Abstract

When you hear music, you experience a repeating pulse that you naturally tap along to—you feel a beat. But you can feel a beat differently under sounds you hear as otherwise alike. Heard each way, things sound different. But, heard each way, nothing seems to change. So why do things sound different? I argue that, surprisingly, the usual theories of perception have no good answer. I then develop a view on which different ways of feeling a beat are different ways of perceiving the same mind-independent features of things. On this view, feeling a beat is hearing sounds as organized within periods of time. And just as we can represent the same events using different calendars, we can perceive the same events using different beats.