When developing buildings or ideas, it is critical to start with a good solid foundation. In fact, when people fail to build with a solid foundation, is usually not even worth one’s while to correct the work. It’s best to trash the entire project and start over with a worthy foundation.

When it comes to ideas, there are three intellectual foundations that become indispensable. These three foundational ideas were set forth in the opening words of Philosophy in the Flesh: the Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1999):

• The mind is inherently embodied.
• Thought is mostly unconscious.
• Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.

Based upon evidence proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (and numerous other cognitive scientists), the battle over these ideas is utterly over. To argue otherwise is, in fact, to argue foolishly. Yet, for many, these three principles have not soaked in. There is constant deep resistance to these ideas among many of the people who present themselves as today’s premier philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, theologians, teachers, and political leaders.

As to why these ideas are so often ignored, there could be many potential explanations. I suspect that many people fear each of these principles because they suggest that we humans lack complete power and control over our lives. That thought makes all of us uncomfortable, of course, though a few of us are willing to take our harsh medicine to heart. Most people, however, are not willing to re-conceptualize traditional accounts of what it means to be human. They are not willing to dispense with a believe that each of us has an ethereal soul that is “free” to think any thought, a soul that is unencumbered by our clunky, fallible, poop and saliva-laden bodies. They like to believe that our conscious thoughts fully capture the full importance of every moment and every drop of sentience and proto-sentience. They prefer to believe that when it comes to words, Humpty Dumpty correctly declared: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more or less.” They want to believe that humans have the power to speak forcefully without first having to develop a coherent theory of language, as though words serve as infallible conduits for transporting our purified ideas from here to there.

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