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Lakoff's original thesis on conceptual metaphor was expressed in his book with Mark Johnson entitled Metaphors We Live By in 1980.
Metaphor has been seen within the Western scientific tradition as purely a linguistic construction. The essential thrust of Lakoff's work has been the argument that metaphors are primarily a conceptual construction, and indeed are central to the development of thought. He says "Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature." Non-metaphorical thought is for Lakoff only possible when we talk about purely physical reality. For Lakoff the greater the level of abstraction the more layers of metaphor are required to express it. People do not notice these metaphors for various reasons. One reason is that some metaphors become 'dead' and we no longer recognise their origin. Another reason is that we just don't see what is going on.
For instance, in intellectual debate the underlying metaphor is usually that argument is war:
For Lakoff, the development of thought has been the process of developing better metaphors. The application of one domain of knowledge to another domain of knowledge, thus offering new perceptions and understandings.
Lakoff's theory has major consequences if correct. It points to the complete re-evaluation of the entire Western philosophical and scientific traditions. It has applications throughtout all academic disciplines and indeed within all society. Lakoff has sought to explore the full consequences of this view in his later works.
When Lakoff claims the mind is "embodied", he is arguing that almost all of human cognition, up through the most abstract reasoning, depends on and makes use of such concrete and "low-level" facilities as the sensorimotor system and the emotions. Therefore embodiment is a rejection not only of dualism vis-a-vis mind and matter, but also of claims that human reason can be basically understood without reference to the underlying "implementation details".
Lakoff is, with Rafael E. Núñez, the primary proponent of the embodied mind thesis.
Lakoff offers three complementary but distinct sorts of arguments in favor of embodiment. First, using evidence from neuroscience and
neural network simulations, he argues that certain concepts, suchas color and spatial relation concepts (e.g. "red" or "over"), can be almost entirely understood through the examination of how processes of perception or motor control work.
Second, based on cognitive linguistics' analysis of figurative language, he argues that the reasoning we use for such abstract topics as warfare, economics, or morality is somehow rooted in the reasoning we use for such mundane topics as spatial relationships. (See
conceptual metaphor.)Finally, based on research cognitive psychology and some investigations in the philosophy of language, he argues that very few of the categories used by humans are actually of the black and white type amenable to analysis in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. On the contrary, most categories are supposed to be much more complicated and messy, just like our bodies.
"We are neural beings," Lakoff states, "Our brains take their input from the rest of our bodies. What our bodies are like and how they function in the world thus structures the very concepts we can use to think. We cannot think just anything - only what our embodied brains permit."
A criticism of Lakoff would be that he writes as if he has discovered something unique with the concept of the embodied mind. However, a number of thinkers have considered the mind to be 'embodied', and his argument would be stronger if he referenced their ideas. Physicist David BohmDavid Joseph Bohm ( December 20, 1917 October 27, 1992) was an American quantum physicist. Born at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Bohm attended Pennsylvania State College, graduating in 1939 and then heading west to work with theoretical physicist Robert Opp made a similar argument for embodiment in Thought As A System. John GrinderJohn Grinder is the co-inventor (with Richard Bandler) of Neuro-linguistic programming. Critics claim they were more concerned with the bottom line than with scientific validity. They might argue that they were concerned with what works rather than scient and Richard BandlerRichard Bandler (born February 24, 1950) is the co-inventor (with John Grinder) of Neuro-linguistic programming as described in their book 'The Structure of Magic' however they have now fallen out which has caused tensions within the NLP community. Critic articulated this view in Neuro-linguistic programmingNeuro-linguistic programming (NLP is a field of human endeavor concerned with empirically studying and modeling human performance and excellence, with the goal of creating transferable skill sets. The field has grown in many directions since its beginning, though referencing them would probably not help his academic credentials.
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