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Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & its Challenge to Western Thought Paperback – October 8, 1999

by George Lakoff (Author), Mark Johnson (Author)

4.6 136 ratings

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What are human beings like? How is knowledge possible? What is truth? Where do moral values come from? Questions like these have stood at the center of Western philosophy for centuries. In addressing them, philosophers have made certain fundamental assumptions-that we can know our own minds by introspection, that most of our thinking about the world is literal, and that reason is disembodied and universal-that are now called into question by well-established results of cognitive science. It has been shown empirically that: Most thought is unconscious. We have no direct conscious access to the mechanisms of thought and language. Our ideas go by too quickly and at too deep a level for us to observe them in any simple way. Abstract concepts are mostly metaphorical. Much of the subject matter of philosophy, such as the nature of time, morality, causation, the mind, and the self, relies heavily on basic metaphors derived from bodily experience. What is literal in our reasoning about such concepts is minimal and conceptually impoverished. All the richness comes from metaphor. For instance, we have two mutually incompatible metaphors for time, both of which represent it as movement through space: in one it is a flow past us and in the other a spatial dimension we move along. Mind is embodied. Thought requires a body-not in the trivial sense that you need a physical brain to think with, but in the profound sense that the very structure of our thoughts comes from the nature of the body. Nearly all of our unconscious metaphors are based on common bodily experiences. Most of the central themes of the Western philosophical tradition are called into question by these findings. The Cartesian person, with a mind wholly separate from the body, does not exist. The Kantian person, capable of moral action according to the dictates of a universal reason, does not exist. The phenomenological person, capable of knowing his or her mind entirely through introspection alone, does not exist. The utilitarian person, the Chomskian person, the poststructuralist person, the computational person, and the person defined by analytic philosophy all do not exist. Then what does? Lakoff and Johnson show that a philosophy responsible to the science of mind offers radically new and detailed understandings of what a person is. After first describing the philosophical stance that must follow from taking cognitive science seriously, they re-examine the basic concepts of the mind, time, causation, morality, and the self: then they rethink a host of philosophical traditions, from the classical Greeks through Kantian morality through modern analytic philosophy. They reveal the metaphorical structure underlying each mode of thought and show how the metaphysics of each theory flows from its metaphors. Finally, they take on two major issues of twentieth-century philosophy: how we conceive rationality, and how we conceive language.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

George Lakoff is professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, and the coauthor, with Mark Johnson, of Metaphors We Live By. He was one of the founders of the generative semantics movements in linguistics in the 1960s, a founder of the field of cognitive linguistics in the 1970s, and one of the developers of the neural theory of language in the 1980s and '90s. His other books include More Than Cool Reason (with Mark Turner), Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, and Moral Politics.

Mark Johnson is professor and head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Oregon and is on the executive committee of the Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences there. In addition to his books with George Lakoff, he is the editor of an anthology, Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books (October 8, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 640 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465056741
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465056743
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1250L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.38 x 1.63 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #426,355 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #307 in Cognitive Neuroscience & Neuropsychology
- #683 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy
- #1,551 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)

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4.6 136 ratings

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Customers find the book provides an interesting and accessible view of philosophy. They appreciate its approachable thesis on language and mind, which is based on human experience rather than abstraction. The book is described as clear, easy to read, and comprehensive. Overall, customers consider it a good value for anyone interested in gauging the disconnect between language and thought.

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Philosophy Readability Value for money

15 customers mention "Philosophy"15 positive0 negative

Customers find the philosophy fascinating and approachable. They appreciate the refreshing view of the mind, which is based in human experience rather than abstraction. The book is a must-read for psychology, linguistics, logic, or philosophy majors for its depth of reflections and thoughts. It offers a great account of embodiment that goes well beyond traditional views.

"...This book is a must read for any psychology, linguistics, logic, or philosophy major." Read more

"Glad to now own a really important work. Thanks Book Outlet." Read more

"I read this book many years ago - it totally transformed my LIVING - I re-read it often...." Read more

"...At the end of the day, however, they do offer a great account of embodiment, one that goes well beyond aegis of philosophy and cognitive science...." Read more

7 customers mention "Readability"6 positive1 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and well-written. They appreciate the clear presentation and thorough coverage of language, philosophy, and religious perspectives.

"...Dennett's book was terrible, especially in contrast to this well written and clear book...." Read more

"...style, which has received some criticism from other reviewers, is clear and accessible, if a bit boring...." Read more

"...The authors break down various language, philsophy and religious approaches into the component metaphors...." Read more

"...There are no footnotes. It is an easy read and simple presentation that, to me, greatly lacks the necessary clarifications and references to..." Read more

7 customers mention "Value for money"7 positive0 negative

Customers find the book a good value for money. They say it's a good book for anyone interested in gauging disconnect.

"...This is a good book for anyone interested in gauging the disconnect between ancient, ancient-modern, and modern views of nature, mind, and self...." Read more

"...but forge on; it gets better...the section on "time" is worth buying the book." Read more

"...A must read." Read more

"The book is excellent; the Kindle version is wasted money, simply because the Table of Contents cannot be used to navigate from chapter to chapter...." Read more

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philly
Lakoff and Johnson are high caliber scientists
Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2013
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I bought this along with a book by Dan Dennett (on free-will) and Charles Peirce (on semiotics). Dennett's book was terrible, especially in contrast to this well written and clear book. I am a fan of Peirce's semiotics and some examples in this book "embodied" many of his concept. I was really shocked at how many parallels I was finding. Arriving at truths independently is a good sign. Lakoff and Johnson are true scientists. Peirce may be thought of as a quack although he was a genius, but L&J, while maybe not complete geniuses (rare these days anyway, see Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil on that topic for why), they are scientists of the highest order. Much better than say Pinker or even worse, Chomsky!

This book is a must read for any psychology, linguistics, logic, or philosophy major.

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10 people found this helpful

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M0ner0
Fast shipping. Great book.
Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2023
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Glad to now own a really important work. Thanks Book Outlet.

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Aquagem
Noted philosopher and linguist team makes strong case for fundamental rewrite of Western philosophy.
Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2013
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This heavy book's theme is essentially this: Based on what we have learned about ourselves over the several centuries from the advances in science, we can now state decisively that most of our philosophical speculations of the last 2000+ years are wrong and need to be opened up, updated, and rewritten. The pace of expansion of our modern knowledge base has left our scholarly and popular consciousness far behind, and we need a fairly radical reorientation of our world view to incorporate new findings into what Lakoff and Johnson dub "empirically responsible philosophy." Anything less than a complete rewrite will leave a detritus of old and long disproven thought to clog the path ahead. Of course, a revolutionary revision like as they suggest would be bound to create massive dislocations of its own, with results that would be inestimable in any terms. The title of the book, Philosophy in the Flesh, places Exhibit A in the trial of our legacy worldview right on the cover. Our traditional philosophy removes the mind from the body, while all current research shows it to be firmly ensconced in the brain. We are in the position of Galileo in the 17th century, who was accused of murdering the angels who had to push the planets around in their orbits to accommodate Aristotelian physical concepts. The Scientific Revolution changed everything, but much of our modern mind still clings to older views now known to be false, including a good deal of the model the Scientific Revolution posed as an alternative to even older ideas. This is a good book for anyone interested in gauging the disconnect between ancient, ancient-modern, and modern views of nature, mind, and self. Whether you agree or disagree with their claims, these authors have posed a challenge that must be met with something other than the denialism so prominent in many areas of science, history, and philosophy.

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34 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer
I read this book many years ago - it totally ...
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2018
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I read this book many years ago - it totally transformed my LIVING - I re-read it often. This purchase was one of several in the past as a gift to young people who demonstrate an interest in 'knowing thyself' as the foundation for living creatively.

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10 people found this helpful

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Squeak
Great Hubris, Great Book, Been Done Before
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2013
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Despite opening the book with their modest claim, "philosophy can never be the same again," George Lakoff and Mark Johnson are correct, if they are speaking for the thirty years of philosophy and feminist theory that preceded the conception of the embodied mind. In short, their undertaking is not "monumental," as some reviewers argue, though Lakoff and Johnson might have you believe that. Rather, their book is a lucid account of already existing theory, albeit unacknowledged, articulated through their actual groundbreaking work on metaphor.

For a very brief, inexcusably incomplete survey of their predecessors, look to any third-wave feminists, Donna Haraway, Chela Sandoval, Gloria Anzaldua, jeez, even Judith Butler, or any number of accessible philosophers, namely Gilbert Ryle, or semi-accessible pragmatists, John Dewey, C.S. Peirce, or Richard Rorty, and, if you enjoy cryptography, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri and, to a lesser extent, Michel Foucault.

As for Lakoff and Johnson's text, I would just read the introduction and, if you have time, the next hundred or so pages on metaphor. The remaining sections, which fill the remaining 400 pages (!), address philosophical debates, such as the long-since defunct deep grammar of Noam Chomsky, and are better left to those who plan on writing the authors' biographies. Their writing style, which has received some criticism from other reviewers, is clear and accessible, if a bit boring. Honestly, they should have consulted with Ali-G, drawing from his interview with "Norman" Chomsky, and maybe then I wouldn't use the latter two thirds of the book as a sleep aid.

At the end of the day, however, they do offer a great account of embodiment, one that goes well beyond aegis of philosophy and cognitive science. You can't blame them for posturing a bit, as they basically wrote the go-to book on metaphor, taking the concept beyond the realm of literary scholars and rhetoricians. Hubris or not, these guys are important to the history of multiple scholarly disciplines and this book marks a significant, if lesser, extension of their landmark Metaphors We Live By.

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19 people found this helpful

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john A. mcleod
it's about time.
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2022
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I thoroughly enjoyed this book...a bit dense in places for someone not very well versed in cognitive science jargon, but forge on; it gets better...the section on "time" is worth buying the book.

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4 people found this helpful

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Roshini Joseph
Outstanding, a must read!
Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2013
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Only after reading this book did a lot of stuff that puzzled me in my readings on philosophy now make sense. Hence Fodor's LOT and the inability of LOT to address the so called global and relevance problems I now read as being a result of Fodor's analytical approach. If one sees meaning as external and disembodied, then of course there will be a "global" problem. But if one approaches it using Lakoff and Johnson's "empirically responsible philosophy," a solution to this (and the relevancy problem) suggests itself.

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3 people found this helpful

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Dalby
Livro fantástico
Reviewed in Brazil on September 25, 2023
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Livro capital para quem quer aprender os fundamentos da perspectiva experiencialista a respeito da mente humana. O postulado de que a mente seria corporificada (ou seja, de que a mente teria como suporte físico não somente o cérebro, mas, sobretudo, todo o nosso aparto sensório-motor) já está sedimentado em grande parte das esferas de conhecimento contemporâneas; porém, esse livro inaugura e compendia os princípios elementares desse empreendimento epistemológico.

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Wies.
This book is amazingly thought provoking
Reviewed in Germany on December 10, 2022
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I great read if you are interested in how metaphorical understanding shape our perception of the world

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Cédric Kayser
Excellent service
Reviewed in Canada on January 21, 2020
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Great experience, highly recommended!

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Happy Teacher
So Relevant and Informative
Reviewed in Spain on February 8, 2017
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Magnificently informative and well written!! Simply brilliant!! It is probably as relevant today as eighteen years ago... and then some.

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Abdullah ^evki YURTVERMEZ
VERY USEFUL BOOK FOR PHILOSOPHY LOVERS....
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 10, 2013
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This book is very important... If you intrested in cognitive science, the philosophy of mind and language you should read this book absolutely. I am sure it will change your world view/ external reality understanding, human relations and art... Revolutionnary and very useful book... Metaphor; maybe it will be a little exageration but, as Lakoff-Johnson's interpretations, we can say like Higgs bozon's impact in our day time life since Descartes...
Abdullah Şevki

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