CMPBS Presents: Dr. Eugene Taylor – Phenomenology and Sustainability

The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems is proud to announce the next installment of our 2011 Presentation Series:
 

Phenomenology and Sustainability

Neurophenomenology strives to educate a new generation of neuroscientists in the philosophy of phenomenology as a way to establish an epistemological bridge between first person science –the inner world as lived experience, and third person science, the objectified world of scientific modeling. American Philosopher/Psychologist William James's radical empiricism takes phenomenology one step further to say that consciousness does not exist as an object to be studied but it does exist as a process that is always attached to someone's personal consciousness somewhere, a view totally rejected by contemporary science. Thus, radical empiricism calls for the evolution of an entirely new kind of science that is not object-centered but rather person-centered, one that is focused not on science for the sake of itself but for science as a tool to understand the mystery of the person. What this new science means for the current definitions of sustainability remains to be discussed.  Pre-eminent is the central role that consciousness and the process of self-realization play in the working out of sustainable alternatives.

Event Information

When:

Monday, July 18, 2011

8:00 – 10:00 PM

8:30 – 9:30 PM: Presentation

9:30 – 10: Q&A and Reception

Where:

CMPBS, 8604 FM 969, Austin, 78724

Drinks and light refreshments will be provided.

This is an outdoor event. CMPBS is a smoke free environment.

$15 Suggested Donation

RSVP to Center@cmpbs.org or 512.928.4786

Eugene Taylor holds the BA and MA in experimental psychology and Asian Studies and a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Psychology. He is an internationally known author on the life and work of William James. Most recently he has been publishing on James's radical empiricism and its interpretation by the neurophenomenologists in the tradition of the late Francesco Varela.

Taylor is currently Professor in the College of Psychology and Humanistic Studies at Saybrook University; Lecturer on Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Senior Psychologist on the Psychiatry Service at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also the founder/director of the Cambridge Institute of Psychology and Comparative Religions.

Among his relevant works are, William James on Consciousness beyond the Margin (2011); The Mystery of Personality: A history of Psychodynamic Theories (2009); Shadow Culture: Psychology and Spirituality in America (1999); and, co-authored with Benjamin White and Richard Wolfe, Stanley Cobb: Builder of the Modern Neurosciences (1984).