CONCEPT
Framing
The cognitive process by which conceptual metaphors structure reasoning <em>before</em> reasoning begins — determining which questions are askable, which evidence counts, and which conclusions feel natural.
Framing is Lakoff's name for the mechanism through which conceptual structures organize reasoning before any argument is explicitly made. A frame is not a window one looks through but the room one is standing in: it determines which walls surround the debate, which doors are visible, which questions can be asked and which never occur to participants. Frames are not propaganda or spin; they are structural features of cognition arising from the fact that abstract thought is metaphorical thought. The frame is always already in place when the argument begins. The argument operates within the frame. And the frame determines the outcome more reliably than the quality of the evidence or the skill of the arguer — which is why, in Lakoff's analysis, the side that establishes the frame establishes the terms, and the terms establish the result.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The most consequential property of frames is that they operate beneath conscious awareness. A participant in a political or policy debate rarely says to herself, "I am