The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason

by Mark Johnson

"There are books—few and far between—which carefully, delightfully, and genuinely turn your head inside out. This is one of them. It ranges over some central issues in Western philosophy and begins the long overdue job of giving us a radically new account of meaning, rationality, and objectivity."—Yaakov Garb, San Francisco Chronicle

Genres: Philosophy, Linguistics, Psychology, Nonfiction, Language, Science, Anthropology

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1987

About the author

Mark is the author of gay coming-of-age adventure Changing Trains, The Blanket Seller and The Expat Commuter.

Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Roksana]

sorry Mark Johnson, wzięłam sb trochę ilustracji do magisterki ale ain't no way że to doczytam

[Gareth Williams]

Excellent companion for “the metaphors we live by”, leading gently into “embodied cognition”. One of several incredible books relating to these subjects.

Apparently there are these bad people called “objectivists”. They are frequently contrasted to the ‘more reasonable’ approach within. I’m not sure I have ever met a person who thinks propositional logic has solved the problem of human cognition and suspect this is more a reflection somehow of the culture wars so keenly fought on US campuses.

[Josiah Miller]

This is a great account of what it is to be human. We understand the world around us through our experiences, but it's our imagination and metaphorical relation to the empirical data that we gather that we can relate and perceive what we know.

[Deni]

С някои хора (Зина тебе гледам) не е полезно да се говори. Вредят на дължината на ТБР-a 😮‍💨😆

[Mahmoud Seifi]

a classic in the cognitive linguistics theory of meaning. clear ideas in transparent words!

[Katja]

A great book which you would appreciate even more if you are familiar with the standard, model-theoretic approach to semantics. Johnson's arguments are solid and convincing but it is yet unclear how operational his theory of (linguistic) meaning is.

[Stuart Macalpine]

Part of the very consistent work by Eleanor Rosch, George Larkoff and Mark Johnson on how experience based schematic metaphors structure our understanding of the world. A solid read with some useful insights.

[Cecilia Anastos]

Excellent read. I recommend readers to also read George Lakoff

[Dave Peticolas]

Johnson explores the cognitive role of "image schemata", which are recurring patterns and structures in our minds and which determine how we perceive and interpret our experience of the world. They also allow us to share meanings with each other as the schemata are derived from our bodily experience of functioning in the world and the similarity of our bodies and cultures lead us to have many of the same schemata in common.

[Tú]

a wow book on modal verbs with modest style of writing. Mark Johnson is a great philosopher whose contribution to the combination of metaphor and concrete linguistic expressions (typically modal verbs) is marvelous.

A great practical philosopher, one must say.

[Ben]

A very clear argument for the value of non-objecivist theories of meaning, giving proper emphasis to the place of understanding and metaphor, among other things.

[Mark]

On pause as of 04 June 2015