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.
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.
We decided to divide this conversation into three parts, reflecting the three major movements that began to emerge over the course of the recording: HISTORICAL, CONCEPTUAL, and ETHICAL. The first part walks us through the origin story of Amy’s earliest encounters with Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson, her reading of The Embodied Mind when it was still in manuscript form, Amy’s and Francisco’s collaboration at key moments in the development of both of their thinking, the early dialogues with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Francisco’s intimate involvement in them, as well as the final weeks of Francisco’s life, when he took a trip to his birthplace in Montegrande, Chile. It was a moving conversation and I mostly let the stories speak for themselves without too much intervention. For those who are interested in Mind & Life Europe’s historical beginnings, this conversation is probably for you. In the next two episodes, we’ll dive much more deeply into the conceptual work of Mind & Life Europe and Amy’s own thinking, as well as the important interplay between theory and practice that informs our work at MLE today. So we hope you’ll stay on for all three episodes.
Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleonor Rosch, The Embodied Mind (revised edition, 2017)
Francisco J. Varela, Organism: A Meshwork of Selfless Selves (1991)
Mind & Life Dialogues Archive (1987-2022)
Franz Reichle’s documentary trilogy on the life and work of Francisco J. Varela
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).
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.