Mark Johnson (philosopher)

Mark Johnson (born May 24, 1949) is an American philosopher known for his work in cognitive science, cognitive linguistics, and philosophy of mind. He is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Oregon.

Johnson's work is primarily focused on the role of embodied cognition in understanding meaning, reason, and imagination. He is best known for his collaboration with George Lakoff on the book Metaphors We Live By (1980), which revolutionized the field of cognitive linguistics by arguing that metaphor is not merely a figure of speech but a fundamental aspect of human thought and understanding. The book introduced the concept of conceptual metaphor, suggesting that our understanding of abstract concepts is grounded in embodied experiences and structured by metaphorical mappings from more concrete domains.

Following Metaphors We Live By, Johnson continued to develop and expand his theory of embodied cognition in subsequent works, including The Body in the Mind (1987), which further explored the role of bodily experience in shaping our cognitive structures and reasoning processes. He argues that our understanding of the world is fundamentally shaped by our physical embodiment and our interactions with the environment.

Johnson's later work, such as Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics (1993), extends his embodied cognition framework to the realm of ethics and moral reasoning. He argues that moral values and principles are not abstract, disembodied ideals, but rather are grounded in our lived experiences and shaped by our embodied understanding of the world. He emphasizes the role of imagination and empathy in moral judgment and action.

His contributions have been influential in fields ranging from philosophy and linguistics to psychology, education, and artificial intelligence. Johnson continues to lecture and write on the implications of embodied cognition for understanding human experience and knowledge. His work challenges traditional philosophical assumptions about the nature of reason, knowledge, and morality, advocating for a more embodied and experiential understanding of human cognition.