Embodied Mind: Science Compels Philosophy To Rethink
Science
Human beings have 100 million light-sensing cells in an eye. But the human eye has only about 1 million fibers leading to the visual cortex. This means each image has to be reduced by a factor of 100.
Such a categorization of information in each fiber from the 100 cells exists throughout the brain. Most categories are formed unconsciously and automatically while a small percentage is created by conscious categorization.
(The stars above and the chairs below: we see them as stars and chairs. Or when we see trees, we see them as trees. Not just as individual objects distinct from one another.
Categorization does not merely happen after the experience. It is the stuff of experience itself: it is the structure that differentiates aspects of our experience. )
Flaws In Philosophy
Cognitive science reveals the flaws of many western philosophical thoughts whose certain aspects have to be, in light of what science discovers, rethought. Here are some of the flaws:
a) Mainstream Western philosophers believe that reality comes divided up into categories independent of human minds, brains, or bodies. This is false.
b) Mainstream Western philosophers believe that the world has a rational structure independent of the human minds, brains, or bodies. This is false, again.
c) Mainstream Western philosophers believe that the structure of human reason is defined by transcendent reason independent of human bodies or brains. This is false, again.
d) Mainstream Western philosophers believe that human concepts are the concepts of transcendent reason which are therefore defined independent of human brains or bodies and disembodied. This is false, again.
e) Mainstream Western philosophers believe that the world has a unique, fixed category structure that we all know and use when we reason correctly. This is false, again.
f) Mainstream Western philosophers believe that what makes us human is our capacity for disembodied reason. This is false, again.
g) Mainstream Western philosophers believe that our essential humanness has nothing to do with our connection to nature, art, music, or to anything of the senses. This is false, again.
References:
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson