The four biggest misconceptions about human thinking:
- Thinking is a conscious process. False!
a. We are not conscious of a good 80% of our thinking. - The human mind is an entity independent of our body. False!
a. All thinking is physical. The form of thinking depends on the physical makeup of our brains. - Thinking is universal, all people can think the same way. False.
a. People conceive the things differently because our brains are shaped differently. - We can mentally grasp all things in the world as they exist. Language can therefore be „literal“. False!
a. We think and speak in metaphors hundreds of times every day without being aware of it. Abstract ideas can only be grasped and named through metaphors.
People do not understand that there is no morality per se, but different metaphors for morality. And that their conceptions of what is moral can be completely opposite and still be true.
Words do not denote the world as it exists in itself. They only ever denote the world as we conceive it, based on our biological functioning in that world.
Source: George Lakoff, The Little Blue Book – The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic.