LANCASTER, Pa. - Evan Thompson, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto and author of the book "Mind in Life," will give a talk on Monday, Nov. 5 at 4:30 p.m. in the Bonchek Auditorium of Franklin & Marshall's new Barshinger Life Sciences and Philosophy Building. The talk, co-sponsored by the Center for Liberal Arts and Society and the Scientific and Philosophical Studies of Mind program, is free and open to the public.
Thompson works in the areas of cognitive science, phenomenology,and philosophy of mind. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto in 1990 and his A.B. in Asian studies from Amherst College in 1983. While writing his dissertation, he also studied with Francisco Varela (1946-2001) at CREA (Centre de Recherche en Epistemologie Applique) at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. During this time the pair wrote their book, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991). From 1989-91, Thompson was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship, which he held first at the Department of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley, and then at the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, where he worked with Daniel Dennett. During 1991-92, Thompson was a non-tenure stream assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of Toronto. He then held tenure-stream appointments in the philosophy departments at Concordia University (1992-94), Boston University (1992-94), and York University (1994-98). I received tenure and became associate professor at York University in 1998, and then from 2002-05, held a Canada Research Chair in cognitive science and the embodied mind. While at York University, he was also a member of the Centre for Vision Research. Thompson moved to the department of philosophy at the University of Toronto in July 2005, where he is now a full professor, as well as a member of the undergraduate program in cognitive science at University College. He has held visiting appointments at CREA, the Center for Subjectivity Research in Copenhagen, and the philosophy department at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His book, "Mind in Life" draws upon sources as diverse as molecular biology, evolutionary theory, artificial life, complex systems theory, neuroscience, psychology, Continental Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy to argue that mind and life are more continuous than has previously been accepted, and that current explanations do not adequately address the myriad facets of the biology and phenomenology of mind. Where there is life, Thompson argues, there is mind: life and mind share common principles of self-organization, and the self-organizing features of mind are an enriched version of the self-organizing features of life. Rather than trying to close the explanatory gap, Thompson marshals philosophical and scientific analyses to bring unprecedented insight to the nature of life and consciousness.
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