Embodied Imagination: Lakoff and Johnson’s Experientialist View of Conceptual Understanding

This paper reviews an embodied or experientialist view of conceptual understanding. It focuses on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s theory of embodied cognition and its framing of human conceptualization and reasoning in terms of embodied imagination. These ideas are summarized as ten basic claims: (a) objectivist assumptions are problematic; (b) many human categories have non-classical structure; (c) conceptual systems consist of cognitive models; (d) thinking utilizes frames, metonymies, and prototypes; (e) metaphor is prevalent and primarily conceptual; (f) image schemas structure our experiences; (g) the mind is embodied; (h) abstract thought is largely metaphorical; (i) truth is relative to embodied understanding; and (j) philosophy should be empirically responsible. Lakoff and Johnson’s theory of embodied cognition offers a view of conceptual understanding that is cognitively realistic (or empirically responsible), biologically plausible, and self-critical, while providing adequate theories of meaning and truth grounded in embodied experience.