Episode 2: Dr. Leonid Perlovsky: Music and Consciousness

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This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Leonid Perlovskly. Dr. Perlovsky is a Visiting Scholar at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and is a Principal Research Physicist and Technical Advisor at The Air Force Research Laboratory at Hanscom AFB.

Our topic was Music and Consciousness, but I’d say it ended up being more about Music, PHYSICS, and Consciousness, covering a wide range of topics from Beauty and the Pursuit fo Knowledge, to the fundamental laws of consciousness to unrequited love. It was a great conversation.

In this episode, we discussed:

  • How music aided the evolution of human consciousness
  • How music helped synthesize the conscious and unconscious mind
  • How music can help one further explore his/her own consciousness
  • Understanding of own knowledge…that is what consciousness is
  • The goal of science is to explain the mechanism of the brain in order to explain consciousness
  • Quantum, schmantum
  • The Unity of Knowledge
  • Beauty, our Instinct for Knowledge, Meaning, ,and our purpose in life and how music aids this
  • Music (and Comedy?) facilitates acquiring of knowledge by helping humans overcome cognitive dissonance. The Fox and the Grapes.
  • “Perlovsky’s” Fundamental Laws of the Mind
  • Can we describe and measure the Mind with mathematical models in a lab?

Get Dr. Perlovsky’s book, Music, Passion and Cognitive Function on Amazon.

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Episode 1: Uriah Kriegel

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This week, I had the honor of speaking with Dr. Uriah Kriegel. Dr. Kriegel is a research director at the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris, where he heads the “Consciousness & Self” team. He works mostly in philosophy of mind and metaphysics, but is also interested in cognitive science, metaethics, epistemology, early analytic philosophy, and a number of other research areas. He received his PhD from Brown University in 2003, whereupon he started teaching at the wonderful philosophy department at the University of Arizona, where he was tenured in 2010. He moved to Nicod in 2012.

It was a fascinating conversation, where we touched on topics from the Awareness Principle to eating one’s brain to learn what chocolate tastes like (hint: you can’t do that) to Arizona’s connection with Asthma to being ‘nobody’s dog!’  

Go buy Uriah’s books on Amazon:

Subjective Consciousness: A Self-Representational Theory

The Varieties of Consciousness (Philosophy of Mind)

The Sources of Intentionality

And many more!

Some topics covered:

  • Manifest image of the world versus the scientific image of the world
  • One can’t eat your brain as you eat chocolate and know what chocolate tastes like
  • Does consciousness fit into the scientific world?
  • The Awareness Principle: can we be wrong about our awareness of our awareness?
  • The Scientific Theory of Everything and Reflexive Awareness
  • Are dreams an exception to the Awareness Principle?
  • Memories aren’t an essential part of consciousness.
  • Meditation, dreaming and allocating your awareness resources
  • Is all consciousness intentional? What the heck does that mean, anyway?
  • The near-perfect correlation between the physical brain and consciousness
  • Does Arizona cause Asthma?
  • Morality, Consciousness and Free Will offer similar challenges — will the Humanities help us find our reason for being, our purpose in life?
  • Undiscovered building blocks of consciousness

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