Upaya Conversations - Evan Thompson & Joanna Harcourt-Smith: A Deeper, Organic Embeddedness

Upaya Conversations is a new series of interviews from Upaya Institute and Zen Center, hosted by Joanna Harcourt-Smith. Their first guest is philosopher Evan Thompson, a regular guest at Upaya for their various series on Buddhism, neuroscience, and psychology.

Here is a bio statement from Thompson's website:

I am a philosopher who works in the fields of cognitive science, Phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially Asian philosophy and contemporary Buddhist philosophy in dialogue with Western philosophy and science. I am currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. As of July 1, 2013, I will be Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. I am the author of Waking, Dreaming, Being: New Light on the Self and Consciousness from Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Columbia University Press, forthcoming).

This is good stuff, and I look forward to future episodes of what promises to be a very excellent addition to the offerings from the Upaya Institute.

Evan Thompson & Joanna Harcourt-Smith: A Deeper, Organic Embeddedness

Speakers: Evan Thompson & Joanna Harcourt-Smith
Recorded: Friday Mar 8, 2013

Upaya Conversations

We are launching a new podcast series (Upaya Conversations), that’s a collaboration with different outstanding teachers, scholars, visionaries, thought leaders, or organizations in Buddhism and other fields of human development. Joanna Harcourt-Smith of Future Primitive will be hosting this monthly series of conversations with Upaya’s collaborators. 

We begin this series with scholars from Neuroscience/Neuropsychology … The first guest is Evan Thompson.

Evan is a philosopher who works in the fields of cognitive science, Phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially Asian philosophy and contemporary Buddhist philosophy in dialogue with Western philosophy and science. He is the author of “Waking, Dreaming, Being: New Light on the Self and Consciousness from Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy” (Columbia University Press, forthcoming) and of Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard University Press, 2007). He is also the co-author of The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991; new expanded edition, 2014).

Evan speaks with Joanna about his forthcoming book “Waking, Dreaming, Being…”: how consciousness and the sense of self shift in different waking states, lucid dreaming…through the twin perspectives of neuroscience of consciousness and meditative experience and philosophy; lucid dreaming in a contemplative context; being a philosopher in a post-modern world; autopoiesis: life creates its own ends; love and the web of life: this deeper, organic embeddedness; embodied mind, gender and aging; sitting & movement: complementary contemplative practices; science and meditation: the primacy of mind as direct experience.

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