Mark Johnson (1949-) is Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Oregon.
Difficulty level: Probably best for those with some formal philosophical study or deep interest.
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Johnson is best known for setting the stage for the perspective of embodied cognition beginning in 1980 with Metaphors We Live By, The Body in the Mind (1987) and Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999). In The Meaning of the Body, Johnson delineates the central implications of the effects of embodiment on consciousness:
- The body-mind division is reconciled. The reality is that human beings are organisms-within-their-environments and human experience is an organic process of systems interacting on a variety of levels from the neurological to the sociocultural. There is no pure “mental” experience and there is there is no pure “physical” experience as all thinking-feeling-acting are of a piece and a circular process.
- All meaning is grounded in the bodymind process. The essence of this idea is that consciousness makes meaning of each experience via a web of activities beginning with sensory-motor activities, to bodily feelings and emotions, up to abstract thought and imagination.
- Thinking is derived from embodiment as a process. There is no “mind” separate from the “body” and abstract thought is a function of the bodymind interacting with its environment.
- Imagination arises from bodily experience.
- Reason and emotion of two sides of the same coin.
- Human consciousness is an embodied entity.
The book is divided into three Parts. In Part I, Johnson presents his views on human cognition which are based on the ideas of John Dewey (DATES) and William James (DATES). Johnson updates Dewey and James with recent ideas from the cognitive sciences. One recent finding that is central to Johnson’s view is the findings by the neuroscientist, Don Tucker, who found that deep brain structures are more densely connected than the recent additions high up in the cortex. Johnson believes that there needs to be necessarily more functional complexity and specialized modularity in the cerebral cortex than in the deeper limbic core. Johnson and Tucker explore this idea more in their Out of the Cave: A Natural Philosophy of Mind and Knowing (2021, The MIT Press).
In Part II, Johnson takes to the heart of the matter in which he believes that primitive thinking was based not on symbolic images but on body experiences which then naturally shape our language. Many of our words reference the body such as in”, “on” and “in front of.” Our more abstract words are derived from metaphoric imagery.
Part III then takes these ideas into the areas of values and aesthetics in particular. The central notion to emerge from Johnson’s book is that the meanings we make in the world come from our own bodies and so a well-lived life should be (or could be) naturally beautiful. Embodied cognition takes us to the point where art is the foundation of value and meaning.
Drawing on the psychology of art and pragmatist philosophy, Johnson argues that all of these aspects of meaning-making are fundamentally aesthetic. He concludes that the arts are the culmination of human attempts to find meaning and that studying the aesthetic dimensions of our experience is crucial to unlocking meaning’s bodily sources.
Closing Thoughts
Johnson’s perspective as a leader in the embodied cognition movement is grounded in psychology, neuroscience, and the philosophy of art; a very interesting cross-section of human thought. Its relevance for somatically-oriented thinkers are that it is one keystone text in the evolution of embodied thinking. It’s a good starting point albeit quite advanced and challenging at times.
Paul D. Shane, Ph.D., LMT
Director, Academic Content
References
Johnson, M. (1987). The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
—– (2007). The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Johnson, M. & Lakoff, G. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
—– (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York, NY: Basic Books.