Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason - How Our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding

Mark Johnson is one of the great thinkers of our time on how the body shapes the mind. This book brings together a selection of essays from the past two decades that build a powerful argument that any scientifically and philosophically satisfactory view of mind and thought must ultimately explain how bodily perception and action give rise to cognition, meaning, language, action, and values.

A brief account of Johnson's own intellectual journey, through which we track some of the most important discoveries in the field over the past forty years, sets the stage. Subsequent chapters set out Johnson's important role in embodied cognition theory, including his cofounding (with George Lakoff) of conceptual metaphor theory and, later, their theory of bodily structures and processes that underlie all meaning, conceptualization, and reasoning. A detailed account of how meaning arises from our physical engagement with our environments provides the basis for a nondualistic, nonreductive view of mind that he sees as most congruous with the latest cognitive science. A concluding section explores the implications of our embodiment for our understanding of knowledge, reason, and truth. The resulting book will be essential for all philosophers dealing with mind, thought, and language.

About the author

Mark Johnson is the Philip H. Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon and the author of numerous books.

Product details

• Authors: Mark Johnson
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.11.2017
• EAN: 9780226500256
• ISBN: 978-0-226-50025-6
• No. of pages: 240
• Dimensions: 154 mm x 230 mm x 13 mm
• Subjects: Education and learning > Teaching preparation > Vocational needs; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Philosophy: general, reference works; PHILOSOPHY / Mind & Body, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy, PSYCHOLOGY / Cognitive Psychology & Cognition, PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Humanism