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Lakoff and Núñez's claim that arithmetic rests on bodily ... — Carmelics

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Challenges→Human beings rely extensively upon metaphorical reasoning when learning or developing an understanding of unfamiliar concepts (Conceptualization thesis).

Lakoff and Núñez's claim that arithmetic rests on bodily metaphors conflates developmental scaffolding with the epistemic structure of mathematical knowledge.

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Reasons For

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Reason for

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1.Developmental origins of concepts differ from their mature logical structure; children learn addition via finger-counting but arithmetic's axioms remain independent of embodiment.
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2.Metaphors may aid mathematical learning without constituting mathematics itself; using analogies to teach doesn't make the subject metaphorical at its foundation.
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3.Abstract mathematical structures are formally provable without reference to bodies, suggesting embodied metaphors are pedagogical tools rather than epistemic grounds.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

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1.All human concept formation necessarily emerges from embodied cognition; the scaffolding that builds a concept shapes what that concept fundamentally is.
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2.No purely 'disembodied' access to mathematics exists—even axioms and proofs are understood through embodied metaphors like spatial relationships and causality.
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3.The distinction between 'scaffolding' and 'epistemic structure' assumes concepts have content independent of their construction, which embodied cognition rejects.
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Key Terms

knowledge(Distinguished from mere true belief, which may be the product of indoctrination and need not exercise deliberative capacities.): Justified true belief — true belief that has been arrived at through the exercise of deliberative capacities, including comparison of and deliberation among alternatives.

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Philosophy of Language1 linked

Related

Abstract mathematical structures are formally provable without reference to bodi...All human concept formation necessarily emerges from embodied cognition; the sca...Developmental origins of concepts differ from their mature logical structure; ch...Human beings rely extensively upon metaphorical reasoning when learning or devel...

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Metaphors may aid mathematical learning without constituting mathematics itself;...No purely 'disembodied' access to mathematics exists—even axioms and proofs are ...The distinction between 'scaffolding' and 'epistemic structure' assumes concepts...

Details

Type: claim
Perspectives: 2 (1 for, 1 against)
Edits: 1 edit