I CANNOT HELP but think of this book as exemplifying what philosophers call the bundle theory of personal identity. According to the bundle theory, there is no single and permanent self that persists through time; the self is rather a bundle of constantly changing and psychologically continuous experiences or mental episodes. Similarly, this book began many years ago and has undergone so many transformations since its inception that I cannot say with any confidence that it is the “same” book I started work on more than ten years ago.
Originally, this book (or its textual ancestor) was supposed to be co-authored with Francisco Varela. We had hoped to write a follow-up to our book (co-authored with Eleanor Rosch), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (MIT Press, 1991). When we began planning our new book (in 1994), Francisco had just learned that he was chronically ill with Hepatitis C. Thus, from the beginning, a sense of urgency lay over this book. Eventually it became clear that Francisco would need a liver transplant. At this time (in 1998), Francisco decided to step back from the project and encouraged me to continue on my own. I thus set about to revise the book by myself. After the success of the transplant, Francisco felt new enthusiasm for the project, and we tried to resume our collaborative efforts. Sadly, his illness returned not long afterward, and Francisco died on May 28, 2001, at his home in Paris. The obituary I wrote a few days later for the online journal Psyche can be read at: http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v7/psyche-7–12-thompson.html An abridged version was also published in Journal of Consciousness Studies 8 (2001): 66–69.
After Francisco’s death, I tried to continue writing this book as a co-authored one. But there was still a large amount of writing to be done, and as time passed it became clear that the book needed to be completely recast and rewritten by me alone. I reorganized and rewrote the chapters, and changed the title twice, before the book finally took its present form. Thus, although the enormous influence of Francisco’s thought will be evident to anyone who reads this book, I bear full responsibility for this work’s contents, and all shortcomings and errors are mine.
Over the long and difficult time it has taken to produce this book, I have had the support and encouragement of many people.
No one has given me more encouragement, aid, and love, and shared more in the tumultuous life of this book, than Rebecca Todd. The love and gratitude I feel are beyond expression. In addition to living with my long periods of self-absorption while struggling with this book, she has read numerous drafts and helped me improve my thinking and writing immeasurably. I cannot imagine having written this book without her.
Our sons Maximilian Todd Williams and Gareth Todd Thompson have had to endure my working on this book for almost their entire lives. My gratitude to them is boundless. I dedicate this book to them, and to our dear family friend, Gabriel Cohen Varela, son of Francisco Varela and Amy Cohen Varela, and the same age as my younger son.
Gail Thompson, William Irwin Thompson, and Hilary Thompson have given great support in ways too numerous to detail. I am deeply grateful to them.
I also express deep thanks to John and Nancy Todd for their encouragement over many years.
Amy Cohen Varela’s enthusiasm for this book, and her unhesitating support and encouragement when I decided to transform it into a single-authored work after Francisco’s death, are deeply appreciated.
Alva Noë’s friendship and intellectual companionship during the writing of this book are greatly valued. I express my gratitude to him also for comments on early versions of several chapters, and for his reading and commenting on the penultimate version of the entire manuscript.
Many people over the years have read various portions of this book and given helpful advice along the way: Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Isabela Granic, Robert Hanna, Marc Lewis, Antoine Lutz, Susan Oyama, Michael Silberstein, Dan Zahavi, and Phil Zelazo.
For helpful discussions on a wide variety of topics related to this book, I thank Lisa Adams, Ralph Adolphs, Michel Bitbol, Maria Botero, Paul Bourgine, Richie Davidson, Natalie Depraz, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Frans de Waal, Adam Engle, Michel Ferrari, Shaun Gallagher, Vittorio Gallese, Tom Hollenstein, Evelyn Fox Keller, Uriah Kriegel, Jean-Philippe Lachaux, Connie Lamm, Alex Lamey, Dorothée Legrand, Michel Le Van Quyen, Luigi Luisi, Jun Luo, Eduard Marbach, Barry McMullin, Bernard Pachoud, Slobodan Perovic, Claire Petitmengin, Jean Petitot, Ljiljana Radenovic, Franz Reichle, Eugenio Rodriguez, Andreas Roepstorff, Jean-Michel Roy, David Rudrauf, Brian Cantwell Smith, John Stewart, Steve Torrence, Joel Walmsley, Mark Wexler, and Arthur Zajonc.
The penultimate version of this book served as the main text for a graduate seminar in “Phenomenological Philosophy of Mind” I taught during the Fall Term 2005, in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. I am grateful to everyone who attended that seminar—especially Ranpal Dosanjh, David Egan, Cathal Ó Madagáin, Joshua Ben Nichols, Adrienne Prettyman, and Joel Walmsley—for their critical responses to the text.
Helena De Preester, at short notice, read the penultimate version of the text and sent me numerous detailed and insightful comments that helped my final revisions considerably.
Mike Wheeler also read the entire manuscript and helpfully called attention to several places where my arguments could be improved.
I am particularly thankful for the patience of Lindsay Waters at the Harvard University Press. His encouragement and speedy efficiency when the manuscript finally arrived on his desk are much appreciated.
I am grateful to several institutions and individuals for their support. During March and April 2003, I stayed as a visting Mâitre de Recherche at the Centre de Recherche en Epistémologie Appliqué (CREA), at the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris. I wish to thank its director, Jean Petitot, for this opportunity, which greatly aided me in writing this book. I also thank Dan Zahavi, director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, for inviting me to visit for two weeks in June 2004 and June 2005, and for numerous productive exchanges during this time. Finally, I am grateful to the McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences, its director, Kathleen Akins, and my fellow project members, for their interest in and support of my work.
For financial support, I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a Standard Research Grant (1998–2001) and a Canada Research Chair (2002–2007); York University for a Faculty of Arts Research Fellowship (2001–2002); the McDonnell Project in Philosophy and Neuroscience; the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson; and the University of Toronto for a Connaught Start-up Research Award.
An earlier version of Chapter 9 was published as the article “Sensorimotor Subjectivity and the Enactive Approach to Experience,” in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (2005): 407–427 (© Springer-Verlag). Chapter 10 is an expanded version of “Look Again: Phenomenology and Mental Imagery,” in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (in press; © Springer-Verlag), and of “Representationalism and the Phenomenology of Mental Imagery,” in Synthese (in press; © Springer-Verlag). I am grateful to the editor of these journals for permission to use this material in revised form here.
Finally, I am grateful to my former colleagues at York University and my new colleagues at the University of Toronto for their encouragement and interest in my work.