Abstract
This article uses the Confucian and Neo-Confucian slogan that we should strive to “form one body with all things” as a starting point for asking whether the organismic metaphors so central to their ontology might be compatible with and of service to contemporary thinkers in cognitive science and philosophy of mind who are actively pursuing a fully embodied theory of mind. In this article I draw upon lines of inquiry exemplified in the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Lakoff and Johnson 1999) and Andy Clark (Clark 1997) who take different routes to important conclusions that I argue would be even more convincing where they to be seen from within the context of an ontology that draws upon organismic rather than mechanistic metaphors. In short, this article draws attention to the largely unnoticed fact that a fully embodied understanding of mind, one that treats knowledge as a kind of active engagement with the world rather than as a purely cognitive state, points away from mechanistic metaphors and toward organismic ones.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the two anonymous readers who provided very helpful comments that strengthened this article’s argument significantly, especially with respect to my discussion of Wang Yangming’s understanding of “forming one body with all things.”
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Frisina, W.G. Forming One Body with All Things: Organicism and the Pursuit of an Embodied Theory of Mind. Dao 21, 107–133 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-021-09817-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11712-021-09817-5