New York Times 30 April: Section E, p. 1-1.
37.
Kleinfield, N.R. (1999) “For Three Interns, Fatigue and Healing at Top Speed,”New York Times 15 November: Section A, p. 1-1.
38.
Knudsen, S. (2005) “Communicating Novel and Conventional Scientific Metaphors: A Study of the Development of the Metaphor of Genetic Code,”Public Understanding of Science14: 373–392 .
39.
Lakoff, G. (1987) Woman, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
40.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
41.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books .
42.
Lemonick, M.D. (1995) “Glimpses of the Mind,”Time146(3) (17 July): 44–52 (cover story).
43.
Lemonick, M.D. (1997) “The Mood Molecule: Serotonin Drugs Treat Everything from Depression to Overeating,”Time150(13) (29 September): 74–81 (cover story).
44.
Liakopoulos, M. (2002) “Pandora's Box or Panacea? Using Metaphors to Create the Public Representations of Biotechnology,”Public Understanding of Science11: 5–32 .
45.
Linde, C. (1987) “Explanatory Systems in Oral Life Stories,” in N. Holland and N. Quinn (eds) Cultural Models in Language and Thought, pp. 343–366. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
46.
Marcus, M. , Santorini, B. and Marcinkiewicz, M.A. (1993) “Building a Large Annotated Corpus of English: The Penn Treebank,”Computational Linguistics19(2): 313–330 .
47.
McCauley, R.N. (1993) “Intertheoretic Reduction and the Future of Psychology,”Philosophy of Science53: 179–198 .
48.
Nash, J.M. (1997a) “Fertile Minds: From Birth, a Baby's Brain Cells Proliferate Wildly, Making Connections that May Shape a Lifetime of Experience,”Time149(5): 48–56 (cover story).
49.
Nash, J.M. (1997b) “Addicted: Why Do People Get Hooked? Mounting Evidence Points to a Powerful Brain Chemical called Dopamine,”Time149(18) (5 May): 68–74 (cover story).
50.
Nelkin, D. and Lindee, M.S. (1995) The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon. New York: Freeman .
51.
Pribram, K. (1971) Languages of the Brain: Experimental Paradoxes and Principles of Neuropsychology. New York: Brandon House .
52.
Richards, M. (1996) “Lay and Professional Knowledge of Genetics and Inheritance,”Public Understanding of Science5: 217–230 .
53.
Rohrer, T. (2001) “Even the Interface is for Sale: Metaphors, Visual Blends and the Hidden Ideology of the Internet,” in R. Dirven , C. Ilie and R.M. Frank (eds) Language and Ideology: Cognitive Descriptive Approaches, Vol. II, pp. 189–214. Amsterdam: John Benjamins .
54.
Rohrer, T. (2004) “Race-baiting, Cartooning, and Ideology: A Conceptual Blending Analysis of Contemporary and WWII War Cartoons,” in S. Greschonig and C.S. Sing (eds) Ideologien Zwischen Luge und Wahrheitsanspruch, Part C, pp. 189–214. Wiesbaden: Deutscher Unversitats-Verlag .
55.
Rorty, R. (1980) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
56.
Searle, J. (1984) Minds, Brains, and Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
57.
Shapin, S. (1979) “The Politics of Observation: Cerebral Anatomy and Social Interests in the Edinburgh Phrenology Disputes,”The Sociological Review Monograph No. 27, pp. 139–178 .
58.
Shaw, A. (2002) “It Just Goes against the Grain,”Public Understanding of Science11: 273–291 .
59.
Sontag, S.L. (1998) “Don't Forget the Addict's Role in Addiction,”New York Times 4 April: Section A, p. 13-13.
60.
Star, S.L. (1992) “The Skin, the Skull, and the Self: Toward a Sociology of the Brain,” in A. Harrington (ed.)So Human a Brain: Knowledge and Values in the Neurosciences, pp. 204–228. Cambridge, MA: Birkhauser Boston .
61.
Sterngold, J. (1999) “For all the TV Pilots, There's Just Not Enough Youth to go Around,”New York Times 17 May: Section E, p. 1-1.
62.
Stich, S.P. (1983) From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .
63.
Strauss, N. (1999) “The Pop Life: Raiding Memory Lane,”New York Times 3 November: Section E, p. 5-5.
64.
Ten Eyck, T.A. (2005) “The Media and Public Opinion on Genetics and Biotechnology: Mirrors, Windows, or Walls?,”Public Understanding of Science14: 305–316 .
65.
Thompson, T. (1999) “Change of Place,”Washington Post Magazine 20 June: W14-W14.
66.
Valenstein, E.S. (1998) Blaming the Brain: the Truth about Drugs and Mental Health. New York: Free Press .
67.
Wilkes, K. (1993) “The Relationship between Scientific Psychology and Common Sense Psychology,”Synthese89: 15–39 .
68.
Wynne, B. (1992) “Misunderstood Misunderstanding: Social Identities and Public Uptake of Science,”Public Understanding of Science1: 281–304 .
69.
Wynne, B. (1993) “Public Uptake of Science: a Case for Institutional Reflexivity,”Public Understanding of Science2: 321–337 .
70.
Zimmer, C. (2004) Soul Made Flesh: the Discovery of the Brain—and How it Changed the World. New York: Free Press .
