EMBODIED COGNITION MEETS BUDDHISM - Evan Thompson PhD #69

What is the relationship between our cognition and our bodies in the natural environment? How do we reconcile the presence of mind in life without splitting them into a dualism? What are the similarities between cognitive science and the buddhist view of the mind? How can we resist the bifurcation of nature into subjective and objective?

In this episode we have the important topic of embodied cognition to raise our awareness about, that is the importance of our biologically lived experience to our perspective of world. So we get into the biologist and neuroscientist Francisco Varela’s concept of Autopoiesis, literally ‘self creation’ from the Greek, which describes the extraordinary tenacity of self-organising living systems to create and sustain themselves; we discuss the meeting point of buddhism, meditation, asian philosophy and modern cognitive science which may have become overstated in recent decades; and we get into the deep continuity between body and mind, and the importance of the artificial separation of the objective and subjective in the history of science, that has led us to the dominant position of reductionist materialism.

To face these diverse topics, we have as our guest the hugely influential philosopher, cognitive scientist and Asian philosophy scholar Evan Thompson. Evan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and an Associate Member of the Department of Asian Studies and the Department of Psychology (Cognitive Science Group). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of many books, collected works, and papers, including “The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience”, “Mind in Life”, “Why I’m not a buddhist” and “The Blind Spot, why science cannot ignore human experience”.

What we discuss:

00:00 Intro.

06:30 Francisco Varela and the “Embodied Mind” book.

11:00 Embodied experience, embedded in the environment.

13:15 Chalmers and Clarke: Extended mind.

15:30 Autopoiesis - Self-creation. Maturana.

21.25 Autonomy and enactive self-organising systems.

24:30 Neither Inside out, nor outside in, rather relational.

26:00 The Enactive relationship between organism and environment.

29:00 Mind is a distributed systemic process in connection with the environment.

34:00 Neurophenomenology - you need an investigation from within.

38:40 Mind in life & Deep Continuity.

40.00 Sense making and cognition are proto-mind.

41:30 Whitehead and the bifurcation of nature into subjective and objective.

44:45 Bottom up/ parts VS top down/ wholes.

47:00 Reductionism: the surreptitious substitution.

53:45 Buddhism & The Mind and Life Institute.

01:03:30 Buddhist exceptionalism.

01:05:00 Neuroscience & Buddhism on self.

01:09:45 The commercialisation of meditation - spiritual narcissism.

01:12:15 The benefits of mindfulness to treat mental heath.

01:13:30 De-individualisation of spiritual practices - social practice for social problems.

01:15:45 Ritualisation of practice for positive transformation.

01:18:30 Dependent Origination and the Self.

01:26:15 Dying: Our ultimate transformation. 

References:

Evan Thompson, “The Blind Spot”

Evan Thompson,“Mind In Life”

Evan Thompson,“Why I’m not a buddhist”

Evan Thompson, “Waking, Dreaming, Being”

Alfred Lord Whitehead - The Bifurcation of nature article

David Bohm - “Wholeness and the Implicate Order”

Evan Thompson quote from the episode:

“Mind is a systemic property or process. It’s not in the head”