FWD: new book

Phil Graham (pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au)
Wed, 13 Jan 1999 18:31:17 +1100

>Return-Path: <sys-func-owner who-is-at uts.edu.au>
>Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 18:09:47 +1100 (EST)
>From: Chris Cleirigh <cleirigh who-is-at speech.usyd.edu.au>
>Subject: FWD: new book
>Sender: owner-sys-func who-is-at uts.edu.au
>To: sys-func who-is-at uts.edu.au
>Reply-to: Chris Cleirigh <cleirigh who-is-at speech.usyd.edu.au>
>X-Info: To unsubscribe, send 'unsubscribe' to sys-func-request who-is-at uts.edu.au
>
> Just Published!
>
>
> PHILOSOPHY IN THE
>FLESH
>
>
>
> The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western
>Thought
>
>
> George Lakoff and Mark
>Johnson
>
>
> Basic
>Books
>
>
>
> Hardcover, 624 pages,
>$30 list price
>
>
> $21 + shipping at Amazon.com and
>BarnesandNoble.com
>
>
>
>
>
>Thought is mostly unconscious.
>
>The mind is inherently embodied.
>
>Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.
>
>
> These are three major findings in cognitive science that
>contradict most of Western philosophy, including both Anglo-American
>analytic philosophy and postmodernist philosophy.
>
>
> This book asks, What would happen if we started with these
>empirical discoveries about the nature of mind and constructed
>philosophy anew from there?
>
>
> Virtually everything changes when the embodiment of mind is
>taken into account:
>
>
>
>-New understandings of truth and of science are required.
>
>
>
>-The most basic philosophical ideas-time, events, causes, the mind, the
>self, and morality-are reanalyzed in detail and shown to be radically
>different than the Western tradition has supposed.
>
>
>
>-Great philosophical theories-from the Presocratics, Plato and
>Aristotle to Descartes and Kant to analytic philosophy-are shown to be
>composed out of a small number of metaphors taken as eternal truths.
>
>
>-Even contemporary accounts of language (Chomskyan linguistics) and
>rationality (the rational actor model using game theory) are shown to
>have a metaphorical basis.
>
>
> Most importantly, the very idea of what a human being is changes
>radically.
>
>
>-There is no Cartesian person, whose essence is a mind separate from,
>and independent of the body.
>
>
>-There is no Kantian, radically autonomous person, with an absolute
>freedom and a transcendent universal reason that correctly dictates
>what is and isn't moral.
>
>
>-There is no utilitarian person, for whom rationality is economic
>rationality-the maximization of utility.
>
>
>-There is no postmodernist person-no completely decentered subject for
>whom all meaning is arbitrary, totally relative, and purely
>historically contingent.
>
>
>-There is no person as posed by analytic philosophy for whom truth is a
>correspondence between words and the world, independent of human
>psychology and biology.
>
>
>-There is no computational person, whose mind is like computer software
>able to work on any suitable computer or neural hardware.
>
>
>-There is no Chomskyan person, for whom language is pure syntax, pure
>form insulated from and independent of all meaning, context,
>perception, emotion, memory, attention, action, and the dynamic nature
>of communication and whom language is a total genetic innovation that
>began with human beings.
>
>
> Contemporary cognitive science reveals that we human beings are
>radically different kinds of creatures than Western philosophy has
>taught us that we were.
>
>
>
>GEORGE LAKOFF is Professor of Linguistics at the University of
>California at Berkeley. He has served on the Governing Board of the
>Cognitive Science Society and has been President of the International
>Cognitive Linguistics Association.
>
>
>MARK JOHNSON is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy
>Department at the University of Oregon.
>
>
Phil Graham
pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html