Reflections on the Evolution and Influence of the Concept of the Embodied Mind

My guest today is Evan Thompson, known to many in the worlds of cognitive science, Asian studies, and philosophy, and one of the foundational figures in the story of Mind & Life Europe. Evan was one of Francisco Varela’s closest collaborators and co-authored with Francisco and Eleonore Rosch the now classic volume, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991, reissued in 2016). 

Evan is currently a writer and professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He received his A.B. from Amherst College in 1983 in Asian Studies and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto in 1990. He works on the nature of the mind, the self, and human experience, and his work combines cognitive science, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially Asian philosophical traditions. In March 2024, he released his most recent book, co-authored with physicists Marcelo Gleiser and Adam Frank, The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience (MIT, March 2024). You’ll hear us reference this book during our conversation, which was recorded in fall 2023. 

Our conversation began in medias res, as I like to begin many of my conversations, and it was as far-reaching as it was multilayered: touching on the enduring power of the enactive approach; knowing as an intersubjective, participatory process; the continued relevance of The Embodied Mind; his own intellectual trajectory beginning with his time spent growing up in the Lindisfarne Association and his first encounters with Francisco Varela; and, finally, we journey through Evan’s own development as a thinker through the defining book projects of his career, including a more personal turn in his thinking. 

This conversation was divided into two parts, so we hope you’ll tune in to the next episode for Part II, where we’ll do a deep dive into his most recent book, The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience (MIT, March 2024), co-authored with Marcelo Gleiser and Adam Frank.

Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleonor Rosch, The Embodied Mind (MIT Press, 1991 and 2016)

Francisco J. Varela, Principles of Biological Autonomy (newly annotated edition coming out from MIT Press in 2025, with a forward by Amy Cohen Varela)

Evan Thompson, Why I Am Not a Buddhist (Yale University Press, 2020) 

Evan Thompson, Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2015) 

Evan Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2007)

Evan Thompson, Colour Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (Routledge Press, 1995)

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