Department of Music

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Browsing Department of Music by Subject "Analytic philosophy"

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    A fundamental explanation of musical meaning in terms of mental states
    (Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010-12) Ross, Barry; Ludemann, Winfried; Smit, Johannes P.; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Music.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study concerns the widespread phenomenon that music is perceived as meaningful to the listener in some sense. The study adopts a style of conceptual clarification and investigation that is current in the analytic philosophy of language, and is further informed by recent research into the fundamental biology of human musicality, which suggests that musicality and language are neurologically related. The problem of musical meaning is approached as a problem of communicative behaviour, and is hence conceptually related to the concept of meaningfulness in the various modalities of linguistic communication. ‘Communication’ is defined in terms of the intended consequences of communicative acts – that is, a communicative act is an attempt on the behalf of the utterer to cause some sort of change in the listener’s mental states. From this premise, meaning in both musical and linguistic acts is defined in terms the mental states elicited in the mind of the listener. Two classes of mental state are identified: cognitive states, which are propositional in nature; and affective states, which are essentially nonpropositional. It is proposed that meaning in both music and language (as well as in other communicative acts) can be explained in terms of the elicitation of these classes of mental states in the minds of competent listeners, and that in any linguistic or musical act, a competent listener will entertain a composite of these mental states that will be perceived as meaning. The mechanisms responsible for the elicitation of these states are discussed, and it is concluded that the causal powers of the communicative act, as it is represented in the mind, are responsible for the elicitation of these mental states. Directly causal means are responsible for affective states: there is a relationship of direct causation between relevant features of the communicative act, as represented in the mind, and affective states. Affective states are nonpropositional, in that they cannot be subjected to deductive or propositional operations in the mind. By virtue of their being non-propositional, such states are also considered to be beyond verbal explication (‘ineffable’). Cognitive states, on the other hand, are propositional in nature. The mechanisms by which they are realised are complex in terms of propositional computation: the relevant propositional features of the communicative act, as represented in the mind of the listener, undergo manipulation by mental processes (for instance, the computational system for linguistic syntax). Cognitive states are expressible in propositional terms, and are hence expressible in language. Whereas linguistic communication is efficacious for the elicitation of cognitive states, musical utterances tend to elicit affective states to a far greater degree. Furthermore, whereas the syntax of language aids communication in the facilitation of semantics, the syntactic dimension of music is principally a means of implementing affective states in the listener. Therefore, any explanation of musical meaning must take the syntactical dimension of music into account. It is also argued that there are features of performance common to both language (in its spoken modality) and musical utterances that serve to elicit affective states.