ABSTRACT
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson believe that Western philosophy is committed to a traditional correspondence theory of truth, that is, to the idea that words fit the world rather in the way that maps fit landscapes. On the subject of the unconscious mind Lakoff and Johnson say cognitive science has discovered that 95 percent of thinking is unconscious. Lakoff and Johnson argue, in effect, that although metaphorical meaning has a more complicated origin than literal meaning both kinds are ultimately traceable to interactions between the body and its environment. Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson is an account of work in cognitive science, a multidisciplinary project compounded of linguistics, psychology, statistical inquiries, computer modeling, and speculation about the nature of the mind. ‘Embodied truth’ is a soft version of relativism and as such it can have no role in philosophical discourse.
