The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience - Hardcover

Francisco J. Varela; Etc.; Evan Thompson; Eleanor Rosch

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262220423 ISBN 13: 9780262220422

Publisher: MIT Press, 1991

Synopsis

Although the scientific study of the mind has developed rapidly, it has devoted little attention to human cognition understood as everyday lived experience. "The Embodied Mind" discusses the spontaneous and reflective dimensions of human experience. The authors argue that it is only by having a sense of common ground, between mind in science and mind in experience that our understanding of cognition can be more complete. To create this common ground they develop a dialogue between cognitive science and Buddhist meditative psychology and situate this dialogue in relation to other traditions, such as phenomenology and psychoanalysis. The dialogue proceeds in five parts. The first introduces the two partners and explains how the dialogue will develop. The second presents the computational model of mind that gave rise to cognitive science in its classical form. The authors show how this model implies that the self is fundamentally fragmented and introduce the complementary Buddhist concept of a nonunified, decentralized self. The third shows how cognitive science and Buddhist psychology provide the resources for understanding how the phenomena usually attributed to a self could arise without an actual self. The fourth presents the authors' own view of cognition as embodied action and discusses the relevance of this view for cognitive science and evolutionary theory. The fifth considers the philosophical and experiential implications of the view that cognition has no foundation or ground beyond its history of embodiment and explores these implications in relation to contemporary Western critiques of objectivism and the nonfoundationalist tradition of Buddhist philosophy.

About this title

About the Author

Francisco J. Varela (1946–2001) was Director of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Professor of Cognitive Science and Epistemology, CREA, at the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, and Cofounder of the Mind and Life Institute.

Review

One of the main difficulties of the science of the mind is to explain how consciousness is possible without there being a transcendental Self that is the receptacle for all experience or a transcendental 'I' that accompanies all experience. The Embodied Mind blends insights from cognitive neuroscience and the Buddhist theory of mind to show how consciousness is possible without any self at all! The book is tremendously helpful in sparing us the illusion that there is a 'mind's 'I'.'

(Owen Flanagan, Class of 1919 Professor, Wellesley College)

Our concern is to open a space of possibilities in which the circulation between cognitive science and human experience can be fully appreciated and to foster the transformative possibilities of human experience in a scientific culture.

(the authors)

The Embodied Mind is a thoroughly original integration of cognitive science, continental philosophy, and Buddhist thought, and in its transpersonal dimension, rather beautiful.

(Gordon G. Globus, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Philosophy, University of California, Irvine)

An important book with wideranging implications for the construction of subjectivity in the Western tradition. Moreover, it is engagingly written, presenting difficult ideas and complex research programs with grace, lucidity, and style.

(N. Katherine Hayles American Book Review)

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0262220423
• ISBN 13: 9780262220422
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 328