Music is ... A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy"
— Ludwig van Beethoven
Spano said that Beethoven thought music is highest philosophy. These are importantly different things. Beethoven does not, according to the above quote think that music=philosophy, but first that philosophy is a sort of revelation which music is higher than and most likely a different category
@bahramf "first that philosophy is a sort of revelation which music is higher than and most likely a different category"
It is intrinsically a different category, but not extrinsically.
It has a different character to linguistic philosophy, to be sure, but it deals with the same subjects.
To some extent philosophy is about words which are thought to reflect reality, then musical philosophy is about music which are thought to reflect reality.
@DarkwingScooter You must mean, "musical philosophy is about sounds which are thought to reflect reality". Well, if music is a form of philosophy, then it is clearly deficient b/c it is unclear, most people don't understand it even after a long time of trying to understand the content of the music and it seems like except for "this music is beautiful, and tragic" no two people seem to have the same interpretation of the content of the music. When they do, it is usually...
@bahramf ...mysterious to others how they could have interpreted the music in such an extravagant way.
Furthermore, how could music deal with the same subject-matter if words refer to things in the word as signs and symbols of those thing and music does not?
Also, your use of intrinsic and extrinsic seems mistaken unless you can elaborate.
@bahramf "how could music deal with the same subject-matter if words refer to things in the word as signs and symbols of those thing and music does not?"
No, music refers to the same things but in a different way. There is a thought process which underlies both music and language of which music and language are different expressions of, each best suited to its own domain.
"intrinsic and extrinsic"
Intrinsic and extrinsic are functions of your point of view.
@DarkwingScooter So, looking from the outside, music and language are different, but from the inside they are the same? Is that the meat of your extrinsic-intrinsic distinction?
There is a thought process which underlies music. While I listen to music, I imagine, I think, I feel, I interpret, etc. but nothing as robust as a philosophy. I might imagine myself in the blissful world of the sounds, I might think about how great this world is and compare it to our non-musical world...
@bahramf ...then I might interpret the music as light and happy.
That's about it, and even these claims are highly contested. See Peter Kivy, Nick Zangwell or Stephen Davies. Spano's claims are almost universally rejected as baseless.
Also, the signs and symbols of language are not entirely arbitrary. Plus, there are a lot of onomatopoeic words and there is poetry, etc. If music is just sounds which are analogous to idea of fear and anger, etc. than this is a sad thing for music.
@bahramf Both Davies and Kivy are mistaken in my opinion in that complex thought is fundamentally gestural in nature, whether that be logic, music, language or art.
The mistake is to get stuck in positivist interpretations of linguistic meaning which are universally discredited even by there own creators and then to insist that music must conform to them. Language doesn't even conform to them. Nevermind "higher" thoughts such as logic and math.
@DarkwingScooter If complex thought is fundamentally gestural in nature, and music is gestural and even the gestures we make when we speak with one another are, obviously, gestural, then you're claim must be that these gesture taken by themselves are capable of being of profound insights. My claim is that for the same reason by themselves, they are not profound with regard to a language, they are not and, like a the gestures we make when we speak, must be accompanied by something more con...
@bahramf ...crete to have any deep meaning. This is not to devalue gestures, but only to say that they are not up to the task of providing us with profound insights, on their own.
But unlike you, I haven't had the paper I've explained all this in published, so maybe I should keep quiet.
No, no, it is an interesting and necessary debate for musicians to resolve and my dissertation is not yet published because one examiner agrees with your position and the other with mine. This is not a new debate.
But I do believe that a lot of the terms of your side of the debate are holdovers from logical positivism (especially in applying the earlier Wittgenstinian notion of linguistic meaning), which is now completely indefensible in philosophy.
@DarkwingScooter No one has argued that with a libretto, lyrics, etc. music can gain meaning and profundity which it did not have w/o it though. Have they?
@bahramf And that is even if I were to grant you that musical elements are somehow simpler than linguistic ones.
The amount of relevant information in a single chord can be far more complex than anything comparable in language:
/watch?v=OUS0kTtK46A
If anything language is the simpler medium of communication because linguistic elements can be of any complexity and yet have the same content ("Ugh" in one language can mean the same as "Verontagsaamingspraktyk" in another).
@DarkwingScooter Musical elements aren't simple so much as piece of music are simple (i.e. their meaning is simple). When it becomes complex, people start to suggest that you're crazy if you think that's what you heard.
Of course the complex can come from the simple. Look at evolution.
@bahramf "When it becomes complex, people start to suggest that you're crazy if you think that's what you heard."
People thought the germ theory of disease was crazy too, hardly a good test of anything.
The only thing that matters in communication is what I want to communicate to you and what you infer from the communication.
It isn't even necessary that the meaning between the participants be the same (refer again to the Chinese room experiment), only that at least one of them sees meaning.
@DarkwingScooter Sure, but the Chinese person, if they also speak English, can explain the Chinese to me, at least in some rudimentary way. You haven't explained how a single piece of music means anything profound yet.
@bahramf "Give me a reasonable, profound interpretation of a single piece of music as I did with Frankl's story."
I have given an interpretation that I find reasonable, I am not going to try and force you to accept it. I just just as easily turn around and claim that I don't find Frankl's story profound.
I know that I don't find the Mona Lisa profound. But I don't claim that "The Mona Lisa is not profound" because of that fact, that would be an absurd and unjustifiable claim.
@JDMusicTuition You haven't given me anything nearly as profound as Frankl's story for a piece of music. Also, almost everyone agrees that Frankl made a profound insight. You can disagree, but you'd have to give me REASONS why.
@bahramf "You haven't given me anything nearly as profound as Frankl's story for a piece of music"
I am sorry, but that is a ridiculous request on two levels:
1) I am not a writer, I could not write a profound story about Frankl's story if I tried.
2) What is profoundly expressed in music may not be expressible in language, and what is profoundly expressed in language may not be expressible in music.
My definitions do not require perfect translation, in fact it may prohibit them altogether.
@DarkwingScooter I didn't ask for perfect translation. But a rudimentary sketch so I know you're not completely talking out of your ass. I can't just trust that you are having a profound subjective experience of a piece of music. You have to give an outsider something, or else, how can I disagree with you at all?
@bahramf "You can disagree, but you'd have to give me REASONS why."
I do disagree, but I still need you to nail your colours to the mast with regards to your definitions of profundity and meaning.
It is no use if you are using a completely different definition of meaning or profundity which basically circularly deny these to music or something, so I must insist that you state them clearly.
@DarkwingScooter "I'll define profundity because I think it is the most important one and if you have profundity you have depth and meaning. In literature, for a work to be profound, it must deal with some profound subject matter (i.e. fate, freedom, the purpose of life, etc.) and do so in some profound way. So, for a statement to be profound it must make you question or re-examine or rethink an idea you once held which has been brought up to more careful consideration and scrutiny."
@bahramf ...The definition of profundity was from a reply to you asking for a definition of profundity from about 21 hours ago. In what sense does it circularly deny music could possibly be profound?
@bahramf If you define profundity as something which is intrinsically a property of language and hold that language is not music for the purposes of showing that music is not profound your argument is circular because your conclusion in implied in your premise.
If you are trying to show that circles are squares you cannot assume that circles have four corners connected by straight lines for the sake of argument because that is part of what you are trying to demonstrate.
@DarkwingScooter My example was a story. That's doesn't mean by definition of profundity is intrinsically linguistic.
A painting could be profound, or even a photograph. Imagine a picture of a group of people chained to trees in protest of a clear cutting. This is about civil disobedience and how sometimes people have to be willing to risk, incarceration, injury or even death for a cause they truly believe in.
@bahramf ...my description doesn't do it justice (you have to actually see it), but it gets you far enough along the way that you know I'm not pulling profundity out of my ass.
@DarkwingScooter Yes, fate is a profound subject b/c it is one which is intimately tied to the human experience. And the question of whether the oracle telling the father (don't recall the name) his fate actually made him do the things he did or whether he was in control of things is profound because it is a question a lot of people (if not all) think about with no clear answer. And for a work of art to grapple with it well is profound.
@bahramf "b/c it is one which is intimately tied to the human experience"
Music is intimately tied to the musical experience, so it is profound?
"And for a work of art to grapple with it well is profound."
And for a work of art to grapple with music is profound? Is not a fugue grappling with its theme?
I am afraid you are simply making the bare assertion of what you perceive to be profound and then not only expecting me to believe it but ALSO expecting me to find it profound too.
@DarkwingScooter If you're saying that music is profound b/c it is dealing with a profound theme (i.e. music) and b/c music is profound it is dealing w/ something profound is clearly circular.
@DarkwingScooter What about numbers and a harmonic series is intimately tied to the human experience? I think I explained quite clearly why my examples are actually profound. I am not at all clear how yours are though.
@DarkwingScooter "I do find the way that the harmonic series can expressed in numbers profound, as apparently did Pythagoras... Can you prove to me why your perception of profundity should "obviously" take precedence over mine?"
Yes, you're using the adverbial definition of profound (i.e. amazingly or really really). I don't mean profound as in "that piece of music was profoundly bad." I mean profound as in insightful in the deepest most meaningful sense - the peak of artistic genius.
@bahramf ...it's amazing that the harmonic series can be expressed in numbers, even profoundly amazing. But that's not profound in the way I've been using it.
@bahramf You may not have had this experience, but as a composer and as a performer I have struggled for months with themes before suddenly coming to a flash of understanding, or insight into what the theme IS, not only as music but as embodiment of nature and reality as I see it.
I have never grappled like that with Oedipus, it is for me a rather dull topic more suited to vanity magazines and psychoanalysts raised by nannies. But notice I don't deny you YOUR experience.
@DarkwingScooter It's not an experience. I explained why fate, moral responsibility and freedom are question all people grapple with and how the play deals with it in a subtle and insightful way.
@bahramf "I explained why fate, moral responsibility and freedom are question"
So only things which deal with these topics can be considered profound? Or do you have a complete list somewhere?
Subtlety and insightfulness can easily be ascribed to music and indeed it is those properties which I always listen for and appreciated in music. Moreover these are subjective evaluations.
How is Moral Responsibility an objectively demonstrable phenomenon in any case?
@DarkwingScooter "How is Moral Responsibility an objectively demonstrable phenomenon in any case?" There is no force to this question b/c not once did I write that anything was a "objectively demonstrable phenomenon". That it is objectively the subject of a play or a novel is not hard to demonstrate. I have done so already.
Almost any reading of, for instance, many of Aesop's fable are about moral responsibility, would you like me to demonstrate this? It would be quite easy.
@DarkwingScooter Also, you see why "embodiment of nature and reality" is just you making something up in place of nothing? Freedom, determinism, God, civil disobedience, etc. these are real things, and things which people struggle with and things which works of art offer insight into.
Also, you haven't explained what you came to understand about reality when you have that musical insight. That's really what is lacking. Even if you can't explain completely, give me some idea of what u mean
@bahramf "Freedom, determinism, God, civil disobedience, etc. these are real things"
WHAT?????
Civil disobedience I may grant you in that it is an action, but what is "real" about freedom?
You are simply substituting "real" for "profound" and stating thing which you find profound to be real, and then saying that you don't accept music as profound because it is not real and does not discuss real profound things.
Your argument is circular with no positive definition of musical profundity.
@DarkwingScooter Freedom, determinism and God are not corporeal things, but they are not empty terms. They are definable (although their definitions are disputed) and thus, something substantial can be said about them.
The embodiment of nature is music and ultimate reality in music are not clear and defined things, even worse, they're meaningless. They're something you said in the place of nothing. Freedom is not a placeholder. It is a real question, experience, issue, etc.
@bahramf You are confused and using a definition of meaning which I have explicitly denied.
I will not accept positivist definitions of meaning and I will not accept that you have the right to claim things like "freedom" as real concepts while musical concepts as placeholders because there is no agreed definition, because I have defined linguistic meaning as that which has meaning by virtue of consensus so you are just saying the WORD "freedom" has no musical meaning, which is obviously true.
@DarkwingScooter "fate is a profound subject b/c it is one which is intimately tied to the human experience. And the question of whether the oracle telling the father (don't recall the name) his fate actually made him do the things he did or whether he was in control of things is profound because it is a question a lot of people (if not all) think about with no clear answer. And for a work of art to grapple with it well is profound." If u think this not profound, you're wrong.
@DarkwingScooter I've never read of Oedipus like articles in vanity magazines. I think the issue of whether we are free or we are destined or preordained to be something and whether that makes a difference to how we should live (i.e. should we resign ourselves to fate) is a deep and meaningful topic. It has motivated much of philosophy and literature (See, Stoics, Aristotle, Plato, Hemingway, Kafka, Stevenson, Homer, etc.).
@bahramf "It has motivated much of philosophy and literature"
Music and specific musical works has motivated much philosophy and literature too, not a good test. In fact I am of the opinion that musical thought often anticipates concepts in scientific and philosophical spheres.
"It's like insight or meaning or truth, etc. If it is there, you can explain how to a third party."
You are insufficiently skeptical, there is (absolutely) no thing which a third party cannot deny.
Respond to this video... Music may motivate philosophy, but so does showering and walking. Also, I didn't mention motivation. I mentioned that fate and moral responsibility are topics of concern for almost all people. They are also not topics which are easily dealt with superficially, therefore, most often, art with them as a theme is profound.
@bahramf "Music may motivate philosophy, but so does showering and walking."
That is not the claim. The claim is that music IS philosophy, nay highest philosophy. All those books of Plato are ABOUT what is trivially expressed in music.
THAT is the claim.
What is more, some things can be expressed in music which are so profound that language has no means to grasp it. Words have no meaning aside from what we agree them to mean, music is truth itself.
@DarkwingScooter Yes, but you haven't showed how music is like this. I've argued and used illustrative examples of non-musical profundity. If music is highest philosophy, you should be able to give a sketch of how a piece of music is at least lowest philosophy. Even if the sketch does not capture the music entirely, you should be able to give a thumbnail sketch so I can believe you.
@bahramf So now I have made a positive definition of meaning and profundity. You can't prove your definition of profundity by simply stating examples anymore because you seek to deny me simply making the bare assertion "This fugue is profound".
You need to PROVE to me the thesis that "freedom is profound". Are you talking about the word freedom? The concept? If so which one? The physical state? Some thing in nature?
What does it mean for "Freedom is profound" to be true?
@JDMusicTuition You're really confusing the issue here. I'm not making a claim about language. I'm saying that any artistic or non-artistic medium which is capable of addressing profound themes in profound ways is capable of profundity.
You can do this linguistically or not. For freedom to be a profound theme it must be significant to the human experience of life. It is, therefore, freedom is a profound subject. It's really that simple. Why are you complicating things?
Yes, but what I am trying to demonstrate to you is that if I were to make a similar claim about language as you are about music you would also not be able to explain what it is for a work of language to be profound in musical terms.
You cannot just claim that literature is OBVIOUSLY profound and then deny me the same strategy.
@DarkwingScooter I explained why literature is profound though. I did a good job in my opinion. If you want to claim that music is obviously profound and you think I'm denying you this, I'm not. You can say that all you want. Whether it can compel others to accept it is another story.
I gave a compelling explanation of literary profundity. You did not give a compelling explanation of musical profundity. If you want to do so in musical terms, go right ahead....
@bahramf ...If you want to explain how music is profound in and through a piece of music, record it and put it on youtube. What do you want from me. We are having a linguistic discussion. If you think I'm winning this argument b/c it's on my 'turf', you are really stretching it b/c I've explain how non-linguistic things (photographs) can be profound.
I really don't think language is a huge advantage to me. You should be able to explain musical profundity if it exists...
@bahramf I really am not understanding why you think explaining musical profundity in language is such an unreasonable demand. What would you expect from a philosophical essay? If you want to deny it is possible to explain musical profundity in words, I suggest you choose a different area of study (other than philosophy) b/c philosophers expect well-worded explanations of why a claim is true from each other all the time and of an array of topics.
@DarkwingScooter But that doesn't make it inconsistent. Why would I have to explain literary profundity in musical terms? You can explain musical profundity however you want, as I've emphasized. Post a video of yourself playing the clarinet, I don't care.
Also, the burden of proof is on you b/c you're making a positive claim about music, mainly, that it is profound.
@DarkwingScooter That explanation of profundity is not categorically correct, but it is quite plausible and captures what we take to be profound about many things. Yours really is an evasion b/c u provide not one example and it's just nuts. Your definition of profundity is ridiculous and wholly implausible. Mine is at least sort of reasoned and appeal to rather banal and generally accepted intuitions while your is farcical and laughable.
@bahramf How is practically the entire Bach oevre, just for starters, "not one example". Are you aware of just how much music he wrote?
I give you an in depth technical explanation, I cite dictionary definitions which all easily allow musical profundity.
All that you manage to respond with is blind positivist denial like you aren't even reading, then you give a bare assertion of an example as an explanation and a petitio principii as a definition.
@bahramf T"he dictionary definition is off of wikipedia"
Not true, I cited all the wiktionary definitions and all easily allow for musical profundity without even so much as thinking hard about it. Try Oxford or any other if you prefer, you will find the same thing.
You, on the other gave a explanation that not only included the explanans but also directly asserted your position (Something is profound if it "talks about"...?) and circularly denied mine.
@DarkwingScooter I wasn't begging the question. I defined profundity. If you think I'm not allowing for music in the definition, that's a high hill to climb b/c it allows for art forms other than literature.
@bahramf "it allows for art forms other than literature"
How? Pictorial art doesn't "talk about" anything in the direct sense you are advocating. "Moby Dick" doesn't talk about all consuming revenge, it talks about an old guy and a whale.
Sure the book is about the profound things, but it doesn't talk about them. Your definition allows nothing but shallow chatter about "ooh, that's deep" things.
That not profound at all. If you have to talk about it you have missed the point.
@bahramf "It illustrates, represents or directly says something profound."
So what? Music does NOT do this?
How does language illustrate profundity. Come on, you are making a positive claim here, you can't just expect me to believe it when that is precisely the basis you have for denying my claim.
If you want me to believe that language represents profundity you will have to prove it in a non-circular fashion, I'm still waiting for that proof.
@JDMusicTuition The proof is very simple. Literature (not just language) deals with subjects like freedom/determinism, for example. That is profound b/c freedom/determinism is an issue which effects human experience and a question we have always had since the very beginning of civilization.
That's not a proof, that's a definition, and a non-circular one to boot. We are making progress.
This does not in and of itself exclusionary of music, since music also "deals with" subjects like freedom or determinism, albeit in a different way, as I have demonstrated. You need to clarify what it is in the way that language "deals with" these things which is special.
Surely you don't claim that the language ITSELF has this kind of referent?
@bahramf Your definition is also needlessly restrictive, the "for example" effectively acts as an "et cetera", expecting the reader to fill the domain covered by the concept.
This will not do when you are trying to delimit the concept. Could I, for example, substitute "the relationship of math to nature" into your definition instead of "freedom"?
These satisfy your criteria as "issues which affects human experience..."
(notice the usage of examples and etc. is correct here)
I have, you either haven't read, don't understand it or are being willfully pigheaded. At least acknowledge the argument, don't just pretend you don't see it.
@JDMusicTuition The relationship of math to nature is profound. The question is how music can illustrate something profound or even represent math+nature at all.
@JDMusicTuition Music might even take up profound subjects, but how it could give any insight into these subjects is just mysterious. It has been for a long time. I'm surprised you think it so obviously can. Go write a paper or something and let me know how it's received.
@bahramf Even if I were to grant your definition of profundity, which seems to limit the scope to ethical and social considerations, you could not exclude music.
The idea that music is deeply ethical in its impact is one that is not only implicitly prevalent today, but has been an accepted concept ever since Plato, Aristotle and Confucius. The Indian classical tradition also has similar ideas.
So even your own definition of profundity implicitly includes music in its scope.
@bahramf "If you want me to believe you have profound experiences of music on faith, that's fine, but realize that that has no argumentative force. "
Of course it does!
There are precious few statements of any kind, and none of yours, that can satisfy your requirement for proof. In fact your test is the strong positivist test, a test which fails because it is itself a bare assertion.
You should not confuse validity with soundness in argument, I can assume anything I please.
@bahramf "An assumption in an argument by itself has no argumentative force."
All arguments start from and aim to clarify assumptions. Even "Cogito Ergo Sum" requires you to make several assumptions to understand it.
More to the point, why do you thing your assumptions should carry more weight than mine. I can trivially show that every statement of yours relies on unsubstantiated assumption.
@DarkwingScooter Okay, but that's not what I was objecting to. You make two unsubstantiated claims: You have a profound experience of music (which I think was the issue) and from here you move to the conclusion that music is profound, which is not fair b/c you haven't substantiated that music is profound b/c you haven't explained your experience. The other is that there is a definition of profundity which fits music and the one for other art forms is inadequate for music.
Colors do not exist as a property of anything in reality (apart from brain states), they are entirely mental subjective phenomena.
It would be absurd for me to claim that colors don't exist unless you can explain to me what it is to experience "green". It may CORRESPOND to a certain wavelength and I understand what you mean by ANALOGY to my own experience, but neither of those EXPLAIN colors.
@DarkwingScooter But profundity is not like colors or an experience. It's something which I've defined and given illustrative examples of.
Also, the reason colors cannot be explained to a color-blind person is b/c they are so simple. You're saying that music is highly complex, and philosophical profound (over even higher than philosophically profound). Thus, you should be able to give some low level sketch of what this could possibly mean. If it were overly simple, I would understand.
@bahramf But meaning by analogy is musical meaning as we defined it.
So language can never BE profound, it can only refer to the concept profound, a concept defined by what you feel when you hold that "PROFOUND" is true of an expression or thing. But music IS profound when it holds true by analogy to what you feel when you hold that PROFOUND is true.
Language REFERS to profundity.
Music IS profound.
Notice that the use of identity there excludes your thesis necessarily, by Leibniz's law.
@JDMusicTuition If your claim is that music/fugue are themselves profound rather than merely referring to profound themes, you still have to argue for that claim. I can't explain how a novel as a medium is profound b/c it's not. Prima facie, this raises a question to any artistic medium or form within that medium (e.g. fugue) which claims to be profound. Therefore, you have to explain (in words, b/c that's what dissertations are written in) how a fugue is profound.
@bahramf "Therefore, you have to explain (in words, b/c that's what dissertations are written in) how a fugue is profound."
And you have to explain to me, in musical terms, how a novel is profound. It is a ridiculous request I know, but that is exactly what you are asking me to do.
In fact, can you explain to me even in linguistic terms how a novel is profound?
@bahramf ...language only MEANS anything by our shared experience. But that experience cannot itself be linguistic in nature because that would violate our definition of linguistic meaning.
So if you say "profound" and give examples it is because I interpret these examples in BY analogy to my own feelings (or perception of reality if you insist, your distinction is not relevant to my thesis) that I can report that I UNDERSTAND what it means.
@JDMusicTuition No, if you didn't think the themes of fate, destiny, freedom, civil disobedience, law & order, etc. were profound by analogy to your feelings of perceptual states, they would still be profound. I think almost everyone accepts these themes as profound even if they have never experienced them dealt with profoundly.
This raises a presumption that they are actually profound themes. Further, I've explain how they are profound w/ illustrative examples. So, there is no denying.
@bahramf "Further, I've explain how they are profound w/ illustrative examples."
I don't accept your illustrative examples as anything other than bare assertions. You have not explained what it is to be profound, only stated that this that and the other is OBVIOUSLY profound and music is OBVIOUSLY not a able to express them.
NO!
Music can express those things (albeit by different means) and I don't find "civil disobedience" a profound topic.
You ask for explanations not examples, so explain.
@DarkwingScooter Explanation of profundity: Profound themes are those which are essential to human experience, to our lives and times, and profoundly taking up these themes is to take them up in such a way that something wise, new or creative is revealed about these important (to life) and perplexing themes. This, if found, altogether in one work of art, makes that work of art profound.
@DarkwingScooter Explanation of profundity: Profound themes are those which are essential to human experience, to our lives and times, and profoundly taking up these themes is to take them up in such a way that something wise, new or creative is revealed about these important (to life) and perplexing themes. This, if found, altogether in one work of art, makes that work of art profound.
This definition of profundity w/ illustrative examples equal anything but a bare assertion.
@bahramf "This definition of profundity w/ illustrative examples equal anything but a bare assertion."
You cannot include the term profound in your definition. What you have given is an example, I can find no definition of "definition" which involves examples.
I can give you examples of musical profundity (e.g. most of Bach's oevre).
@DarkwingScooter I didn't use the term profound in the definition of profundity. I used it in the next definition which was how a piece of art can be profound: "profoundly taking up these themes is to take them up in such a way that..." That's not the definition of profundity, that's a explanation of how a work of art can take up profound themes profoundly.
@bahramf "which was how a piece of art can be profound:"
It is still petitio principii.
If you can make the positive statement that language is profound and only provide examples as "proof", why should I have to prove my statement?
Even so, I HAVE proved my position amply in my opinion, you are refusing to acknowledge said proof and demand an example instead, an example which you deny on a priori grounds (i.e. without proof).
That is always the problem with positivism, so stop doing it.
@bahramf Here is proper definition: Something can be said to be "profound" when it elicits an emotional response corresponding to the emotional response elicited by a musical piece which invites contemplation upon serious themes.
From wiktionary:
"Characterized by intensity" (music can be intense)
"entering far into subjects; reaching to the bottom of a matter, or of a branch of learning; thorough" (a fugue is a thorough examination of a theme)
@DarkwingScooter Wikipedia is a good source for aesthetic terms. Good on you! It's difficult to understand how the theme of a fugue is very deep or serious. Whereas, freedom, fate, etc. are actually very serious themes. They plague us all.
@DarkwingScooter Anyways, lets carry this conversation on the messages function of youtube. I think we're making Spano seem more popular than he really is.
@bahramf "Anyways, lets carry this conversation on the messages function of youtube. I think we're making Spano seem more popular than he really is."
@bahramf "profundity is not like colors or an experience."
Nothing exists, from my perspective, that is not an experience. The statement "If A then B" is true if and only if I experience the state of "trueness" for B when I experience the state of "trueness" for the concept A, or I experience the state "falseness" for A.
"Profound" only exists, or is only true of something, when I experience the feeling which I feel when profound is true for me when I experience the thing which is profound...
@JDMusicTuition The reason people don't ask for musical interpretations of linguistic profundity is b/c they understand how a piece of literature is profound through the linguistic explanation. If you can explain to me how music is profound musically, that would be okay, but the fact that I don't think you can says something about the limitations of musical meaning I think.
You might be right that there is something non-linguistically communicable to music, but unless u can explain it...
@DarkwingScooter So, what can we even discuss? You're just saying you have an experience of musical profundity and if no one else agrees you're still right?
What is philosophy? It is at least partially about argumentation. So, you can claim that music is profound without explaining how it is profound, but no one else has to buy that.
@bahramf "I mean profound as in insightful in the deepest most meaningful sense - the peak of artistic genius."
That is what I mean when I say I find this fugue profound. Insightful in the most meaningful sense - the peak of artistic genius.
If you can't prove that you experience it differently I should have to to prove that I don't. You can't prove that you experience Oedoipus as profound any more than I can prove that I don't. You could be a text generating computer for all I know.
@DarkwingScooter I never claimed to experience Oedipus as profound. I claimed it was profound by explaining what makes it profound. Profundity is not a subjective state.
@DarkwingScooter I didn't just assert the picture's profundity. I explained it:
"A painting could be profound, or even a photograph. Imagine a picture of a group of people chained to trees in protest of a clear cutting. This is about civil disobedience and how sometimes people have to be willing to risk, incarceration, injury or even death for a cause they truly believe in. "
That's enough to buy that it is profound until you see it for yourself I think.
@bahramf You have simply defined what it is to be profound in literature and what it is for a statement (by which I presume you mean linguistic statement, not the statement of a musical theme, which is no less a statement in my view) and then declare that music cannot do this.
Well, it does, for me. The fact that you don't is inconceivable to me. Like trying to imagine the experience of a blind person.
I didn't say you were deficient or that your musical experience is deficient because of your inability to perceive musical profundity.
What I am trying to show is that your perception of musical profundity is a function of your perception of music, not of the music itself. Just because a blind person cannot see doesn't mean that colors don't exist or that there perception of reality is in any way inferior.
@DarkwingScooter Also, this bite about how I'm not defining my terms is getting old, b/c clearly I've defined my terms and even given you an example of how my term (i.e. profundity) is exemplified in novels and stories.
@bahramf "but the Chinese person, if they also speak English, can explain the Chinese to me, at least in some rudimentary way"
I have explained the meaning to you, at least as I see it and in some rudimentary way.
The ONLY thing that is at issue here is your refusal to accept MY interpretation, not that an interpretation exists or is possible. You can't claim that language has a consistent interpretation either, that is simply not true, and can easily be shown to be not true.
@JDMusicTuition Again, I don't recall you giving me a profound, meaningful interpretation of a single piece of music. If you have, please copy/paste it, or tell me where I can find it.
@bahramf You be tempted to argue that it is precisely the consensual nature of language that gives it meaning, i.e. it only has meaning when you believe you have consensus with the speaker or society at large over the meaning (notice though that we have two separate and irreducible terms: "Meaning" and "Consensus").
Problem is that in logic the terms do not have "meaning" in any sense apart from being terms, that is what makes it logic. Yet, would you argue that logic itself is meaningless?
@DarkwingScooter I don't know about consensus, but people understand logic. Maybe not the individual terms, but large numbers of people understand modus ponens for examples.
You are confusing the system of logic with the meaning of terms used within the system of logic. Logical terms are logical because they are formal, and they are formal because they do not have any meaning aside from being logical terms.
This is exactly parallel to the musical case where a piece of music can have consensus meaning (which is why you do not play gigues at funerals or the French anthem at an American football game) even though notes do not.
@JDMusicTuition No, the point is that you and Darkwingscooter are confusing the two. For, I never argued that complex meaningful things cannot come from simple meaningless things. Obviously that would be ridiculous because the letters of the alphabet are simple and meaningless sounds.
@bahramf "the idea is that you'd be able to give me a rudimentary sketch of the meaning of a piece of music"
I did, I will repeat:
The first four notes have leap with an interruption before returning. This speaks of overcoming frustration. Next note is a leading note which indicates defeat (because it confirms the minor key). But then we have the cotchets going back up in defiance, returning to the third (relative major).
The overall meaning (as you perform) is "I overcome frustration".
@DarkwingScooter Is that a profound piece of subject matter? or a profound thing to illustrate about that subject matter? I mean that seriously, is overcoming frustration profound? Is frustration profound?
I agree that what you describe is a meaning. But it's clearly not profound in the way that the subject of fate and freedom and their relation is profound in Oedipus.
@DarkwingScooter If you're repeating this: "The first four notes have leap with an interruption before returning. This speaks of overcoming frustration. Next note is a leading note which indicates defeat (because it confirms the minor key). But then we have the cotchets going back up in defiance, returning to the third (relative major)."
Tell me where it first came up in our discussion. I told you that my definition of profundity came up about 21 hours ago.
@bahramf "Tell me where it first came up in our discussion."
22 hours ago now, immediately after you requested it.
"this bite about how I'm not defining my terms is getting old"
That is not a proper definition, simply not dealing with the subject matter at hand or defining away musical profundity will not do at a technical level.
You cannot define away my experience like a behaviorist would, you have to account for it.
@DarkwingScooter Profundity is not an experience. English essays explain why works of literature are profound. I don't necessarily buy the person had a profound experience, but I should be able to buy that the work itself is profound b/c it deals with a profound piece of subject matter profoundly an with great skill and nuance, perhaps revealing something new about it.
@bahramf You should see now where the problem is. Profundity (like "aesthetic significance") is a subjective state of the perceiver in relation to perceived.
In Christian mysticism monks will contemplate the "seven last words" for one each. If one can profoundly contemplate the word "into" for a day and come to new religious insight, what makes you think one can't do the same with a perfect fifth in an infinitely more complex context?
@DarkwingScooter Profundity is not subjective or a subjective state. The picture of people chained to trees in profound whether you think it is or not.
@DarkwingScooter I don't think music can be profound, so I don't know what a MUSICAL definition of profundity would be. I've applied my very standard definition of profundity to narrative artwork and photographic art. What more could you possibly want?
@bahramf "I don't know what a MUSICAL definition of profundity would be."
Well you see that is a pretty big problem. If you cannot provide a positive definition of something you cannot deny it
If you don't know what it is for A to be true how can know when it is not the case that it is true? How could you prove that a blargho is not blue if I don't tell you what a blargho is?
"Why? I don't have to prove to you that I am conscious for you to accept that do you?" No, but how we know other people are conscious is actually quite a puzzling a pressing philosophical issue. Whether painting and literature are profound is not. Whether music is on the other hand is. If you want me to believe you have profound experiences of music on faith, that's fine, but realize that that has no argumentative force.
@DarkwingScooter That was my point earlier in the discussion. You have to prove that music is profound, not the other way around. I just have to show that your claims of profundity in music are false.
@bahramf I don't think you were here yet. I made the point of the fact that the burden of proof was not on my shoulders to the other person on this comment section.
@bahramf ...What I am talking about are the gestures which are expressed by our speech.
Someone should come up with a better term for it because it causes considerable confusion but they are not physical gestures, this can be empirically shown and has been by Susan Goldin-Meadow when she showed that suppressing physical gesturing when speaking imposes a cognitive load but only in those who naturally do so.
Respond to this video... I understand that speaking louder, quieter, etc. can be gestures as well, but without words, just shouting loudly, quietly, softly, slowly, quickly is not of much aesthetic value. If it sounds nice it may be nice to listen to, but unless it can help address some of the question which plague humankind, in what way are these gestures profound. They might be meaningful is a very bare and essential sense, but not so much that this meaningfulness is aesthet...
@bahramf ...ically significant. For that to be the case, look at some of the art forms which are clearly meaningful (i.e. literature, drama, poetry, etc.). These art forms speak (in their own way) to the human experience and when they are good, they speak about it profoundly.
I've never heard absolute music which can do this with the level of sophistication of a novel, for instance. To me this suggests that music is not meaningful as an art form, though there may be some base meaning in it
@bahramf "I've never heard absolute music which can do this with the level of sophistication of a novel, for instance."
That is your interpretation. I have never heard of a novel that can reach the level of sophistication of something like a fugue. I don't find novels particularly profound.
"No one has argued that with a libretto, lyrics...."
@DarkwingScooter The music. But, that's my point. It's not the music alone.
Also, I can explain how a novel is profound. For instance, Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" (though this is not a novel, a story, nonetheless) is profound b/c it shows the resiliency of the human spirit and that even under the most difficult conditions people can endure if only their suffering has meaning.
With utmost ease, let us take the one from the video on the fugue:
The first four notes have leap with an interruption before returning. This speaks of overcoming frustration. Next note is a leading note which indicates defeat (because it confirms the minor key). But then we have the cotchets going back up in defiance, returning to the third (relative major).
The theme speaks to me of adversity and perseverance. How is that not profound?
@bahramf By way of example if I read Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" but I do not understand English, is that proof that the book has no meaning (it is, after all, nothing but gibberish to me) or that I didn't get understand the book?
If we argue over the interpretation of some passage, what is at issue is our interpretations, not some absolute meaning residing in the book. Because there is no absolute meaning residing in the book to begin with.
@DarkwingScooter Okay, but if I spoke the language you do understand (as you speak English, and I guess 'Music') I could explain it to you in that language. You should be able to do that for me, or even translate from 'Music' to English.
@bahramf "I could explain it to you in that language"
Classic problem: See the Lewis Carrol poem "Jabberwocky". There is a lot of writing about why your assumption is incorrect. My favorite is the translator's introduction to my edition of Adorno's "Aesthetic Theory" (Robert Hullot-Kentor, the publisher is Continuum).
Even if that were not the case, you would only have shown that linguistic meaning does not translate directly to musical meaning, which is a different issue.
@JDMusicTuition It's not though. Without language and music being completely interchangeable, the idea is that you'd be able to give me a rudimentary sketch of the meaning of a piece of music, even if not translate it note for note, fugue for fugue, etc. Without this, I have to take you on faith that in your head, the music is meaningful.
@DarkwingScooter If music means in an analogous, but distinct way from the way language means, then what's so special about it? Presumably we don't just want a music language, different, but in many way the same as our own language (in that there is still signing).
Is it me or is that dude high/drunk???
aldebarankanon 8 months ago
PROFUNDITY is NOT an EXPERIENCE! It's like insight or meaning or truth, etc. If it is there, you can explain how to a third party.
bahramf 1 year ago
You can end this debate quickly. Give me a reasonable, profound interpretation of a single piece of music as I did with Frankl's story.
bahramf 1 year ago
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JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
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Music is ... A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy"
— Ludwig van Beethoven
Spano said that Beethoven thought music is highest philosophy. These are importantly different things. Beethoven does not, according to the above quote think that music=philosophy, but first that philosophy is a sort of revelation which music is higher than and most likely a different category
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "first that philosophy is a sort of revelation which music is higher than and most likely a different category"
It is intrinsically a different category, but not extrinsically.
It has a different character to linguistic philosophy, to be sure, but it deals with the same subjects.
To some extent philosophy is about words which are thought to reflect reality, then musical philosophy is about music which are thought to reflect reality.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter You must mean, "musical philosophy is about sounds which are thought to reflect reality". Well, if music is a form of philosophy, then it is clearly deficient b/c it is unclear, most people don't understand it even after a long time of trying to understand the content of the music and it seems like except for "this music is beautiful, and tragic" no two people seem to have the same interpretation of the content of the music. When they do, it is usually...
Furthermore,
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf ...mysterious to others how they could have interpreted the music in such an extravagant way.
Furthermore, how could music deal with the same subject-matter if words refer to things in the word as signs and symbols of those thing and music does not?
Also, your use of intrinsic and extrinsic seems mistaken unless you can elaborate.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "how could music deal with the same subject-matter if words refer to things in the word as signs and symbols of those thing and music does not?"
No, music refers to the same things but in a different way. There is a thought process which underlies both music and language of which music and language are different expressions of, each best suited to its own domain.
"intrinsic and extrinsic"
Intrinsic and extrinsic are functions of your point of view.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter So, looking from the outside, music and language are different, but from the inside they are the same? Is that the meat of your extrinsic-intrinsic distinction?
There is a thought process which underlies music. While I listen to music, I imagine, I think, I feel, I interpret, etc. but nothing as robust as a philosophy. I might imagine myself in the blissful world of the sounds, I might think about how great this world is and compare it to our non-musical world...
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf ...then I might interpret the music as light and happy.
That's about it, and even these claims are highly contested. See Peter Kivy, Nick Zangwell or Stephen Davies. Spano's claims are almost universally rejected as baseless.
Also, the signs and symbols of language are not entirely arbitrary. Plus, there are a lot of onomatopoeic words and there is poetry, etc. If music is just sounds which are analogous to idea of fear and anger, etc. than this is a sad thing for music.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf Both Davies and Kivy are mistaken in my opinion in that complex thought is fundamentally gestural in nature, whether that be logic, music, language or art.
The mistake is to get stuck in positivist interpretations of linguistic meaning which are universally discredited even by there own creators and then to insist that music must conform to them. Language doesn't even conform to them. Nevermind "higher" thoughts such as logic and math.
(I'm not familiar with Zangwell)
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter If complex thought is fundamentally gestural in nature, and music is gestural and even the gestures we make when we speak with one another are, obviously, gestural, then you're claim must be that these gesture taken by themselves are capable of being of profound insights. My claim is that for the same reason by themselves, they are not profound with regard to a language, they are not and, like a the gestures we make when we speak, must be accompanied by something more con...
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf ...crete to have any deep meaning. This is not to devalue gestures, but only to say that they are not up to the task of providing us with profound insights, on their own.
But unlike you, I haven't had the paper I've explained all this in published, so maybe I should keep quiet.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "so maybe I should keep quiet. "
No, no, it is an interesting and necessary debate for musicians to resolve and my dissertation is not yet published because one examiner agrees with your position and the other with mine. This is not a new debate.
But I do believe that a lot of the terms of your side of the debate are holdovers from logical positivism (especially in applying the earlier Wittgenstinian notion of linguistic meaning), which is now completely indefensible in philosophy.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter No one has argued that with a libretto, lyrics, etc. music can gain meaning and profundity which it did not have w/o it though. Have they?
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf And that is even if I were to grant you that musical elements are somehow simpler than linguistic ones.
The amount of relevant information in a single chord can be far more complex than anything comparable in language:
/watch?v=OUS0kTtK46A
If anything language is the simpler medium of communication because linguistic elements can be of any complexity and yet have the same content ("Ugh" in one language can mean the same as "Verontagsaamingspraktyk" in another).
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Musical elements aren't simple so much as piece of music are simple (i.e. their meaning is simple). When it becomes complex, people start to suggest that you're crazy if you think that's what you heard.
Of course the complex can come from the simple. Look at evolution.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "When it becomes complex, people start to suggest that you're crazy if you think that's what you heard."
People thought the germ theory of disease was crazy too, hardly a good test of anything.
The only thing that matters in communication is what I want to communicate to you and what you infer from the communication.
It isn't even necessary that the meaning between the participants be the same (refer again to the Chinese room experiment), only that at least one of them sees meaning.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Sure, but the Chinese person, if they also speak English, can explain the Chinese to me, at least in some rudimentary way. You haven't explained how a single piece of music means anything profound yet.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "Give me a reasonable, profound interpretation of a single piece of music as I did with Frankl's story."
I have given an interpretation that I find reasonable, I am not going to try and force you to accept it. I just just as easily turn around and claim that I don't find Frankl's story profound.
I know that I don't find the Mona Lisa profound. But I don't claim that "The Mona Lisa is not profound" because of that fact, that would be an absurd and unjustifiable claim.
JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@JDMusicTuition You haven't given me anything nearly as profound as Frankl's story for a piece of music. Also, almost everyone agrees that Frankl made a profound insight. You can disagree, but you'd have to give me REASONS why.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "You haven't given me anything nearly as profound as Frankl's story for a piece of music"
I am sorry, but that is a ridiculous request on two levels:
1) I am not a writer, I could not write a profound story about Frankl's story if I tried.
2) What is profoundly expressed in music may not be expressible in language, and what is profoundly expressed in language may not be expressible in music.
My definitions do not require perfect translation, in fact it may prohibit them altogether.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter I didn't ask for perfect translation. But a rudimentary sketch so I know you're not completely talking out of your ass. I can't just trust that you are having a profound subjective experience of a piece of music. You have to give an outsider something, or else, how can I disagree with you at all?
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "You can disagree, but you'd have to give me REASONS why."
I do disagree, but I still need you to nail your colours to the mast with regards to your definitions of profundity and meaning.
It is no use if you are using a completely different definition of meaning or profundity which basically circularly deny these to music or something, so I must insist that you state them clearly.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter "I'll define profundity because I think it is the most important one and if you have profundity you have depth and meaning. In literature, for a work to be profound, it must deal with some profound subject matter (i.e. fate, freedom, the purpose of life, etc.) and do so in some profound way. So, for a statement to be profound it must make you question or re-examine or rethink an idea you once held which has been brought up to more careful consideration and scrutiny."
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf ...The definition of profundity was from a reply to you asking for a definition of profundity from about 21 hours ago. In what sense does it circularly deny music could possibly be profound?
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf If you define profundity as something which is intrinsically a property of language and hold that language is not music for the purposes of showing that music is not profound your argument is circular because your conclusion in implied in your premise.
If you are trying to show that circles are squares you cannot assume that circles have four corners connected by straight lines for the sake of argument because that is part of what you are trying to demonstrate.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter My example was a story. That's doesn't mean by definition of profundity is intrinsically linguistic.
A painting could be profound, or even a photograph. Imagine a picture of a group of people chained to trees in protest of a clear cutting. This is about civil disobedience and how sometimes people have to be willing to risk, incarceration, injury or even death for a cause they truly believe in.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf ...my description doesn't do it justice (you have to actually see it), but it gets you far enough along the way that you know I'm not pulling profundity out of my ass.
bahramf 1 year ago
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@bahramf "I'm not pulling profundity out of my ass."
Yes but can you PROVE that the picture is profound. You are just asserting that it is, I may agree or not, but I want proof.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter "But it's clearly not profound in the way that the subject of fate and freedom and their relation is profound in Oedipus."
Sorry to dredge up an old comment, but I literally don't find the subject of fate as discussed in Oedipus to be particularly profound.
I do find the way that the harmonic series can expressed in numbers profound, as apparently did Pythagoras.
Can you prove to me why your perception of profundity should "obviously" take precedence over mine?
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Yes, fate is a profound subject b/c it is one which is intimately tied to the human experience. And the question of whether the oracle telling the father (don't recall the name) his fate actually made him do the things he did or whether he was in control of things is profound because it is a question a lot of people (if not all) think about with no clear answer. And for a work of art to grapple with it well is profound.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "b/c it is one which is intimately tied to the human experience"
Music is intimately tied to the musical experience, so it is profound?
"And for a work of art to grapple with it well is profound."
And for a work of art to grapple with music is profound? Is not a fugue grappling with its theme?
I am afraid you are simply making the bare assertion of what you perceive to be profound and then not only expecting me to believe it but ALSO expecting me to find it profound too.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter If you're saying that music is profound b/c it is dealing with a profound theme (i.e. music) and b/c music is profound it is dealing w/ something profound is clearly circular.
bahramf 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter What about numbers and a harmonic series is intimately tied to the human experience? I think I explained quite clearly why my examples are actually profound. I am not at all clear how yours are though.
bahramf 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter "I do find the way that the harmonic series can expressed in numbers profound, as apparently did Pythagoras... Can you prove to me why your perception of profundity should "obviously" take precedence over mine?"
Yes, you're using the adverbial definition of profound (i.e. amazingly or really really). I don't mean profound as in "that piece of music was profoundly bad." I mean profound as in insightful in the deepest most meaningful sense - the peak of artistic genius.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf ...it's amazing that the harmonic series can be expressed in numbers, even profoundly amazing. But that's not profound in the way I've been using it.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf You may not have had this experience, but as a composer and as a performer I have struggled for months with themes before suddenly coming to a flash of understanding, or insight into what the theme IS, not only as music but as embodiment of nature and reality as I see it.
I have never grappled like that with Oedipus, it is for me a rather dull topic more suited to vanity magazines and psychoanalysts raised by nannies. But notice I don't deny you YOUR experience.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter It's not an experience. I explained why fate, moral responsibility and freedom are question all people grapple with and how the play deals with it in a subtle and insightful way.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "I explained why fate, moral responsibility and freedom are question"
So only things which deal with these topics can be considered profound? Or do you have a complete list somewhere?
Subtlety and insightfulness can easily be ascribed to music and indeed it is those properties which I always listen for and appreciated in music. Moreover these are subjective evaluations.
How is Moral Responsibility an objectively demonstrable phenomenon in any case?
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter "How is Moral Responsibility an objectively demonstrable phenomenon in any case?" There is no force to this question b/c not once did I write that anything was a "objectively demonstrable phenomenon". That it is objectively the subject of a play or a novel is not hard to demonstrate. I have done so already.
Almost any reading of, for instance, many of Aesop's fable are about moral responsibility, would you like me to demonstrate this? It would be quite easy.
bahramf 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Also, you see why "embodiment of nature and reality" is just you making something up in place of nothing? Freedom, determinism, God, civil disobedience, etc. these are real things, and things which people struggle with and things which works of art offer insight into.
Also, you haven't explained what you came to understand about reality when you have that musical insight. That's really what is lacking. Even if you can't explain completely, give me some idea of what u mean
bahramf 1 year ago
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@bahramf "Freedom, determinism, God, civil disobedience, etc. these are real things"
WHAT?????
Civil disobedience I may grant you in that it is an action, but what is "real" about freedom?
You are simply substituting "real" for "profound" and stating thing which you find profound to be real, and then saying that you don't accept music as profound because it is not real and does not discuss real profound things.
Your argument is circular with no positive definition of musical profundity.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Freedom, determinism and God are not corporeal things, but they are not empty terms. They are definable (although their definitions are disputed) and thus, something substantial can be said about them.
The embodiment of nature is music and ultimate reality in music are not clear and defined things, even worse, they're meaningless. They're something you said in the place of nothing. Freedom is not a placeholder. It is a real question, experience, issue, etc.
bahramf 1 year ago
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DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
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@bahramf You are confused and using a definition of meaning which I have explicitly denied.
I will not accept positivist definitions of meaning and I will not accept that you have the right to claim things like "freedom" as real concepts while musical concepts as placeholders because there is no agreed definition, because I have defined linguistic meaning as that which has meaning by virtue of consensus so you are just saying the WORD "freedom" has no musical meaning, which is obviously true.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter "fate is a profound subject b/c it is one which is intimately tied to the human experience. And the question of whether the oracle telling the father (don't recall the name) his fate actually made him do the things he did or whether he was in control of things is profound because it is a question a lot of people (if not all) think about with no clear answer. And for a work of art to grapple with it well is profound." If u think this not profound, you're wrong.
bahramf 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter I've never read of Oedipus like articles in vanity magazines. I think the issue of whether we are free or we are destined or preordained to be something and whether that makes a difference to how we should live (i.e. should we resign ourselves to fate) is a deep and meaningful topic. It has motivated much of philosophy and literature (See, Stoics, Aristotle, Plato, Hemingway, Kafka, Stevenson, Homer, etc.).
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "It has motivated much of philosophy and literature"
Music and specific musical works has motivated much philosophy and literature too, not a good test. In fact I am of the opinion that musical thought often anticipates concepts in scientific and philosophical spheres.
"It's like insight or meaning or truth, etc. If it is there, you can explain how to a third party."
You are insufficiently skeptical, there is (absolutely) no thing which a third party cannot deny.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Yes, a third party can deny many thing. But this doesn't mean they are correct.
bahramf 1 year ago
Respond to this video... Music may motivate philosophy, but so does showering and walking. Also, I didn't mention motivation. I mentioned that fate and moral responsibility are topics of concern for almost all people. They are also not topics which are easily dealt with superficially, therefore, most often, art with them as a theme is profound.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "Music may motivate philosophy, but so does showering and walking."
That is not the claim. The claim is that music IS philosophy, nay highest philosophy. All those books of Plato are ABOUT what is trivially expressed in music.
THAT is the claim.
What is more, some things can be expressed in music which are so profound that language has no means to grasp it. Words have no meaning aside from what we agree them to mean, music is truth itself.
(See? I can also make strong claims)
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Yes, but you haven't showed how music is like this. I've argued and used illustrative examples of non-musical profundity. If music is highest philosophy, you should be able to give a sketch of how a piece of music is at least lowest philosophy. Even if the sketch does not capture the music entirely, you should be able to give a thumbnail sketch so I can believe you.
bahramf 1 year ago
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JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@bahramf So now I have made a positive definition of meaning and profundity. You can't prove your definition of profundity by simply stating examples anymore because you seek to deny me simply making the bare assertion "This fugue is profound".
You need to PROVE to me the thesis that "freedom is profound". Are you talking about the word freedom? The concept? If so which one? The physical state? Some thing in nature?
What does it mean for "Freedom is profound" to be true?
JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@JDMusicTuition You're really confusing the issue here. I'm not making a claim about language. I'm saying that any artistic or non-artistic medium which is capable of addressing profound themes in profound ways is capable of profundity.
You can do this linguistically or not. For freedom to be a profound theme it must be significant to the human experience of life. It is, therefore, freedom is a profound subject. It's really that simple. Why are you complicating things?
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "I'm not making a claim about language."
Yes, but what I am trying to demonstrate to you is that if I were to make a similar claim about language as you are about music you would also not be able to explain what it is for a work of language to be profound in musical terms.
You cannot just claim that literature is OBVIOUSLY profound and then deny me the same strategy.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter I explained why literature is profound though. I did a good job in my opinion. If you want to claim that music is obviously profound and you think I'm denying you this, I'm not. You can say that all you want. Whether it can compel others to accept it is another story.
I gave a compelling explanation of literary profundity. You did not give a compelling explanation of musical profundity. If you want to do so in musical terms, go right ahead....
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf ...If you want to explain how music is profound in and through a piece of music, record it and put it on youtube. What do you want from me. We are having a linguistic discussion. If you think I'm winning this argument b/c it's on my 'turf', you are really stretching it b/c I've explain how non-linguistic things (photographs) can be profound.
I really don't think language is a huge advantage to me. You should be able to explain musical profundity if it exists...
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf my professor tries to do this. He uses musical terms, but he explains it in words.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf I really am not understanding why you think explaining musical profundity in language is such an unreasonable demand. What would you expect from a philosophical essay? If you want to deny it is possible to explain musical profundity in words, I suggest you choose a different area of study (other than philosophy) b/c philosophers expect well-worded explanations of why a claim is true from each other all the time and of an array of topics.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "I really am not understanding why you think explaining musical profundity in language is such an unreasonable demand."
It is not unreasonable in itself, you just flat out deny and claim burden of proof is only on me.
Yet if I were to set you the same task (explaining linguistic profundity in musical terms) you would have no hope in satisfying your standards.
Your position is not consistent and therefore it is not tenable.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter But that doesn't make it inconsistent. Why would I have to explain literary profundity in musical terms? You can explain musical profundity however you want, as I've emphasized. Post a video of yourself playing the clarinet, I don't care.
Also, the burden of proof is on you b/c you're making a positive claim about music, mainly, that it is profound.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "He uses musical terms, but he explains it in words."
I still don't see why you won't accept my version of doing this. You keep asking for it and then ignore it when I post it.
"Explanation of profundity"
Now PROVE that explanation is correct. I have provided an explanation of the profound in music, but you flat out ignore it and pretend I am evading.
Why should I accept your explanation then? (I don't, as a matter of fact, but I accept it AS an explanation)
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter That explanation of profundity is not categorically correct, but it is quite plausible and captures what we take to be profound about many things. Yours really is an evasion b/c u provide not one example and it's just nuts. Your definition of profundity is ridiculous and wholly implausible. Mine is at least sort of reasoned and appeal to rather banal and generally accepted intuitions while your is farcical and laughable.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf How is practically the entire Bach oevre, just for starters, "not one example". Are you aware of just how much music he wrote?
I give you an in depth technical explanation, I cite dictionary definitions which all easily allow musical profundity.
All that you manage to respond with is blind positivist denial like you aren't even reading, then you give a bare assertion of an example as an explanation and a petitio principii as a definition.
Give me a break, are you even serious?
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter If you explained how Bach was profound, that would be a good example.
The dictionary definition is off of wikipedia. Also, it's not clear that it does allow for musical profundity.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf T"he dictionary definition is off of wikipedia"
Not true, I cited all the wiktionary definitions and all easily allow for musical profundity without even so much as thinking hard about it. Try Oxford or any other if you prefer, you will find the same thing.
You, on the other gave a explanation that not only included the explanans but also directly asserted your position (Something is profound if it "talks about"...?) and circularly denied mine.
Try harder.
DarkwingScooter 11 months ago
@DarkwingScooter "talks about" is a short-hand. I've shown how a photograph can be profound and about a profound subject.
bahramf 11 months ago
@DarkwingScooter I wasn't begging the question. I defined profundity. If you think I'm not allowing for music in the definition, that's a high hill to climb b/c it allows for art forms other than literature.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "it allows for art forms other than literature"
How? Pictorial art doesn't "talk about" anything in the direct sense you are advocating. "Moby Dick" doesn't talk about all consuming revenge, it talks about an old guy and a whale.
Sure the book is about the profound things, but it doesn't talk about them. Your definition allows nothing but shallow chatter about "ooh, that's deep" things.
That not profound at all. If you have to talk about it you have missed the point.
DarkwingScooter 11 months ago
@DarkwingScooter It illustrates, represents or directly says something profound. Tolstoy does this directly, but it is implied by most good novels.
bahramf 11 months ago
@bahramf "It illustrates, represents or directly says something profound."
So what? Music does NOT do this?
How does language illustrate profundity. Come on, you are making a positive claim here, you can't just expect me to believe it when that is precisely the basis you have for denying my claim.
If you want me to believe that language represents profundity you will have to prove it in a non-circular fashion, I'm still waiting for that proof.
JDMusicTuition 11 months ago
@JDMusicTuition The proof is very simple. Literature (not just language) deals with subjects like freedom/determinism, for example. That is profound b/c freedom/determinism is an issue which effects human experience and a question we have always had since the very beginning of civilization.
bahramf 11 months ago
@bahramf "The proof is very simple."
That's not a proof, that's a definition, and a non-circular one to boot. We are making progress.
This does not in and of itself exclusionary of music, since music also "deals with" subjects like freedom or determinism, albeit in a different way, as I have demonstrated. You need to clarify what it is in the way that language "deals with" these things which is special.
Surely you don't claim that the language ITSELF has this kind of referent?
JDMusicTuition 11 months ago
@JDMusicTuition It doesn't though and you haven't demonstrated how it could or does.
bahramf 11 months ago
@bahramf Your definition is also needlessly restrictive, the "for example" effectively acts as an "et cetera", expecting the reader to fill the domain covered by the concept.
This will not do when you are trying to delimit the concept. Could I, for example, substitute "the relationship of math to nature" into your definition instead of "freedom"?
These satisfy your criteria as "issues which affects human experience..."
(notice the usage of examples and etc. is correct here)
JDMusicTuition 11 months ago
@JDMusicTuition It's not a precise definition, but everyone knows math is not profound.
bahramf 11 months ago
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@bahramf "everyone knows"
That is not an argument.
"you haven't demonstrated how it could or does"
I have, you either haven't read, don't understand it or are being willfully pigheaded. At least acknowledge the argument, don't just pretend you don't see it.
DarkwingScooter 11 months ago
@DarkwingScooter It's not an argument. I'm not pretending. Also, that literature can be profound is not a contested claim. That's not false.
bahramf 11 months ago
@JDMusicTuition The relationship of math to nature is profound. The question is how music can illustrate something profound or even represent math+nature at all.
bahramf 11 months ago
@JDMusicTuition Music might even take up profound subjects, but how it could give any insight into these subjects is just mysterious. It has been for a long time. I'm surprised you think it so obviously can. Go write a paper or something and let me know how it's received.
bahramf 11 months ago
@bahramf Even if I were to grant your definition of profundity, which seems to limit the scope to ethical and social considerations, you could not exclude music.
The idea that music is deeply ethical in its impact is one that is not only implicitly prevalent today, but has been an accepted concept ever since Plato, Aristotle and Confucius. The Indian classical tradition also has similar ideas.
So even your own definition of profundity implicitly includes music in its scope.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter I don't care if Plato considered music profound.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "If you want me to believe you have profound experiences of music on faith, that's fine, but realize that that has no argumentative force. "
Of course it does!
There are precious few statements of any kind, and none of yours, that can satisfy your requirement for proof. In fact your test is the strong positivist test, a test which fails because it is itself a bare assertion.
You should not confuse validity with soundness in argument, I can assume anything I please.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter An assumption in an argument by itself has no argumentative force.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "An assumption in an argument by itself has no argumentative force."
All arguments start from and aim to clarify assumptions. Even "Cogito Ergo Sum" requires you to make several assumptions to understand it.
More to the point, why do you thing your assumptions should carry more weight than mine. I can trivially show that every statement of yours relies on unsubstantiated assumption.
EVERY system of thought requires axioms.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Okay, but that's not what I was objecting to. You make two unsubstantiated claims: You have a profound experience of music (which I think was the issue) and from here you move to the conclusion that music is profound, which is not fair b/c you haven't substantiated that music is profound b/c you haven't explained your experience. The other is that there is a definition of profundity which fits music and the one for other art forms is inadequate for music.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "you haven't explained your experience"
There is a classic case in philosophy: Colors.
Colors do not exist as a property of anything in reality (apart from brain states), they are entirely mental subjective phenomena.
It would be absurd for me to claim that colors don't exist unless you can explain to me what it is to experience "green". It may CORRESPOND to a certain wavelength and I understand what you mean by ANALOGY to my own experience, but neither of those EXPLAIN colors.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter But profundity is not like colors or an experience. It's something which I've defined and given illustrative examples of.
Also, the reason colors cannot be explained to a color-blind person is b/c they are so simple. You're saying that music is highly complex, and philosophical profound (over even higher than philosophically profound). Thus, you should be able to give some low level sketch of what this could possibly mean. If it were overly simple, I would understand.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf ...the complicated can be illuminated by the simple even if the simple cannot be illuminated by the complicated.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf But meaning by analogy is musical meaning as we defined it.
So language can never BE profound, it can only refer to the concept profound, a concept defined by what you feel when you hold that "PROFOUND" is true of an expression or thing. But music IS profound when it holds true by analogy to what you feel when you hold that PROFOUND is true.
Language REFERS to profundity.
Music IS profound.
Notice that the use of identity there excludes your thesis necessarily, by Leibniz's law.
JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@JDMusicTuition If your claim is that music/fugue are themselves profound rather than merely referring to profound themes, you still have to argue for that claim. I can't explain how a novel as a medium is profound b/c it's not. Prima facie, this raises a question to any artistic medium or form within that medium (e.g. fugue) which claims to be profound. Therefore, you have to explain (in words, b/c that's what dissertations are written in) how a fugue is profound.
bahramf 1 year ago
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@bahramf "Therefore, you have to explain (in words, b/c that's what dissertations are written in) how a fugue is profound."
And you have to explain to me, in musical terms, how a novel is profound. It is a ridiculous request I know, but that is exactly what you are asking me to do.
In fact, can you explain to me even in linguistic terms how a novel is profound?
No bare assertions now.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@bahramf ...language only MEANS anything by our shared experience. But that experience cannot itself be linguistic in nature because that would violate our definition of linguistic meaning.
So if you say "profound" and give examples it is because I interpret these examples in BY analogy to my own feelings (or perception of reality if you insist, your distinction is not relevant to my thesis) that I can report that I UNDERSTAND what it means.
It is true because the expected ANALOGY holds.
JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@JDMusicTuition No, if you didn't think the themes of fate, destiny, freedom, civil disobedience, law & order, etc. were profound by analogy to your feelings of perceptual states, they would still be profound. I think almost everyone accepts these themes as profound even if they have never experienced them dealt with profoundly.
This raises a presumption that they are actually profound themes. Further, I've explain how they are profound w/ illustrative examples. So, there is no denying.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "Further, I've explain how they are profound w/ illustrative examples."
I don't accept your illustrative examples as anything other than bare assertions. You have not explained what it is to be profound, only stated that this that and the other is OBVIOUSLY profound and music is OBVIOUSLY not a able to express them.
NO!
Music can express those things (albeit by different means) and I don't find "civil disobedience" a profound topic.
You ask for explanations not examples, so explain.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Explanation of profundity: Profound themes are those which are essential to human experience, to our lives and times, and profoundly taking up these themes is to take them up in such a way that something wise, new or creative is revealed about these important (to life) and perplexing themes. This, if found, altogether in one work of art, makes that work of art profound.
bahramf 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Explanation of profundity: Profound themes are those which are essential to human experience, to our lives and times, and profoundly taking up these themes is to take them up in such a way that something wise, new or creative is revealed about these important (to life) and perplexing themes. This, if found, altogether in one work of art, makes that work of art profound.
This definition of profundity w/ illustrative examples equal anything but a bare assertion.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "This definition of profundity w/ illustrative examples equal anything but a bare assertion."
You cannot include the term profound in your definition. What you have given is an example, I can find no definition of "definition" which involves examples.
I can give you examples of musical profundity (e.g. most of Bach's oevre).
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter I didn't use the term profound in the definition of profundity. I used it in the next definition which was how a piece of art can be profound: "profoundly taking up these themes is to take them up in such a way that..." That's not the definition of profundity, that's a explanation of how a work of art can take up profound themes profoundly.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "which was how a piece of art can be profound:"
It is still petitio principii.
If you can make the positive statement that language is profound and only provide examples as "proof", why should I have to prove my statement?
Even so, I HAVE proved my position amply in my opinion, you are refusing to acknowledge said proof and demand an example instead, an example which you deny on a priori grounds (i.e. without proof).
That is always the problem with positivism, so stop doing it.
JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@JDMusicTuition I never said language was profound... anyways, let's carry this over to personal messages.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf Here is proper definition: Something can be said to be "profound" when it elicits an emotional response corresponding to the emotional response elicited by a musical piece which invites contemplation upon serious themes.
From wiktionary:
"Characterized by intensity" (music can be intense)
"entering far into subjects; reaching to the bottom of a matter, or of a branch of learning; thorough" (a fugue is a thorough examination of a theme)
"Very deep; very serious"
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Wikipedia is a good source for aesthetic terms. Good on you! It's difficult to understand how the theme of a fugue is very deep or serious. Whereas, freedom, fate, etc. are actually very serious themes. They plague us all.
bahramf 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Anyways, lets carry this conversation on the messages function of youtube. I think we're making Spano seem more popular than he really is.
bahramf 1 year ago
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@bahramf "Anyways, lets carry this conversation on the messages function of youtube. I think we're making Spano seem more popular than he really is."
Hehe, sure thing.
JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@bahramf "profundity is not like colors or an experience."
Nothing exists, from my perspective, that is not an experience. The statement "If A then B" is true if and only if I experience the state of "trueness" for B when I experience the state of "trueness" for the concept A, or I experience the state "falseness" for A.
"Profound" only exists, or is only true of something, when I experience the feeling which I feel when profound is true for me when I experience the thing which is profound...
JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@bahramf [this msge one goes first, soz]
No:
1) You are claiming that music is not profound because I cannot explain to you IN LANGUAGE what it is for music to be profound.
2) So what if I were to claim that language cannot be profound because you cannot MUSICALLY express what it is for language to be profound.
Would I be justified in claiming that language is not profound on these grounds except that we put music to the words in our heads?
Language doesn't MEAN anything anyhow remember.
JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@JDMusicTuition The reason people don't ask for musical interpretations of linguistic profundity is b/c they understand how a piece of literature is profound through the linguistic explanation. If you can explain to me how music is profound musically, that would be okay, but the fact that I don't think you can says something about the limitations of musical meaning I think.
You might be right that there is something non-linguistically communicable to music, but unless u can explain it...
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "but unless u can explain it..."
Meaning is not a function of explanation. When I mean "dog" and and you understand what I mean it is not because I have explained it to you.
I have said that I will not answer positivist demands though, this is a positivist demand.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter So, what can we even discuss? You're just saying you have an experience of musical profundity and if no one else agrees you're still right?
What is philosophy? It is at least partially about argumentation. So, you can claim that music is profound without explaining how it is profound, but no one else has to buy that.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "I mean profound as in insightful in the deepest most meaningful sense - the peak of artistic genius."
That is what I mean when I say I find this fugue profound. Insightful in the most meaningful sense - the peak of artistic genius.
If you can't prove that you experience it differently I should have to to prove that I don't. You can't prove that you experience Oedoipus as profound any more than I can prove that I don't. You could be a text generating computer for all I know.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter I never claimed to experience Oedipus as profound. I claimed it was profound by explaining what makes it profound. Profundity is not a subjective state.
bahramf 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter I didn't just assert the picture's profundity. I explained it:
"A painting could be profound, or even a photograph. Imagine a picture of a group of people chained to trees in protest of a clear cutting. This is about civil disobedience and how sometimes people have to be willing to risk, incarceration, injury or even death for a cause they truly believe in. "
That's enough to buy that it is profound until you see it for yourself I think.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf You have simply defined what it is to be profound in literature and what it is for a statement (by which I presume you mean linguistic statement, not the statement of a musical theme, which is no less a statement in my view) and then declare that music cannot do this.
Well, it does, for me. The fact that you don't is inconceivable to me. Like trying to imagine the experience of a blind person.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Good ad hominem argument. I didn't define it in terms of linguistic meaning. It's just hard to understand how sounds can be profound.
Also, constantly appealing to your special ability to grasp profundity in music w/o explaining how, is not a good way to argue.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "Good ad hominem argument."
Where did I attack you personally?
I didn't say you were deficient or that your musical experience is deficient because of your inability to perceive musical profundity.
What I am trying to show is that your perception of musical profundity is a function of your perception of music, not of the music itself. Just because a blind person cannot see doesn't mean that colors don't exist or that there perception of reality is in any way inferior.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Also, this bite about how I'm not defining my terms is getting old, b/c clearly I've defined my terms and even given you an example of how my term (i.e. profundity) is exemplified in novels and stories.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "but the Chinese person, if they also speak English, can explain the Chinese to me, at least in some rudimentary way"
I have explained the meaning to you, at least as I see it and in some rudimentary way.
The ONLY thing that is at issue here is your refusal to accept MY interpretation, not that an interpretation exists or is possible. You can't claim that language has a consistent interpretation either, that is simply not true, and can easily be shown to be not true.
JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@JDMusicTuition Again, I don't recall you giving me a profound, meaningful interpretation of a single piece of music. If you have, please copy/paste it, or tell me where I can find it.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf You be tempted to argue that it is precisely the consensual nature of language that gives it meaning, i.e. it only has meaning when you believe you have consensus with the speaker or society at large over the meaning (notice though that we have two separate and irreducible terms: "Meaning" and "Consensus").
Problem is that in logic the terms do not have "meaning" in any sense apart from being terms, that is what makes it logic. Yet, would you argue that logic itself is meaningless?
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter I don't know about consensus, but people understand logic. Maybe not the individual terms, but large numbers of people understand modus ponens for examples.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "people understand logic"
You are confusing the system of logic with the meaning of terms used within the system of logic. Logical terms are logical because they are formal, and they are formal because they do not have any meaning aside from being logical terms.
This is exactly parallel to the musical case where a piece of music can have consensus meaning (which is why you do not play gigues at funerals or the French anthem at an American football game) even though notes do not.
JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@JDMusicTuition No, the point is that you and Darkwingscooter are confusing the two. For, I never argued that complex meaningful things cannot come from simple meaningless things. Obviously that would be ridiculous because the letters of the alphabet are simple and meaningless sounds.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "the idea is that you'd be able to give me a rudimentary sketch of the meaning of a piece of music"
I did, I will repeat:
The first four notes have leap with an interruption before returning. This speaks of overcoming frustration. Next note is a leading note which indicates defeat (because it confirms the minor key). But then we have the cotchets going back up in defiance, returning to the third (relative major).
The overall meaning (as you perform) is "I overcome frustration".
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Is that a profound piece of subject matter? or a profound thing to illustrate about that subject matter? I mean that seriously, is overcoming frustration profound? Is frustration profound?
I agree that what you describe is a meaning. But it's clearly not profound in the way that the subject of fate and freedom and their relation is profound in Oedipus.
bahramf 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter If you're repeating this: "The first four notes have leap with an interruption before returning. This speaks of overcoming frustration. Next note is a leading note which indicates defeat (because it confirms the minor key). But then we have the cotchets going back up in defiance, returning to the third (relative major)."
Tell me where it first came up in our discussion. I told you that my definition of profundity came up about 21 hours ago.
bahramf 1 year ago
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@bahramf "Tell me where it first came up in our discussion."
22 hours ago now, immediately after you requested it.
"this bite about how I'm not defining my terms is getting old"
That is not a proper definition, simply not dealing with the subject matter at hand or defining away musical profundity will not do at a technical level.
You cannot define away my experience like a behaviorist would, you have to account for it.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Your experience is meager and lacking in profundity. I could have a similar experience looking at a light show.
bahramf 1 year ago
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@bahramf "I could have a similar experience looking at a light show."
Prove it.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Profundity is not an experience. English essays explain why works of literature are profound. I don't necessarily buy the person had a profound experience, but I should be able to buy that the work itself is profound b/c it deals with a profound piece of subject matter profoundly an with great skill and nuance, perhaps revealing something new about it.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf You should see now where the problem is. Profundity (like "aesthetic significance") is a subjective state of the perceiver in relation to perceived.
In Christian mysticism monks will contemplate the "seven last words" for one each. If one can profoundly contemplate the word "into" for a day and come to new religious insight, what makes you think one can't do the same with a perfect fifth in an infinitely more complex context?
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Profundity is not subjective or a subjective state. The picture of people chained to trees in profound whether you think it is or not.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "The picture of people chained to trees in profound whether you think it is or not"
What? Is this the picture experiencing an emotion then?
"You have to prove that music is profound, not the other way around."
Why? I don't have to prove to you that I am conscious for you to accept that do you?
I can't prove that music is profound in any case if you cannot provide a positive definition of what MUSICAL profundity is.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter I don't think music can be profound, so I don't know what a MUSICAL definition of profundity would be. I've applied my very standard definition of profundity to narrative artwork and photographic art. What more could you possibly want?
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "I don't know what a MUSICAL definition of profundity would be."
Well you see that is a pretty big problem. If you cannot provide a positive definition of something you cannot deny it
If you don't know what it is for A to be true how can know when it is not the case that it is true? How could you prove that a blargho is not blue if I don't tell you what a blargho is?
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter I gave you a definition of profundity which fit multiple art forms. I think it fits music if any definition of profundity does.
bahramf 1 year ago
"Why? I don't have to prove to you that I am conscious for you to accept that do you?" No, but how we know other people are conscious is actually quite a puzzling a pressing philosophical issue. Whether painting and literature are profound is not. Whether music is on the other hand is. If you want me to believe you have profound experiences of music on faith, that's fine, but realize that that has no argumentative force.
bahramf 1 year ago
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DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
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DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter That was my point earlier in the discussion. You have to prove that music is profound, not the other way around. I just have to show that your claims of profundity in music are false.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf I don't think you were here yet. I made the point of the fact that the burden of proof was not on my shoulders to the other person on this comment section.
bahramf 1 year ago
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JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@bahramf ...What I am talking about are the gestures which are expressed by our speech.
Someone should come up with a better term for it because it causes considerable confusion but they are not physical gestures, this can be empirically shown and has been by Susan Goldin-Meadow when she showed that suppressing physical gesturing when speaking imposes a cognitive load but only in those who naturally do so.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
Respond to this video... I understand that speaking louder, quieter, etc. can be gestures as well, but without words, just shouting loudly, quietly, softly, slowly, quickly is not of much aesthetic value. If it sounds nice it may be nice to listen to, but unless it can help address some of the question which plague humankind, in what way are these gestures profound. They might be meaningful is a very bare and essential sense, but not so much that this meaningfulness is aesthet...
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf ...ically significant. For that to be the case, look at some of the art forms which are clearly meaningful (i.e. literature, drama, poetry, etc.). These art forms speak (in their own way) to the human experience and when they are good, they speak about it profoundly.
I've never heard absolute music which can do this with the level of sophistication of a novel, for instance. To me this suggests that music is not meaningful as an art form, though there may be some base meaning in it
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "I've never heard absolute music which can do this with the level of sophistication of a novel, for instance."
That is your interpretation. I have never heard of a novel that can reach the level of sophistication of something like a fugue. I don't find novels particularly profound.
"No one has argued that with a libretto, lyrics...."
Why are these funny:
/watch?v=EEhF-7suDsM /watch?v=Vd0UAdpBNUg
(two different reasons actually)
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter The music. But, that's my point. It's not the music alone.
Also, I can explain how a novel is profound. For instance, Victor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" (though this is not a novel, a story, nonetheless) is profound b/c it shows the resiliency of the human spirit and that even under the most difficult conditions people can endure if only their suffering has meaning.
Can you do the same for a fugue?
Not just my interpretation or opinion.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "Can you do the same for a fugue?"
With utmost ease, let us take the one from the video on the fugue:
The first four notes have leap with an interruption before returning. This speaks of overcoming frustration. Next note is a leading note which indicates defeat (because it confirms the minor key). But then we have the cotchets going back up in defiance, returning to the third (relative major).
The theme speaks to me of adversity and perseverance. How is that not profound?
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@bahramf By way of example if I read Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" but I do not understand English, is that proof that the book has no meaning (it is, after all, nothing but gibberish to me) or that I didn't get understand the book?
If we argue over the interpretation of some passage, what is at issue is our interpretations, not some absolute meaning residing in the book. Because there is no absolute meaning residing in the book to begin with.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter Okay, but if I spoke the language you do understand (as you speak English, and I guess 'Music') I could explain it to you in that language. You should be able to do that for me, or even translate from 'Music' to English.
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "I could explain it to you in that language"
Classic problem: See the Lewis Carrol poem "Jabberwocky". There is a lot of writing about why your assumption is incorrect. My favorite is the translator's introduction to my edition of Adorno's "Aesthetic Theory" (Robert Hullot-Kentor, the publisher is Continuum).
Even if that were not the case, you would only have shown that linguistic meaning does not translate directly to musical meaning, which is a different issue.
JDMusicTuition 1 year ago
@JDMusicTuition It's not though. Without language and music being completely interchangeable, the idea is that you'd be able to give me a rudimentary sketch of the meaning of a piece of music, even if not translate it note for note, fugue for fugue, etc. Without this, I have to take you on faith that in your head, the music is meaningful.
bahramf 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter If music means in an analogous, but distinct way from the way language means, then what's so special about it? Presumably we don't just want a music language, different, but in many way the same as our own language (in that there is still signing).
bahramf 1 year ago
@bahramf "just shouting loudly, quietly, softly, slowly, quickly is not of much aesthetic value"
Ah, here's is your problem though:
1) Tonal languages DO use musical elements in linguistically semantic ways.
2) Physical gestures ARE used in linguistically semantic ways in sign language.
3) Digital computers use concatenations of much simpler elements to produce outputs indistinguishable from language.
The thesis that simple elements = lack of profundity has no basis in reality.
DarkwingScooter 1 year ago
@DarkwingScooter 1) That's great, but you already said that musical meaning cannot be reduced to linguistic meaning.
2) That's just another form of language once again.
3) Language again.
Presumably there is something music doe