And when do you recognize that what u hear is music Sent from my iPhone
> On Dec 22, 2013, at 12:39 PM, [email protected] wrote: > > The confusion in this exchange among all of us is the result of our using > different words to refer to the same thing. In particular I see other posters > use 'response' where I'd use 'reaction'. I don't say I'm right and they're > wrong, we're just using words differently. > > Here is how I talk about the stages involved in an "experience" (whether it > be aesthetic or non-aesthetic). Let's use as an example what happens when > music gets played in our presence. > > First there's the noise the player produces. I don't mean anything negative > by "noise"; I just want to distinguish "noise" and "sound". When a tree > falls in the forest there is "noise" -- oscillations in the physical air in > the vicinity of the tree. If there are no ears around to hear, there is no > 'sound'. "Sound" is an event, call it, INSIDE a skull. When noise hits an ear, > the brain processes the noise into a sound. I claim we're on our way to > confusion if we call noise waves "sound waves". Sound is an aural event, part > of our "notional" world, our "consciousness". We can have noise with no > sound, and, in the head of a Beethoven, imagined "sound" with no noise. (Just > as, > when I say "Abraham Lincoln" some of my audience will "picture" the man.) > > So: First, there's a noise, then there's a sound. Next, but all but > simultaneously, comes what I'm terming my "reaction" -- I'm liking it, I'm > hating > it, I'm bored, I'm feeling next to nothing. On rare happy occasion my > reaction is one of an ecstasty I call an a.e. -- an "aesthetic experience." > > Notice my inconsistency there. You'll detect me wanting to include both the > sound and the reaction -- two elements -- as "the experience"; at other > moments I'll slip and seem to mean only the reaction when I refer to the > "experience". > > But, unlike any of the forum members participating in this thread, I > refrain from calling my reaction a "response". As I tried to say earlier: "I > use > 'response' when I have in mind 'what I say or do in specific reply'. So, for > me, it would come after my "reacting", the feeling I have as I experience. > But, though I always react, I often don't respond." Again and again I notice > posters using 'response' where I would use 'reaction'. They're not wrong. > That's often, in English-speakers, the notion behind the use of 'response': > "When you hear Pavarotti sing, what's your response?" They're not asking, > "What's your reply to him?" > > For all of my would-be clarifying palaver, I'm still on square one with my > question: "When my reaction is an a.e., why is it so? What's going on?"
