Professor Evan Thompson has recently been named a UBC Distinguished University Scholar and awarded the 2026 Mind–Matter Prize by the Society for Mind–Matter Research.
Together, these honors are a testament to Professor Thompson’s lifelong dedication to scholarship and the far-reaching influence of his work in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, phenomenology, and Asian philosophical traditions.
To commemorate this milestone, Professor Thompson shares his reflections on these achievements and discusses the sources of inspiration that have shaped his research path.
Your work bridges philosophy of mind, cognitive science, phenomenology, and Asian philosophical traditions. What inspired you to pursue this interdisciplinary path, and how has it evolved over time?
I’ve been interested in all these things since I was a teenager. I grew up in an educational institute that was also an intentional community called the Lindisfarne Association, founded by my parents, where I was home-schooled and exposed at a young age to wide-ranging intellectual and political discussions.
Later I got my B.A. in Asian Studies from Amherst College, focusing on Chinese language and Asian philosophies. When I was working on my Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Toronto, I decided to focus on philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and phenomenology. I’ve been working across these areas since I was a graduate student, pursuing my own research and working collaboratively with scientists, mostly neuroscientists, and lately with physicists.
In your latest book, The Blind Spot, you highlight how human experience is often overlooked in scientific research. How has this philosophical perspective shaped your broader research agenda, and how do you hope it will shape future research across disciplines?
This is a big theme in my work going back to my first co-authored book, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, which was written with the neuroscientist Francisco Varela and the psychologist Eleanor Rosch. That book put forward an “enactive” approach to the mind, drawing from cognitive science, phenomenology, and Buddhist philosophy.
“Central to the enactive approach is the importance of the body and lived experience. The enactive approach has continued to develop in the cognitive and brain sciences and philosophy, while influencing other fields like artistic practice and art theory, especially performance arts, and education.”
The Blind Spot, which I wrote with Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser brought ideas from the enactive approach and phenomenology into engagement with physics and the philosophy of science. We now have a podcast called The Blind Spot, with conversations with philosophers, scientists, and Indigenous scholars.
Recently, I wrote a paper with one of my UBC doctoral students, Laura Bickel, on the relevance of the enactive approach for understanding the human experience of dying in palliative and end-of-life care. My hope is that this kind of research, which foregrounds human experience in science, philosophy, and medicine, will continue to inspire new generations of researchers. I’m very encouraged to see lots of younger researchers interested in these ideas across a wide range of fields.
You recently received the UBC Distinguished University Scholar Award and the Mind–Matter Prize. What do these awards mean to you, and how have they influenced your work or perspective?
It was already an honour just to be nominated for the UBC DUS Award by my Philosophy colleagues and the Faculty of Arts, but to receive it was wonderful, and very encouraging stimulus for my research and teaching. The Philosophy Department has two other Distinguished University Scholars, a University Killam Professor, and several Canada Research Chairs, so we are a very strong department in this respect. I really value the collegial interdisciplinary research environment at UBC, and I hope to use the award to further energize my research and give back to the community through my undergraduate teaching and graduate supervisions. As for the Mind-Matter Prize, this came as a complete surprise to me. I’ve been invited to give a keynote lecture at the Society for Mind-Matter Research’s at annual meeting in Copenhagen on the scope and limits of using mathematical models to illuminate consciousness.
“My hope is that this kind of research, which foregrounds human experience in science, philosophy, and medicine, will continue to inspire new generations of researchers. I’m very encouraged to see lots of younger researchers interested in these ideas across a wide range of fields.”
What are the most exciting or challenging questions you hope to address next in your research?
I just finished a book, When Death Comes, about the human experience of dying, especially in hospice. I’m now starting work on a book co-authored with philosopher Alva Noë called Only Life: AI and the Mismeasure of Mind, which argues that only life has mind. This theme of whether artificial systems can have minds of their own or whether they are extensions of human minds is one of my main research questions for the next year. My physicist co-authors and I hope to write a sequel to The Blind Spot, and my longer term hope is to write a book about philosophical mysticism, the idea that there is a greater unity to things than we normally recognize in everyday experience or science, directly intuited and reflected in different traditions, art, and the work of prominent scientists.
Is there a particular book, thinker, or experience outside of your formal research that has shaped your philosophical outlook?
There are so many things! I’m a voracious reader, and besides philosophy I read mostly poetry — the English metaphysical poets, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, classical Chinese poetry, Tomas Tranströmer, to name just a few. The mystical writings and philosophies of the world’s religions have also influenced my personal outlook. For many decades, I’ve been a devoted student and practitioner of taijiquan/太極拳 , practicing each morning and studying weekly one-on-one with an exceptional Chinese master in Vancouver. For understanding mind and body, and getting out of my head, there’s nothing better!
