booklogging

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
Philosophy in the flesh : the embodied mind and it's challenge to western thought / Basic Book New York, 1999

The core thesis of this book is that mind emerges from body and that body to some degree, therefore, determines the shape of thinking. This is, clearly, a challenge to philosophical systems that see mind and body as substantially different and distinct.In addition, the thesis extends to asserting that the scope and range of non-metaphorical thought is fairly small: most if not all of our thinking is, in fact, metaphorical.

The general outline of the core idea is, if I have understood correctly, that our brains have areas or patterns of neural firing that are activated by particular bodily events. These neural patterns are then available to be used to conceptualise other more abstract thoughts."It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience." P.568

Rightly too they take issue with spiritual traditions where disembodied souls figure prominently. This is no threat to Christian thinking where it is rooted in Hebrew and Aquinas's appropriation of Aristotelian philosophy. However, the easy accommodation with Descartes and Kant is over!

Here are Some quotes to give the flavour.

Consider, for example, all that is going on below the level of conscious awareness when you are in a conversation. Here is only a small part of what you are doing, second by second:
Accessing memories relevant to what is being said
Comprehending a stream of sound as being language, dividing it into distinctive phonetic features and segments, identifying phonemes, grouping them into morphemes
Assigning a structure to the sentence in accord with the vast number of grammatical constructions in your native language
Picking out words and giving them meanings appropriate to context
Making semantic and pragmatic sense of the sentences as a whole
Framing what is said in terms relevant to the discussion
Performing inferences relevant to what is being discussed
Constructing mental images where relevant and inspecting them
Filling in gaps in the discourse
Noticing and interpreting your interlocutor's body language
Anticipating where the conversation is going
Planning what to say in response. Pp. 10 - 11

Conscious thought is the tip of an enormous iceberg. It is the rule of thumb among cognitive scientists that unconscious thought is 95 percent of all thought-and that may be a serious underestimate. Moreover, the 95 percent below the surface of conscious awareness shapes and structures all conscious thought. If the cognitive unconscious were not there doing this shaping, there could be no conscious thought. P.13

The first and most important thing to realize about categorization is that it is an inescapable consequence of our biological makeup. We are neural beings. Our brains each have 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synaptic ccnnectlons. It is common in the brain for information to be passed from one dense ensemble of neurons to another via a relatively sparse set of connections. Whenever this happens, the pattern of activation distributed over the first set of neurons is too great to be represented in a one-to-one manner in the sparse set of connections. Therefore, the sparse set of connections necessarily groups together certain input patterns in mapping them across to the output ensemble. Whenever a neural ensemble provides the same output with different inputs, there is neural categorization. P.I8

Categorization is thus not a Purely intellectual matter, occurring after the fact of experience. Rather, the formation and use of categories is the stuff of experience. It is part of what our bodies and brains are constantly engaged in. We cannot, as some meditative traditions suggest, ''get beyond'' our categories and have a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience'. Neural beings cannot do that. P.I9

What we call concepts are neural structures that allow us to mentally characterize our categories and reason about them. Human categories are typically conceptualized in more than one way, in terms of what are called prototypes. Each prototype is a neural structure that permits us to do some sort of inferential or imaginative task relative to a category. Typical-case prototypes are used in drawing inferences about category members in the absence of any special contextual information. Ideal-case prototypes allow us to evaluate category members relative to some conceptual standard. (To see the difference, compare the prototypes for the ideal husband and the typical husband.) Social stereotypes are used to make snap judgements, usually about people. Salient exemplars (well-known examples) are used for making probability judgments. (For a survey of kinds of conceptual prototypes, see A4, Lakoff 1987.) In short, prototype-based reasoning constitutes a large proportion of the actual reasoning that we do. Reasoning with prototypes is, indeed, so common that it is inconceivable that we could function for long without it. P.19

An embodied concept !s a neural structure that is actually part of, or makes use of, the sensorimotor system of our brains. Much of conceptual inference is, therefore, sensorimotor inference. P.20

that human reason and human concepts are mind-, brain-, and body-free and characterize objective external reality. If these tenets are false, the whole worldview collapses. Sap- pose human concepts and human reason are body- and brain-dependent . Suppose they are shaped as much by the body and brain as by reality. Then the body and brain are essential to our humanity. Moreover, our notion of what reality is changes. There is no reason whatever to believe that there is a disembodied reason or that the world comes neatly carved up into categories or that the categories of our mind are the categories of the world. P.22

Color, then, is not just the perception of wavelength; color constancy depends on the brain's ability to compensate for variations in the light source. Moreover, there is not a one-to-one correspondence between reflectance and color; two different reflectances can both be perceived as the same red. P.23

The opposition between red and green or blue and Yellow is a fact about our neural circuitry, not about the reflectance properties of surfaces. Color is not just the internal representation of external reflectance. And it is not a thing or a substance out there in the world. P.24

Subjectlvism in its various forms -radical relativism and social constructionism - also fails to explain color, since color is created jointly by our biology and the world, not by our culture. This is not to say that color does not differ in its significance from culture to culture. It clearly does. Rather, color is a unction of the world and our biology interacting. P.25

... the very mechanisms responsible for perception, movements, and object manipulation could be responsible for conceptualization and reasoning. Indeed, in recent neural modeling research: models of perceptual mechanisms and motor schemas can actually do conceptual work in language learning and in reasoning. This is a startling result. It flies in the face of time-honored philosophical theories of faculty psychology and their recent reincarnation in strong modularity theories of mind and language, each of which insists on a separation of the mechanisms for perception and conception. P.38

There are hundreds of primary metaphors. Together these metaphors provide subjective experience with extremely rich inferential structure, imagery, and qualitative ''feel,'' when the networks for subjective experience and the sensorimotor networks neurally connected to them are coactivated. They also allow a great many of the words of sensorimotor experience to be used to name aspects of metaphorically conceptualized subjective experience. Narayanan's neural theory of metaphor gives us an account of how primary metaphors are learned, an explanation of why we have the ones we have, and a neural mechanism for metaphorical inference. We have a system of primary metaphors simply because we have the bodies and brains we have and because we live in the world we live in, where intimacy does tend to correlate significantly with proximity, affection with warmth, and achieving purposes with reaching destinations. P.59

Our most important abstract concepts, from love to causation to morality, are conceptualized via multiple complex metaphors. Such metaphors are an essential part of those concepts, and without them the concepts are skeletal and bereft of nearly all conceptual and inferential structure. Each complex metaphor is in turn built up out of primary metaphors, and each primary metaphor is embodied in three ways: (1) It is embodied through bodily experience in the world, which pairs sensorimotor experience with subjective experience. (2) The source-domain logic arises from the inferential structure of the sensorimotor system. And (3) it is instantiated neurally in the synaptic weights associated with neural connections.
In addition, our system of primary and complex metaphors is part of the cognitive unconscious, and most of the time we have no direct access to it or control over its use. Thus, abstract concepts structured by multiple complex metaphors exemplify the three aspects of mind that are the central themes of this book: the cognitive unconscious, the embodiment of mind, and metaphorical thought. P.73

The key points of the second-generation embodied view of mind are the following: Conceptual structure arises from our sensorimotor experience and the neural structures that give rise to it. The very notion of ''structure'' in our conceptual system is characterized by such things as image schemas and motor schemas.
Mental structures are intrinsically meaningful by virtue of their connectlon to our bodies and our embodied experience. They cannot be characterized adequately by meaningless symbols.
There is a ''basic level'' of concepts that arises in part from our motor schemas and our capacities for gestalt perception and image formation.
Our brains are structured so as to project activation patterns from sensorimotor areas to higher cortical areas. These constitute what we have called primary metaphors. Projections of this kind allow us to conceptualize abstract concepts on the basis of inferential patterns used in sensorimotor processes that are directly tied to the body.
The structure of concepts includes prototypes of various sorts: typical cases, idea cases, social stereotypes, salient exemplars, cognitive reference points, end points of graded scales, nightmare cases, and so on. Each type of prototype uses a distinct form of reasoning. Most concepts are not characterized by necessary and sufficient conditions.
Reason is embodied in that our fundamental forms of inference arise from sensorimotor and other body-based forms of inference. Reason is imaginative in that bodily inference forms are mapped onto abstract modes of inference by metaphor.
Conceptual systems are pluralistic, not monolithic. Typically, abstract concepts are defined by multiple conceptual metaphors, which are often inconsistent with each other. P.77 -78

Embodied truth is not, of course, absolute objective truth. lt accords with how people use the word true, namely, relative to understanding.
Embodied truth is also not purely subjective truth. Embodiment keeps it from being purely subjective. Because we all have pretty much the same embodied basic level and spatial-relations concepts, there will be an enormous range of shared ''truths,'' as in such clear cases as when the cat is or isn't on the mat. P.107

Our ordinary metaphor that time is a spatial-like dimension leads us to ask, ''But what happened before the Big Bang?'' If all events can occur in time, then presumably so could the event of the Big Bang. It is a question that makes sense given our metaphor, The idea that time itself started with the Big Bang makes no sense given our common metaphor. The Big Bang would then not be occurring in time, but rather defining the start of time . P.I59

Concepts of direct human agency- pushing, pulling, hitting, throwing, lifting, giving, taking, and so on- are among the basic-level anchors of our conceptual system in general and our system of causal concepts in particular. P.23I

As we saw, there are other reasons as well that this is not a literal argument, namely, Searle's use of the Formal Language, Symbol Manipulation, and Machine As Person metaphors. The reason that the Chinese Room Argument is compelling (or so many people is not its incorrect status a literal modus tollens argument, but rather its status as a metaphorical argument. Given that we implicitly use the Formal Language, Symbol Manipulation, and Machine As Person metaphors, the Chinese Room Argument works as a powerful metaphorical argument. It seems compelling because it uses metaphors we already have. What is interesting to us about Searle's Chinese Room Argument is that so many Anglo-American philosophers of mind, including Searle himself, took it as literal. But then, they could hardly have done otherwise, since Anglo-American philosophy, because of its own deep-seated metaphors, recognizes neither the cognitive unconscious nor conceptual metaphor. P.265

What we call ''mind'' is really embodied. There is no true separation of mind and body. These are not two independent entities that somehow come together and couple. The word mental picks out those bodily capacities and performances that constitute our awareness and determine our creative and constructlve responses to the situations we encounter. Mind isn't some mysterious abstract entity that we bring to bear on our experience. Rather, mind is part of the very structure and fabric of our interactions with our world. P.266

What we call our “inner lives'' concerns at least five kinds of experience that are consequences of living in a social world with the kinds of brains and bodies that we have. First, there are the ways in which we try to control our bodies and in which they '' get out of control.'' Second, there are cases in which our conscious values conflict with the values implicit in our behavior. Third, there are disparities between what we know or believe about ourselves and what other people know or believe about us. Fourth, there are experiences of taking an external viewpoint, as when we imitate others or try to see the world as they do. And last, there are the forms of inner dialog and inner monitoring we engage in. What we find striking about such experiences of self is how commonplace they are. P.267

Our metaphoric conceptions of inner life have a hierarchical structure. At the highest level, there is the general Subject-Self metaphor, which conceptualizes a person as bifurcated. The exact nature of this bifurcation is specified more precisely one level down, where there are five specific instances of the metaphor. These five special cases of the basic Subject-Self metaphor are grounded in four types of everyday experience: (1) manipulating objects, (2) being located in space, (3) entering into social relations, and (4) empathic projection -conceptually projecting yourself onto someone else, as when a child imitates a parent. The fifth special case comes from the Folk Theory of Essences: Each person is seen as having an Essence that is part of the Subject. The person may have more t an one Self, but only one of those Selves is compatible with that Essence. This is called the ''real'' or ''true'' Self. P.269

Imitating makes use of an ability to project, to conceptualize oneself as inhabiting the body of another. Empathy is the extension of this ability to the realm of emotions -not just to move as someone else moves, but to feel as someone else feels. P.281

We are not claiming that there are no nonmetaphorical ethical concepts. Some of our moral concepts appear to have a minimal nonmetaphorical ''core.'' However, this core is typically so thin, so underspecified, that it can play little or no role in our reasoning without being flushed out by various metaphors. Thus, any comprehensive analysis of a moral concept will reveal one or more metaphorical structurings that serve as the basis for our reasoning. For example, consider our concept of rights. Its minimal nonmetaphoric core appears as early as infancy and toddlerhood. P.329

Given that most of our moral concepts are structured by metaphor, then the inference patterns of our moral reasoning come, for the most part, from the source domains of the metaphors. So, even if there were to he such a thing as a ''pure practical reason,'' which we deny, it would not be doing the primary work of our moral thinking. P.33O

It is for this reason that at least the most extreme postmodern views of ethics are mistaken. It is sometimes claimed that morality is nothing more than a fabric of arbitrarily chosen narratives that we impose on our experience and that all our values are arbitrary constructs. The grounding of our metaphors for morality shows why such extreme forms of social constructivism are wrong. We have seen some of the ways that the source domains import constraints Into our moral concepts, and we have seen how these source domains are tied up with our basic bodily well-being. Even though such constraints allow for a very wide variety of moralities, they establish the general form and substance of human morality. That is, they give genera! constraints on what a morality will look like. P.33I

What do these case studies of metaphysics, mind, language and morality tell us? First, that all philosophical theories, no matter what they may claim about themselves, are necessarily metaphoric in nature. Second, that the metaphorical thought is ineliminable: It is metaphoric thought that defines the metaphysics and unifies the logic of each philosophical theory. Third, this is simply a consequence of the fact the philosophical theories make use of the same conceptual resources that make up ordinary thought. Because we ordinarily think metaphorically, and because our everyday metaphysics derives from our metaphors, it should be no surprise that philosophical thought works the same way. Metaphor, rather than being an impediment to rationality, is what makes rational philosophical theories possible. P.345

But if language and thought are embodied and if thought is metaphorical, then formalist philosophy, the entire structure on which meaning holism is based, goes up in smoke. It does not apply to real human thought and language. P.459

The doctrine of free-floating signifiers constitutes a disembodied account of meaning, as in the case of Rorty and Quine. lf meaning were embodied in our sense, then it would not be totally arbitrary. Moreover, the doctrine of the arbitrariness of the sign, as we have noted above, is at odds with our analysis of conceptual metaphors, which assign nonarbitrary meanings to signs. The post- structuralist theory of meaning is fundamentally at odds with virtually every finding of second-generation cognitive science. P.467

Concepts arise from, and are understood through, the body, the brain, and experience in the world. Concepts get their meaning through embodiment, especially via perceptual and motor capacities. Directly embodied concepts include basic-level concepts, spatial-relations concepts, bodily action concepts (e.g., hand movement), aspect (that is, the general structure of actions and events), color, and others. Concepts crucially make use of imaginative aspects of mind: frames, metaphor, metonymy, prototypes, radial categories, mental spaces, and conceptual ending. Abstract concepts arise via metaphorical projections from more directly embodied concepts (e.g., perceptual and motor concepts) . As we have seen, there is an extremely extensive system o conceptual metaphor that characterizes abstract concepts in terms of concepts that are more directly embodied. The metaphor system is not arbitrary, but is also grounded in experience. P.497

The neural facts don't fit the philosophical theory of innateness. Moreover the connections present at birth are too dense to perform normal adult human functions. Development requires that connections must die off. That means that learning requires a loss of what we were born with. But in the classic picture, learning just adds to what we were born with. Neurally, the classic picture doesn't work. P.507

Philosophers are not simply logic-choppers who fine-tune what their culture already knows in its bones. Instead, they are the poets of systematic thought. Philosophy at its best is creative and synthetic. It helps us put our world together in a way that makes sense to us and that helps us deal with the problems that confront us in our lives. When philosophers do this well they are using our ordinary conceptual resources in very extraordinary ways. They see ways of Putting ideas together to reveal new systematic connections between different aspects of our experience. They sometimes give us the means for criticizing even our most deeply rooted concepts. They show us ways to extend our metaphors and other imaginative structures to deal with newly emerging situations and problems. Thus, Kant, almost single-handedly, generated the notion of moral autonomy (and its metaphors) that has become a defining feature of the modern view of moral responsibility. P.542

One might imagine a spiritual tradition in which such a Soul is fundamentally embodied -shaped in important ways by the body, located forever as part of the body, and dependent for its ongoing existence on the body. The results about the mlnd discussed throughout this book in no way rule out the existence of ttat kind of Soul, an embodied Soul. But that is not the way the Soul or Spirit is conceptualized in a great many of the world's spiritual traditions, and as we have just seen, there is a good scientific reason why. The universal embodied experiences that give rise to t the metaphors of Subject and Self produce in our cognitive unconscious a concept of a Subject as an independent entity in no way dependent for its existence on the body. Because of those universal embodied experiences, this idea has arisen In many places spontaneously around the world. P.563

The concept of spirituality in our culture has been defined mostly in terms of disembodiment and transcendence of this world. What is needed is an alternative conception of embodied spirituality that at least begins to do justice to what people experience. P.564

The mind is not merely corporeal but also passionate, desiring, and social. It as a culture and cannot exist culture-free. It has a history, it has developed and grown, and it can grow further. It has an unconscious aspect, hidden from our direct view an knowable only indirectly. Its conscious aspect characterizes what we take ourselves as being. Its conceptual system is limited; there is much that it cannot even conceptualize, much less understand. But its conceptual system is expandable: It can form revelatory new understandings. A major function of the embodied mind is empathic. From birth we have the capacity to imitate others, to vividly imagine being another person, doing what that person does, experiencing what that person experiences. The capacity for unimaginative projection is a vital cognitive faculty. Experientially, it is a form of ''transcendence.'' Through it, one can experience something akin to “getting out of our bodes'' It it is very much a bodily capacity. P.565

An embodied spirituality requires an aesthetic attitude to the world that is central to self-nurturance, to the nurturance of others, and to the nurturance of the world itself. Embodied spirituality requires an understanding that nature is not inanimate and less than human, but animated and more than human. It requires pleasure, joy in the bodily connection with earth and air, sea and sky, plants and animals, and the recognition that they are all more than human, more than any human beings could ever achieve. Embodied spirituality is more than spiritual experience. It is an ethical relationship to the physical world (E, Abram 1996; Spretnak 1991, 1997). P.566

But empathic connection to the world is only one dimension of spirituality that the body makes possible. It is the body that makes spiritual experience passionate, that brings to it intense desire and pleasure, pain, delight, and remorse. Without all these things, spirituality is bland. In the world's spiritual traditions, sex and art and music and dance and the taste of food have been for millennia forms of spiritual experience just as much as ritual practice, meditation, and prayer. P.567

The vehicle by which we are moved in passionate spirituality is metaphor. The mechanism of such metaphor is bodily. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience. P.568