BS 202 Is Meditation Mind Science? with Evan Thompson

Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, MD: Neuroscience for Everyone

Ginger Campbell, MD

Life Sciences, Health & Fitness, Neuroscience, Medicine, Brain, Science

4.8 • 896 Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2022

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The idea that meditation is a "mind science" is popular, but in this interview Canadian philosopher Evan Thompson argues that this claim does not stand up to either scientific or philosophical scrutiny. As one of the pioneers of the Embodied Cognition movement Thompson reminds us that the Mind is not restricted to the Brain and we must also consider how other recent discoveries in neuroscience fail to support the claim that meditation provides neutral scientific insight into how the Mind really works.

Links and References:

Evan Thompson's website
Why I am not a Buddhist by Evan Thompson
Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers by Kwame Anthony Appiah
The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience by Francisco J. Varela, Evan T. Thompson, Eleanor Rosch
Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind by Evan Thompson
- discussed in BS 198
Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy by Evan Thompson
- discussed in BS 115
Please visit http://brainsciencepodcast.com for additional references and episode transcripts.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	One is being told that one's doing is practicing a science of seeing things as they really are.
0:08.0	All along the way one is actually being given a kind of conceptual framework and script for how to understand and relate to the mind
0:14.7	that involves a kind of, you might say, baby version or minimal version of a Buddhist psychology.
0:21.0	That is a skill, that is a practice, but it's not a kind of disinterested examination of how things are neutrally.
0:32.0	So in saying that it's not a science I don't mean to say that it's
0:35.8	anti science or opposed to science I mean to say it's just different and that
0:40.3	casting it in the rhetoric of science really falsifies what it is.
0:44.8	Welcome to brain science, the podcast that explores how neuroscience is unraveling the mystery of how our
0:55.2	brain makes us human.
0:57.1	I'm your host Dr. Ginger Campbell, and this is episode 2002.
1:02.1	The title of this episode is,
1:05.0	Is Meditation a Brain Science?
1:08.0	And my guest is philosopher Evan Thompson.
1:11.0	Obviously, the excerpt you just heard is a spoiler since Thompson
1:15.9	clearly answers no to this question. This is Dr Thompson's third appearance on
1:21.8	brain science,
1:22.7	and he is uniquely positioned
1:24.7	to answer this challenging question.
1:28.2	Before we jump into the interview,
1:29.8	I just want to remind you of a few things. First you can get complete show notes and
1:34.4	episode transcripts on our website at brainscience podcast.com and you can send me
1:40.5	feedback at brainscience podcast at gmail.com. To get brain science
	...

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