This keynote lecture proposes that mindfulness includes cultural practices, habits of attending, and ways of using the body in the social and material world. Current neuroscience conceptions of mindfulness as an inner mental state or trait that can be correlated with unique patterns of brain activity are therefore inadequate because they leave out the wider embodied and sociocultural constituents of mindfulness. Using embodied cognitive science, I show how mindfulness depends on internalized forms of social cognition and is inherently relational.

Evan Thompson, PhD

University of British Columbia

Convening Faculty, Fellow, Grantee, Reviewer

Evan Thompson is a writer and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, where he is also an Associate Member of the Department of Asian Studies and the … MORE


Mind & Life Connections

2016

Mind & Life Videos

ISCS 2016 – Closing Keynote – Evan Thompson

Mind and Life Institute • November 13, 2016

Topics: Brain & Cognitive Science | Interconnection | Mindfulness | Self & Other