Music and Consciousness 2
April 11, 2019
Lawrence M. Zbikowski
Abstract This chapter explores how the notion of cognitive extension, which is the idea that cognitive processes can be extended through material resources, reshapes the way we think about musical consciousness. A brief review of recent work on cognitive extension by Andy Clark is provided and linked with Edwin Hutchins’s idea of distributed cognition. Examples of cognitive extension from...
Music and Consciousness 2
April 11, 2019
Ruth Herbert
Abstract: In what ways may individual differences in personality, age, and training shape subjective experiences with and of music? And how far is it possible to determine whether particular personality characteristics may predict the capacity for certain subtle shifts of consciousness such as episodes of spontaneous, effortless involvement? This chapter examines the construct of openness (the...
Music and Consciousness 2
April 11, 2019
David Borgo
This chapter champions the notion of ‘strange’, paradoxical, level-crossing feedback loops as a means to address the shortcomings of information-processing approaches to cognition, especially as applied to musical improvisation. It highlights the inherent challenges of studying improvisation and consciousness, and suggests ways that embodied and enactive theories of cognition, and emerging...
Music and Consciousness 2
April 11, 2019
Christoph Seibert
Abstract: Informed by a review of recent attempts in cognitive science to overcome head-bound conceptions of the mind, this chapter investigates the contribution of ‘situated’ approaches to understanding music and consciousness, focusing on musical experience. It develops a systematic framework for discriminating between situated approaches, and based on this framework and an analysis of...
Music and Consciousness 2
April 11, 2019
Simon Høffding
Abstract: Based on interviews with the Danish String Quartet, this chapter points to limitations in the philosophical literature that construes musical absorption primarily as involving various forms of reflective and pre-reflective self-awareness. It then shows the paradigmatic experience of musical absorption as being expressed in statements such as ‘It wasn’t I who played the music’ or ‘The...
Music and Consciousness 2
April 11, 2019
Kat Agres, Louis Bigo, Dorien Herremans
Abstract: The act of listening to music to reach altered states of consciousness is common across many different cultures around the world, ranging from tribal settings in Central Java, Indonesia, to EDM (electronic dance music) dance clubs in the Western world. Despite the widespread listenership to trance music, we lack a comprehensive, scientific account of how features of the musical...