We can find "neural correlates" of consciousness, but nothing we do right now can prove that experience/awareness is taking place somewhere other than where oneself is experiencing/being aware.
> The tension between, and variation of, predictable and surprising elements in music are clearly important to it's enjoyability.
I heard this idea a few times as well and I interpreted it more as being about a piece of music in relation to other pieces in the same genre or simular musically (e.g. harmonically, melodically or rhythmically).
When we talk about popular music I think for the majority people it will be nearly perfectly predictable after hearing a composition a few times. Clearly people enjoy re-listening the tunes they like so I think the point of predictability being enjoyable still stands.
Though I guess the idea about the tension between novelty and predictability applies to many contexts. Another example I clearly understand is that the melody needs to be a bit surprising with respect to the harmony to be interesting and enjoyable. Also the structure of the music seems to revolve around this idea as well - even the popular songs more often than note incorporate intros, solos, bridges, breaks and/or key changes to blend the chorus-verse base pattern.
Can you elaborate in what sense you find it simplistic ?
What I would personally add to that model is that if the music is "too easy" to predict for the brain, there's no challenge hence no reward. But that complements rather than contradict the initial theory.
In Chinese, if you just put 'big' and 'small' together, you get 'size', and if you just put 'big' and 'not big' together, it means 'Is it big?'. By the same token, juxtaposed memories are questions or suggestions. I think it's the logic before logic.
That's a really interesting tidbit about Chinese. Can't think of anything similar in any language I know, though. Does remind me of those primitive languages where the word for "forest" is just the word for "tree" repeated two or three times.
So if I ask you to form an image of a song, (or recall it in your mind): the "happy birthday" song. How vivid or clear is it? Do you have no clarity, some, or lots? is it vivid as the actual sound as if you were hearing it in real life? Do you notice the tune as well as the words?
Now change this image of happy birthday so that it's now a childrens choir singing it. Now change it so its by a bunch of cynical unix grey beards singing it in a convention.
How easy was it to change this image? Did changing it affect the clarity?
Wow, these questions are really interesting, I've never thought about it!
For my favorite songs, I can recall it perfectly... But I don't hear it at all as if I was hearing it in real life. In fact, I don't know how to describe how vivid it is. Maybe I don't hear it at all? But I can sing these songs (out loud) without a problem.
However, I seem to be incapable of changing some elements about it. I can't seem to be able to make it faster, slower, change the singer, or the instruments. But, when I sing it out loud, I can of course modify it.
For "Happy birthday" (well, in my native language), it's really weird. Because I don't have a specific song in mind, I can follow the words, the tune, but I don't "feel" the voice of a specific singer. And I'm incapable to change this recall to different voices, like children or grown men. But if I listen to a version sung by these people, I can recall it after (until I forget).
Thanks again for these questions, I was aware of my lack of inner voice, my difficulties of a "inner sight" (that's a whole other can of worms), but I never applied this interrogations to a "inner hearing".
I got and adapted the questions from a survey about these issues but I've been trying to get the question right as we tend to use language which presupposes things.
I like this one as it asks to form an image and asks about clarity. The image is about hearing. So it crosses both parts.
Another example would be to form an image of a telemarketer on the telephone. Change the accent. Introduce line distortion.
For me it's in the middle. Happy birthday is clear to visualise and I can follow the tune. it's not very vivid but it's like I'm singing to myself with my mouth shut. I don't have a mental "visual" image of the song by default. When changing it the imagery appears a bit more but the focus is on the sound. I can easily change it to children's voices, the unix greybeards is more difficult as it requires me working out what they would sound like including spatial echoes from the auditorium. I find the resulting image (which is clearer than the children) is amusing.
Ha, interesting! I don't have the control you have on my inner hearing. For a song I love, I can like sing along with my mouth shut, not only the voices, but also the instruments. Strangely, it's hard to have the complete song at the same time (voice + instruments), but I suspect it's more of a skill issue, as I seem to be able to do it faintly.
I'm not envious of the people who have an inescapable inner voice. I think it would hinder my thoughts, the speed of it, and the ability to think abstractly. It's not totally baseless, because I can force myself to have an inner voice, but it's a conscious effort. Sometimes useful if I need to clarify my thoughts. On the same note, not having a inner voice makes it really difficult sometimes to put my emotions and thoughts into words.
But I'm really jealous about anyone that can clearly conjure images, "videos", and sounds in their mind, I feel like I have a big disadvantage if I want to learn to draw, 3D model, or play an instrument.
People speak of these things in term of identity, but I wonder how true that is. I could easily imagine (pun intended) these are more akin to skills, that can be improved with practice.
Actually now that I think about it, I do know that this is a well-known phenomenon in the chess world. Newcomers are unable to to play blind-chess. But experienced players say that they gradually learned how to do it. How it started as a really blurry picture of just a small part of the board, and how they gradually got better at remembering and visualizing the whole board at the same and were able to play full games with a blindfold.
You can absolutely hear the difference between a bad MP3 and the original. I used to amuse myself and friends by quite reliably identifying the difference, blinded, using a rather bad pair of speakers.
Actual CD audio can also work quite differently than any encoding, as at least older CD drives had an entirely separate analog output cable that connected to the sound card and bypassed the ATAPI link entirely. Levels wouldn’t even be matched.
To be fair, that's true today, but not in 2008 when this article was written. MP3 encoders have come a long way and bitrates are typically much higher.
I can definitely hear the difference on some songs at some “CD quality” bit rates of MP3. Also some MP3 encoders (and decoders too, to be fair) are better than others. Particularly back when this article was written.
That all said, these days encoders are much better, and there’s no excuse not to go for 320kbps (assuming you have to use MP3).
What I find more interesting is that there was a period where some people who grew up listening to MP3s preferred the artefacting they introduced vs lossless. In much the same way how vinyl enthusiasts like the colouring of the sound that medium introduces. Which just goes to show that as much of this is down to psychology as it is technology.
Even if hard determinism is true then the act of 'communicating a logical argument' is still part of the deterministic chain of events and could potentially influence the beliefs and actions of others.
The universe exists. It exists outside of our minds. We have the ability to explore and understand it, by choosing to focus our minds and engaging our rational faculty.
If we don’t have free will, then we can’t reason. If we can’t reason, then there is no such thing as evidence.
To learn more about this approach, see Rand’s “Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology” and Peikoff’s “Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand”.
