Folk Theory of the Social Mind: Policies, Principles, and Foundational Metaphors

A polarization has developed in American political debates concerning the nature of society as a rational agent that implements policies to govern individual behavior. As analyzed by Lakoff, the reasons for discord are not entirely based on logical consistency, but originate in radically different moral principles based on metaphors, values, and faith. How people attend to alternative views, handling disparity, ambiguity, and exceptions in political debates constitutes a mode of reasoning—favoring facts or moral principles—that is part of the world view being debated. This paper explores the idea that both the conservative (defined categories, rule-based) and progressive (open categories, empathy-based) modes of reasoning are stable and tenaciously held because they are a cognitively functional, socially provided and reinforced means for making conceptual systems coherent. Furthermore, the liberalprogressive and conservative world views may relate to individual neural biases in how conceptual discord is managed, involving assimilation (joining) or disjunction (splitting) of categories.