489. The Co-Evolution of Philosophy and Cognitive Science with Mark Johnson

unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

If meaning is made with our minds, what role does the body play in shaping meaning? How do the studies of philosophy and cognitive science intersect?

Mark Johnson is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon and one of the key thought leaders on the co-evolution of philosophy and science in the 20th century. His books like, Metaphors We Live By and Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & its Challenge to Western Thought explore the relationship between philosophy and cognitive science.

Mark and Greg discuss the evolution of philosophical thought from metaphysical realism to embodied cognition, the impact of metaphors on human thought and understanding, and philosophy’s potential future in the world of artificial intelligence.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• George Lakoff
• Patricia Churchland
• Gottlob Frege
• Maurice merleau ponty
• John Dewey
• Brain in a vat
• James J. Gibson
• Time and Narrative by Paul Ricoeur
• William James

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at University of Oregon
• Professional Website

His Work:

• Metaphors We Live By
• Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & its Challenge to Western Thought
• Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics
• The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding
• Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason: How Our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding
• Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor
• Out of the Cave: A Natural Philosophy of Mind and Knowing

Episode Quotes:

Embodiment and the human experience

15:25: The fundamental unit of experience, or of anything you do or think, is a human brain, at least partially functioning, operating a human body, at least partially functioning as it engages in an ongoing way. It's an environment which is, at once, material, interpersonal, and cultural. That's a nugget of what everything we're doing is about and trying to articulate. So, embodiment all the way through. And now that we have all these information processing models, sometimes questions get raised about, well, you know, are we going to do what to do away with the body and all of that, but you have to build up to that.

All philosophy emerge in experience

44:53: I think that all philosophy, all thought, all action, and all values emerge in experience, which is not reducible; its enriched experience, and that we have to, through inquiry, remake that experience to move forward in the world.

On bringing rigor from science to the humanities

50:05: Doing good science is so difficult, labor-intensive, time-consuming, and expensive that it kind of fills up your world, I want to say. And they [scientists] don't see the same rigor in what they regard as the humanities. So, the best I can do with that is try to bring research out of the humanities and help it interface.

On the theory of meaning

26:27: My theory of meaning is built around the fact that the meaning of something is the affordances that it enacts. There's a complicated story to tell about that, but intuitively, it makes you grow into a world where you learn the meaning of things by what it affords you by way of experience.