Re: [Fis] Meaning of music?

Rafael Capurro wrote:

> Steven,
>
> I guess that music has less to do with meaning as with affection or
> *mood.*
>
> In our modern rationalist and subjectivist tradition affections
> (Greek: *pathe*) are seen as something *less* than rationality and
> *subjective* as opposed to the so called objective and *mood-free*
> science. This is, I believe, a Cartesian idealization. Human knowledge
> (and probably also *any kind* of knowledge of other living beings...)
> is basically, as Heidegger (following Aristotle and Augustine)
> stressed, *mood conditioned.* If we do not take for granted the
> dichotomy between an *outside world* and an *encapsuled subjectivity*
> then this thesis means that moods are not purely subjective but a
> condition of world experience. We can the say, for instance, that to
> experience the world as something *supporting* (or *destroying* or...)
> our lives makes us aware (AS *happiness*, *fear*, ...) of what
> *reality* is. Also the value free experience of the world through
> objective science is a specific mood, a *cold* one, so to speak. Not
> being the authors neither of the world nor of our lives (i.e. being,
> in Kantian words, "intellectus ektypus" or "derived intellects" as
> contrast to "intellectus archetypus"), our *cold* intellect comes too
> late in order to rationalize what we could call the *vibration* of
> being (this is a poetic formula, of course).

For me, mood is simply another form of meaning. Formally, a mood is the
experience of a trace of experience (i.e., meaning) - it is a sign,
coexistent with other signs of some variety. Informally, you might
think of it as an individuated experience "smeared" across our other
experiences.

Recall that I said there are two forms of meaning synthesis, formal and
intuitive. Mood is an intuitive synthesis and it may act as a modifier
of formal synthesis. Conversely, formal synthesis is a modifier of
intuitive synthesis and in the case of "mood", for example, ritual is a
formal modifier. But I see no reason beyond these dynamics to label a
"mood" distinct from other meaning.

I think it is well understood that the experience of "mood" is modified
by body chemistry. My model would predict this. This chemistry is
obviously changed by the things we consume.

The primitive transduction instantiated by aural inputs - including
music - causes chemistry modifications that in turn have an affect on
our embodied traces of experience - the experience of which is meaning.
Immersive rock music thus provides a different "musical" experience when
the senses are assaulted by sound than that of a string quartet.

A simple way to think about the distinction here, if this advanced forum
will forgive me using a simplification I use in teaching it - is to
consider formal thinking simply as experience that you can put into
words, and intuitive thinking as experience you cannot.

If you have not reviewed my materials before I should make it clear that
in my model the primitive of experience is first-order.

> I would say that we grasp a sound AS music when we perceive it as an
> echo of such "vibration" or as an answer to it, in case we compose
> sounds giving them the quality of such a *world mood.*

I would put it this way: we grasp sound as music - i.e., as a
metaphysical mark (as opposed to a natural mark such as the sound of the
wind in the trees) - when we embody a set of definitions consistent with
the convention that permits us to appreciate it as such. This is not to
say that one cannot appreciate Beethoven only if we know what music is -
clearly a child, with no such knowledge, appears to appreciate
Beethoven. However, the meaning they associate with it is entirely
intuitive - and insufficient to allow them to distinguish Beethoven as
music from the music of birdsong or the wind in the trees.

>
> Probably this is a dimension in which we can communicate with other
> living beings without the direct (!) intervention of meaning and
> language.

You mean in the same sense that the gods communicate with us via the
signs in the heavens? :)

> I very much agree with Andrei's posting concerning the "impossibility
> to say" which is another way of considering music as an 'echo' to the
> *vibrations* of being. I would only remark that we usually relate
> music to infinity and to God within a metaphysical perspective. We can
> also consider it is a response to *finitude* which is no less
> *disturbing* giving that *natality* and *mortality* are empirical
> phenomena which at the same time (!) resist to *meaning*.

Ask yourself what made you say this. Where did you get this notion of
"infinity" from? What do you mean by "metaphysical"? What do you mean
by "God"? What makes you draw a connection to "music"?

A good friend of mine died a few weeks ago aged 39 - he had been
apparently in good health. In my experience of his passing I cannot say
it "resists meaning." I could say that it left me confused intuitively
and "made no sense" - but this is rhetoric. I am confident, in fact,
that mortality has broad meaning both intuitively and formally - for it
is survival.

With respect,
Steven
Received on Sun Feb 8 06:25:01 2004