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109Living Ways of Sense MakingPhilosophy Today 55 (Supplement): 114-123. 2011.Evan Thompson’s paper has four parts. First, he says more about what he means when he asks, “what is living?” Second, he presents his way of answering this question, which is that living is sense-making in precarious conditions. Third, he responds to Welton’s considerations about what he calls the “affective entrainment” of the living being by the environment. Finally, he addresses Protevi’s remarks about panpsychism
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52Ways of coloring: Comparative color vision as a case study for cognitive scienceBehavioral and Brain Sciences 15 (1): 1-26. 1992.
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27Why I Am Not a BuddhistYale University Press. 2020._A provocative essay challenging the idea of Buddhist exceptionalism, from one of the world’s most widely respected philosophers and writers on Buddhism and science_ Buddhism has become a uniquely favored religion in our modern age. A burgeoning number of books extol the scientifically proven benefits of meditation and mindfulness for everything ranging from business to romance. There are conferences, courses, and celebrities promoting the notion that Buddhism is spirituality for the rational, c…Read more
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2Neural correlates of consciousness and the matching-content doctrineJournal of Consciousness Studies. forthcoming.
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69Sellarsian Buddhism Comments on Jay Garfield, Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to PhilosophySophia 57 (4): 565-579. 2018.This paper critically examines Jay Garfield’s accounts of the self, consciousness, and phenomenology in his book, Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy. I argue that Garfield’s views on these topics are shaped, in problematic ways, by views he takes over from Wilfrid Sellars and applies to Buddhist philosophy.
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32Color vision: A case study in the Foundations of Cognitive ScienceRevue de Synthèse 111 (1-2): 129-138. 1990.
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215Can Tai Chi and Qigong Postures Shape Our Mood? Toward an Embodied Cognition Framework for Mind-Body ResearchFrontiers in Human Neuroscience 12. 2018.
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19Enaction Without Hagiography (review)Constructivist Foundations 13 (1): 41-44. 2017.Vörös and Bitbol provide a helpful account of the depths of enaction but their hagiographic rhetoric and neglect of important historical facts and recent developments work at cross-purposes to their account.
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781Developing Attention and Decreasing Affective Bias: Towards a Cross-Cultural Cognitive Science of MindfulnessIn Kirk W. Brown John D. Creswell and Richard M. Ryan (ed.), Handbook of Mindfulness: Theory and Research,, Guilford Press. 2015.
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23Problem umysł-ciało-ciałoAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (T). 2012.Robert Hanna and Evan Thompson offer a solution to the Mind-Body-Body Problem. The solution, in a nutshell, is that the living and lived body is metaphysically and conceptually basic, in the sense that one’s consciousness, on the one hand, and one’s corporeal being, on the other, are nothing but dual aspects of one’s lived body. One’s living and lived body can be equated with one’s being as an animal; therefore, this solution to the Mind-Body-Body Problem amounts to an “animalist” version of the…Read more
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12Umysł w życiu. Streszczenie „Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind”Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 2 (T): 83-95. 2011.[Précis of Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind] The theme of this book is the deep continuity of life and mind. Where there is life there is mind, and mind in its most articulated forms belongs to life. Life and mind share a core set of formal or organizational properties, and the formal or organizational properties distinctive of mind are an enriched version of those fundamental to life.
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794The Philosophy of Mind WanderingIn Kieran Fox & Kalina Christoff (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought and Creativity, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.Our paper serves as an introduction to a budding field: the philosophy of mind-wandering. We begin with a philosophical critique of the standard psychological definitions of mind-wandering as task-unrelated or stimulus-independent. Although these definitions have helped bring mind-wandering research onto centre stage in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, they have substantial limitations that researchers must overcome to move forward. Specifically, the standard definitions do not account for…Read more
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Empathy and consciousnessJournal of Consciousness Studies 8 (5-7): 1-32. 2001.This article makes five main points. Individual human consciousness is formed in the dynamic interrelation of self and other, and therefore is inherently intersubjective. The concrete encounter of self and other fundamentally involves empathy, understood as a unique and irreducible kind of intentionality. Empathy is the precondition of the science of consciousness. Human empathy is inherently developmental: open to it are pathways to non-egocentric or self-transcendent modes of intersubjectivity…Read more
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Précis of Mind in LifeJournal of Consciousness Studies 18 (5-6): 10-22. 2011.The theme of this book is the deep continuity of life and mind. Where there is life there is mind, and mind in its most articulated forms belongs to life. Life and mind share a core set of formal or organizational properties, and the formal or organizational properties distinctive of mind are an enriched version of those fundamental to life. I take a twofold approach to these ideas in Mind in Life. On the one hand, I try to show that to be a living organism is physically to realize or instantiat…Read more
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Are There Neural Correlates of Consciousness?Journal of Consciousness Studies 11 (1): 3-28. 2004.In the past decade, the notion of a neural correlate of consciousness has become a focal point for scientific research on consciousness. A growing number of investigators believe that the first step toward a science of consciousness is to discover the neural correlates of consciousness. Indeed, Francis Crick has gone so far as to proclaim that ‘we need to discover the neural correlates of consciousness. For this task the primate visual system seems especially attractive. No longer need one spend…Read more
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The Mind-Body-Body ProblemAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (T): 23-42. 2012.Robert Hanna and Evan Thompson offer a solution to the Mind-Body-Body Problem. The solution, in a nutshell, is that the living and lived body is metaphysically and conceptually basic, in the sense that one’s consciousness, on the one hand, and one’s corporeal being, on the other, are nothing but dual aspects of one’s lived body. One’s living and lived body can be equated with one’s being as an animal; therefore, this solution to the Mind-Body-Body Problem amounts to an “animalist” version of the…Read more
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Colour Vision and the Comparative Argument, a Case Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of PerceptionDissertation, University of Toronto (Canada). 1990.In this thesis, I show how decisions about the ontology of colour depend upon the empirical and conceptual relations among levels of explanation for vision. In Chapter 1, I show how the "received" Lockean view of colour is linked to Newton's theory of light and colour. In Chapter 2, I review extensively recent biological, psychophysical, and computational models of colour vision, and I discuss their relations. I also show how the ontological status of colour is linked to these levels of explanat…Read more
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2Philosophical theories of consciousness: Asian perspectivesIn Morris Moscovitch, Philip Zelazo & Evan Thompson (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, Cambridge University Press. 2007.
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IntroductionIn Mark Siderits, Evan Thompson & Dan Zahavi (eds.), Self, no self?: perspectives from analytical, phenomenological, and Indian traditions, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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9Sensomotorische Subjektivität und die enaktive Annäherung an ErfahrungIn Wolfgang Welsch, Christian Tewes & Klaus Vieweg (eds.), Natur und Geist: über ihre evolutionäre Verhältnisbestimmung, Akademie Verlag. pp. 125. 2011.
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Living Ways of Sense MakingAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (T): 38-58. 2012.Evan Thompson’s paper has four parts. First, he says more about what he means when he asks, “what is living?” Second, he presents his way of answering this question, which is that living is sense-making in precarious conditions. Third, he responds to Welton’s considerations about what he calls the “affective entrainment” of the living being by the environment. Finally, he addresses Protevi’s remarks about panpsychism.
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15Living Ways of Sense MakingIn Oliver Müller & Thiemo Breyer (eds.), Funktionen des Lebendigen, De Gruyter. pp. 25-42. 2016.
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2Consciousness: An introductionIn Morris Moscovitch, Philip Zelazo & Evan Thompson (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, Cambridge University Press. pp. 1--3. 2007.
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96Planetary thinking/planetary building: An essay on Martin Heidegger and Nishitani KeijiPhilosophy East and West 36 (3): 235-252. 1986.
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76Perceptual completion: A case study in phenomenology and cognitive scienceIn Jean Petitot, Francisco J. Varela, Bernard Pachoud & Jean-Michel Roy (eds.), Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, Stanford University Press. pp. 161--195. 1999.
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