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Title: Philosophy in the Flesh : The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson ISBN: 0-465-05674-1 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.41 (29 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: the embodied mind and its trifles with western thought
Comment: I may just be an armchair philosopher, but I don't think this book's challenge is nearly as radical as it's rhetoric would suggest. Surely, the authors are part of a wonderful project, and one with very important consequences; it seems they know this and with this book aim to convince a wider audience of this fact. It's a noble endeavor; the inclusion of the findings of cognitive science are impressive enough to warrant a reading by anyone who wants to broaden their base of informed philosophical opinion. Nevertheless, the authors' attempts to make this text more accessible tends to oversimplify their critique of philosophy and effectively weakens their overall argument. Many crucial movements - post-structuralism, for example - are merely paid lip service here, and the more comprehensive commentaries seem to be conveniently selected. It's not difficult to finish this book with the impression that these authors are better linguists than they are philosophers.
Rating: 4
Summary: Important insights vitiated by mediocre intrepretive analysi
Comment: For over two millenia, nearly all worldly knowledge was regarded as falling under the general heading of philosophy. Physics, psychology, politics, and even economics were all regarded as various branches of study growing out of a single, philosophical trunk. Aristotle, the most systematic of the ancient philosophers, even dabbled in biology. But as human knowledge advanced, these various branches of study broke off from the philosophic stem and established themselves as independent sciences in their own right. Philosophy soon found itself reduced to metaphysics, morals, aesthetics, and epistemology. But now even epistemology is trying to break away. "Philosophy in the Flesh" documents the attempt of "cognitive science" to make epistemology an empirical science separate from philosophy. Its authors, Lakoff and Johnson, seek to challenge the largely introspective and "a priori" speculations of philosophical epistemology, which they regard as discreditable.
"Philosophy in the Flesh" commences by laying down three major findings of cognitive science: (1) that the mind is inherently embodied; (2) that thought is mostly unconscious; and (3) that abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. Assuming that these three findings are true (and, according to Lakoff & Johnson, they are empirically validated beyond any question), then it follows that many of the central tenets of the major philosophic traditions must be dismissed as hopelessly inadequate. "Once we understand the importance of the cognitive unconscious, the embodiment of mind, and metaphorical thought," our intrepid authors advice us, "we can never go back to a priori philosophizing about mind and language or to philosophical ideas of what a person is that are inconsistent with what we are learning about the mind."
All this is very important. If true, it constitutes one of the great revolutions in philosophy and science. But are Lakoff & Johnson the men to carry it out? No, I do not think so. They may be competent scholars and solid citizens within the academic fold, but their philosophical interpretation of the empirical data of cognitive science definitely leaves something to be desired. While I whole-heartedly agree with their contention that philosophy needs to become more empirically responsible, empiricism, though vital and necessary, is not enough. The empirical facts must by synthesized into a grand interpretive vision, and this can only be done by a philosopher of genius. And indeed, in some respects, it already has been done. Most of the valid points in Lakoff's & Johnson's book have been made by philosophers working within the critical realist tradition, especially the philosopher George Santayana. Lakoff and Johnson operate under the illusion that the findings of cognitive science are radically new, but they are not: they simply are new to those whose philosophical knowledge doesn't extend beyond the major traditions taught within academia. Yet well before second generation cognitive science, Santayana had been arguing that the mind has a natural locus within the body, that it contains a large "vegatative" (i.e., unconscious) component, and that concepts (and, indeed, all knowledge) are essentially metaphorical. Cognitive science, in discovering and validating these great truths, merely affirms what Santayana contended throughout his long philosophic career. If we could but merge the findings of cognitive science on the one hand with Santayana's philosophic vision of man and his spirit, we might at last have the honest, empirically responsible philosophy which Lakoff & Johnson are so eager to provide for us and which, thanks to analytic and rationalist philosophy, we have so desparately lacked.
Rating: 4
Summary: important but not as original as it is supposed to be
Comment: I am only an amateur of philosophy and linguistics; but the points this book presents seem to me not as original as they are supposed to be.
For example, why no mention of Nietzsche's writings? Nietzsche, if my memory and understanding are correct, has said many things about what the authors call "embodied logic". And that most of our thoughts are unconscious, that language and thought is essentially metaphorical, do not strike me as really new insights.
Anyway, it is a book worthy being read.
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Title: Metaphors We Live by by George Lakoff, Mark Johnson ISBN: 0226468011 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind by George Lakoff ISBN: 0226468046 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: January, 1990 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being by George Lakoff, Rafael E. Nunez, Rafael Nuñez ISBN: 0465037712 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 07 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.50 |
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Title: The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities by Gilles Fauconnier, Mark Turner ISBN: 0465087868 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff ISBN: 0226467716 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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