Philosophy: books and discussion

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by TGS

So long as there is something equipped with the sensory apparatus to hear it there is noise - but if there isn't anything so equipped then there isn't noise.

I disagree, but understand that it is dependent upon the definition of 'noise'

If noise is sound and sound is the physical manifestation of sound waves in air then I believe that regardless of whether anyone/anything is there to 'hear it' that noise/sound is still there because it is for me that physical property of the universe that we describe upon detecting it as noise/sound.

The physical manifestation is there, so it exists (of course without anyone there to prove it the point is mute)


p.s. get it? mute?

[obs20]

Does a melody exist, or is it just a sequence of notes that is interpreted by the listener?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by obs20

Does a melodies exist, or is they just a sequence of notes that is interpreted by the listener?

Well I'd say the physical relationship between the sounds/notes exist. Interpretation is a different matter.

[luqmaninbmore]

Originally Posted by obs20

Does a melodies exist, or is they just a sequence of notes that is interpreted by the listener?

That is an incredibly deep question, related to what Kant called the transcendental unity of apperception.

Luqman

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore

That is an incredibly deep question, related to what Kant called the transcendental unity of apperception.

Luqman

Not so deep as far as I'm concerned. See above.

And what about the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" they played melodies.

[obs20]

I really have to watch my grammar.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I disagree, but understand that it is dependent upon the definition of 'noise'

If noise is sound and sound is the physical manifestation of sound waves in air then I believe that regardless of whether anyone/anything is there to 'hear it' that noise/sound is still there because it is for me that physical property of the universe that we describe upon detecting it as noise/sound.

The physical manifestation is there, so it exists (of course without anyone there to prove it the point is mute)

I think I agree with WT and TGS that noise doesn't exist outside of minds.

What gives rise to the perception of noise exists externally, but noise is an internal perception. We could have evolved to interpret pressure waves in air as something other than noise.

I'm wondering if the same is true for our other senses, and can't see any reason why it isn't.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by beppe

Of course. and Plato, and Aristotle, in spite of your slightly jacobin attitude, that does not belong to your generous nature by the way, made some important steps right at the beginning. 1800 years before the great Descartes, Apollonius of Perga developed in most of its sophistication analytical geometry. Mostly through abstract thinking. Luckily for me, the guy who taught us geometry in the first year, loved Apollonius and gave us glimpses of his genius. And of Pappus of Alexandria, practically the father of a very useful and difficult branch of mathematics that goes under the name of projective geometry.

Urray for Plato!

Well, I can't deny that my hatred of Plato is slightly on the irrational side I tend to reject something when too many people love it and tell me I should love it. But in Plato's case, I tried sincerely (I think) to like him, and was sincerely taken aback by what I can only, as a 20th Century born and raised person, see as intellectual dishonesty, both in the way he treated his adversaries and in the way he treated reality and logic.

You seem to think that I am rejecting the whole of classical thinking. I never said I hated Apollonius or Pappus, or denied their contribution to geometry. But as far as I know, Plato did not bring any original contribution to geometry or science in general.

OK, I'll try to be more honest with you and admit that there is something I admire in Plato: it's his insistence in defining the terms and concepts that he is discussing. This is something that we inherited from him and I think it's very important.

Plato was important, but he was not alone. There were many other thinkers in ancient Grece and Rome, whose philosophy the Western tradition has tended to despise or ignore because they were materialists, and who had a lot more to say than we think. My personal favorite is Epicurus, maybe because he was the first I heard about. Before him was Democritus, who is strangely absent from Plato's writings. Both happened to think that the universe was made from small particles that they called atoms. They also thought that the human mind was purely physical. I think they were right. But that's not the most important thing. They also thought that the way to go about understanding the world is to observe it, and try to make sense of what we observe.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by obs20

Does a melody exist, or is it just a sequence of notes that is interpreted by the listener?

If you think of melodies as meaningful sequences of notes, then there has to be something for which that sequence has meaning.

As I write this post, there are female Blue Tits sitting in the tree outside demanding to be fed by their mates. They make this demand by a particular series of notes - which is meaningful to the male. I only mention this because it's easy to think of meaning requiring human consciousness, or something very much like it - which it doesn't.

[FlorenceArt]

Noise, music and language (in the spoken form) are all sounds, and we are trained from before the birth to separate sounds into meaningful ones, music and the rest. I once read that Japanese babies, already when they are a few months old, cannot distinguish the sounds "L" and "R", when French babies can. I think it's the same with music. The notes we learn to identify as music are very few I think, compared to oriental melodies. And we also learn to associate specific combinations of notes as music, and again that is different in other cultures.

I wonder what Klingon music sounds like?

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by TGS

If you think of melodies as meaningful sequences of notes, then there has to be something for which that sequence has meaning.

As I write this post, there are female Blue Tits sitting in the tree outside demanding to be fed by their mates. They make this demand by a particular series of notes - which is meaningful to the male. I only mention this because it's easy to think of meaning requiring human consciousness, or something very much like it - which it doesn't.

Well, in your example we do have a living consciousness. It's not human, but it's closer to us than a rock. Does music exist to a rock?

[TGS]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

And we also learn to associate specific combinations of notes as music, and again that is different in other cultures.

I wonder what Klingon music sounds like?

Don't want to be picky (that's obviously rubbish - if it was true I wouldn't be writing this post!), but there is a difference between melody and music. Some music contains no melody - John Cage's 4' 33" is I suppose the limit case, four and a half minutes of silence - and some melodies are not music, the melody that my phone makes when it rings (which is just the normal, old fashioned "ring-ring").

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by TGS

Don't want to be picky (that's obviously rubbish - if it was true I wouldn't be writing this post!), but there is a difference between melody and music. Some music contains no melody - John Cage's 4' 33" is I suppose the limit case, four and a half minutes of silence - and some melodies are not music, the melody that my phone makes when it rings (which is just the normal, old fashioned "ring-ring").

I think we all (most of us at least) enjoy being picky, otherwise we wouldn't be here

Point noted. I don't know anything about music anyway

[TGS]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Well, in your example we do have a living consciousness. It's not human, but it's closer to us than a rock.

Is it? Isn't that a bit like saying that the temperature of water at 10 degrees is closer to the temperature of boiling water than it is to the temperature of ice because water at 10 degrees and boiling water are both liquid and ice is not?

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

Does music exist to a rock?

I don't know - I'm not sure how one could know - but I doubt it. I don't think the world is meaningful for rocks.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by TGS

Is it? Isn't that a bit like saying that the temperature of water at 10 degrees is closer to the temperature of boiling water than it is to the temperature of ice because water at 10 degrees and boiling water are both liquid and ice is not?

I do believe we have a lot in common with all lifeforms on Earth. We are all descended from the same ancestor, a long long time ago, and birds are closer to us than, say bacteria. But not as much as apes. I see it all as a question of degree, which I would not dare try to quantify. But we do have things in common with birds. We have warm blood as they do, and we need sex to reproduce as they do. And some of us sing too

We tend to concentrate on differences, because they are what helps us, well, differentiate things (), that is, classify, describe and understand them. And the practical consequences of tiny differences can be huge. But in fact the differences are very few in number, compared to the similarities. This is especially true within the human species, but it's also true of the way we look at other living beings.

I wonder, if we ever manage to find life elsewhere (intelligent or otherwise), how really different it will be.