E Thompson

Biographic Data

ID23105
NAMEE Thompson
GIVEN NAMESE
FAMILY NAMEThompson
SIGNATURETHOMPSON E
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of British Columbia
ORCID0000-0003-0084-8477
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS38
TOTAL CITATIONS599
AUTHOR COUNT38
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1963
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX2

  • Response to commentators on the blind spot: Why science cannot ignore human experience

    Open AccessE ThompsonARTICLEPhenomenology and the Cognitive…2026

  • Précis of the blind spot: Why science cannot ignore human experience

    Open AccessE ThompsonARTICLEPhenomenology and the Cognitive…2025

  • Enaction as the bringing forth of worlds

    Open AccessE ThompsonARTICLEPhenomenology and the Cognitive…2025

  • Buddhist Philosophy and Scientific Naturalism

    Open AccessE ThompsonARTICLESophia2023

  • The EU and Southern Cross: The effects of EU energy policy on EU-Australia energy trade

    Open AccessE ThompsonARTICLEAustralian and New Zealand…2021

    The Lisbon Treaty which entered into force in 2009 was a major event in the ongoing evolution of the European Union (EU) project. However, despite important changes, energy policy formation remains muddled and continues to be area of contest between the EU and its Member States. This in turn means that trade dynamics with important energy providers such as Australia become affected by the internal dynamics concerning energy policy within the EU. …

  • Creolizing Modern Buddhism: A Reply to Yarran Hominh & A. Minh Nguyen

    Open AccessE ThompsonARTICLEComparative Philosophy An…2021

    In reply to Hominh and Nguyen, I argue that “creolizing” methods in the study and practice of Buddhism should not be opposed to historicist and contextualist modes of investigation and understanding. Rather, historicism and contextualism can and should inform creolizing approaches

  • Understanding and assessing uncertainty of observational climate datasets for model evaluation using ensembles

    Open AccessMarius Zumwald, Knsel et al.ARTICLEWiley Interdisciplinary Reviews…2020

    In climate science, observational gridded climate datasets that are based on in situ measurements serve as evidence for scientific claims and they are used to both calibrate and evaluate models. However, datasets only represent selected aspects of the real world, so when they are used for a specific purpose they can be a source of uncertainty. Here, we present a framework for understanding this uncertainty of observational datasets which distingu…

  • Jonardon Ganeri’s Transcultural Philosophy of Attention

    Open AccessE ThompsonARTICLEPhilosophy and Phenomenological…2020

  • Full Issue #11.1

    Open AccessTeresa Behrens, Pat Robinson et al.ARTICLEThe Foundation Review2019References: 17

    The Foundation

  • Evolutionary Path Making and Natural Drift

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter demonstrates how unique histories of structural coupling can be understood from the vantage point of evolution. To this end, it provides a critique of the adaptationist view of evolution as a process of progressive fitness, and articulates an alternative view of evolution as natural drift. These unique histories of coupling, which enact incommensurable kinds of “color space,” should not be explained as optimal adaptations to differen…

  • A Fundamental Circularity: In the Mind of the Reflective Scientist

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter describes cognitive science. In its widest sense, the term cognitive science is used to indicate that the study of mind is in itself a worthy scientific pursuit. At this time, cognitive science is not yet established as a mature science. It does not have a clearly agreed upon sense of direction and a large number of researchers constituting a community. Rather, it is really more of a loose affiliation of disciplines than a discipline…

  • Introduction to the Revised Edition

    E ThompsonOTHERThe Embodied Mind2017

  • Selfless Minds

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter looks at Marvin Minsky's and Seymour Papert's recent proposal to study the mind as a society, which takes the patchwork architecture of cognition as a central element. Minsky and Papert present a view in which minds consist of many “agents” whose abilities are quite circumscribed: each agent taken individually operates only in a microworld of small-scale or “toy” problems. This model of the mind as a society of numerous agents is int…

  • The Middle Way

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter argues that contemporary Western views have been unable to articulate together the loss of foundations for the self and for the world. There is no methodological basis for a middle way between objectivism and subjectivism (both forms of absolutism). In cognitive science and in experimental psychology, the fragmentation of the self occurs because the field is trying to be scientifically objective. Precisely because the self is taken a…

  • What Do We Mean “Human Experience”?

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter examines human experience. It is necessary to have a disciplined perspective on human experience that can enlarge the domain of cognitive science to include direct experience. Such a perspective already exists in the form of mindfulness/awareness meditation. Mindfulness/awareness practice, phenomenological philosophy, and science are human activities; each is an expression of human embodiment. The chapter then looks at the Buddhist m…

  • The I of the Storm

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter discusses the self. The tension between the ongoing sense of self in ordinary experience and the failure to find that self in reflection is of central importance in Buddhism—the origin of human suffering is just this tendency to grasp onto and build a sense of self, an ego, where there is none. As meditators catch glimpses of impermanence, selflessness, and suffering, and some inkling that the pervasiveness of suffering may have its …

  • The Cartesian Anxiety

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter examines directly the feeling that arises when one senses that one can no longer trust the world as a fixed and stable reference point. The nervousness that one feels is rooted in “the Cartesian anxiety.” The anxiety is best put as a dilemma: either one has a fixed and stable foundation for knowledge, or one cannot escape some sort of darkness, chaos, and confusion. Ultimately, this feeling of anxiety arises from the craving for an a…

  • Emergent Properties and Connectionism

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter analyzes connectionism. In this alternative orientation in cognitive science, the brain has once more become the main source of metaphors and ideas. Theories and models no longer begin with abstract symbolic descriptions but with a whole army of neural-like, simple, unintelligent components, which, when appropriately connected, have interesting global properties. These global properties embody and express the cognitive capacities bei…

  • Enaction: Embodied Cognition

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter explains embodied action. The term embodied highlights two points: first, that cognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities, and second, that these individual sensorimotor capacities are themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological, and cultural context. The term action emphasizes that sensory and motor processes, perception and action, are fu…

  • Laying Down a Path in Walking

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This concluding chapter examines some of the ethical dimensions of groundlessness in relation to the concern with nihilism that is typical of much post-Nietzschean thought. In the humanities—in art, literature, and philosophy—the growing awareness of groundlessness has taken form not through a confrontation with objectivism but rather with nihilism, skepticism, and extreme relativism. Indeed, this concern with nihilism is typical of late-twentiet…

  • Symbols: The Cognitivist Hypothesis

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter explores cognitivism and the cognitivist hypothesis. The central intuition behind cognitivism is that intelligence—human intelligence included—so resembles computation in its essential characteristics that cognition can actually be defined as computations of symbolic representations. The cognitivist argument is that intelligent behavior presupposes the ability to represent the world as being certain ways. Another cognitivist claim is…

  • Full Issue

    Open AccessTeresa Behrens, Pat Robinson et al.ARTICLEThe Foundation Review2016References: 6

    In the Bay-area, a place on the cutting edge of family giving, some of the country's most experienced and entrepreneurial donors will join with national thought leaders for a deep-dive dialogue about a perennial pushpull in family philanthropy

  • The Foundation Review 8.2 Full Issue

    Teresa Behrens, Pat Nanzer et al.ARTICLEThe Foundation Review2016References: 12

    The Foundation Review

  • Right Here on Our Stage Tonight! Ed Sullivan's America

    E Thompson, Edward Maunde ThompsonARTICLEJournal of American History2011

    Journal Article Right Here on Our Stage Tonight! Ed Sullivan's America Get access Right Here on Our Stage Tonight! Ed Sullivan's America. By Gerald Nachman. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 455 pp. Cloth, $29.95, ISBN978-0-520-25867-9. Paper, $18.95, ISBN978-0-520-26801-2.) Ethan Thompson Ethan Thompson Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi Corpus Christi, Texas Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Schol…

  • Making Sense of Sense-Making: Reflections on Enactive and Extended Mind Theories

    Open AccessE Thompson, Martha Stapleton et al.ARTICLETopoi2009