Elena Holmgren (University of British Columbia)

I am a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of British Columbia, where I work with Evan Thompson. My general research interest lies in defending the enduring relevance of Husserlian and Merleau-Pontian phenomenology to contemporary philosophy of mind and to cognitive science. My dissertation articulates a phenomenological account of flow states (states of absorbed, effortless, intrinsically motivated and spontaneous action). By describing how alterations of self-, time- and norm-consciousness bring about such states, my work strives to bring greater conceptual precision to our understanding of these states and of how they contribute …