Some observers note that Lakoff and Johnson’s “cognitive - TopicsExpress

Some observers note that Lakoff and Johnson’s “cognitive linguistics” extends the insights of Jean Piaget. In their central work, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, however, Lakoff and Johnson thank “two of our greatest philosophers of the embodied mind, John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty,” but say not a word about Jean Piaget. Surprisingly there’s no reference to Piaget anywhere in the book. Hypothesis: If one applied the very practical metaphor of Ockham’s Razor to the reifications of Lakoff and Johnson’s “metaphor theory,” one might uncover the clear, uncluttered insights of Piaget’s Genetic Epistemology. Any thoughts on this hypothesis would be appreciated.