Nature & Nurture

Dr. Jorge Morales is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Philosophy at Northeastern University, where he directs the Subjectivity Lab. In this episode, we discuss Jorge’s research on the neuropsychology and philosophy of visual perception, introspection, and theory of mind as lenses through which to study consciousness.
We discuss the neural and computational building blocks of perception, the evolution of self-awareness, consciousness in simple organisms, and the plausibility of panpsychism and other theories of consciousness. We also discuss brain damage and psychiatric illnesses, such as blindsight agnosia and schizophrenia hallucinations as windows into how our brain constructs or misconstructs the reality in front of us. Lastly, we discuss philosophical questions of ontology and epistemology: do objects really exist in the way that our mind perceives them?