REVIEW

published: 29 June 2015

doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00875

Embodied understanding
Mark Johnson*

Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

Western culture has inherited a view of understanding as an intellectual cognitive

operation of grasping of concepts and their relations. However, cognitive science
research has shown that this received intellectualist conception is substantially out of
touch with how humans actually make and experience meaning. The view emerging
from the mind sciences recognizes that understanding is profoundly embodied, insofar
as our conceptualization and reasoning recruit sensory, motor, and affective patterns
and processes to structure our understanding of, and engagement with, our world.
A psychologically realistic account of understanding must begin with the patterns of
ongoing interaction between an organism and its physical and cultural environments and
must include both our emotional responses to changes in our body and environment,
and also the actions by which we continuously transform our experience. Consequently,
embodied understanding is not merely a conceptual/propositional activity of thought, but
rather constitutes our most basic way of being in, and engaging with, our surroundings
in a deep visceral manner.
Edited by:
Keywords: understanding, embodiment, embodied cognition, meaning, emotion, bio-functional understanding
Franco Zengaro,
Delta State University, USA
Asghar Iran-Nejad,
University of Alabama, USA
Introduction
Reviewed by: The term “biofunctional understanding” was introduced by Iran-Nejad in a technical report in 1980
Fareed Bordbar,
and subsequently elaborated in a number of publications (e.g., Iran-Nejad and Ortony, 1984; Iran-
University of Alabama, USA
Nejad, 2000; Iran-Nejad and Stewart, 2011; Iran-Nejad and Bordbar, 2013). It is an especially apt
William Stewart,
Delta State University, USA expression for the way we should approach a theory of human understanding. It reminds us that
we need to see how our capacities for understanding and reasoning are grounded in biological
*Correspondence:
Mark Johnson,
processes of organism-environment interaction. The “bio” component refers to the fact that we are
Department of Philosophy, University biological organisms evolved both to sustain in our person the conditions of life and to enhance
of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA its quality. The “functional” component refers to the fact that our activities as biological organisms
markj@[Link] give rise to our capacity to perform a wide range of cognitive and affective functions. These specific
emerging functions define who and what we are, and they shape the way we make sense of our
Specialty section: experience, including all of our higher order cognitive operations. These life-sustaining and life-
This article was submitted to enhancing functions are embodied in the sense that there is no mind, thought, valuing, or action
Cognition,
that is not in some way dependent upon our bodily makeup and patterns of engagement with our
a section of the journal
world. In short, our very ability to understand our world and other people arises from the nature
Frontiers in Psychology
of our bodily existence (including both our physical body and the structures and processes of our
Received: 02 January 2015
brains) plus the embodied interactions we have with our material and cultural environments.
Accepted: 13 June 2015
Published: 29 June 2015
In this article, I shall attempt to explain how our bodily nature and activities give rise to
understanding, by which I mean our way of situating ourselves more or less successfully in the
Citation:
Johnson M (2015) Embodied
world, in a manner that allows us to make sense of our surroundings, ourselves, other people,
understanding. and cultural institutions and practices. This embodied orientation challenges the unsatisfactory
Front. Psychol. 6:875. notion of understanding as merely an abstract intellectual grasping of concepts and their relations. I
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00875 argue, instead, that understanding is a full-bodied, full-blooded, fully passionate process that reaches

Frontiers in Psychology | [Link] 1 June 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 875

Johnson Embodied understanding

down into the visceral depths of our incarnate experience and though it is an artifact of centuries of philosophical theories of
connects us functionally to our physical-cultural world. mind, thought, and knowledge.
Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume all had influential faculty
theories of mind and thought, but Kant’s famous account has
Our Inherited Conception of Understanding no doubt had the greatest influence on our current perspective.
as Disembodied To oversimplify a bit (though not unfairly), Kant thought of
understanding as the power to create concepts and to apply them
The chief obstacle to employing the phrase “embodiment of to sense contents or other representations to generate knowledge
understanding” is that the dominant intellectual traditions within of objects of experience. He regarded understanding as an activity
Western culture have bequeathed to us a view of understanding of judgment, where “all judgments are functions of unity among
as either completely disembodied, or at least not primarily our representations” (Kant, 1781, A69/B93-94). Understanding,
dependent on the nature of our bodies and brains when it comes in Kant’s theory, performs unifying judgments that combine one
to the structures and processes of our conceptualization and or more representations under some concept. He explains: “...
reasoning. I begin, therefore, with a brief account of this received concepts rest on functions. By “function” I mean the unity of
folk theory of relatively disembodied understanding that stands the act of bringing various representations under one common
in the way of a deeper and more adequate appreciation of how the representation” (Kant, 1781, A68/B93). Concepts are thus formal
body grounds and participates in mind. Although I have several rules for ordering (i.e., making determinate in thought) various
times (Johnson, 1987, 2007, 2014; Lakoff and Johnson, 1999) given images or other concepts. For instance, according to Kant’s view,
strong critiques of what I have called “disembodied” views of the concept chair would be a rule (of the faculty of understanding)
mind, thought, and language, I have sometimes thought that this specifying the features that together constitute a given object as a
is perhaps too strong a term for the views I am challenging, since chair, and in this way the concept supposedly unifies a number of
only the most extreme ontological dualists think that mind can sense impressions into an object of knowledge (e.g., a chair). More
exist without a body. Instead, the view of disembodiment I am general concepts can also unify subsidiary concepts, such as when
criticizing is the assumption that the structures of our concepts, the concept furniture contains within it concepts for chairs, tables,
understanding, and reason are not grounded in the nature of our beds, sofas, etc. Concepts, for Kant, are thus formal structures,
brains and our sensory, motor, and affective capacities. Therefore, insofar as they identify the necessary and sufficient properties
I regard any theory (including materialist theories of mind) that or features something must have to be that particular kind of
tries to explain meaning, understanding, and reasoning without thing. Kant succinctly summarizes the relative contribution of
detailed reference to the nature and workings of our bodies as both intuitions (as the product of the faculty of sensations) and
“disembodied” in the broad sense. concepts (as the product of the faculty of understanding): “Our
Although there is in the West a long history of disembodied knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind;
views of mind, thought, and language, for our purposes we the first is the capacity of receiving representations (receptivity
need only trace the history back to the Enlightenment faculty for impressions), the second is the power of knowing an object
psychology that has so fatefully shaped our commonsense and through these representations (spontaneity in the production
theoretical views of mind down to the present day. The basic idea of concepts).... Intuition and concepts constitute, therefore, the
of faculty psychology is that any achievement or operation we elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without
attribute to creatures with minds can be explained in terms of an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition
the activity of discrete powers or capacities (i.e., faculties) that without concepts, can yield knowledge” (Kant, 1781, A50/B74).
either individually or conjointly produce the various kinds of As the past two centuries of Kant-influenced philosophy
judgments of which mind is capable. Each faculty supposedly and its critics have demonstrated, once you distinguish the
has its own distinct nature (essence) by virtue of which it matter of sensations from the formal structure of concepts,
carries out certain specific functions, such as perceiving, feeling, you cannot really explain how the two get combined in
forming concepts, reasoning, judging, or willing. For example, our acts of judgment. Once Humpty-Dumpty is broken (i.e., once
ability to perceive objects allegedly depends upon our capacity form (the concept) and matter (the sensations) are separated),
to passively receive sense impressions (of colors, textures, odors, you cannot put Humpty back together again. In his famous
sounds) of objects in the world. This alleged faculty of sensation is “Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding” (Kant,
typically thought to cooperate with the faculty of imagination, by 1781, A137/B176—A147/B186), Kant attempted to bridge the
which we order sensations into unified images or representations gap between the material of sensations supplied by the body
that can persist over time. According to most faculty psychologies, and the formal structuring supplied by the mind by finding a
full-blown knowledge of an object additionally requires a third capacity—imagination—that supposedly has one foot in the
faculty of understanding that supplies concepts for thinking (i.e., material and another in the formal, and somehow unites them in
conceptualizing) the object that has been presented to our senses one synthetic act. However, as has been well documented in Kant
and ordered by us into a unified image. Finally, we are supposed scholarship, this unifying move leaves the faculty of imagination
to be able to then expand our knowledge by using our faculty of a bit out in no man’s land. On the one hand, it seems bodily in the
reason to connect, according to the laws of logic, propositions into way it constitutes images out of sensations. On the other hand,
larger units (systems) of knowledge. Faculty psychology strikes it remains non-bodily in the way it generates formal schemata
most people in Western cultures as simple common sense, even (Johnson, 1987). This indeterminate status for imagination shows

Frontiers in Psychology | [Link] 2 June 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 875

Johnson Embodied understanding

up in the Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant sometimes aligns at the physical level, but also at the interpersonal and cultural
imagination with sensing and our bodily formation of images and levels. In other words, understanding is our way of making sense
other times with understanding and its capacity for spontaneously of and inhabiting the world in which we live, so that we can
generating synthesizing forms. go forward with our lives. Understanding is thus less a form
I cannot discuss the intricacies and problems of Kant’s schema- of knowing or thinking than it is a matter of experiencing and
tism here. It is enough for our purposes to recognize that unders- acting. To say that we understand something is to say that we
tanding (Verstand) has been defined as a faculty of concepts and grasp its meaning in a way that allows us to be at least somewhat
conceptual unifying judgments, in contrast with the contribution “at home in” and not alienated from our world. “Grasping”
to knowledge made by the bodily processes of sense perception meaning is not restricted to an intellectual act, but is rather a
and imagination. Concepts are the products of the synthesizing process of intelligent bodily organism-environment interaction.
power of the mind that allows us to grasp the form of objects This “intelligence” refers to our whole embodied engagement with
of knowledge. Kant insists that reason has an a priori structure our surroundings, and not merely to some intellectual operation
that makes possible logical relations and logical inference that are of thought. We “understand” some object, event, or idea when
supposedly in no way dependent for their structure on the bodily we grasp its significance for past, present, and future activity and
makeup or experience of any reasoning being. are able to carry that understanding forward into new experience.
Kant was not a Cartesian substance dualist (where “mind” Therefore, understanding is a form of embodied adaptive and
and “body” are two different kinds of substance); rather, he has transformative experience, since developing a new understanding
a dualism that aligns sensing and feeling with the body, and actually remakes experience.
conceptualizing and reasoning with acts of a transcendent ego, Let us consider in more detail and depth the steps of the
which is the source of a spontaneous organizing activity. argument in the previous paragraph. To develop an adequate
This “disembodied” view of understanding has seemed just understanding of experience, the starting point must be
right to many so-called functionalist philosophers of mind, organism-environment coupling through which both organism
since they regard mental operations as functional programs and environment change over time and establish new relations.
for manipulating representations based only on their formal In order to have a viable organism, you need a body—that is, a
(syntactic) properties. Kant’s view of determinate judgment living physical bodily structure with an interior and an exterior
as a synthetic operation through which concepts and other that are demarcated by a semi-permeable boundary that allows
representations are combined into propositional judgments the organism to take in energy, excrete waste, and operate
having a subject-predicate structure perfectly fit the information with relative integrity. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio nicely
processing view of mind that arose in the middle of the last summarizes the conditions for an organism’s management of its
century. On this view, sentences in natural languages are taken life functions in relation to its surroundings:
to express subject-predicate propositions that can map onto
mind-independent aspects of the world, thus generating objective (L)ife requires that the body maintain a collection of
knowledge of the world. Contemporary functionalist theories parameter ranges at all costs for literally dozens of
of mind (such as Fodor’s (1981) program and the view Hilary components in its dynamic interior. All the management
Putnam once held (Putnam, 1967) and later rejected) are good operations to which I alluded earlier—procuring energy
examples of relatively disembodied views of mind. When Putnam sources, incorporating and transforming energy products,
(1981, 1988) eventually came to reject his early functionalism, it and so forth—aim at maintaining the chemical parameters
was precisely because it lacked the requisite bodily engagement of a body’s interior (internal milieu) within the magic
with the environment that is necessary for any understanding and range compatible with life. The magic range is known as
knowledge of the world. homeostatic, and the process of achieving this balanced state
is called homeostasis. (Damasio, 2010, p. 42)

The Embodiment of Understanding This grounding in organism/environment interactions means

that, as both James (1890) and Dewey (1925) argued, we must
To say that understanding is embodied requires a fundamentally not base our account of understanding on any abstractions from
different orientation toward mind, thought, and language that experience, such as “sensations,” “concepts,” “propositions,” or
contrasts markedly with our received view of understanding “knowledge judgments.” To cite just one example, we must avoid
as an intellectual, disembodied, mostly conceptual process. the classical empiricist error of assuming that all experience begins
Embodied Cognition views start with the recognition that the with atomistic sense impressions that have to be synthesized,
locus of all our human perception, meaning-making, valuing, via associative processes, into unified perceptual judgments.
thought, and action is a series on ongoing organism-environment Contrast this erroneous view with the fact that what we
interactions (Dewey, 1925). Humans are embodied creatures actually experience are whole, unified situations, within which
that, before any other cognitive activities are possible, must first we experience individual objects, qualities, and events through
maintain the requisite conditions for their bodily integrity and life the selective discriminations by which we individuate aspects of
maintenance. Understanding is not just an intellectual operation, our experience. If we keep in mind that experience includes both
but rather a series of full-bodied engagements with significant the structure and activity of the organism as well as the structure
aspects of one’s environment that are meaningful for them and of the environment, we will appreciate how bodily processes are
that sustain their life and growth, and this happens not just absolutely crucial for the possibility of any form of cognition,

Frontiers in Psychology | [Link] 3 June 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 875

Johnson Embodied understanding

feeling, or action, and we will not abstract away from the body p. 49). Note that the “current context” referred to here would
and its environments. Otherwise, we end up selecting some part typically be not merely our physical surroundings, but equally our
or phase of an experience and then mistakenly assuming that interpersonal and communal relations.
what we have selected out (a sensation, quality, concept, image,
judgment) defines the whole of that experience, in all its depth Emotional Dimensions of Understanding
and richness.
The second important point is that the homeostasis necessary The next (i.e., fourth) characteristic of our embodied
for life should be thought of as what Jay Schulkin (2011) calls understanding is so important that it deserves its own separate
allostasis—a dynamic equilibrium in which the organism can, as heading. The tendency to regard understanding as an intellectual,
it interacts with its environment in an ongoing fashion, establish cognitive, conceptual, or propositional activity has led to the
a new equilibrium set-point, and does not merely return to downplaying or even denial of any role for emotion and feeling.
some pre-established, fixed set-point. According to Luu and On the face of it, such a separation is ludicrous, but that has not
Tucker (2003) “allostasis can be defined as the regulation of stopped committed cognitivists from excluding emotions from
many variables (including behavioral as well as physiological the domain of understanding, or even from regarding emotions
variables) over time to meet motive set-points that are established as contrary to acts of understanding. Nothing could be farther
dynamically... Rather than just responding to deviations from from the truth.
fixed set-points, allostasis allows the organism to anticipate needs To see immediately why this dismissal of emotion is such a
and to adjust configurations of regulatory goals in advance to meet devastating mistake, we need a brief consideration of the nature
those needs” (Luu and Tucker, 2003, pp. 125–126). It is only within and function of emotions in humans (and other animals). Here
a bounded organism that homeostasis or allostasis are possible, so, again, Damasio’s work has been quite influential, based on his
once again, we must keep our focus on the nature and conditions extensive research on the role of emotions and feelings in the
of the embodied organism in its many environments. formation of self, the emergence of consciousness, and the nature
The third key point is that it is always within the context of our values. The whole story of emotions, feelings, and their
of organism-environment transactions that values arise and neural and chemical substrates is quite long and detailed, but a
influence behavior. Our experience is value-laden all the way few key points are relevant to the argument I am making here.
down to the primitive emergence of the values required for life Put simply, emotions are neural-chemical-bodily response
maintenance. Damasio concludes, “I see value as indelibly tied patterns resulting from an organism’s monitoring of its changing
to need, and need as tied to life. The valuations we establish in body-state as it interacts with things in its environment.
everyday social and cultural activities have a direct and indirect These responses are generated—mostly unconsciously and
connection with homeostasis.... Value relates directly or indirectly automatically—when the organism detects some “emotionally
to survival. In the case of humans in particular, value also relates competent stimulus” (Damasio, 2003, p. 53) that the organism
to the quality of that survival in the form of well-being” (Damasio, registers as requiring some change in its body-state. Most of these
2010, pp. 47–48). This last sentence is crucial, insofar as it response patterns for the basic emotions have been established
recognizes that, for creatures as complex and interrelated as we and sedimented over our evolutionary history. “The ultimate
are, our primitive values include not just maintenance of bodily result of the responses, directly or indirectly, is the placement
equilibrium necessary for life, but also maintenance of social and of the organism in circumstances conducive to survival and
cultural equilibrium within larger communities. well-being” (Damasio, 2003, p. 53). Consequently, emotions
Because the focus of my argument is not directly on values, I are the result of our most important capacities to appraise our
will not elaborate Damasio’s extensive and nuanced treatment of situation in order to act appropriately within it. Most emotional
the origin and development of human values (see Damasio, 2003). response patterns are automatic and operate beneath our
I emphasize the pervasiveness of value only to emphasize that reflective awareness, but sometimes they are also accompanied
understanding is irreducibly value-laden and tied to our specific with feelings of those emotions, in which cases we are able to
environments, both physical and social/cultural. Understanding be consciously aware of the felt changes in our body-state as it
is not just a matter of concepts and propositions capturing some engages its environments. In short, emotional response patterns
aspect of the world; rather, it is a matter of appropriately situating constitute the body’s (mostly unconscious) registering of how it
and enabling purposive action in the world, relative to our well- is being altered by its engagement with its surroundings, and we
being. feel an emotional state whenever we become conscious of those
I also want to highlight the way in which values first emerge changes in our body state. So, we can be in an emotional state
from our bodily, interpersonal, and communal needs, which without necessarily being aware (through feeling) that we are in
are realized primarily in and through our bodily activities. In that specific state. That is why, for example, we can be angry, even
short, “the values that humans attribute to objects and activities before we feel angry.
would bear some relation, no matter how indirect or remote, to Emotional response patterns and emotional feelings thus lie
the two following conditions: first, the general maintenance of at the heart of our capacity to understand the various situations
living tissue within the homeostatic range suitable to its current in which we find ourselves. Emotional response patterns emerge
context; second, the particular regulation required for the process because of their general, though not always complete, suitability
to operate within the sector of the homeostatic range associated for helping us survive and enhance the quality of our existence.
with well-being relative to the current context” (Damasio, 2010, Consequently, our ability to understand what is happening in a

Frontiers in Psychology | [Link] 4 June 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 875

Johnson Embodied understanding

developing situation, as well as figuring out what it means for us, for the full range of human conceptualization, reasoning, and
is dependent on our emotional makeup. language. While they may grant that structures of embodied
Emotions are therefore an integral part of human meaning play a role in the semantics of ordinary concrete physical
understanding and meaning. I use the term “meaning” here objects and events, they will insist that abstract concepts cannot
in the way it was understood by the classical American Pragmatist be grounded in these embodied structures of meaning. So, the
philosophers. Basically, any thing (object, quality, event, important question arises: How do we get from the dimensions
person, idea) has meaning just insofar as it points to some of embodied understanding sketched above to our full capacity
experience, either past, present, or future (projected) that is for for abstract symbols and formal reasoning? The answer lies with
us connected with it. Things are meaningful because they afford the recruitment of sensory and motor capacities to perform
us various possible experiences. For example, with respect to conceptualization and rational inference.
past experience, the term “gun” might have a complex meaning Before considering abstract understanding, let us first consider
that recalls your experience with guns, the history of changing the role of the body in how we understand the meaning of a
weapons technologies, knowledge of your culture’s use of and simple physical object like a cup. Barsalou (1999) has pointed
attitude toward guns, and the history of gun violence, both at out that the meaning of concrete physical objects is not merely
home and abroad. In your present experience, the meaning is some abstract feature list of properties that supposedly define that
tied to certain objects (guns) that you can see, handle, and use kind of thing. He explains, “a concept is not a single abstracted
in various ways. This would include our visual experience of representation for a category, but is instead a skill for constructing
guns and our motor programs for using guns. In relation to idiosyncratic representations tailored to the current needs of the
our projected future, gun might afford various possibilities for situated action” (Barsalou, 2003, p. 521). The meaning of an
certain definite kinds of experiences, such as hunting, target object, and our conception of it, involves our simulation, via
practice, warfare, mass shootings, police practices, and criminal functional neuronal clusters involved with sensory, motor, and
operations. This Pragmatist conception of meaning is not just affective experiences, of various actual and possible interactions
tied to words in a language, for it stretches out to include any with the things we call cups. In other words, the meaning of any
form of symbolic activity in which meaning can emerge (e.g., object would be the kinds of experiences we have had, are now
painting, sculpture, architecture, music, dance, spontaneous having, or might someday have, with that sort of thing. For a
bodily gestures, ritual practices, etc.). This means that our cup, for example, some of these experiences would be visual—the
understanding of guns will include a vast body of visual, tactile, various views we might have of different cups as we regard them
auditory, gestural, movement, object manipulation, and other from multiple perspectives. Most of those views would present
possible experiences. the perceiver with a physical container structure that has a three
Within such a broad notion of meaning, emotions can play a dimensional boundary with an interior and an exterior, capable
crucial role, because they direct us toward tendencies for past, of holding liquids and solid substances. Some cups would have
present, and future experiences. Emotional response patterns handles, others would not. Some would be delicate china, others
indicate, at the deepest levels of our engagement with our world, thick and heavy, and still others thin and made of cheap materials
the perceived values to us of things and activities and the (paper, plastic, etc.). Our concept of a cup is not limited merely to
tendencies of various qualities, objects, and events. Brentano visual simulations, however. Our visual simulations of cups would
(1874) argued that the mark of the mental is intentionality—the be coupled with simulations of the tactile and motor interactions
directedness of a mental state toward some object. Emotions we have, or might have, with various kinds of cups. Neural imaging
exhibit intentionality just as much as linguistic terms and concepts studies show that when we see a cup, we are not only having
do. Emotions point to and mark the character of various situations activations in the visual areas of the brain, but also activation
in which we find ourselves. My joy this morning is not merely of motor programs and tactile sensations. Seeing a cup will thus
an internal mental state locked within my body-mind, but rather activate areas in the motor and pre-motor cortex that would be
it marks the character of my world as it stretches out before me involved in touching and handling cups, even though we are not
and affords me various possible experiences and modes of activity actually handling them (Gallese and Lakoff, 2005). These motor
and response. Instead of saying merely that I am joyful, it is simulations would include operations such as the arm, hand, and
more accurate to say that my situation—my mode of being in the finger movements that are necessary to grip cups of various types,
world—is joyful. sizes, and materials, and to raise them to our lips, take a drink, and
It is in this broad sense that emotions are just as much a crucial return them to a table. Thus, there would be the motor synergies
part of understanding as concepts and propositions are. Emotions (activated in motor cortex in the brain) required to partially close
are one of our primary and most important ways of taking the each finger, with just the right force so that we do not either drop
measure of our situation. They are appraisal processes that help or break the cup. These hand and finger movements also need to
us to orient ourselves meaningfully within a certain context and be coordinated and sequenced into a fluid hand-closing gripping
to grasp various possibilities for meaning and action. gesture that is just right for the size, location, and material makeup
of the cup. This sequencing is done in the pre-motor cortex.
Understanding Concrete Concepts Our visual, tactile, auditory, and motor simulations of
perceptions of, and interactions with, cups are still not the whole
Those who are enamored of disembodied views of understanding story. An adequate account would need to include what are
will claim that embodiment views cannot adequately account traditionally called the “esthetic” dimensions of our experiences

Frontiers in Psychology | [Link] 5 June 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 875

Johnson Embodied understanding

with cups. This would involve aspects such as our experiences metaphorical locations into and out of which some object, event,
with the different types of cups (e.g., fine china tea cups, mugs, or person could move. Thus, we use the language of physical
paper cups, plastic cups) that figure in the meaning of cup. It location and motion to metaphorically understand changes of
would also need to include our sense of the social and cultural state, as in “The water went from cold to hot in a matter of minutes,”
contexts in which these different types of cups are appropriately “He fell in love,” “She clawed her way out of her depression,”
used (e.g., tea ceremonies, dinner parties, meetings in cafes, family “He keeps getting into trouble,” and “She fell deep into debt when
meals, picnics, beer parties). These latter activities constitute her hedge fund collapsed.” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, 1999)
what are known in cognitive linguistics as “frames,” which are observed that such conceptualizations of change of state involve
complex event structures that have roles for agents, objects, a conceptual metaphor in which we understand being in a state
actions, causation, purposes, outcomes, and so forth (Fillmore, metaphorically as being within a bounded location. Change of state
1982; Lakoff, 1987; Feldman, 2006). is understood as movement from one state-location to another.
Our understanding of something as ordinary as a cup actually The metaphor here is a conceptual mapping across two different
turns out to be a fairly complex blending of simulated perceptions, experiential domains, namely, physical locations/motions and
emotions, and actions associated with the things we call cups, abstract states and changes of state (typically either physical states
within specific social and cultural contexts. It involves bodily or psychological/emotional states). The underlying metaphor,
activities of perception of qualities, forms, spatial locations, which we named the Location Event Structure metaphor, consists
internal structure, spatial relations, etc., and also activities of of the following mapping:
simulated body movement and object manipulation that are
appropriate in various cultural settings. This embodied account of • States Are Locations
understanding and meaning has come to be known as Simulation • Change of State is Motion From One Location to Another
Semantics. In his book, Louder than Words: The New Science of • Manner of Change is Manner of Motion
how the Mind Makes Meaning (Bergen, 2012), has presented scores
• Means of Attaining a Goal are Paths of Motion
of experiments showing how semantic simulation operates as we
hear and read sentences and grasp their meaning. He calls his view • Causes Are Physical Forces
the “embodied simulation hypothesis,” which asserts that “we • Causation Is Forced Movement from one Location to Another
understand language by simulating in our minds what it would be • Difficulties are Impediments to Motion
like to experience the things that the language describes” (Bergen,
• Purposes are Desired Locations (Destinations)
2012, p. 13).
The crucial moral I draw from this research on simulation • Progress Toward Goal is Motion Along a Path
semantics is that understanding is not just an intellectual
operation on disembodied concepts, ideas, or representations. In English (and most other languages around the world), there
Instead, understanding is a profoundly bodily process of are hundreds of linguistic expressions that manifest these basic
experiential simulation that uses complexly interconnected mappings. Thus, we say things like “She’s in a funk” (State As
brain regions responsible for all sorts of perceptual and motor Location), “He went from good to bad” (Change Of State As
activities, as well as emotional responses and feelings. It is critically Movement From One Location To Another), “This is the way to
important to keep in mind that the embodied simulations I have happiness” (Means To Goal Is A Path). “Her death pushed me
described here are typically not conscious reflective acts, but over the edge” (Causation Is Forced Movement), “He just stumbled
rather are carried out automatically and very rapidly, usually into the relationship with her” (Manner Of Change Is Manner Of
beneath the level of our conscious awareness. In other words, we Motion), “Don’t let your fear keep you from going where you want
do not actually have to consciously imagine that we are seeing to be in life” (Difficulties Are Impediments To Motion), and “I’m
or handling a cup, even though the functional neural ensembles half-way to paradise” (Progress Toward Goal Is Motion Along A
required for these simulations are activated in our brains. Path).
Notice that the source domain in conceptual metaphors
through which we understand the target is nearly always
Understanding Abstract Concepts
some experience of bodily perception, motion, feeling, personal
Up to this point, I have considered only our embodied interaction, or social relations (often those within a family). The
understanding of the concrete physical object cup. But that is mechanism involved is a recruitment of entities, qualities, and
merely a small part of the larger story of human understanding, for structures involved in perception, feeling, bodily movement, etc.,
we have to include some account of the bodily grounding of our to construct understanding of an abstract domain. In our present
understanding of abstract concepts like mind, knowledge, love, case of the Location Event Structure metaphor, one of the key
justice, fear, cooperation, etc. Explaining the possibility of abstract structures is what Lakoff (1987) and I (Johnson, 1987) called the
understanding is a vast project, so here I must be content to give a Container image schema, which consists of the following minimal
few examples of how parts of a comprehensive theory of the bodily structure:
basis of abstract understanding could be developed. Consider, for
example, the abstract notion of a state, such as being hot, cold, • A boundary
weak, invigorated, in love, depressed, or in trouble. Notice that in • An interior
English (and most languages) we speak of states as if they were • An exterior

Frontiers in Psychology | [Link] 6 June 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 875

Johnson Embodied understanding

As we saw earlier, the Container schema was actually involved So far, the vast majority of research on image schemas and
in our understanding of the meaning of cup, since cups have a their logics has been based on linguistic and conceptual analysis
three dimensional boundary that defines an interior and exterior. showing how, in languages all over the world, these basic
There are scores of image schemas, such as container, structures (1) underlie the meanings of terms for physical entities,
object, source-path-goal, near-far, up-down, center-periphery, states, and relations, and (2) shape our understanding of and
right-left, straight-curved, forced motion, degree of intensity, reasoning, via conceptual metaphor, about abstract concepts.
balance, iteration, and on and on (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff, 1987; However, in addition to this cognitive linguistic analysis, there is
Hampe and Grady, 2005). Image schemas emerge first in our now an emerging theory of the neural structures and processes
mundane unreflective bodily engagement with our environment, underlying image schemas (see Dodge and Lakoff, 2005 for a brief
as recurring patterns of our corporeal/spatial experience. They summary). There is also a complementary neural treatment of
can be realized in multiple modalities, such as vision, touch, taste, conceptual metaphor (Feldman, 2006; Lakoff, 2008). Lakoff and
and hearing (Dodge and Lakoff, 2005). Srini Narayanan provide the most extensive cognitive linguistic
Importantly, these image-schematic structures and and neural account of both of these phenomena in their
relationships are not limited to cases of concrete objects and forthcoming book, How Brains Think.
actions. Their structure and logic can also be appropriated for
abstract understanding, such as when, as we just saw above, a State Bio-functional Embodied Understanding
is understood metaphorically as a Location (which is a bounded
region, and hence a two- or three-dimensional container). For Human understanding is profoundly embodied. That is, it is
understanding and reasoning about abstract states, we recruit rooted in how our bodies and brains interact with, process,
our knowledge of the source domain, which will have its own and understand our environments in a way that recruits bodily
corporeal or spatial logic, to draw inferences about the target meaning, neural simulation, and feeling to carry out both concrete
domain. In the present example, the relevant logic is that of the and abstract conceptualization and reasoning. “Embodiment”
Container schema, such as: is thus not an add-on to the notion of the bio-functional
grounding of human understanding. It is integral to that notion.
1. If you are in a container (bounded region), you are not outside To say that understanding is bio-functional is necessarily to say
of it. that it is embodied, because the relevant functional operations
are those of an embodied organism in ongoing engagement
2. If you are outside a bounded region and cross the closed
with its material, interpersonal, and cultural environments. This
boundary, you will at some point end up within the bounded
perspective overthrows centuries of disembodied views that either
region (container).
deny or overlook the way our bodies, functioning within our
3. If object O is in Container A, and Container A is in Container changing environments, generate meaning, thought, and, I might
B, the object O is in Container B. add, values (Johnson, 2014).
We obviously do not yet have the full story of embodied
This image-schematic logic applies, not just to physical understanding—how it is worked up in our formative experience,
containers or bounded spaces, but to abstract containers like how it emerges in and is realized through our bodies and
states, mathematical sets, institutions, etc. (Johnson, 1987; Lakoff brains, how it undergirds and shapes our conceptualization
and Nunez, 2000). Thus, if I am kicked out of the Beautiful Persons and reasoning, and how it allows us to be “at home” in our
Club, then, by the embodied logic of Containment, I know I’m no world through our bodily engagement with our surroundings.
longer in the club. Or if I use the mathematical metaphor of Sets However, we are beginning to develop the tools, techniques, and
As Containers, then I get, from (3) above, the logical principle of experimental methods for studying the nature and operation of
Transitivity: All A are B, All B are C, so All A are C, and this holds our bio-functional understanding in sufficient detail to make it
for any kind of abstract entity (as metaphorical container) I can clear why we must never again revert to disembodied views of
imagine within a set-theoretical logic. mind, thought, language, and values.

References Dewey, J. (1925). Experience and Nature. Vol. 1, of The Later Works, 1925–1953. Jo
Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behav. Brain Sci. 22, 577–660. Dodge, E., and Lakoff, G. (2005). “Image schemas: from linguistic analysis to neural
Barsalou, L. W. (2003). Situated simulation in the human conceptual system. Lang. ground,” in From Perception to Meaning: Image Schemas in Cognitive Linguistics,
Cogn. Process. 18, 513–562. doi: 10.1080/01690960344000026 eds B. Hampe and J. E. Grady (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter), 57–91.
Bergen, B. K. (2012). Louder than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Feldman, J. (2006). From Molecule to Metaphor: A Neural Theory of Language.
Meaning. New York: Basic Books. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Brentano, F. (1874). “Psychology from an empirical standpoint,” in Psychology Fillmore, C. (1982). “Frame semantics,” in Linguistics in the Morning Calm, ed. The
from an Empirical Standpoint, eds A. C. Rancurello, D. B. Terrell, and Linguistic Society of Korea (Seoul: Hanshin Publishing Company), 111–137.
L. McAlister, transl. 2nd Edn. intr. by Peter Simons, 1995 (London: Fodor, J. (1981). The mind-body problem. Sci. Am. 244, 114–123.
Routledge). Gallese, V., and Lakoff, G. (2005). The Brain’s concepts: the role of the sensory-
Damasio, A. (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Orlando, motor system in conceptual Knowledge. Cogn. Neuropsychol. 22, 455–479. doi:
FL: Harcourt. 10.1080/02643290442000310
Damasio, A. (2010). Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. New Hampe, B., and Grady, J (eds). (2005). From Perception to Meaning: Image Schemas
York: Pantheon. in Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Frontiers in Psychology | [Link] 7 June 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 875

Johnson Embodied understanding

Iran-Nejad, A. (2000). Knowledge, self-regulation, and the brain-mind cycle of Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and
reflection. J. Mind Behav. 21, 67–88. Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.
Iran-Nejad, A., and Bordbar, F. (2013). The paradox of the missing function: how Lakoff, G., and Nunez, R. (2000). Where Mathematics Comes From: How the
similar is moral mutualism to biofunctional understanding? Behav. Brain Sci. 36, Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. New York: Basic Books.
93–94. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X12000957 Luu, P., and Tucker, D. (2003). “Self-regulation by the medial frontal cortex:
Iran-Nejad, A., and Ortony, A. (1984). A biofunctional model of distributed mental limbic representation of motive set-points,” in Consciousness, Emotional
content, mental structures, awareness, and attention. J. Mind Behav. 5, 171–210. Self-Regulation and the Brain, ed. M. Beauregard (Amsterdam: Benjamins),
Iran-Nejad, A., and Stewart, W. (2011). “First-person education and the 123–161.
biofunctional nature of knowing, understanding, and affect,” in Multiple Putnam, H. (1967). “Psychological predicates,” in Art, Mind, and Religion, eds W.
Perspectives on Problem Solving and Learning in the Digital Age, eds D. Ifenthaler, H. Capitan and D. D. Merrill (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburg Press), 37–48.
D. Kinshuk, P. Isalas, D. G. Sampson, and J. M. Spector (New York: Springer), Putnam, H. (1981). Brains in a Vat. Reason, Truth, and History. Cambridge:
89–109. Cambridge University Press, 1–21.
James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2. New York: Dover. Putnam, H. (1988). Why Functionalism Didn’t Work. Representation and Reality.
Johnson, M. (1987). The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 73–89.
and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schulkin, J. (2011). Adaptation and Well-being: Social Allostasis. Cambridge:
Johnson, M. (2007). The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Cambridge University Press.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Johnson, M. (2014). Morality for Humans: Ethical Understanding from the
Conflict of Interest Statement: The author declares that the research was
Perspective of Cognitive Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could
Kant, I. (1781). Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by N. K. Smith. New York: St.
be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Martin’s Press.
Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal
About the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Copyright © 2015 Johnson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms
Lakoff, G. (2008). “The neural theory of metaphor,” in The Cambridge Handbook of of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or
Metaphor and Thought. ed. Raymond Gibbs (Cambridge: Cambridge University reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor
Press), 17–38. are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with
Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which
Chicago. does not comply with these terms.

Frontiers in Psychology | [Link] 8 June 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 875