The Problem of Conciousness: New Essays in Phenomenological Philosophy of Mind (Volume 29)

by Evan Thompson (Editor)

Contributors to the latest Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume, The Problem of Consciousness , make connections regarding what is consciousness and how it is related to the natural world. The essays in this volume address this question from the perspective of phenomenological philosophy of mind, a new trend that integrates phenomenology, analytic philosophy, and cognitive science. The guiding principle of this new thinking is that precise and detailed phenomenological accounts of subjective experience are needed if significant progress is to be made in understanding consciousness and its place in the natural world. From this standpoint, the essays collected here explore a variety of nuances concerning consciousness, including time consciousness, perception, schizophrenia, empathy, and intersubjectivity. Also addressed are fascinating methodological issues about the relationship between phenomenology and other approaches to understanding the mind in science and philosophy.

Genres: Neuroscience, Nonfiction

232 pages, Paperback

First published December 13, 2004

About the author

Evan Thompson is 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. His work combines cognitive science, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially Asian philosophical traditions. He is the author of Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2015); Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2007); and Colour Vision: A Study in Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Perception (Routledge Press, 1995). He is the co-author, with Francisco J. Varela and Eleanor Rosch, of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991, revised edition 2016). Evan is an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Evan 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 was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto from 2005 to 2013, and held a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science and the Embodied Mind at York University from 2002 to 2005. In 2014, he was the Numata Invited Visiting Professor at the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has also held invited visiting appointments at the Faculty of Philosophy, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, the Ecole Polytechnique (Paris), the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

In 2012 he co-directed, with Christian Coseru and Jay Garfield, the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on Investigating Consciousness: Buddhist and Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives, and he will again be co-director, with Coseru and Garfield, of the 2018 NEH Summer Institute on Self-Knowledge in Eastern and Western Philosophies.

Evan is currently serving as the Co-Chair of the Steering Council of the Mind and Life Institute and is a member of the Dialogue and Education Working Circle of the Kalein Centre in Nelson, British Columbia.

Reviews

[DJ]

great think on consciousness and embodiment; recommended by John Kowalko

[Lauren Wild · Rating 4 out of 5]

Challenging train of thought but the last two essays were an excellent payoff