Philosophy Now Forum

Lacewing wrote:

Harbal wrote:

Dubious wrote: Deaf people respond to music in their own way.

Yes, they tend to completely ignore it.

I think the important thing to remember here is that the song remains the same, regardless of whether someone hears it or not.

If he song remains the same then its nobody's fault but mine!

Lacewing wrote: I think the important thing to remember here is that the song remains the same, regardless of whether someone hears it or not.

Yes, I think there's been a bit of a communication breakdown somewhere along the line.

Dubious wrote: ...if you like to think so. I would have expected more wit in your replies since you're so adept in applying it to everyone else.

Yes, I know Dubious, my jokes tend to go down like a lead balloon, I'm afraid.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Lacewing wrote:

Harbal wrote: Yes, they tend to completely ignore it.

I think the important thing to remember here is that the song remains the same, regardless of whether someone hears it or not.

If he song remains the same then its nobody's fault but mine!

I could listen to the Eroica and the Mahler symphonies, the piano sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert, etc., any number of times and they're never the same especially under different orchestras and performers. The abstractions of music always yield more goodies.

Dubious wrote:I could listen to the Eroica and the Mahler symphonies,

What's the Erotica symphony? Is everyone naked while they blow their horns?

Lacewing wrote:

Dubious wrote:I could listen to the Eroica and the Mahler symphonies,

What's the Erotica symphony? Is everyone naked while they blow their horns?

Responses like this make me wonder if what's left of your brain is equal to the amount of pork in a can of Libby's Beans.

Dubious wrote:I could listen to the Eroica and the Mahler symphonies, the piano sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert, etc.

I could, too, but I'd much rather put on Stravinsky, or Stockhausen, or Copland, or Reich, etc.

Harbal wrote:

Dubious wrote: ...if you like to think so. I would have expected more wit in your replies since you're so adept in applying it to everyone else.

Yes, I know Dubious, my jokes tend to go down like a lead balloon, I'm afraid.

Sorry if I failed to see the humor.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Dubious wrote:I could listen to the Eroica and the Mahler symphonies, the piano sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert, etc.

I could, too, but I'd much rather put on Stravinsky, or Stockhausen, or Copland, or Reich, etc.

Fair enough since choice is personal. For me its preeminently Wagner.

Dubious wrote:Sorry if I failed to see the humor.

No, no... I'm the one who should be sorry for being so frivolous with such a critically serious topic. My comment about naked people blowing horns was totally inappropriate. I hope the forum members can forgive me.

Dubious wrote:Deaf people respond to music in their own way. Their feeling apparatus is not impaired only the means by which they sense. Providing they have the talent they can also obviously create music which many of us are grateful to hear. But music is not just a matter of hearing; it's also a way of an organic sensing, inflecting and philosophizing which goes far beyond any mere AI calculation of such.

http://www.washington.edu/news/2001/11/ ... ear-music/

Thanks. That explains how Evelyn Glennie can do what she does. She is a deaf percussionist who plays barefoot to feel the vibrations through the floor. What astonished me was that the tones she produces are beautiful. I could comprehend that she would notice impulses through the floor but not sense and appreciate the beauty of the timbre. Interesting and it does lend weight to your idea that music is somewhat fundamental.

I find the idea weird because other animals did just fine without music, so we assume, anyway. It would seem that early versions of advanced general AI that lack feeling about music (but still comprehend its import on biology) would, despite its advances, regress in some areas. Music is a form of communication that, like any physical activity, expresses things that cannot fully be detailed with words. AI won't need our music since it lives in an informational, rather than physical world, and the information need not be drawn out physically when it can be gathered directly. Perhaps AI would instead create patterns of data flow, creating waves of data (analogous to sound waves) that provide it with pleasure?

Dubious wrote:

Greta wrote: I'm thinking that, just as animals pass on an informational version of themselves when they reproduce, I think the Earth is creating informational versions of itself which may reproduce on other worlds once the growing Sun makes liquid water on the Earth's surface impossible.

Not certain if I understand this. Based on the astronomical and geological data on how Earth was created, 'creating informational versions of itself which may reproduce' is something I can't fathom. By what method could this happen? Are you referring to terraforming other planets by earth remnants possibly landing on them incorporating that info within its native environment?

Yes.

Multicellular life creates informational versions of itself for reproduction. Ecosystems spread through individual organisms moving beyond its boundaries, and each individual carries with it a little of the ecosystem's characteristics (eg. frogs in wetlands, armoured lizards in deserts). Humans and their works too carry in them the characteristics of Earth, and certainly have the capacity to carry, protect and nurture Earth's microbial DNA on other worlds.

Early humans would have believed that their lands were the only ones where anything happened, perhaps the only place at all. Then they crossed the oceans, found new lands, and colonised. It's just a continuation of that process.

This informational reproduction happens all the time, not just in breeding but all types of communications, including the arts. Interestingly, the structures we create and communicate don't need to be real, which suggests they are based more in math than energy, since math (pure math) is similarly capable of creating superficially coherent unreal structures. Then again, energy too is also capable of creating unreal structures - like humanity - but then we call it "emergence".

PS. Harbal is well qualified to speak on this topic, he's a musician. I've heard some of his recordings and he is a solid player with a good ear for tone and style, although I think he could take a few more risks in his work :)

Greta wrote: I think he could take a few more risks in his work

It's on Youtube where anyone can hear it, I can't think of a bigger risk than that.

Harbal wrote:

Greta wrote: I think he could take a few more risks in his work :)

It's on Youtube where anyone can hear it, I can't think of a bigger risk than that.

I'm talking about edge, being a little less smooth, adding a bit of starch to the shirt.

YT is no risk these days. In my experience it's hard enough to get a dozen views let alone find someone who cares enough to troll you :)

Greta wrote: Music is a form of communication that, like any physical activity, expresses things that cannot fully be detailed with words.

That idea has always seemed extremely dubious to me.

Sounds that would otherwise be music can be used to communicate in a way that's a substitute for words--for example, particular figures on a bugle might serve battle commands per a predetermined schematic ("when the bugler plays this figure, it means to flank the enemy's left"), but I'd say those sounds aren't functioning musically in that context, and in so far as sounds function musically, they don't communicate in the manner you're describing.

They might "communicate" in an extremely loose sense of that term, but only where we're saying that they catalyze aesthetic reactions or perhaps what's essentially programmatic content, but where both can easily vary from individual (listener) to individual.

And I say this as someone who has not only been a music fan for my entire life (where I'm in my 50s), but someone for whom music has been my career, my livelihood for my entire adult life.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Greta wrote: Music is a form of communication that, like any physical activity, expresses things that cannot fully be detailed with words.

That idea has always seemed extremely dubious to me.

Sounds that would otherwise be music can be used to communicate in a way that's a substitute for words--for example, particular figures on a bugle might serve battle commands per a predetermined schematic ("when the bugler plays this figure, it means to flank the enemy's left"), but I'd say those sounds aren't functioning musically in that context, and in so far as sounds function musically, they don't communicate in the manner you're describing.

They might "communicate" in an extremely loose sense of that term, but only where we're saying that they catalyze aesthetic reactions or perhaps what's essentially programmatic content, but where both can easily vary from individual (listener) to individual.

And I say this as someone who has not only been a music fan for my entire life (where I'm in my 50s), but someone for whom music has been my career, my livelihood for my entire adult life.

Nonetheless, it's impossible t express that which is real time in words. As a musician you will appreciate that most music scores are only brief sketches of the intended performance, relying on the performers' interpretations to add the ineffable aspects.