On Sunday, September 23, 2012 9:08:14 AM UTC-4, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote: > > > > On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 6:10 PM, Craig Weinberg > <whats...@gmail.com<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> >> >> On Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:01:14 AM UTC-4, Platonist Guitar Cowboy >> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>>> Nothing would work except the ontological primitive that I use (sense). >>>> >>> >>> Glad that works for you. Linguistically I am flexible with primitives, >>> and I'm not overly hungry for consistency either, as language is so >>> semantically imprecise and notoriously slippery: on some days maybe >>> numbers, >>> >> >> numbers = cognitive *sense*-making >> > > So numbers have your sense calibration and meaning. >
Numbers don't exist on their own in real terms, but in the course of common sense negotiations between different levels of material structures, numerical protocols are used which bring out whatever common sense the material/experiential medium is capable of. I can get a cool cymatic pattern by vibrating some powder on a drum, but I can make the same pattern by hand and not have any sound vibrate out of it. The pattern can be made just by imitating and seeing, there is no counting necessary. > > Then, with our deaf composer, you rob numbers of the cognitive > sense-making, you just gave: > >> >> Because he is looking as meaningless numerical coordinates rather than a >> multi-sensory experience that uses physical-acoustic level qualia to drive >> emotional-biochemical, mental-neurological, and social-zoological layer >> qualia, not just a single channel of mental symbolic sense. >> >> >>> Groovy patterns are number relations. >>> >> >> No, they aren't. Number patterns are pure abstraction. You are taking >> visual or audio representation completely for granted. If you want number >> relations, open an mp3 file in a text editor and you'll see how groovy and >> interesting they are. >> >> >>> If our hypothetically deaf composer had been presented with the >>> genealogy of say mambo, late 70s funk, 90s hip-hop, dubstep grooves through >>> another sensory channel, then she/he would be able to distinguish between >>> groovy and not. >>> >> >> Not at all. It's like saying that by comparing phone books from different >> cities you could distinguish how exciting of a city it must be. >> > > Everybody researches travel plans and consults some phone > book/script/source of information, be it friends' former experience, > surfing the web, and I have definitely looked at restaurant availability > and offers before deciding to visit certain cities in phone books pre-web, > believe it or not. > I meant White Pages. A list of the names of residents of the town is not going to tell you if it's an exciting place to be. > > Concerning groovy patterns, take any serious approach to groove as Latin > percussion, which is extensively documented, and you will find grids for > all varieties of samba, bossa, mambo etc. Then join a Latin percussion > section and see how well you fare negating the precise placements of say > your conga's pattern along the numbered grid. I will bet you one thing: > your deliberations of how your conga pattern are "groovy to you" will get > you fired. No matter how much sense they make. Now if you master the grid, > and then decide to deviate from the math by knowing it intimately: conga > career. > That's only telling us about skill and entrainment. It's true of any profession. It doesn't say anything about a purely mathematical spirit that manifests as music. > > >>> But I don't need this line of argument since you already divorced rhythm >>> from music by negating the "deaf drummer feeling vibrations" phenomenon >>> that you brought up. That's clearly contradiction. >>> >> >> Deaf drummers can still feel acoustic experiences. I am talking about >> deaf = no sensory access to music, only music theoretical analysis through >> mathematics. >> >> > > Here it's interesting because now you give back a few cents of the > "meaningless numerical coordinates" by use of "only music theoretical > analysis"... rendering them no longer meaningless and conceding a lower > level in qualia hierarchy. The numbers live again! Albeit with some loss of > status... > The music theoretical analysis *is* meaningless without the music. That's my point. What are you anlayzing? Meaningless numerical coordinates. > > >> >> That's not what I'm talking about at all. Coordinating images with sound >> is not the same thing as looking at sound as an image. Nobody makes music >> so that they can turn off the sound and look at it as a visual graph. >> > > I always do this when doing mixing engineer work to compare perceived > loudness with digital measurements to work out bias of my system. On every > mix. I also record outputs of various "visualizer" programs for different > perspectives on what was composed and for use as video accompaniment. > Ugh. Nobody seems to get this critically important concept of how to think of things prospectively rather than retrospectively. I am not talking about turning the sound off temporarily to verify and tweak musical compositions, I am talking about THE COMPLETE ABSENCE OF SOUND IN THE UNIVERSE. What are your digits measuring now? Why are the jumping LEDs interesting now? > > Everybody that works in film knows: music is last step in post production. > So editor, cinematographers, directors, and composer all see the video > without the music, by nature of workflow, first. > > >> >> >>> Also, if you tell say a club to not sync their light machines to the >>> music... Visual pulses reflect rhythm and all manner of musical nuance can >>> find a visual counterpart. Music videos are still produced as effective >>> marketing tools and films without music are rare and make some inverted >>> statement of: absence of music raises/lowers some other effect parameter. >>> >> >> Again, not what I'm talking about. Music can be used to complement a >> film, and film can be used to complement music, sure, but a silent film of >> music is nothing. >> > > What? You don't remember the whole live piano based, silent movie era? > (See previous). Not silent movies of things people want to watch, silent movies of a multitrack display moving up and down, or just numerical values scrolling down the screen for two hours. > > Total sonic isolation is rare, unless your in a sonically non-reflecting > singing booth, which is avoided in most studios today as a bit of > reflection is good and doesn't "dull out" the instrument too much, because > everybody is used to hearing instrument + room... or you can go isolation > tank of sorts: then there is still heartbeat, breathing etc. There is > always sound. John Cage's 4:33 min composition is case in point. > You aren't getting what I am talking about at all. I am proving that music is nothing without sound. You are telling me that mathematics is somehow music without sound and now that there is always sound. > > > >> >> No question of that. I don't know that the dirt and blankets have a >> similar experience though. Seems like a human journey to phenomenological >> places. Figurative spacetime, not literal. You can't play a song from the >> 1920s and learn who was vice president by osmosis. >> >> >>> >>>>> Yes you can, >>>>> >>>> >>>> How so? You are saying that I can learn specific factual knowledge >>>> about the real world of the 1920s by listening to a recording of any >>>> random >>>> song from that time? Like an oracle? >>>> >>>> >>> As I stated: speech is a stringed succession of small mouth noises, >>> pitch, articulation and rhythm... >>> >> >> What does that have to do with time travel or omniscience? I guess you >> aren't understanding what I'm saying at all. >> > > Yes, I am: speech is music in many ways. See Sprechgesang of Arnold > Schönberg beginning of 20th century (often rhythmic parameter on scores is > labeled "freely, as spoken") and for rhythmic speech as song see Hip-Hop, > beat boxing etc. > > So I could pick some fact from the 1920s and say it, or rap it, if you > want. No time-travel necessary or translation of symphony into language or > such complicated things. > Ugh. No. I am talking about hearing 'Brother Can You Spare A Dime' and being able to actually psychically describe details that you didn't know about the construction of the Empire State Building just by hearing the sound of that music. > > The idiom "that's music to my ears" following some message appreciated by > the receiver, further illustrates what I mean. Now, people will say they're > speaking figuratively, but this slip of our collective tongue is not > metaphorical bs. We all know what is meant even though linguistic semantics > is powerless. > You are listening to your own argument, not mine. > > >> Sense runs the gamut. It is the alpha and omega - the universal >> abstraction and intimately personal concrete, and everything in between. >> They all make sense in different senses. >> >> > > This is what leads to me failing to understand: semantic overload of sense > linguistically tied to word fields of physical senses, sensations, your > hierarchically slippery notion abstract sense, plausibility, logic etc. > Consider different candidates to state the categories more clearly; this is > confusing and could lead some people to believe that you unify and > differentiate your terms as you see fit according to local context of > discussion. I wouldn't let that happen if I wanted to convince > linguistically. > Unfortunately it is our language that must accommodate the reality of the universe, not the other way around. I think that the reality is that if we put the entire universe under a single category that has any meaning, it has to be something like 'sense'. > >> >>> Even ancient Greeks believed in creative muse/spirits whispering them >>> word and song... if sense holds, how do you make plausible that we >>> experience introspection or introspective listening/dreaming as non-local, >>> foreign? >>> >> >> Just as the physical-acoustic layer is used to drive chemical-emotional >> layers, all of the sub-personal layers drive the personal layers of sense, >> which opens us up to super-personal layers as well. A larger scope of 'here >> and now'. >> > > Like a sort of superman layer of qualia, I guess then. > A super-now layer which bears superhuman promise. > > >> >> >>> Mahler remarking of his fifth or sixth symphony while conducting it: "It >>> feels as though 'I' didn't write this music; as though I'm merely a scribe >>> conducting someone else's music." How does sense account for the >>> non-locality of introspection and dreaming, alluded to here? >>> >> >> Accessing the super-personal bands of sense. >> > > So Mahler was one superman. I'm ok with that because of personal bias. > Some geniuses identify more personally with their skills than others. > > >> >> >>> If these are Mahler's neurons performing the operations primitively as >>> sense, why does he, and many composers share this, feel a "foreign sense >>> informing them" or why do the Greeks feel "muses speaking to them", spirit >>> talk heard by indigenous people, and why is this so pervasive if its always >>> "our neurons" firing? >>> >> >> The interior is as vast as the exterior. That's the point of >> understanding that photons aren't literally real, because it implies that >> sense is shared between objects from the inside rather than interstitially >> in the gaps between exterior surfaces. We are not connected to the universe >> through space and bodies, rather we are disconnected through space and >> bodies. We reconnect selves through time from the interior, in spite of the >> many layers of disconnection. It bleeds through. This is what sense does. >> > > Dunno. Interior vs exterior distinction vanishes when I burn my hand for > example. Hand hurts and inside goes " wtf? Not again..." So one to one > correspondence on such phenomenon. Not to mention musical, sexual, > plant-induced etc. ecstasy, and just plain old everyday activities exhibit > this to perhaps less marked degree. > If you burn your hand there is the public reality of the hand that a doctor can see and treat, and there is the private phenomenology of the pain and emotion and thought. I don't see the confusion. The doctor doesn't feel your hand in pain directly and your pain is not described literally by the shape of the burned tissue of your hand. > > > > >> >> >>> >>> And if this is a mere hallucination produced by neuronal activity, why >>> is it so fruitful in art, science, music etc. since the antique; and not >>> more random without results like books and symphonies etc.? >>> >> >> Not a hallucination at all. Neurons are the 'hallucination' if anything, >> from an absolute perspective. They are a lowest common denominator >> representation of distant and disconnected impersonal measurements. Being >> however, that we are in a halfway disconnected state, straddling >> disconnection in space and connection through time, neurons are just as >> real as music. >> > > It follows that the absolute perspective you give of neurons is not > absolute? > It's absolute in the sense that it is anchored in the Totality as a frame of reference, rather than a person's experience of it. > > Also, neuron as "lowest common denominator" is only a lower quale or > meaningless, according to you, because math... and then it becomes "as real > as music" suddenly. This may look like flip-flopping whenever convenient to > some. Again, you might want to address that. > Not flip flopping at all. Bodies in space are the lowest common denominator, but their universality has a quantitative value which is a fair substitute for realism. > > And how does sense, in your framing, account for humor and nonsense, if > everything is reducible to sense on some level? > Yes, nonsense is a category of sense. There are different subcategories of nonsense based on which sense expectations are not met. This ties into humor as jokes often play on certain sociological and psychological expectations which are suppressed from conscious awareness. By presenting a text which agrees with some expectations and not others, you foreground the nonsense of the suppressed irrationality and then, you laugh because you realize in some way, the limitations of your own sense of yourself and the world. You get a controlled dose of insanity and it homeopathically heals your sanity. > >> Think of the music as the Sun and neurons as the Moon reflecting the Sun. >> Because the Moon is only 238,855 miles away and the Sun is 93,000,000 miles >> away, they are the same apparent size. From the absolute perspective, the >> Moon is a little fleck of dust which supervenes utterly on the Sun in every >> way, but from our vantage point, the Moon is in many ways a more 'real' >> place to us. >> >> Craig >> >> > I guess by now, my position today on that is sufficiently clear. Since I > teach music as well, reasoning based on the value of musical experience and > sense would be a good marketing strategy for me, as it is for many in this > field: "Join our percussion group/choir etc. for new musical experiences". > But a few years ago, having studied under proponents of aesthetic > experience of music in pedagogical contexts, even taking degree closing > exams on precisely this topic, I just found myself learning circular > linguistic labyrinths, with all their dead ends by heart, and thus tone > this down in my educational practice today, which I frame more as dialogs > between fellow learners with different histories, but this is slightly > off-topic. > > Contrasting with my compositional and digital audio programming and > engineering activities, this sort of linguistic reasoning just lacked > clarity, was circular, or I'm just too ignorant for it. This constant > arguing about terminology, how important the game of an ever more exact and > politically/authoritatively nuanced word(s) for something becomes the focus > obsessively... > > At first it felt like privilege and like I was getting somewhere, but > then, compared to composing, audio engineering, increasing performance, > improvisation play, techniques of sharing ecstatic modes of trance and joy > etc. it got tedious and dull. I asked myself: "Do we even realize how > stupid this looks to everyone else, and why they might perhaps be right to > think so?" > > Don't get me wrong however: I enjoy reading and engaging people's > philosophies of experience and sense and appreciate your sharing. For > instance, I have no problem reading and engaging Schiller for example, > because his aesthetics, albeit with materialist streaks, is joy oriented, > with ethical good = beautiful etc. > > m > > Cool, yeah I don't like arguing about terminology either. I am mainly concerned with getting a basic understanding of what we are and what is really going on. 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