One of the many puzzles philosophy is dealing with is how meaning comes about. An increasing number of investigations in cogni-tive science indicate that the body plays a central role in grounding the meaning of concepts and language. Particularly there are many indica-tions that our abilities to move, perceive and act upon the world are di-rectly related to our capacity to understand linguistic expressions. In this paper we will review some of the more salient findings in this area of re-search (...) and indicate their consequences for the debate about how mean-ing and body are related. (shrink)

will point out that Mandeville makes a fundamental distinction between �self-love� and �self-liking�; �self-love� being the immediate orientation towards our self-preservation and �self-liking� being comparative: it is our inclination to overrate ourselves in comparison with others. We are more or less conscious that we overestimate ourselves and for this reason we constantly have to nourish our �self-liking�. To do this we even have sometimes to conquer our �fear of death� (self-love), e.g. when we commit suicide to avoid shame. The presupposition (...) that mankind according to Mandeville is consistently motivated by �self-interest� apparently is in need of quite a few adjustments. This implies, further, that a difference between Mandeville and Hobbes becomes manifest, which undermines the supposition of their basic similarity. This is clearly illustrated by the suicide example: in the Hobbesian world suicide can only be understood as a sort of mental disease. After all, a suicide acts against the principle of self-preservation. In the Mandevillean world committing suicide belongs to the same category of phenomena as brave behaviour during wars and fighting a duel: in all of these cases the �fear of shame� (self-liking) conquers the �fear of death� (self-love). (shrink)