Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!rex!ukma!seismo!esosun!edda.css.gov
From: penrose@edda.css.gov (Christopher Penrose)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: 2nd rate European Conference
Summary: please weed
Keywords: segmentation, absolute perceptual unity
Message-ID: <650@esosun.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jan 91 20:21:51 GMT
References: <16384@venera.isi.edu> <5376@idunno.Princeton.EDU> <648@esosun.UUCP> <5419@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Sender: news@esosun.UUCP
Reply-To: penrose@edda.css.gov (Christopher Penrose)
Followup-To: talk.philosophy.misc
Distribution: na
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 114
In-reply-to: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)

in article <5419@idunno.princeton.edu>, eliot@phoenix (eliot handelman) writes:

>i take it you're concerned that music will always be nothing more than
>taste or esthetics or entertainment unless it has some claims on
>omething like "truth." i share that concern, partly because taste
>etc. seem less important than ever, and so i want to demonstrate that
>music has legitimate claims to something like "truth," only i'm
>at odds with the implications of legitimation in some sense compatible
>with scientific discourse. i think i can do this through an appeal
>to the imagination, and if not i'm stuck, because there are too few
>facts to go on (8ves and the like). i'll never convince anyone that
>music is worthwhile except for purposes of entertainment, if i
>need to base my discourse around facts. ther are no appreciable facts 
>concerning experience, for instance: that's still a private domain.

Are you trying to appeal to my imagination, or are you trying to
communicate your own?  I have always had great difficulty with the
concept of "claims to truth".  Disposition is variable.  An instance
can be true.  I have not encountered any concept that could be true
for all instances and all times.  My concern is simply one of freedom:
although I deny the existence of absolute truth, I find the teleological
side-effects of its pursuit to be potentially useful.  The search for
truth, can fill up the catalog of dispositions (instances).  Is my
abstraction annoying?

Your mention of entertainment is interesting.  What is experience more
than entertainment? Existence? Being?  In themselves, these are empty
generalizations.  as variables, they are powerful.  I do not feel that
I am diverging from our concern of music's potentialities.  In the
past, you have denied that music can communicate.  Xenakis asserts
that music is an exhibition of intelligence.  Without external
explanation and context, I agree, music can not consistently
communicate, nor does every listener conceptualize an intelligence
from a piece of music.  You have also mentioned that experience is
a private domain; this further complicates an explication of music.


>;freedom yourself.  you didn't mention a scheme of graduation either;
>;it is possible that you were attempting to maximize dialectic freedom
>;through the qualitative repression of undesired dialectic tendencies.
>
>rewrite and submit.

Sorry, I originally had a sentence after this passage to the effect:
"am i attempting to communicate too much context in this sentence? 
Let me know."  I figured that you would let me know, as you have,
without such a indicator.  The intent of this text was to ask you
if you were making qualitative distinctions between the freedoms
afforded by scientific discourse, and freedoms afforded by its
absense.  If qualitative distinctions are being made, then you
have constructed a scheme of graduation.  

>i think that the "scientific" approach has failed miserably. i'm
>neutralizing this discourse.

you are clearly categorizing all scientific dialectic applied
toward music as "failing".  i agree with you that many of the
claims of music researchers that are couched in scientific method
are ridiculous.  does this indicate their failure?  their research
clearly still can be utilized and applied toward some musical end.
if anything, a composer can mock their analysis with a piece of
music that humiliates their claims.

>The neuroscientist Llinas says that "music is the machine language of
>the brain." That's a completely deculturized view of what music is,
>but I think there's something to it: that is, I think that music might
>one day become the de facto machine language of the brain (and I'm
>working on it). However Llinas' statement is not an instance of 
>scientific discourse in any sense in which I understand the phrase,
>yet it's about as absolute as one can get in talking about music, 
>much more absolute than any "informed" statement about music would care
>to be.

That statement is useful.  I do prefer, "music is an experiential
impetus for a mind."  Although, the essence of music may infact be
abstract from its medium, vision, sound, etc., my statement maintains
a distinction between the structure of mind and its experiences.  I'd
like to continue to believe that mental structure is independent of
experience; although it is possible that: mind is music--music is
mind.  


>That's what Lerdahl thinks. His music is sterile. Anyhow I'm not 
>at all interested in "how useful" x y or z is for a "composer." 
>As far as I'm concerned, "composition" -- I mean the "serious modern 
>music" jive -- has run its course and is completely uninteresting. 
>It should be much HARDER to compose, rather than easier. Proof: Forte.

I do not understand your proof.  Also, I do not think it to be
essential for composition to be resolutely difficult or easy.  I will
be predictible and say that a composer should have access to facility
and impediment; both should be employed by choice.  Unfortunately,
reality does not accomodate people with such freedom.  I do not
understand your aversion to tools; I am very fond of them.  By
conceptually and aesthetically accepting them, I can use computers to
compose music.

>That's not my position at all. I'm saying something like, the conference
>had nothing to with science, period: the announcement was a bunch of
>empty, muddled crap, indicative of woozy and 10th rate thinking. I'm
>not concerned with curbing science: quote the contrary, I want it to
>adavance as speedily as possible. I don't think that scientific
>discourse is consistent with this goal. As I said, I want to find out
>what it means to "do science" from a musical perspective: imitating
>the standards of the APS doesn't do it for me.

I feel that I can make progress toward this same goal by
conceptualizing research efforts and perceptions as tools subordinate
to instance localized aesthetic goals.  I'd like more information
however.  Can you explain what this "musical perspective" is?  


Christopher Penrose
jesus!penrose