Abstract
This presentation is a dialogue between eastern philosophy (the Kyoto School of Philosophy) and western cognitive science (particularly psychology and neuroscience) on the topic of education. As a discussion point, I take up contemplative pedagogy/mindful education, which is a movement that attempts to integrate contemplative practices into the process of education. I will examine four points of connection between this movement and the ideas of the Kyoto School. The four points concern the idea of mindfulness itself, the subject-object relationship, well-being, and creativity. To represent the Kyoto School, I will focus on Nishida Kitarô’s idea of pure experience and Nishitani Keiji’s idea of the standpoint of emptiness. Additionally, I will try to bring these ideas into dialogue with the enactivist view of Francisco Varela (who directly cites Nishitani’s philosophy in The Embodied Mind).
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Acknowledgments
This paper was written with the aid of funding from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Project Number: 17K13988).
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Sevilla, A.L. (2018). Mindful Education and the Kyoto School: Contemplative Pedagogy, Enactivism, and the Philosophy of Nothingness. In: Delgado-García, J., Pan, X., Sánchez-Campusano, R., Wang, R. (eds) Advances in Cognitive Neurodynamics (VI). Advances in Cognitive Neurodynamics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8854-4_51
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