Book Review - Philosophy in the Flesh, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1999)

Reviewed by Joanne Tippett

Abstract

Philosophy in the Flesh explores the development of an embodied realism, grounded in empirical evidence emerging from cognitive science and linguistics, and contrasted against a traditional ‘Western’ philosophical view, analytical philosophy, positivism and objectivism. It explores the ways in which metaphorical constructs shape our thinking, how these are related to the fit and functioning of evolving organisms in the environment, and the implications of such an understanding for philosophy, social understanding and science.

Review

“The core of all the troubles we face today is our very ignorance of knowing” (Maturana and Varela 1987, pg. 28).

Metaphors surround us. This book follows on from Lakoff and Johnson’s important work in Metaphors We Live By, which showed a myriad of ways in which our conceptual systems are constructed through metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). This work is quoted in fields as diverse as environmental science and cultural anthropology, with many examples used to illustrate the point, such as the well worked out entailments of the metaphors Love is a Journey and Argument is War. As a synthesis of 20 years of work since Metaphors We Live By was published, Philosophy in the Flesh takes this work several steps further, and offers both a challenge to many of the traditions of Western philosophy (the most controversial part of the book) as well as a possible route out of the seeming maze of contradictions between a positivist objectivist point of view and the seemingly shifting sands of a relativist point of view. Their concept of embodied cognition and an Experientialist approach has potentially profound implications for research methodology, and may offer a way of grounding a constructivist methodology consistent with biological experience, such that social construction can be more fully understood and related to empirical evidence emerging from the fields of cognitive linguistics and linguistic anthropology.

In Philosophy in the Flesh, Lakoff and Johnson (1999, pg. 3)make three central assertions:

“The mind is inherently embodied.

Thought is mostly unconscious.

Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical…

philosophy can never be the same again”.

The concept of an absolute truth has been dealt several blows from a variety of sources. Whorf and Sapir showed the ways in which language can determine the types of thought possible for individual in a society (Moran 1982). Cultural anthropology has shown ways in which different cultures can have radically different interpretations of phenomenon (Turner 1985; Mudimbe 1988; Milton 1993; Vidich and Lyman 2000). The concept of paradigms, elaborated by Kuhn, in the philosophy of science has encouraged a debate about the ways in which scientific knowledge is socially constructed (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1994; Ravetz 1997), while Post Modern thought and deconstructivism has helped to show the ways in which entrenched power structures can influence discourse and communicative actions (Foucault 1972; Foucault 1984; Luks 1999; Tognetti 1999; van de Kerkhof and Leroy 2000). Many of these shifts, deconstructing a rationalist, objective standpoint and opening up the possibility of a multiplicity of interpretations of meaning, combined with developments in interpretive and hermeneutic methodologies, can seem to leave researchers with a fundamental choice between a view of objective truth or relativism (Lincoln and G. 2000). Lakoff and Johnson offer in this book a new way of looking at these issues, illuminating the ways in which humans construct meaning through metaphor, and suggesting that the way in which we are able to reason is fundamentally linked with the way in which our bodies orientate spatially in the world and interact with the environment. How we can know is not just influenced by what we see, but also fundamentally by how we can see and feel. The authors call for an ‘empirically responsible philosophy’, which they suggest carries on from the tradition of John Dewey and Merleau Ponty.

In this lengthy book (624 pages), full of well demonstrated examples, the authors detail the emergence of their findings from a convergence of evidence from many sources, although Steen (2000) suggests that they could have made more reference to evidence from areas outside of the linguistic field. I would suggest that more exploration of the way in which their work relates to concepts and findings in living systems biology, such as autopoiesis, self organising systems and hierarchy theory, would also strengthen the argument of the book (Koestler 1969; Capra 1982; Allen and Hoekstra 1992; Capra 1996; Tognetti 1999) (Maturana and Varela 1987). Much of the empirical evidence is referred to briefly in the text, and is not elaborated on. This could be seen as a weakness in the text, but there is an excellent reference section, split into categories for ease of following up ideas. The book benefits from a clear and well laid out structure and easily accessible, rich writing, and with an explication of more of the empirical evidence could become overwhelmingly lengthy.

Reading this book takes a degree of active engagement on behalf of the reader. The reader is lead through a series of common metaphorical constructs that are often sub-visible in our culture, the common entailments of these metaphors and the way in which they can be related to bodily experience. The empirical evidence which informs this book carries on John Dewey’s tradition of using empirical experiments to test perceptions, and the ways in which they are in biological systems and are thus not direct representations of an outside reality, as is postulated in correspondence theory. Reminiscent of the way in which Maturana and Varela (1987)(whose theory of enactive cognition is influential in this thesis) attempt in the beginning of the book, The Tree of Knowledge, to ‘jog’ people’s perceptions through a series of images and exercise, the authors ask the reader to conceive of many aspects of thought which they discuss without using metaphor, an effective means of engaging the reader in the process of understanding the ways in which metaphor constructs meanings. Combined with the leavening effect of the author’s humour, this makes the book a pleasure to read, as well as a rather informative exploration of one’s own metaphorical structuring of thought, which can at times be uncomfortable, but is illuminating.

In the first part of the book, the authors lay out the theory behind the way that thinking is embodied in experience. They show how basic bodily functions help to build primary metaphors that are used in many aspects of abstract thought. This epistemology suggests that our ways of thinking are structured by the evolutionary adaptation of organisms living in the physical environment, and that metaphorical thought allows us a rich and evocative means of constructing higher level thought and abstraction. In their critique of analytical philosophy and the concept of disembodied realism, the authors suggest that the concept of metaphorical structuring of thought does not imply an inability to discuss stable truths in the world and to engage in rational scientific reasoning, but rather that the commonalties of using bodies and responding to the physical environment that we share allows for the exploration of shared truths. They suggest that imaginative capacity enhances scientific ability and the possibility of discovering abstract concepts.

The book explores two major shifts in an understanding of truth. One is that any discussion of truth may need to be multi-leveled, and that concepts of truth when seen at different levels may be contradictory. This aspect of reality does not necessarily mean that there is no truth in any physical construct, but rather that human perception of reality is a complex and many-layered phenomenon. They suggest that abstract reasoning requires metaphorical thought, and that more than one metaphor can be used to describe abstract thoughts, which can lead to completely different interpretations of reality through the lense of different metaphorical constructions. The authors see metaphor as essential in the construction of worldviews, though often this is an unconscious process.

In Part Two of the book, they carry out what they call ‘the cognitive science of ideas, …studying basic philosophical ideas as a subject matter for cognitive science’ pg. 134. They discuss the metaphorical constructions of the concepts of Time, Events and Causes, The Mind, Self and Morality. They offer illustrations about how different metaphorical construction of these concepts allow us to reason about them in different ways. This exploration allows them to show that although they see primary metaphors, arising from bodily experience, to be central to the human brains’ ability to reason about more abstract concepts, they do not see this as a fixed or static process, but rather one that develops over time. This section of the book could prove to be a valuable reference text for writers and researchers wishing to explore the metaphors they use in thinking and the entailments of these metaphors.

Metaphors are ‘live’ when they are used to actively construct meaning in society, and many societies have different metaphors for the same concepts. They suggest that scientific paradigm shifts are fundamentally changes in the metaphors underlying scientific thought. They help to illustrate this point through a discussion of the Western cultural metaphor that Time is Money, and show how cultures that do not have this metaphor conceive of time in a different way. They suggest that it is important to examine our metaphorical constructs and see how they influence our thinking, both to illuminate the thought process and to see which metaphors may be limiting or misleading, and their substitution with metaphors more apt and fitting may be of use in improving the quality of abstract thought and discourse. Lakoff (pers comm, 1998) suggested the utility (especially in academic discourse) of replacing the Argument is War metaphor with Argument is a Dance, as a thought experiment, if not as a practical means of changing the tenor of academic polemic. At the moment (email communication, 2000), he is working on a reframing of the global warming debate though an expression of the metaphors used to construct the debate and a explication of the ways in which these are used to justify ethical positions.

In Part Three of the book, the authors carry this task out for many of the great thinkers of ‘Western Philosophy’, starting by illuminating the metaphorical underpinning of the Early Greek Metaphysics, and ending with a discussion of the theory of Rational Action. This sets the stage for their discussion, in the Fourth and final section, of an Embodied Philosophy, in which they contrast the traditional Western concept of a person with the concept of an embodied person, discussing reason, freedom, morality and nature. Some of the implications of such a philosophy are explored in a discussion of metaphors of evolution, and the ways in which these have structured social and economic discourse in ‘Western culture’.

There is a fertile ground for taking these ideas into methodological thinking for research, which is not touched upon in this book. Lakoff (email) is thinking about the implications for research methodology, but has not yet written on this subject. Several works in qualitative research methodology (Miles and Huberman 1994; Darling-Hammond and Snyder 2000; Janesick 2000) (Richardson 2000) mention the importance of looking at metaphorical constructs in interpretation, and some research work explicitly looks at an active engagement of metaphorical construction in reasoning, in particular through the concept of retroductive reasoning explored by Blaikie (1993), and the concepts of imaginative modeling espoused in soft systems methodology (Checkland 1991). Participatory research, looking at the concept of diagramming participant’s concepts and illuminating metaphors of concepts, has proved fruitful in research into topics as diverse as primary school education and the effectiveness of teaching in the UK (Darling-Hammond and Snyder 2000) and sex education for Aids awareness in rural Zimbabwe (Kesby 2000). It seems there is fertile ground for further exploration of these concepts in research methodology, which would help to broaden the application of the ideas in the book. Philosophy in the Flesh is notable in the omission of a discussion of visual analogy and reasoning, and could be strengthened by reference to work in design and creativity theory (Casakin and Goldschmidt 1999; Blaser, Sester et al. 2000; Claramunt, Jiang et al. 2000; Sven 2000; Dahl, Chattopadhyay et al. 2001) as well as participatory research techniques emerging in 'Two - Third World' countries (e.g. Participatory Rural Appraisal) (Reason 1994; Stringer 1999; Kemmis and McTaggart 2000) (Ivanov 2000). Indeed the book would be enhanced by graphics representing some of the rich conceptual ideas and analogies it presents.

The author of this review is currently working on the implications of embodied philosophy for an action based research project into sustainability issues within a multi-stakeholder organisation.

While this book goes a long way towards overcoming the dualism of a Cartesian mind body split, I agree with Sinha (2000), that there is not enough attention paid to the role of culture and embodiment of thought in the material artifacts of culture in the development of metaphorical concepts and conceptual thought. They call for “a dialectical synthesis [of the role of embodiment in individual perception and the role of culture in the embodiment of thought] that incorporates, while transforming, both of them (and … the embodiment thesis)”.

This book has potentially profound implications for research methodology and for an epistemology grounded in biological understanding as well as in the active ways that humans construct and negotiate meaning. It is well written, clear and illuminating. In particular, the embodied thought thesis could provide a sound epistemological basis for research into complex systems. It offers a possible way to work towards a dialectic integration of the tensions between qualitative and quantitative research, social and natural sciences and between an individualist perspective and a societal perceptive. In order to develop a fully-fledged epistemological basis, work from living systems biology, systems thinking (in particular hierarchy theory), cultural geography and cultural anthropology and linguistics would need to be incorporated. Fruitful avenues of exploration along these lines have been begun in the methodologies of Post Normal Science, Participatory Action Research., biologically grounded constructivism and Soft systems Methodology. Considering the leap of thinking which has been accomplished between the publication of Metaphors We Live By and Philosophy in the Flesh, the next book is awaited with anticipation.

References:

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