Philosophy in the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought

Author's name: George Laikovdar Publisher: Dar Al-Kitab Al-Jadid Al-Muttahidah Year of publication: 2025 Literary classification: Philosophy and Thought Brief about the book: The book discusses the vision of the body and its relationship with the mind and language in Western philosophical thought, rethinking what philosophy will become. Lyikov and Johnson start from three principles supported by evidence from cognitive science from empirical (experimental) studies in many fields, which are: the mind is embodied essentially, thinking is mostly unconscious, abstract concepts are widely metaphorical. They say, "These are three fundamental results of cognitive science. Because more than two thousand years of pre-philosophical reflection on these aspects of the mind have passed. And because of these discoveries, philosophy can never return as it was before." They add, "When these three results are taken together and examined in detail as results of the science of the mind, they appear incompatible with the central components of Western philosophy. They require a comprehensive rethinking of the most famous and widespread current approaches, namely postmodern philosophy. And our book asks: what will happen if we start with these empirical discoveries about the nature of the mind and rebuild philosophy? The answer is that empirical philosophy will require our culture to abandon some of its deepest philosophical assumptions, and this book is an expanded study of what many of those changes will look like in detail." The philosophers continue, "Our understanding of what the mind is of deep importance, as most of our core philosophical beliefs are inseparable from our view of thought. Thought has been understood for over two thousand years as the defining property of human beings; it includes not only our ability to reason logically but also our ability to research, solve problems, evaluate, criticize, reflect on how we should behave, and understand ourselves, others, and the world. For this reason, any radical change in our understanding of thought is a radical change in our understanding of ourselves. It is astonishing to discover, based on empirical research, that human rationality is not at all as the Western philosophical tradition believed it to be. But it is also shocking to discover that we are very different from what our philosophical tradition told us we are." They clarify that thought is not non-embodied, as widely depicted by tradition, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experiences. The claim that we need a body to think is not a commendable or entirely clear claim; rather, the assertion that the actual structure of the individual comes from the details of our embodiment is a shocking invitation. The neural and cognitive mechanisms that enable us to perceive and move also create schemas and methods of thought; therefore, to understand thought, we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanisms of neural linking. In short, thought is not in any way a property detached from the universe or a property of an unembodied mind. Instead, it is decisively shaped by the properties of our human bodies, with the remarkable details of our neural architecture and our everyday functioning in the world. Thought is evolutionary; abstract thought builds on the forms of perceptual and motor reasoning present in "lower" animals and benefits from them. The result is a Darwinian thought, a Darwinian mind: even in its most abstract forms, thought does not transcend our animal nature but benefits from it. Thus, discovering that thought is evolutionary completely changes our relationship with other animals and alters our view of humans as uniquely rational. Thought is not, therefore, the essence that separates us from other animals but what places us in continuity with them. Lyikov and Johnson see that thought is not cosmic in the sense of being an alien element, i.e., not part of the structure of the universe. However, it is cosmic as a shared universal capacity among all humans. What makes it shared is the common properties found in the way our minds are embodied. They add, "Thought is not fully conscious but mostly unconscious. Thought is not literal in particular but metaphorical and imaginative on a broad scale. Thought is not insensible but emotionally involved. This shift in our understanding of ourselves as human beings is profound. What we now know about the mind fundamentally contradicts the main classical philosophical views of what it means to be human. For example, there is no Cartesian dual human, with a separate, independent mind from the body, sharing the same transcendent, unembodied thought with every other person, capable of knowing everything about his/her mind simply through introspection. Instead, the mind is originally embodied, and thought is formed by the body. Since most thinking is unconscious, the mind cannot be simply known through introspection, and therefore empirical study is essential."