Overview

For many years, Western mind science investigated cognitive processes, such as reasoning, perception, imagery, and attention, with little or no concern for subjective experience. In recent years, however, this attitude has begun to change, so that today there is increasing scientific interest, especially in affective-cognitive neuroscience, in understanding the experiential aspects of mental processes. For real progress to be made in this area, however, scientists must rely on detailed first-person reports about subjective experience. Yet exactly how such reports should be integrated into the conceptual framework and experimental procedures of mind science is still not clear.

Dialogue 12
1 sessions
October 10, 2004
Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India
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Speakers

Evan Thompson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at York University shere he holds a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science and the Embodied Mind. He received his B.A. from Amherst College in Asian Studies, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. He has published numerous articles in cognitive science, phenomenological philosophy, the philosophy of perception, and the philosophy of mind. Professor Thompson held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is a member of the McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Mind and Life Institute. In 2003 he was a visiting Maître de Recherche at the Centre de Recherche en Epistémologie Appliquée (CREA), at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.

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