Jerry Gill's Enduring Questions

PROPHETS OF THE EMBODIED MIND: LAKOFF AND JOHNSON

Back in the 1980s, these two thinkers surprised the academic world with their claim that metaphoric language is the most fundamental form of human thought and language in their book “Metaphors We Live By”. Lakoff and Johnson argued that, although it has traditionally been regarded as a “third cousin” by philosophers and cognitive scientists alike, metaphoric speech and thought are actually at the core of all language, especially in theoretical language. They maintained that the human mind is, in fact, always “enfleshed” in the neurology of the body.

These two thinkers based their claims on the seminal ideas of well-known figures like Wittgenstein, Edward Sapir, Benjamin Lee Whorf, J.J. Gibson, Paul Ricoeur, and Jean Piaget. They applied the insights of these thinkers to the concepts of knowledge and meaning by focusing on metaphorical thought and speech, highlighting the essential role of metaphor in all thought and language. They accomplished this by listing and illustrating a wide range of key metaphors found in both our everyday speech and theoretical language. 

Then, years later (1999), they produced their Magnum Opus, “In The Flesh,” which explores the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought, particularly in psychology and philosophy. It is a 583-page document that presents their fundamental thesis that metaphorical thought and reasoning generate and form the very foundation of our rational efforts to understand and express the world of our experience. In the concluding paragraph of their acknowledgments page, they give special recognition to the two thinkers who have provided the unique inspiration for their efforts in this book, John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “empirically responsible philosophers.” 

This massive book by these two thinkers outlines both the foundation and implications of their seemingly radical view of human cognition. They start with a critique of traditional Western thinkers for limiting the realities of thought and knowledge to purely mental experiences and processes, when in reality, there could be no such realities apart from the brain’s physical processes. Human embodiment is at the core of their understanding of personhood and cognitive activity. I am both proud and embarrassed to say that I have now made my way through the large and definitive presentation of the case for understanding human cognition as a form of embodiment, in the flesh.

       Their thesis directly challenges the mental “fixation” of almost all Western philosophical thought, from Plato and Aristotle to Russell and Existentialists. In Part One, Lakoff and Johnson demonstrate how the history of Western philosophical and psychological thought has almost completely overlooked the role of human embodiment in explaining human knowledge. In Part Two, our authors explain the basic principles of cognitive science and how they influence our understanding of causation, the mind, the self, and morality. In Part Three, they trace how our understanding of embodiment contrasts with the main theories of Western philosophers. 

In Part Four, Lakoff and Johnson aim to clarify some of the implications of understanding the mind as embodied for our approach to philosophy and theology. They explore the concept of the “embodied person” in relation to both morality and spirituality, as well as Marcus Borg’s description of process-philosophy thinkers such as Whitehead and Hartshorne, and the idea of “panentheism” as a helpful way to think about God’s relation to the world. “In the flesh,” indeed!

I must say that I have found the focus on embodiment in these two thinkers both interesting and fruitful in my own efforts to understand both traditional philosophy and theology. In addition, it complements my own preferences regarding Michael Polanyi’s ideas about the importance of “tacit knowing,” and placing the body at the center of both philosophy and theology aligns with my thinking on these topics. To put it slightly differently, the approach of Lakoff and Johnson highlights the concept of the “Incarnation,” as I see it unfolding in the New Gospels. “In the flesh” resonates equally well with a sound interpretation of the New Testament understanding of both the life of Jesus and the life of believers.     

The Western myth of the disembodied mind has been definitively disproved by these two thinkers. Like Humpty Dumpty, dualistic thinking is shattered and cannot be restored!