A podcast by Mind & Life Europe, emphasising the importance of exploratory dialogue, radical candour, intersubjectivity, and listening as an epistemology. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of our co-founder, the Chilean neurobiologist and philosopher Francisco Varela, these conversations are one more way of exploring what has been the lodestar for our work at Mind & Life Europe: the continuity between mind and life, or in Francisco’s own formulation, “living as sense-making.”
Mind & Life Europe is a home for unconventional interdisciplinary encounters, where researchers and practitioners enrich one another in their understanding of mind and life, through the rigour of scientific inquiry, the openness of philosophical investigation, the edginess of artistic exploration, and the depth of contemplative wisdom traditions. We believe that holding an open-hearted and interdisciplinary space of dialogue is in itself a radical, ethical mode of being-in-the-world, which generates new pathways of research and collective sense-making with transformative potential.
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A podcast by Mind & Life Europe, emphasising the importance of exploratory dialogue, radical candour, intersubjectivity, and listening as an epistemology. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of our co-founder, the Chilean neurobiologist and philosopher Francisco Varela, these conversations are one more way of exploring what has been the lodestar for our work at Mind & Life Europe: the continuity between mind and life, or in Francisco’s own formulation, “living as sense-making.”
Mind & Life Europe is a home for unconventional interdisciplinary encounters, where researchers and practitioners enrich one another in their understanding of mind and life, through the rigour of scientific inquiry, the openness of philosophical investigation, the edginess of artistic exploration, and the depth of contemplative wisdom traditions. We believe that holding an open-hearted and interdisciplinary space of dialogue is in itself a radical, ethical mode of being-in-the-world, which generates new pathways of research and collective sense-making with transformative potential.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Amy Cohen Varela is Chairperson of the Mind & Life Europe Board and has been involved with Mind and Life since its inception. She is also a clinical psychologist specialised in psychodynamic therapy and philosophy. Amy studied comparative literature at Brown and Columbia Universities before moving to Paris in the early ’80s, where she received her degree in clinical psychology at the University of Paris 7, with a specialty in psychodynamic theory and practice, and in parallel, completed psychoanalytic training. For context here, we should also mention that Amy is the former wife and partner of Francisco Varela and was intimately involved in the intellectual ecosystem of Francisco and the evolution of his thinking during the height of his intellectual productivity. And as you’re hear, she has her own unique and uniquely lush ways of thinking about epistemology, intersubjectivity, embodiment, and particularly participatory sense-making, which we’ll dive into together.
In this second part of my conversation with Amy Cohen Varela, we do a deep dive into some of the conceptual frameworks that Amy is most passionate about, including the field of participatory sense-making (as developed by Hanne De Jaegher and Ezequiel Di Paolo) and the notion of epistemophilia. You’ll hear us reference the work of Gemma Corradi Fiumara, who first theorised this notion in the field of psychoanalysis. It was particularly evocative to hear Amy think about the body as the site of sense-making, the importance of desire in the sense-making process, the crucial role of adaptivity, Hans Jonas’ notion of ‘needful freedom,’ the idea of theory and practice playing together, and the work of letting be and always becoming an analyst in the psychoanalytic situation. I found it particularly illuminating when Amy defined sense-making as “adaptive self-regulation in precarious circumstances.” What better way to describe the state of being human, and conscious? So with that, I hope you’ll enjoy this segment of the conversation as much as I did. And if you haven’t listened to the first episode yet, we’d encourage you to go back and give it a listen!
Mind & Life Europe’s European Summer Research Institute (ESRI), where Amy’s paper was delivered in 2023
Hanne De Jaegher’s website for material on participatory sense-making
An introduction to Gemma Corradi Fiumara’s work on epistemophilia: The Mind’s Affective Life: A Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Inquiry (2001)
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing to this podcast, donating to Mind & Life Europe, and becoming an MLE Friend. We would also encourage you to visit our website for upcoming events, as well as our YouTube Channel, where you can find dozens of free talks, dialogues, symposia, and cutting-edge educational materials.
"Slate Tracker" and "Lemon and Melon" by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).
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