V. Philosophy of Language / Metaphor

At the University of Chicago as a doctoral student I was introduced to the dominant analytic philosophy of language, beginning with Frege and culminating, at that time, in the new work of Davidson and Rorty. I never took to analytic philosophy of language, which seemed to me to have little to do with actual human meaning and communication. I had the good fortune to take Ted Cohen’s J.L. Austin course, which introduced me to speech act theory and linguistic philosophy. This also connected up with my interest in Wittgenstein from my undergraduate days at the University of Kansas. In 1974 I had the privilege of taking a course called Metaphor and Symbol, co-taught by Paul Ricoeur and David Tracy. That was my introduction to the importance of metaphor, and this led me to Ted Cohen’s presentations on metaphor in his classes. I had originally thought of writing my dissertation on metaphor in religious language, but under the guidance of Ricoeur and Cohen, I came to focus more broadly on the cognitive status of metaphor as an irreducible process of meaning-making.

In 1979, while I was a Visiting Assistant Professor in Philosophy at UC Berkeley, I met George Lakoff, whom I had asked to write an essay for my anthology on metaphor. We immediately realized that we shared a view of the importance of metaphor that our respective traditions in philosophy and linguistics had no way of appreciating. This led to our collaboration on Metaphors We Live By (1980) and to subsequent decades of work on the pervasiveness of metaphor in all aspects of our abstract conceptualization and reasoning. I owe to George Lakoff my recognition of the importance of empirical research in cognitive science for any account of mind, thought, or language. I wrote The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (1987) to explore the role of sensory-motor processes the emergence of meaning and conceptual structure. In Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (1999), Lakoff and I attempted to work out the major implications of second-generation (embodied) cognitive science for the nature of philosophy and the analysis of key philosophical concepts and theories. In the 90’s cognitive neuroscience came more prominently into play, and it became possible to take some initial steps toward discovering some of the brain- and body-based sources of cognition, both for concrete and abstract concepts. This orientation led me even more deeply into the sensory-motor springs of meaning, as I began to focus on the traditionally “aesthetic” dimensions such as qualities, images, image schemas, feelings, and emotions, which became the focus on The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (2007).

Courses:

PHIL 407/507: Embodiment

This course includes issues and relationships of cognition, meaning, and language.

PHIL 425: Philosophy of Language

This undergraduate-level course includes speech act theory and recent work on the embodied and imaginative character of meaning and language.

PHIL 607: Seminar: Concepts

PHIL 607: Seminar: Metaphor

PHIL 607: Seminar: Philosophy and Cognitive Science

An ongoing investigation into the implications of empirical research from the cognitive sciences for our understanding of the nature of mind, self, thought, meaning, and values. I take an “embodied cognition” approach to issues of mind, thought, and language.

PHIL 625: Philosophy of Language

This graduate-level course includes speech act theory and recent work on the embodied and imaginative character of meaning and language.

Resource:

Metaphor of Cognitive Science Archive (1998).

Books:

The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (co-author George Lakoff), Basic Books, 1999.

The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason, University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Philosophical Perspectives on Metaphor, edited with introduction, University of Minnesota Press, 1981.

Metaphors We Live By (co-author George Lakoff), University of Chicago Press, 1980; second edition with new Afterword, 2003.

Articles:

“The Stone that was Cast Out Shall Become the Cornerstone: The Bodily Aesthetics of Human Meaning,” Journal of Visual Arts Practice, 6, no. 2 (2007), 89-103.

“Mind, Metaphor, Law,” Mercer Law Review, 58, no. 3 (2007), 845-868.

"Mind Incarnate: From Dewey to Damasio,” Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 135: no. 3 (Summer 2006), 46-54.

"Something in the Way She Moves: Metaphors of Musical Motion,” (co-author Steve Larson). Metaphor and Symbol, 18, No. 2 (2003): 63-84.

“Why Cognitive Linguistics Requires Embodied Realism,” (co-author George Lakoff), Cognitive Linguistics, 13: no. 3 (2002), 245-263.

"Law Incarnate,” Brooklyn Law Review, 67: No.4 (Summer 2002), 949-962.

"Cause and Effect Theories of Attention: The Role of Conceptual Metaphors,” (co-author Diego Fernandez-Duque), General Review of Psychology, 6: No.2 (2002), 153-165.

“Attention Metaphors: How Metaphors Guide the Cognitive Psychology of Attention,” (co-author Diego Fernandez-Duque), Cognitive Science, 23: No.1 (1999), 83-116.

”Why Metaphor Matters to Philosophy,” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 10, No. 3 (1995), 157-62.

“Conceptual Metaphor and Embodied Structures of Meaning,” Philosophical Psychology, 6, no. 4 (1993), 413-422.

“Why Cognitive Semantics Matters to Philosophy,” Cognitive Linguistics, 4, No. 1 (1993), 62-74.

“Philosophical Implications of Cognitive Semantics,” Cognitive Linguistics, 3, No. 4 (1992), 345-366.

“Image-schematic Bases of Meaning,” RSSI (Recherches Sémiotique Semiotic Inquiry), 9, Nos. 1-2-3 (1989), 109-118.

Book Chapters:

“The Meaning of the Body,” Developmental Perspectives on Embodiment and Consciousness, W. Overton, U. Mueller, & J. Newman (eds.). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2008, 19-43.

“Philosophy’s Debt to Metaphor,” The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, R. Gibbs (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 39-52.

“The Philosophical Significance of Image Schemas,” From Perception to Meaning: Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics, B. Hampe (ed.). Mouton de Gruyter, 2005, 15-33.

“Metaphor-based Values in Scientific Models,” Model-based Reasoning: Science, Technology, Values, L. Magnani and N. Nersessian, (eds). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2002,1-19.

“Metaphor,” Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998, 208-212.

"Embodied Meaning and Cognitive Science,” Language Beyond Postmoderism, David Levin (ed.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1997, 148-168.