Rating: 
Summary: masterful but where is Freud?
Review: Reviews below pointed out two prominent philosophers the authors have neglected. But I think the biggest omission is the late Freud, whose concept of a "bodily ego" is remarkably similar to the views presented here. Moreover Freud's work in dream interpretation, though rather naive, also anticipates Lakoff and Johnson. Before these authors, the father of psychoanalysis was the only thinker to take seriously the metaphorical nature of thought. But of course there's much that is original in this book, particularly the extensive critique of western philosophy. Chomsky and Quine have indeed retired . . .
Rating: 
Summary: Equally painful and pleasurable
Review: Some of the comments have been unkind on this book, and this is in part correct. The sheer breadth of what they attempt to do - a reconceptualising of philosophy through the body - means that, even in 500+ pages, there is little doubt they can do the subject justice. They have a damn good go, though.I found the book alternately easy-going and hard, interesting and repellant. People will bring their own specialisations with them when they read the book and so will become enraged at different points within the book. My personal interest - in physiological vision - was mentioned only really in passing but there was enough there to use on other matters for the book to be considered generally useful. I do resent having to read all through it and having to endure repetition, though. The phrase about '2nd-generation cognitive science', as if it were a panacea, contributes towards the narrow-minded scientism that they were presumably attempting to rid 20th-Century philosophy of in the first place -- especially in their dealings of analytic philosophy. And their treatment of 'poststructuralist' philosophy is best forgotten, even though Iragary, Grosz and Deleuze could have given them a big helping hand...
Rating:
Summary: Doorstop or groundbreaker?
Review: Tend to the latter. Amazing work, especially valuable as a foil if you are a serious rationalist and/or realist (with small 'r's). The authors take a fairly reasonable realist stance, and try to retain as much reasonable rationalism as possible and consistent with the book's proposed findings; but they do seriously challenge major aspects of r & r, as these have commonly been understood - although one *sometimes* feels they are clutching at straw men! The publisher's blurb pretty much describes it accurately. This work could have an impact on all areas of your thought, *everything* might have to be re-jigged to a greater or lesser extent once you decide to take this stuff seriously. BTW, has anybody thought of analogies between this work and Douglas Hofstadter's recent work? Dennett might be another healthy cross-fertilisation.
Rating: 
Summary: Vital reading for all modern philosophers and their students
Review: The authors don't say it, they may not even know it; but this book is revolutionary. Not only does it suggest that philosopy has to start again almost from scratch, but it is an opening blow of the scientific attack upon philosophy in which the end results will probably be the same as those of the scientific attack upon religion.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting premise marred by flawed exposition
Review: The authors set out on what *appeared* to be an interesting project. How could philosophy be reconstructed in order to be made compatible with the "results" of second-generation cognitive science? Yet Philosophy is not fundamentally an empirical enterprise. Empirical results, while interesting, do not often help to answer philosophical questions. Knowing that we conceptualize time as moving does little to tell us whether the A theory or the B theory of time is true. One of them must be, for they are mutually exclusive alternatives. Is space-time kind of substance, or is it merely a system of relations? Are propositions about the future true *now*? Nothing in this book will give you an inkling. The authors seem confused between a thing and and our conceptualization of it, and the majority of this book just seems like a long ad hominem circumstantial. Even if everyone who ever believed in God was absolutely insane, that would do nothing to settle the *philosophical* issue of whether or not God actually exists. The fact that we conceptualize time spatially tells us nothing about whether or not time is really like space. It might be, and it might not be, the fact that we conceptualize it thus is entirely irrelevant to the issue. The problem lies in their calling these cognitive mechanisms "metaphors", since calling them such presupposes that they cannot be literally true. Since the authors treat them as metaphors, they win by default, and there's simply no argument to be had. For example, they call "time is space" a metaphor. But is it really? The past does not seem to be co-located with the future. They do not interpenetrate each other, and this presupposes that they are indeed "separated" some quasi-spatial sense. It would have been better if the authors examine these "metaphors" as they went along to decide whether they were true or false, instead of postulating a priori that all conceptualizations must be nonliteral. For a whopping 600 pages the content is remarkably sparse. Their shallow analysis of philosophical theories is more likely to inspire laughter than serious reconsideration. Their theory of truth is also very deficient. If whatever is true is true "according to an understanding" how is it that anything ever turns out to be false? Suppose I have two patches of color that are almost exactly the same shade of red, but not quite. Let's call them red #96 and red #97. Suppose further that they look indistinguishable. Then I propose to you that the two patches are the same shade. You look at them and (mis)percieve that they are the same shade. So the proposition is true "according to your understanding". But it is in fact false. Truth fundamentally involves a relation between the asserting mind and the fact asserted, and all the cognitive science in the world cannot change that. I give this wasted exercise two stars.
Rating:
Summary: An adventerous journey in the world of imagination
Review: The book is very well written and it presents the topic in extreme clarity with only one problem; it doesn't relate what it says to reality. The author keeps mentioning research findings without referencing any particular findings and arrives at conclusions without informing the reader of how these conclusions have been arrived at. The author doesn't even he justify how credible or well established are the research findings on which it is based. This makes the book seem closer to science fiction than science in other words too perfect to be believable; simply the closer a science is to reality the more uncertain it is.
Rating: 
Summary: Paradigmatic deconstruction to be taken with a pinch of salt
Review: The central argument of this book is that human abstract thinking is built upon sensory-motor and concrete thinking which form the universal foundations of human cognitive activity and that all abstract thinking are really metaphors for these foundations. They presume that since the early development of human intelligence takes place within the context of our bodies and our interactions with the physical environment the cognitive mechanisms for abstract thinking are based on neurological layers built above the sensory motor modes on to which they are mapped. These are not new ideas, of course. The developmental stages of Piaget provide much the same perspective on human cognitive ontology. Contemporary research in artificial intelligence presuppose the same. Lakoff and Johnson, while presuming the same, are not concerned with marshalling the evidence to justify this position. It becomes the ideological foundation of their broadside against the entire body of western thought. The evidence presented by Lakoff and Johnson for their hypothesis is entirely comprised of a linguistic analyses of the metaphors we use when talking about abstract ideas. They argue that since we are usually not aware of the sensory- motor and concrete origins of our abstract thinking the borrowed logic of the metaphors prevent us from engaging in true abstract thinking. Neither we nor any of the great philosophical forefathers of Western thought are or were aware of that. We cannot think what we think we are are thinking, and neither could they. The entire body of Western philosophy can be reduced to a collection of metaphors for the embodied sensory-motor mind. The broadest criticism of Lakoff and Johnson must refer to the negative self reference inherent in their main argument. Their deconstruction of human thinking and all of Western philosophy is itself abstract. If their method gives us a valid critical method that leads to knowledge about the function of human minds and its habits of thinking, then Western philosophy too must preserve its claim to yield valid arguments and true knowledge. Despite this, however, these authors make a valid point. Much of our language about abstract concepts is metaphorical. This insight is not new. Besides the usual favorites of postmodern writers such as Neitzche and Freud who both discussed (besides using) metaphor, the issues is not new to philosophical debate. Even Aristotle, the linguistic essentialist par excellence, talked about the use of metaphor. Besides the evidence offered by Lakoff and Johnson, there is a large body of evidence from evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology and the study of artificial intelligence which contribute to the view of human intelligence, broadly speaking, as having been shaped by embodied sensory motor mechanisms and experiences. Unfortunately, very little of this evidence was marshaled by these authors. Lakoff and Johnson's chief conclusion does not follow from the data they present. Metaphorical thinking may be a barrier to pure abstract thinking but at another level it may be the bridge which enables us to grapple with concepts outside the sensory-motor and concrete operations of everyday life. Why it should not be possible to meaningfully map systems of abstract ideas onto the metaphors is not explained by Lakoff and Johnson. Simply to point out that the language of abstract thinking is metaphorical does not prevent it from being the language of abstract thinking. Lakoff and Johnson's rather cavalier dismissal of the entire body of Western philosophy on the basis of the metaphors employed by important representative writers is not convincing. The corpus of Kant's work, for example, cannot be reduced to the "strict father" metaphor which Lakoff and Johnson claim to find underlying almost everything he said; a description which in any case is dubious at best. Where these metaphors can be found, they do not invalidate Kant's systematic and monumental works, which have their own meaning. In some places, the metaphors seem to be found more strongly in Lakoff and Johnson's presentation than in the original works. Kant was mistaken in some central aspects of epistemology. His synthetic a priori judgments, which he took to be certain and necessary truths, became shaky with the development of electrodynamic theory in the 19th Century and lost all credibility after general relativity was discovered in the early part of the 20th. Einstein freely used spatial metaphors to describe the formalism of relativity but these in no way invalidate his theory. It is interesting to note that the most abstract of contemporary theories of matter employ terms such as "spin", "color" and "charm" to designate formal entities which we know can have no such physical meaning; they are merely terms in equations describing properties of quantum waves. The use of these metaphors, as distinct from calling them "particle a", "particle b" and so one, has no impact on the truth or validity of quantum formalism. Where Lakoff and Johnson are able to demonstrate that philosophers have systematically used metaphors in their language, they have failed to demonstrate that the logic of the metaphors is carried over to the thinking of the philosophers in question to such a degree that their works are invalidated. Perhaps this happens some times - but not all the time to everyone. Lakoff and Johnson's arguments are often forced and not convincing. They are indubitably post-modern critics of traditional philosophy and need to be taken with a large pinch of salt (metaphor intended).
Rating:
Summary: Warmed over reifications of "science" & "philosophy"
Review: These guys should get a little help from an expert like Noam Chomsky who could set them straight. What a boring, uniformed attempt to "appear"scholarly. Thankfully, I got my money back for the book.
Rating:
Summary: A displeasure to read!!
Review: This book was abhorrent to my philosophical sensibilties!! I found it narrow-minded and boring. Johnson seems bent on interpreting all of philosophy according to his lame, psuedo-scientific theory of metaphor, and the result leaves much to be desired in the way of actual explanation. Much is asserted in this book, but not a lot is backed up with cogent reasoning. For a better view of reality, I recommend a real language-scientist, such as Chomsky or Pinker
Rating:
Summary: The best we have so far.
Review: This volume is the best argument we have so far on behalf of the dismantling of Western philosphical traditions based on what has been learned about the human project by cognitive scientists. It is essential reading. The vehemence with which some have dismissed it is certainly a plus, but the book's true value is in every word of the text. We truly can begin again with a more correct understanding of our place in the universe -- the superstitions embedded in Plato's assumptions are seen for what they are: magical thinking.
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