The embodied mind

Table of Contents

  Introduction  2

  Embodied Experience and Cognition  3

  Metaphors as mode of thought  4

  Embodied Language Understanding  5

  Conclusion  9

  Works cited  10

Introduction

The 2.000 year old dichotomies of mind versus body and inner self versus external world are still ubiquitous in Western spontaneous philosophy (in Gramsci’s sense), science and education. However, they cannot be empirically testified. On the contrary, more than thirty years of rich evidence from interdisciplinary cognitive science leave no doubt that the human mind is embodied in our entire organism and embedded in the world.

The nature of our everyday sensory (i.e. visual, auditory, haptic, olfactory, gustatory, vestibular) and motoric experience, which is interactive and could be described as “organism- environmentco-ordination” (Johnson & Rohrer 10), constitutes our “species-specific view of the world” (Evans & Green 45). Moreover it serves as information on the “opportunities and costs of acting in the environment” (Proffitt 110) and thereby at least indirectly (i.e. via our individual conceptual structures derived from embodied experience of our natural and socio-cultural environment) guides our (linguistic) behaviour. Perception (i.e. processing of information obtained by our sensory system), cognition (i.e. conceptual representation of perceptual input and off-line employment of the concepts), consciousness (i.e. confluence of distinct phenomena such as first-person-perspective and volition) and action do not form clearly divided systems of brain activity but function as continuum of ongoing interaction between our body, mind and ambiance. They are “not merely contingently in individuals; they have also evolved together.” (Rosch & Thompson etc. 173) This paper will sum up the most fundamental findings from the branches of cognitive linguistics, psychology and neuroscience, giving account of the neural and mental structures and processes that link all (in equal measure physical) aspects of our existence. More precisely we are going to see how mechanisms of thought such as image schemas, conceptual domains and even metaphors are derived from bodily experience and how they are embodied themselves in the brain structure. Metaphor in particular will be looked at as a conceptual rather than purely linguistic device that structures our world view (including our political and scientific stance, cf. Lakoff Why the embodied… 33), language and social action in place of some universal, disembodied reason (which is a Rationalist illusion). Further we will be concerned with embodied language understanding on the basis of neural computation over so-called Perceptual Symbol Systems. Finally the reader will learn about the Neo-Whorfian notion of language as a “shaper of thought” (Evans & Green 98) and why it does not contradict the Embodied Realist model of semantic structure encoding conceptual and ultimately perceptual structure.

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Embodied Experience and Cognition

It is the unique morphology of our bodies, in particular our sensory-perceptive and neuralanatomic architecture, that determines how aspects of the ecological niche we inhabit as well as the “distinctively human socio-cultural environment” (Johnson & Rohrer 20) enter into the shape of our thought. This happens as so-called image schemas, i.e. perceptual and simultaneously conceptual recurring patterns of embodied experience that are “computed via structures

in the sensorimotor system” (Johnson & Lakoff Why cognitive linguistics… 249), without our conscious awareness give rise to concepts and linguistic meaning. There are three types of primitive image schemas: topological, orientational and force-dynamic. One (orientational) example is the UP-DOWN schema derived from the asymmetry of the human body’s vertical axis (cf. Evans & Green 178) and the experience of gravity. The concepts related to the (not yet metaphorically extended) UP-DOWN schema are lexicalized by English prepositions or adverbs such as up and down.

Image schemas are neurally embodied in and between unimodal neural maps in the visual system (e.g. topographic maps within the visual field providing embodied definitions of bounded regions and paths). These maps in turn are connected to the motor system in the prefrontal cortex (and even play a major role in motor control themselves, cf. Feldman & Narayanan

2) and brain areas responsible for higher cognitive functions (e.g. mental imagery) to form “functional clusters” (Gallese & Lakoff 6). As we are going to see, these clusters give rise to the inferential structure of concepts and conceptual domains. “[T]he same neural circuitry capable of motor control is also capable of abstract inferences.” (Johnson & Lakoff Why cognitive linguistics… 257) It follows from the cognitive reality of embodied experience that there is no objective disembodied knowledge (i.e. immediate mental representation) of an objective external reality. Instead our categorization of and reasoning about entities, properties, structures, processes and states we encounter is guided by coherent knowledge structures that consist of fundamental values and principles as well as detailed, but at the same time idealized (folk or expert) beliefs about the world (e.g. Platonic/Rationalist mind-body dualism). They are idealized because reality (instead of being reflected by the mind) is narrowed and fitted into these conceptual domains, which George Lakoff labeled Idealized Cognitive Models. ICMs are created

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