Embodied philosophy
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Embodied philosophy (also known as the embodied mind thesis, embodied cognition or the embodied cognition thesis) usually refers to a set of arguments proposed by various authors including George Lakoff and Mark Turner, which suggest that the mind can only be well understood by taking into account the body and the more primitive underpinnings of the mind.
Lakoff and Johnson (1999) argue that the embodiment hypothesis entails that our conceptual structure and linguistic structures are shaped by the peculiarities of our perceptual structures. As evidence, they cite research on embodiment effects from mental rotation and mental imagery, image schemas, gesture, sign language, color terms, and conceptual metaphor among other examples.
According to Lakoff and Johnson, an embodied philosophy "would show the laws of thought to be metaphorical, not logical; truth would be a metaphorical construction, not an attribute of objective reality." That is, it would not rely on any foundation ontology from the physical sciences or from religion, but would likely proceed from metaphors known to be effective for certain situations, as in the philosophy of action.
Philosophical roots
In his pre-critical period, philosopher Immanuel Kant advocated a remarkably similar embodied view of the mind-body problem that was part of his Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven (1755). José Ortega y Gasset, George Santayana, Miguel de Unamuno, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger and others in the broadly existential tradition have proposed philosophies of mind very close to the 'embodiment' thesis.
See also
