[lit-ideas] Re: The Philosophy of Music
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 16:26:42 EDT
In a message dated 7/7/2011 12:59:09 P.M, donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
>This new title thread contains points by JLS of [interesting] merit.
Incidentally, the title is an essay by Mazzini, "Filosofia della musica", I
was recently coming across.
Giuseppe Mazzini, Filosofia della musica (1836), Pisa, Domus Mazziniana,
1996.
We were considering a melody, and McEvoy was talking 'body' -- "the body of
the operas by Wagner is immense" (or words to similar effect). I objected
to the use of 'body' in musical parlance. McEvoy re-attacks, to the effect
that 'body' is
>[N]o more a metaphor than saying something is matter, or
material or physical. When we say a lump of clay is matter
we do not mean it metaphorically, i.e. that it is merely like matter. We
mean
it is matter. Of course, we may also say that it is not merely matter - it
can
make a striking sculpture."
I see. Perhaps 'function' vs. 'form' is what we are looking for. We say
that _form_ is what Wagner composed. What he _meant_ is 'function'.
He repeats his point:
>music qua sound is physically embodied - i.e. it is something that has
physical presence, indeed a >presence that it measurable in physics - we are
not just speaking metaphorically.
I see. "Form" perhaps does not lead us too far, either. We say that
'symphony' is a musical "form", which is a meaningless thing to say. The
concept
of 'form' is too abstract to digest to some, Plato included. "Shape" is
perhaps what we mean. Shape can be physical. But I agree with McEvoy that it
is
the acoustic and the auditory levels were are considering here. What is
music to me cannot be music for a dog, since a dog's acoustics differ from a
homo sapiens sapiens, etc.
---
McEvoy:
"I put my post in terms of music qua sound in order to show that, even
when considering music as something physically embodied, we can still
distinguish a World 3 content within what is embodied: so that a piece of
played
music qua sound is a World 3.1 object, that exists in both World 3 and World 1
and has content in both realms."
It's odd that, as I saw things, it's mainly a psychological event, i.e.
world II. The performing and the perception of the performance.
---
McEvoy:
"We can measure its World 1 content by using the techniques of a physicist
but its World 3 content is not reducible to these measurements, even if it
may be expressed by way of these specific physical properties and may be
said to be (in some sense) "supervenient" on them. But we can also refer to
'music' in a way that is not embodied as physical sound - such as the music
playing in the imagination or that is rehearsed "mentally". For Popper
these World 2 contents are not reducible to World 1 anymore than the World 3
content of played sounds is reducible to World 1: in a case of music playing
in Beethoven's imagination, or rehearsed "mentally" by Sutherland, we are
referring to music as a World 2.1 object, that has content in the realm of
World 2 and also perhaps content in World 1, insofar as that World 2 content
is embodied in World 1 brain states."
I follow you there. I agree that if music is psychological, and has some
'substance' at the World II level, it should be reduced to a World I level.
McEvoy:
"In addition to 'music' as "mentally" existent yet non-existent as physical
sound, there is also 'music' that is physically embodied in a soundless
score."
I think we covered this ground, confusingly, when we were considering
Wittgnstein's obscure thoughts on 'sound'. It's best, in anglophone parlance,
to
stick with 'hear'.
"We hear noises".
"We hear sounds".
A sound is something that is heard. Strawson individualised these sounds
("Individuals: an essay in descriptive metaphysics"). Grice didn't ("Some
remarks about the senses" -- e..g. the sense of 'hearing').
In Latin,
what is heard
would be
auditum
--- Surely we can abstract the 'form' of what is heard --. An unperformed
(or 'soundless', as McEvoy punnily put it) score just displays the
possibilities of "audita" (plural of 'auditum') -- as much as a sentence, e.g.
"You're the cream in my coffee" displays all possible implicata).
McEvoy:
"If we were to discover a lost work by Bach in some manuscript, we would be
discovering an object that might have no existence any longer in anyone's
head, or as "sound", but which had been left to us as a soundless World 3
object encoded in the form of musical notation. A World 3.1 object".
But if it's not just gibberish, it means that the notation is understood as
"possibilities" of performances. I.e. audita. We have to see what
instrument it is meant for. What type of harmonies are involved, the tempo,
the
melody itself. Just to consider 'melody' for example. Consider "Danny Boy" --
the melody line of this, the "Derry air", so-called, is perhaps a 'form' in
that it represents or displays just ONE possibility of audita. A minor
issue would be to determine what counts as the complete 'air'. It's not one
auditum at time t1, but a contiuum from t1 to t8, say, which is what it takes
to 'hear' (even mentally) the, say, first musical segments of the air.
McEvoy:
"Though Popper does not pursue this very far, in his Schilpp volume he
makes clear that as well as these sorts of W3.1 and W2.1 objects [that is
objects whose respective World 3 and World 2 content is simultaneously embodied
in World 1] and of W3.2.1 objects where the content is simultaneously in
each realm, he also would defend the view that there are World 3.3 objects
and that these indeed can have a causal affect on the mental and physical
worlds. He describes these W3.3 objects as a kind of shadow-world."
I wonder why, when in such an imaginative phase, he did not come out with
World IV, too. A shadow of a shadow, as I think Shakespeare has it.
---
(In other words: the Meinongian challenge to Popper is: why stop at World
III? For Grice this is no problem -- "Mundi non sunt multiplicanda praeter
necessitatem"). What we need from Popper is a modal argument against the
possibility of World IV and beyond.
McEvoy:
"My comment:- of course, we cannot give an example of a World3.3 object
without thereby rendering it in World 2 [as an object of conscious thought]
or in World 1 [insofar as that content is embodied physically]. But we could
give examples of 'creative discoveries' in art and science where we might
plausibly see these as discoveries of some pre-existing and as yet
unthought and unembodied World3.3 object. Popper's standard examples here
include
odd and even numbers and prime numbers:- 'prime numbers' may be said to have
existed as World3.3 objects to be discovered once we had invented the
sequence of natural numbers (they do not exist, for Popper, prior to the
invention of such a sequence). That is, once we have invented our sequence of
natural numbers, then primes do not require invention but are there to be
discovered within the sequence (what may require 'invention' is the World 2
'thought' to look for these inbuilt and ineradicable and invariant properties
of our number system); and insofar as a mathematician develops a way of
identifying primes and theorising about their properties, we may say the
mathematician is being affected by the W3.3 object, 'the prime', that is there
to be discovered prior to be being identified or consciously thought as such.
The affect of this W3.3 may be seen as the explanation for why, when
knowledge has developed to a certain specific level of problem, the solution to
a specific problem will be the subject of a race between competitors who
rightly believe that if they do not get the solution soon enough then others
apprised of the same problem-situation will get there; they may be right to
believe this because that solution is there to be discovered in W3.3. This
may make W3.3 appear somewhat less shadowy than it might otherwise seem."
I see. Since I see these "world III" phenomena as 'forms' out of displays
of world-2 and world-1 phenomena, I'm still curious as to why not posit
something like a world-4, say, for metamathematics. If prime numbers were out
there to be discovered (in the world 3 limbo) why not assume that the THEORY
of these numbers was lying at even a higher, limbo of metamathematical
inventions. Lakatos may have thought along those lines.
We then get at
"what Wagner may have meant" by "dah-dah-dah-dah" (the nuptial hymn).
McEvoy:
"Depending on what we mean by meaning, we might be able to avoid that
territory, with its excessive taxes and heavy-handed border patrols."
Too true. Plus, Wagner would have "meinen" something. In German, 'meinen'
means 'believe', rather than 'mean'.
McEvoy:
"JLS raises the important and interesting relation of 'supervenient'. By
mentioning W3.3 objects, we are indicating objects that are not
straightforwardly supervenient on World 1 or World 2. For some indication of
Popper's
views on the role of 'supervenience' in explaining the relation of mind and
body, there is his work in "The Self and Its Brain", and in particular his
criticisms of so-called 'identity' theories. Popper seems to be of the view
that the way philosopher's typically use 'supervenience' is either
unsustainable when used in a strict sense or is used so loosely that it puts
very
little, if any, limit on the character and downward causal affect of what is
posited as 'supervenient'".
Thanks. I was discussing elsewhere Popper's view vis a vis the idea of
'freedom of the will', and can't say I have digested most of Popper's
"philosophical psychology". The fact that he was perhaps overinfluenced by
Eccles
(and J. J. C. Smart) perhaps did not help?
---
McEvoy:
"It is also Popper's view that World 3, though it emerges from World 2,
has some autonomy from World 2; and that World 3 has downward causal affect
on World 2 (as the prior existence of a 'prime number' has a causal effect
in producing the human thought that discovers it, by being, as it were, that
object in the dark that the conscious mind then is able to bring to light).
This autonomy and downward causation of World 3 greatly limits the sense
in which we can say World 3 is merely supervenient on World 2 and World 1."
I see. R. M. Hare, a colleague of Grice's at the Saturday mornings, also
has a few things to say about 'supervenience'. On the whole I don't use the
term. But I agree it's a fascinating one.
Perhaps the whole idea of 'world' is confused here. "Mundus" is possibly
just as confused, but in the Germanic languages (that use "world" or "Welt"
as in Popper), the idea is too anthropomorphic for me to digest. I prefer
Meinong.
When I speak of Meinong, I don't mean I subscribe to his views, but at
least he found that it all belongs in "ontologia specialis" as it was called.
Grice refers to Meinong in his "Vacuous Names" and indeed, notes, that he
wants his systems "not to create a (Meinongian) jungle", which is a phrase
that fits with his parsinomy alla Ockham. He went as far as to coin an
"ontological Marxism". A prime number, say or stuff like the philsoopher's
'proposition' (qua 'abstract entity' even without much determinacy to it) may
be deemed to _exist_, qua entity, provided it works ("They work; therefore,
they exist -- entities").
And so on.
Then we should revise how Mazzini fits in. I think he was meaning 'opera',
not just sounds, and he was reading too much patriotic 'bullshit', as
anglophone speakers put it, to it.
Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
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