Below is the audio recording of Evan Thompson’s presidential address, “Conceptualizing Cognition in Buddhist Philosophy and Cognitive Science,” given at the 2021 Pacific Division Meeting. The full text is available on the APA website (member sign-in is required) as well as on JSTOR. 

The audio of the lecture is available here:

“Conceptualizing Cognition in Buddhist Philosophy and Cognitive Science” by Evan Thompson

Evan Thompson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia where he has been on the faculty since 2013. Prior to that, he taught at the University of Toronto (2005–2013) and held a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science and the Embodied Mind at York University (2002–2005). He 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. His research interests are in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, especially embodied cognition and the neuroscience of consciousness, Phenomenology, and cross-cultural philosophy, especially South Asian and East Asian philosophical traditions. He is the author of Why I Am Not a Buddhist (Yale University Press, 2020); 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). He is an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

About this series: The Blog of the APA is pleased to publish the Presidential Addresses and John Dewey Lectures given at the Eastern, Central, and Pacific APA Division Meetings, which communicate the ideas and experiences that the renowned philosophers who delivered them felt are most important for people in the field to know. The Blog wishes to thank the APA leadership and Jeremy Cushing for their support and assistance in making these recordings available.

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