Odysseus Stone

Short presentation

I am a philosophy PhD fellow with the Center for Subjectivity research (CFS) at the University of Copenhagen. I have a BA in philosophy from the University of Bristol and an MA in philosophy from the University of Copenhagen. 

Current research

My current project, supervised by prof. Dan Zahavi, concerns phenomenology and meditation. In recent years, so-called mindfulness meditation has transgressed (or expanded) the boundaries of what religious scholars call ‘Buddhist modernism’, finding its way into the secular contexts of neuroscience laboratories, corporate boardrooms, parliamentary assembly halls, stock‐market trading floors, military training grounds, school classrooms and clinics. Denmark is no exception to the trend with Copenhagen Municipality now offering mindfulness-style interventions for stress and a new political party (Alternativet) even including mindfulness in their manifesto.

But what, exactly, is mindfulness? What, if anything, is distinct and interesting about it? And how should we think about its widely publicised therapeutic benefits? Drawing primarily on contemporary Buddhist scholarship and phenomenology (as well as the phenomenology-inspired 4E cognitive sciences) my project will shed light on these questions. It contains three parts:

1. Assessing the prospects for a fruitful exchange between phenomenology and meditation/ Eastern contemplative traditions.

2. Using phenomenological investigations (into, e.g., temporality, attention, self-awareness, intentionality) to illuminate mindfulness

3. Drawing on a phenomenologically enriched conception of mindfulness to elucidate its therapeutic import for both healthy and clinical populations.