Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/06/2025
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Location
The Rose Battersea
On 1 June 2025 Bob Clarke will speak on ‘Philosophies of Embodiment’.
From the 1970s onwards Philosophies and Sciences of Cognition, Mind, Language, Thinking and Consciousness have been developed that emphasise the fact that we are animals with bodies and that our very embodiment deeply affects the ways we think about the world. The philosopher Mark Johnson has referred to earlier approaches, such as those that treat mental acts as computational processes, as ‘First Generation’ cognitive theories as they have largely ignored our embodiment. The ‘Second Generation’ theories that he – and others we shall meet in this talk – promote take full account of our embodiment. We will survey three varieties of embodiment theory: (1) ‘Autopoiesis’, which treats Life as a whole, (2) ‘4EA’ – standing for the fact that life is Embodied, Enacted, Embedded, Extended and Affective – which deals with our Cognition and (3) ‘Conceptual Metaphor Theory’, which, among other claims, argues that metaphor is not just an ornament in our language, it is constitutive of our human ‘take’ on the world. It also argues that our abstract and philosophical Concepts, and the Language we use to speak about them, emerge from more worldly, day-to-day, concepts via Embodied metaphors.
The development of Embodied Theories of Life, Cognition and Language over the past 50 years or so has been undertaken in a multidisciplinary enterprise by philosophers and scientists working together, and it continues to progress through such collaborations, giving us a better understanding of ourselves and how we interact with our world.
Bob will give his talk at The Rose Battersea, 74-76 Battersea Bridge Road, London SW11 3AG but the meeting will also be on Zoom see SLPC Zoom Meeting
We always welcome new speakers. If you would like to give a talk on a philosopher or a philosophical topic please contact Adrian Carter at southlondonphilosophy@gmail.com