My philosophical research is focused on the nature of consciousness and its relation to affect and attention. My research is both cross-cultural and interdisciplinary. From the cross-cultural perspective my focus has been on the early Indian Buddhist philosophy of the Pāli Tipiṭaka and its commentaries. The Tipiṭaka is the canon of texts of the Therāvada Buddhist tradition of South Asia. Empirically, I have been working in the domains of affective neuroscience and the psychology of attention. Methodologically, I am interested in analytic as well as Phenomenological approaches to the nature of the mind.
Published:
PEER REVIEWED
- Smith, S.M. (2025) “An Existential Attention Norm for Affectively Biased Sentient Beings: A Buddhist Intervention from Buddhaghosa” in Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 11, Issue 2: 354-373.
- Smith, S.M. (2024) “The Affectively Embodied Perspective of the Subject” in Philosophical Psychology, Vol. 37, No. 5: 1140-69.
- Smith, S.M. (2024) “Pain, Suffering, and the Time of Life” in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, online first
- Smith, S.M. (2021) “The Epistemic Role of Consciousness from a Practical Point of View” in Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 18, No. 3: 242-62
- Smith, S.M. (2021) “The Negation of Self in Indian Buddhist Philosophy” in Philosopher’s Imprint, Vol. 21, No. 13: 1-23.
- Smith, S.M. (2020) “A Pāli Buddhist Philosophy of Sentience: Reflections on Bhavaṅga Citta” in Sophia, Vol. 59: 457-88.
- Smith, S.M. (2019) “Phenomenal Overflow, Bodily Affect, and Some Varieties of Access” in Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. 10, No. 4: 787-808.
- Smith, S.M. (2019) “A Buddhist Analysis of Affective Bias” in Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 47, No. 1: 15-85.
INVITED
- Smith, S.M. (2025) “Review of Monima Chadha’s Selfless Minds: A Contemporary View of Vasubandhu’s Metaphysics” in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 103 (3): 863-866.
- Smith, S.M. (2022) “Interrogating Constructive Realism About the Self” for Philosophical Psychology online first.
- Smith, S.M. (2022) “Review of Other Lives: Mind and World in Indian Buddhism by Sonam Kachru” for Mind: online
- Smith, S.M. (2022) “2022 “Review of The Non-Existence of the Real World by Jan Westerhoff” for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: online
- Smith, S.M. (2021) “Buddhist Modernism, Scientific Explanation, and the Self” in Journal of Comparative Philosophy, Vol. 12, No. 1: 157-69. A reply to Struhl (2021), found here as well as Struhl’s reply.
- Smith, S.M. (2020) “Paying Attention to Buddhagosa and Pāli Buddhist Philosophy” in Philosophy East and West Vol. 69, No. 4: 1125-51.
- Smith, S.M. and Thompson, E. (2015) “Searching for Affect: From William James to Neurophenomenology” in Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, Vol. 2, No. 1: 19-23. Commentary on Miskovic et al. (2015)