The first Whitehead lecture of the spring term 2011 will be given by Dr. Giovanna Colombetti, Department of Sociology & Philosophy at the University of Exeter,  at 4pm Wednesday January 26th and will be entitled "Towards an affective neuro-physio-phenomenology". An abstract for the lecture and short biography for the speaker are appended below.

The lecture will take place at 4pm on Wednesday January 26th in the Ben Pimlott lecture theatre at Goldsmiths College .


ABSTRACT: The neuroscientific study of emotion experience has been neglected compared to other aspects of consciousness. Affective neuroscience is still largely dominated by a behaviouristic paradigm that focuses on the link between emotional stimuli, neural, bodily and/or behavioural responses. To rectify this situation, I propose to augment affective neuroscience with the neurophenomenological method originally delineated by Varela (1996) to combine first-, second- and third-person methods in the study of consciousness. I argue that this integration will enrich affective neuroscience as well as neurophenomenology itself, given that the latter has not yet been applied to emotion experience, and has focused exclusively on the brain in spite of its association with the “enactive” view of the mind. Integrating neurophenomenology with affective neuroscience will extend the neurophenomenological method to the rest of the organism (hence the proposed label “affective neuro-physio-phenomenology”), enabling us better to understand how lived experience relates to physical processes.

BRIEF BIO: Dr. Colombetti is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy in the Department of Sociology & Philosophy at the University of Exeter. Her main research interests include embodied and enactive approaches in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and philosophical and scientific theories of emotion. She is currently working on a 5-year project funded by the ERC (European Research Council) to bridge these two fields of inquiry. Among others she has co-edited with Evan Thompson a special issues of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on "Emotion Experience".  Dr. Colombetti is currently working on a manuscript provisionally titled "The Feeling Body: Emoting the Embodied Mind".