The body debate between Lakoffian naturalism and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology

Lakoff and Johnson develop a new understanding of philosophy based on the developments in cognitive sciences. This approach, referred to as Lakoffian naturalism in our study, comes to the fore with a normative claim that philosophy should adopt cognitive sciences as a method. Accordingly, the relationship between consciousness and the body is achieved by explaining cognitive processes by bodily processes. However, for Lakoffian naturalism, the innovations brought by Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to the concept of the body are important. In Philosophy in the Flesh, the main work introducing Lakoffian naturalism, the concept of "flesh" is used with reference to Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. However, Merleau-Ponty phenomenology cares about the boundary between the scientific and the philosophical. In this context, our study problematises the philosophical character of Lakoffian naturalism. Lakoffian naturalism, which treats the body as a scientific object, is taken as a type of empirical naturalism in our study. In this case, how the body can be addressed philosophically appears as a problem. The body, in other words, bodily existence, can be recognised with a philosophical perspective through Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. Thus, the phenomenal dimension of the body emerges.