Evan Thompson

My forthcoming book When Death Comes is now listed at Amazon and other book stores. Please consider placing an advance order at your preferred bookseller. Advance sales make a big difference to the life of a book. www.amazon.com/When-Death-C...

Thank you Jon Kabat-Zinn for this fantastic blurb!

Highlights from Day 3 of #MoC7: our first talks inside the exhibition spaces of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, with a packed keynote by @evanthompson.bsky.social, a showcase, discussions, and an intro to surrealist artist Remedios Varo. Thanks to Louisiana and all who joined! #consci 🧪

It's always nice to see one's work cited, but... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Enormously grateful to Alva Noë for this endorsement.

Thank you Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, for this lovely blurb: "A sweeping and personal book illuminating the philosophical, psychological, and transcendent dimensions of our shared experience of death and dying."

Thank you, @joanhalifax.bsky.social

I'm enjoying reading and highly recommend @karenkyng.bsky.social's book Hegel's Concept of Life: Self-Consciousness, Freedom, Logic, especially for enactivistas looking for life after Kant academic.oup.com/book/37427

"Evan Thompson has written that very rare book that subjects scientific claims about life and death to the critical scrutiny of human experience itself.... A must-read as a thinking person's meditation on a mortal life with hope." -- Allan Kellehear cup.columbia.edu/book/when-de...

imo, you have to choose between using genAI OR cultivating fundamental educational values. you simply can’t have both 🤷🏾‍♀️

been reading university/higher-ed policies on the use of genAI in education. most policies propose using genAI safely, ethically, & responsibly, which is an oxymoron. the way current genAI is developed, deployed & functions renders the very ideas of safety, ethics, and responsible use meaningless

Looking forward to reading this: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... by Rodrigo Ramírez-Tagle

New paper by my doctoral student Elena Holmgren: Action in Unison: A Phenomenological Account of Collective Agency in Group Flow States - Holmgren - European Journal of Philosophy - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I'm honoured and very excited to be one of the team members of this 4.2 million Templeton Foundation grant to investigate "The Emergence of Agentic Intelligence: The Physics of Life, Autonomy, and Meaning." www.rochester.edu/newscenter/t...

Two excellent books, one by Mazviita Chirimuuta, the other by @romainbrette.bsky.social, that should be read side by side.

@beckety.bsky.social talks to Freddy Drabble about extended cognition and participatory sense-making www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzbx...

New paper on grief by Jelena Markovic, one of my former @ubcphilosophy.bsky.social doctoral students: The resilience problem for grief: Philosophical Psychology: Vol 0, No 0 - Get Access www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Very much looking forward to reading @miriamkyselo.bsky.social The Relational Mind mitpress.mit.edu/978026205698...

Can't resist putting them side by side.

I'm happy to announce that I've been elected a Corresponding Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. royalacademy.dk/videnskabern...

It's our pleasure to have @evanthompson.bsky.social as a keynote speaker for #MoC7 at the University of Copenhagen! Evan is a renowned philosopher and phenomenologist and his talk will explore the intersections of philosophy and neuroscience, promising to inspire crucial methodological discussions.

Cover design for my new book, forthcoming with Columbia University Press in spring 2027. (Apparition by Odilon Redon, c. 1905.)

Turkish readers, there's now a Turkish edition of The Blind Spot.

What is the minimal machinery needed for complex, cognition-like behavior? With @lostintheswarm.bsky.social, we show how self-sustained calcium oscillations, diffusion, and mechanics may be enough to coordinate behavior across a single cell with no nervous system. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 1/

Our Podcast has a new season and a new name! "Life, The Universe and All the Rest" First guest of the new season: Michael Pollan Most people listen on Spotify etc open.spotify.com/show/5RWMnV4... YouTube is also possible youtube.com/@LUAR-Podcast

This is a marvellous book that I wish I had known about when I was writing The Blind Spot with @adamfrank4.bsky.social and Marcelo Gleiser. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Indeed, neuroscientists must stop using analytic philosophers to understand the brain!

"It treats the brain as if it is an analytical philosopher, a machine evaluating logical propositions. But this is a faulty anthropomorphic projection, conflating the tools that scientists use to study nature with nature itself."

How to breathe life back into brain theory www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Dr. Evan Thompson on the ideas that shape his research philosophy.ubc.ca/news/profess...

New paper with lead author Snetha Sheth, Mike Doswell, Kalina Christoff Hadjiileva, @beckety.bsky.social @evanthompson.bsky.social and Lawrence Ward: Phenomenology of the stream of thought: dissociable dynamic dimensions revealed through experience sampling academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

Another great paper on phenomenology and science by @themispant.bsky.social and @haraldwiltsche.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Excellent new paper on Husserl and Merleau-Ponty by my doctoral student Yamina Venuta @ubcphilosophy.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Where to find our conversation with @michaelpollan.bsky.social on Spotify open.spotify.com/episode/1ele...

Here's our conversation with @michaelpollan.bsky.social on Life, the Universe, and All the Rest www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHpO...

It turns out this lithograph was for a book by Edmond Picard who was a very unsavoury character, so we are going to work with a different Redon painting. Stay tuned!

Frank Ostaseski will offer tonight’s Dharma Talk at Upaya 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. MST In Person at Upaya + Online Join online www.youtube.com/user/upayazencenter/live

My new book When Death Comes: Our Ultimate Transformation is now officially in production at Columbia University Press. The cover will feature this 1887 lithograph by Odilon Redon.

substack.com/@footnotes2p...

This new paper on the enactive approach in cognitive science by @philosodave.bsky.social is excellent: www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publicati...

For anyone interested in memory, check out this excellent new paper by my @ubcphilosophy.bsky.social doctoral student Laura Bickel. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Our conversation with @michaelpollan.bsky.social about his new book A World Appears drops May 13

Episode 2 of our new podcast season will feature an interview with Michael Pollan. Available May 13.

This paper by Ken Archer and @haraldwiltsche.bsky.social on how AI systems are rooted in human cognition and extend, rather than reconstruct it, is superb.

A quibble: I think "computation" should mean the manipulation of medium-independent vehicles according to a rule, so the biophysical processes described in this article aren't computational. Otherwise "computation" can mean almost anything (not that I want to be a word cop).

Another nail in the coffin of computational functionalism. Excellent paper by @neuromorphicboki.bsky.social and @jaanaru.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I did this program in 2011 and I highly recommend it. I'm not a health care professional but I did the program so I could learn about the experience of dying and how it affects the dying and their caregivers. I wrote about my experience of the program in my book Waking, Dreaming, Being.

And here we go! With @introspection.bsky.social l