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 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 this second part we delve into his most recent book, The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience; the importance of tolerating complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty; the thorny state of science in western contexts; alternative epistemologies; philosophy as a way of life; what kind of conversation Evan would have with Francisco if he were alive today; future directions for his work (including reflections on death and dying); and, finally, visions for an organisation like Mind & Life Europe. We’ve included a whole host of references in the show notes below, as it was a richly layered conversation.
Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson, “The blind spot” in Aeon (Jan 8, 2019)
Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson, The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience (MIT Press, 2024)
For more on the debate between Bergson and Einstein, see for example: Jimena Canales, The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time (Princeton University Press, 2016)
Kyle Whyte, the indigenous philosopher, scholar, and activist referenced by Evan
For the classic account of epistemology and ethics by Francisco Varela, see: Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition (SUP, 1999)
Hanne De Jaegher and participatory sense-making [see for example: De Jaegher and Di Paolo (2007), “Participatory sense-making: an enactive approach to social cognition”]
For more on the Lindisfarne Association, including an archive of recordings, see: William Irwin Thompson, Thinking Together at the Edge of History: A Memoir of the Lindisfarne Association, 1972-2012 (2016)
Pierre Hadot (ed. Arnold I. Davidson), Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (Blackwell, 1995)
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