Possible Offering in Spring 2009: Readings in Philosophy (PHIL 401)

Analytic Philosophy and Cognitive Science: The Challenge of Embodied Realism

“Analytic Philosophy” has been the dominant perspective of philosophy in the English-speaking world since the early 20^th century. Embodied realism is a perspective informed by cognitive science and developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in the late 20^th century.

If there is sufficient interest among philosophy majors and minors, I would like to offer a course focusing upon the confrontation between analytic philosophy and embodied realism.

Although the course would not be offered before Spring 2009, the department will have to decide in early Fall whether to offer this course the next semester.  I am trying to gauge interest among our current students to facilitate planning. Please contact me (jan.garrett@wku.edu) to indicate if this is an option you might seriously considering taking.

More information that may help you reach a tentative conclusion:

Analytic philosophy is associated with figures such as Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, A. J. Ayer, W. V. O. Quine, Carl Hempel, and others. Because of time constraints, we would probably concentrate on the first and second phases of this movement, Logical Atomism and Logical Positivism.

Lakoff’s and Johnson’s work in cognitive linguistics led them to undertake a critique of the philosophical tradition, which they published in their 1999 book Philosophy in the Flesh. At the heart of their view is a theory of conceptual metaphor, which provides a novel yet increasingly well-confirmed explanation regarding how human beings form the concepts with which we think about everyday matters such as time, mind, and causality and sheds new light on philosophical treatments of these and other issues.  Embodied realism, according to Lakoff and Johnson, directly challenges the assumptions upon which analytic philosophy rests.

This course would be designed to acquaint students with analytic philosophy and the Lakoff-Johnson theory of human cognition, so that they could begin to determine for themselves whether the challenge of embodied realism to the analytic tradition has merit.

Given the nature of analytic philosophy, a prerequisite for this course would be Introduction to Logic. At least one course in the history of philosophy would be highly desirable. Some familiarity with 20^th century propositional and predicate logic is required. Your philosophy instructor can explain these terms if they are unfamiliar to you.

Probable textbooks

Robert Annerman, ed., Classics of Analytic Philosophy

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh, 1999