George Lakoff: How Brains Think: The Embodiment Hypothesis

Published on Apr 7, 2015

Keynote address recorded March 14, 2015 at the inaugural International Convention of Psychological Science in Amsterdam.

Saturday, 14 March 2015


George Lakoff
Departments of Linguistics and Cognitive Science, University of California, Berkeley, USA

How do we answer the question, “How are thought and language constituted by the brain’s neural circuitry?” Neuroscience alone cannot answer this question. The field that studies the details of embodied conceptual systems and their expression in language is cognitive linguistics. In a book (in preparation with Srini Narayanan) we propose a neural computational “bridging model” as a way to answer the question. The talk gives illustrative details.

George Lakoff is a world-renowned cognitive linguist whose work reaches beyond the area of linguistics to provide groundbreaking insights into the realms of neuroscience and cognitive psychology as well. He is a pioneer in the multidisciplinary theory of the embodied mind, the idea that higher-order aspects of cognition are rooted in and constrained by bodily features such as the motor and perceptual systems. Additionally, his metaphor theory and insight into morally based framing, in which ideas are conveyed using very specific language that is tied to a larger conceptual framework such as freedom or equality, have made him a go-to strategist for politicians.

Read more about George Lakoff.

Books by George Lakoff that might be of interest.


Metaphors We Live By (2003, updated reissue)
Where Mathematics Comes From: How The Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics Into Being (2000)
Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind & its Challenge to Western Thought (1999)