Music and the problem of the Ineffable

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Delamente
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Music and the problem of the Ineffable

Post by Delamente »

Hello folks,

this is my first try in pursuing a philosophical question on an online forum and English is not my primary language, so excuse me, if something seems uncertain.

I am interested in Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Music. "Music and the Problem of the Ineffable. A cognitivst discussion about musical perception." I stumbled upon the Problem of the Ineffability of music in one of Diana Raffman´s works (1988)(but also 1993).Here I do not want to focus on the similarities between music and language, nor music and emotions. My stance is a representational, cognitivst one, perceptions can subconsciously induce representations of past impressions, therefore could give rise to emotions (any kind of perception). I have a definition what music is (sounds, organized sounds (and breaks), intentional organized sounds and breaks), a brief description of the biological process (see Nelken, King, Schupp 2011) , and an overview over the theory of musical perception called GTTM (generative tonal theory of music) (Jackendoff, Lerdahl 1983).


The ineffable in this sense means, any symbol, linguistic expression to transfer certain occurent knowledge by acquaintance we have will fail.

At first, my thoughts were, that vector coding (Churchland 1996) could be a possible solution, but that has changed since then.

1. Raffman makes a point for all Phenomenology (1995), but I will argue strongly that music is different to other kind of arts (due to temporal aspect and the difference between visual and auditory perception (object/event perception). Makes sense?

2. So I could critize Raffman´s memory constraint argument (see also 1995) (by showing that people could differ more than 12 subtones of Western music), but still the constraint seems true for the smallest "nuances".

3. The Problem of the Ineffability remains for me due to additional reasons. -> Coding your experience would result in a huge mathematical equation if you want to into account everything that constitutes your inner world in auditory perception. Its not like a picture which is constant over time. (Tripartition of consciousness comes into mind). → The multitude of words needed to fully describe every nuance of musical perception would be too much, also depending on the “beetle in the box” of certain words we use for that description. → How do constituent structures play a role ? (Jakab 2000).


4. So Ostension (making acquaint by showing) remains the only possible solution? → Extended Mind ? (Clark, Chalmers 1998)

→ Can we “beat around the brush”, is it some sort of Sprachspiel (Wittgenstein) we are doing? Could the reports of Musicophilia (Sacks 2008) be of use?

5. How is brief description of the biological process (see Nelken, King, Schupp 2011) , and an overview over the theory of musical perception called GTTM (generative tonal theory of music) (Jackendoff, Lerdahl 1983) of philosopical interest?

6. Can “Arguments from Music” be used for attacks on materialists and eliminative materialists ? The ineffability problem seems to me like a huge problem for that views.

Any other thoughts of you guys?

Kind regards, me.

References:

Gracyk, T. (Hrsg.), Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Music, S.592-602, London & New York, Routledge

Jakab, Zoltán (2000). Ineffability of Qualia: A Straightforward Naturalistic Explanation

Lerdahl, Fred & Jackendoff, Ray (1983). A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Cambridge. MIT Press

Nelken, Israel; King, Andrew & Schnupp, Jan (2011). Auditory Neuroscience. Making sense of sound. Cambridge MA, MIT Press

Raffman, Diana (1988). Toward a Cognitive Theory of Musical Ineffability. In Philosophy Education Society Inc.; The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 41, No. 4; S. 685-706

Raffman, Diana (1993). Language, Music, and Mind. MIT Press;

Raffman, Diana (1995). On the Persistence of Phenomenology. In T. Metzinger (Hrsg.), Conscious Experience, Schoningh

Sacks, Oliver (2008). Musicophilia. New York, Random House Inc.
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Henry Case
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Joined: May 15th, 2015, 1:04 am
Favorite Philosopher: Jacques Derrida

Re: Music and the problem of the Ineffable

Post by Henry Case »

I say this respectfully. Too many of your "questions" were partial critiques of Raffman's argument and/or rhetorical questions. It would be easier for us to jump in if you made clear what exactly your main stances on the issue are and/or your main questions for us.
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