Music and Conceptualization

This book is a philosophical study of the relations between hearing and thinking about music. The central problem it addresses is as follows: how is it possible to talk about what a listener perceives in terms that the listener does not recognize? By applying the concepts and techniques of analytic philosophy the author explores the ways in which musical hearing may be described as nonconceptual, and how such mental representation contrasts with conceptual thought. The author is both philosopher and musicologist and uniquely combines the perspectives of both disciplines. Exploring the philosophical questions of mental representation in the relatively neglected, nonverbal domain of music, this study is a major contribution to the philosophical understanding of music perception and cognitive theory.

Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction: hearing ascriptions; 2. Musical hearing as weakly nonconceptual; 3. Musical Hearing as Strongly Nonconceptual; 4. Is There an Observation-Theory Distinction in Music?; 5. Theoretically Informed Listening; 6. Conceptions of musical structure; Works cited; Index.

This book is a philosophical study of the relations between hearing and thinking about music. By applying the concepts and techniques of analytic philosophy the author explores the ways in which musical hearing may be described as nonconceptual, and how such mental representation contrasts with conceptual thought.