The aims of this paper are twofold. First, I offer a new insight into Shepherd’s theory of mind by demonstrating that she distinguishes a threefold ‘Variety of Intellect’, that is, three kinds of minds grouped according to their cognitive limitations. Following Shepherd, I call them (i) minds afflicted with idiocy, (ii) inferior understandings, and (iii) sound understandings. Second, I show how Shepherd’s distinction informs her theory of education. While Shepherd claims that her views serve to improve educational (...) practices, she does not explain how her threefold ‘Variety of intellect’ does so. I argue that Shepherd’s distinction contributes to her aim by providing pedagogues with a more comprehensive grasp of the various cognitive limitations of the people in their care. This allows the former to adjust their expectations and to provide need-oriented guidance. (shrink)

Distractibility is one of the key features of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and has been associated with alterations in the neural orienting and alerting networks. Task-irrelevant stimuli are thus expected to have detrimental effects on the performance of patients with ADHD. However, task-irrelevant presentation of novel sounds seems to have the opposite effect and improve subsequent attentional performance particularly in patients with ADHD. Here, we aimed to understand the neural modulations of the attention networks underlying these improvements. Fifty boys participated (...) in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which unique or repeatedly presented sounds were placed before a visual flanker task in 2/3 of the trials. We found that presenting any sound improved task performance in all participants, but the underlying neural mechanisms differed for the type of sound. Familiar sounds led to a stronger increase in activity in the left posterior insula in patients with ADHD compared to typically developing peers. Novel sounds led to activations of the fronto-temporoparietal ventral attention network, likewise in ADHD and TD. These changes in signaling by novelty in the right inferior frontal gyrus were directly related to improved response speed showing that neural orienting network activity following novel sounds facilitated subsequent attentional performance. This mechanism of behavioral enhancement by short distractions could potentially be useful for cognitive trainings or homework situations. (shrink)

In this chapter we present a new approach to research in music perception allowing one to investigate how musical sound representations are formed in the human brain. By studying subjects' brain responses to unattended stimuli we can determine, for instance, whether neural circuits are more readily activated by musical sounds implicitly learned than by unfamiliar sounds even in non-musicians. Indeed, neuronal populations seem to respond more efficiently to pitch deviations within sound patterns following the rules of Western scale (...) structure, rather than to deviations inside patterns artificially created. Moreover, neural circuits are selectively activated by mistunings inside tonal melodies or by out-of-key chords inside harmonic cadences even when attention is not directed towards the sounds. These data together suggest that incoming sounds are more efficiently processed when they match the neural templates derived from our musical culture. The existence of 'musical memories' in the auditory cortex that are effortlessly activated enabling us, e.g., to identify and recognize speech vs. music sounds can thus be postulated. (shrink)

The catastrophe of the eye -- A new view of seeing -- Applying the new view of seeing -- The illusion of seeing everything -- Some contentious points -- Towards consciousness -- Types of consciousness -- Phenomenal consciousness, raw feel, and why they're hard -- Squeeze a sponge, drive a porsche : a sensorimotor account of feel -- Consciously experiencing a feel -- The sensorimotor approach to color -- Sensory substitution -- The localization of touch -- The phenomenality plot -- (...) Consciousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Understanding Musical Understanding: The Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology of the Musical ExperienceDavid BakerHarold E. Fiske, Understanding Musical Understanding: The Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology of the Musical Experience. (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008).Building on several earlier publications on music and the mind (1990, 1993, 1996, 2004), Harold Fiske offers Understanding Musical Understanding. This is a well-referenced piece that outlines the thinking of various authors (for example, Crowder, (...) 19931; Huron, 2006;2 Snyder, 20073). Furthermore, as Fiske meticulously constructs his case, it draws in psychologists such as Carl Seashore and philosophers like Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, and Schopenhauer. All this suggests an author of great expertise and wide appeal.Fiske begins to build his argument by discussing musical cognition in terms of ‘time’ (Chapter 2) and ‘shape’ (Chapter 3) returning to these themes in greater detail in Chapter 6. It may seem axiomatic that music is perceived structurally and through time. Yet, as the author mentions, the capacity for someone to designate musical form is no way in which to illustrate systematically the workings of musical understanding. This happens swiftly and unceasingly in the course of a person’s musical encounter. It is commonplace, too, for musicians and listeners to allude to visual imagery and shape when describing music (for example, ‘high [End Page 204] and low pitches,’ ‘a texture that is dense or thin,’ or ‘an angular melody’). Fiske contributes a plausible explanation of musical shape:... the perceived shape of music can only be the outcome of a construction (not reconstruction or ‘copy’) calculated on the part of the neural network mechanisms… The ‘reality’ of a musical-auditory image is likely a result of imposing a three-dimensioned visual perspective on an inherently unstructured (invisible, tasteless, intangible, and otherwise unknowable) transitory experience. This is the only means the brain has for making sense of a sound event. What it seems to do is: identify relevant cues, piece the cues together into patterns that can be retained (in the echoic memory) long enough for brain mechanisms to examine and create the sense that we can ‘look’ at music by invoking principles borrowed from vision, and then creating the impression of an auditory ‘object.’ The ‘object’ seems complete and multidimensioned but is, however, only remotely related to what we hear during the slit-like limitations of the perceptual ‘now.’(p. 56).Nonetheless, the manner in which we communicate musical perception with terms borrowed from vision does not inconclusively evidence the same mechanisms of human thought on receiving visual or, on the other hand, musical stimuli. Use of such language may only represent an opportune mode of expressing phenomena to which we have no dedicated vocabulary. Fiske argues that musical understanding is part of the human organism’s genetically-inherited capacity to construe (rapidly invent) patterns from sonic stimuli thus making sense of temporal experience. This process, he argues, is part of the brain’s facility to determine quickly the source, kind and meaning of stimuli for the organism’s immediate safety and survival; the mental processes involved are regulated by ‘brain time’ as opposed to ‘clock time.’ Brain time is “... a rapid, micro-temporal, flexible-variable scheme...” (p. 8) in contrast to pre- and externally-determined ‘clock time.’Musical memory is addressed in Chapter 4 in tandem with ‘pattern constructs.’ Pattern constructs, Fiske explains, are ‘chunks’ of learned musical experience encoded in ‘brain time’ as multi-dimensional, unidirectional entities (p. 63). There is evidence of the ‘inner replay’ of learned events such as these.4 Incoming musical information is perceived, though, according to the listener’s cognitive context, and perhaps retroactively linked for ‘best fit’ rather than being ‘measured’ against fixed expectations and pre-established contextual information, say, about genre. The degree of ‘best fit’ either confirms or modifies assumed context. An important point Fiske makes, then, is that “... a misfit... between incoming information and the presumed context” evidences learning (p. 84).5 Since a ‘misfit’ triggers modifications to the cognitive context by which a person discerns music, it enriches his or her musical knowledge and understanding. [End Page 205] Consequently, Fiske sets a challenge for music education: “... how [do we] design teaching... (shrink)

From the winds of Mars to a baby's first laugh, a prolific philosopher-composer reflects on the profound imperative of sound in everyday life. Experiencing Sound presents its subject, the one sense we can never stop using, as fundamental to all experience-sensation, perception, and understanding. Lawrence Kramer turns on its head the widespread notion that vision takes pride of place among the senses and demonstrates how paying attention to sound can transform how we make meaning out of experience. (...) Through a series of brief, lyrical forays, Experiencing Sound shows that sound is the object of a primary need and an essential component in the sensation of being alive and the perception of time. It is something that we may suffer-or be made to suffer-as well as enjoy. Like its predecessor, The Hum of the World, this book ranges widely across music, philosophy, literature, art, media, and history, from classical antiquity to the present, as it invites us to experience sound anew. (shrink)

The notion of hyle seems problematic for a phenomenological foundation of experience. For this very reason, its completed invalidity was generally postulated. At the same time, there are many reflections in Husserlian writings that help us understand it better. This paper attempts to show how hyletic experience, by existing in the lived body, triggers in parallel rhythmic, vibrating, and sonorous experiences as bodily experiences. Sounds are experienced by the body before any reflections or conscious experiences of them. In this way, (...) the aporetical instance of hyletic data founds a proposal of resolution in the fundamental corporeal experience of sound. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to understand student perceptions towards plagiarism and identify some factors influencing their plagiarist behaviour to be able to develop successful strategies to promote academic integrity and prevent plagiarism. Although academic dishonesty and plagiarism have been investigated by many researchers, psychometric qualities of these data collection instruments have generally been ignored, which has resulted in a shortage of standardized and validated questionnaires in the literature. Therefore, to address this issue the researcher ran a rigorous psychometric (...) analysis on a previously developed and psychometrically evaluated questionnaire. The modified instrument was conducted on 404 students studying in a private university in Kuwait in March 2022, representing the first administration of a psychometrically established plagiarism scale in the Kuwaiti context. The statistical analysis revealed that students’ perceptions are significantly different according to the high school type they graduated from, their reasons for studying at the university, and their post-graduation career plans, whereas gender, major and year of study do not cause statistically significant differences. (shrink)

Exploring a wide range of sonic practices, from birdsong in the Marshall Islands to Zulu ululation, the contributors reorient the field of sound studies toward the global South in order to rethink and decolonize modes of understanding and listening to sound.

What is poetry’s so-called ‘form-content unity’? In this paper, I argue that the idea of ‘form-content unity’, as derived from A. C. Bradley’s 1901 lecture, has been misconstrued by Peter Kivy, who believes that it is confused and vague. I argue that it has also been misconstrued, however, by the philosophers who find the idea insightful and instructive and present themselves as defending and developing it against Kivy’s criticisms. Crucially, Bradley’s argument emphasizes that hearing is necessary to any ‘poetic’ reading (...) of a metrical poem, but this focus on sound and metre tends to be ignored. A precision of terminology—particularly a reformulation of the paraphrase ‘form-content unity’—offers an improved understanding of Bradley’s claims. The lecture, I argue, properly understood, in fact supports the call for a shift of attention away from understanding poems as ‘form-content unities’ in the philosophy of poetry. (shrink)

... ISBN0199215928 ... -/- Abstract: Vision dominates philosophical thinking about perception, and theorizing about experience in cognitive science traditionally has focused on a visual model. This book presents a systematic treatment of sounds and auditory experience. It demonstrates how thinking about audition and appreciating the relationships among multiple sense modalities enriches our understanding of perception. It articulates the central questions that comprise the philosophy of sound, and proposes a novel theory of sounds and their perception. Against the widely accepted (...) philosophical view that sounds are among the secondary or sensible qualities, and against the scientific view that sounds are waves that propagate through a medium such as air or water, the book argues that sounds are events in which objects or interacting bodies disturb a surrounding medium. This does not imply that sounds propagate through a medium, such as air or water. Rather, sounds are events that take place in one's environment at or near their sources. This account captures the way in which sounds essentially are creatures of time and situates sounds in the world. Sounds are not ethereal, mysterious entities. It also provides a powerful account of echoes, interference, reverberation, Doppler effects, and perceptual constancies that surpasses the explanatory richness of alternative theories. Investigating sounds and audition demonstrates that considering other sense modalities teaches what we could not otherwise learn from thinking exclusively about the visual. This book concludes by arguing that a surprising class of cross-modal perceptual illusions demonstrates that the perceptual modalities cannot be completely understood in isolation, and that a visuocentric model for theorizing about perception — according to which perceptual modalities are discrete modes of experience and autonomous domains of philosophical and scientific inquiry — ought to be abandoned. -/- . (shrink)

Discussion of J. Kevin O’Regan’s “Why Red Doesn’t Sound Like a Bell: Understanding the Feel of Consciousness” Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-20 DOI 10.1007/s13164-012-0090-7 Authors J. Kevin O’Regan, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS - Université Paris Descartes, Centre Biomédical des Saints Pères, 45 rue des Sts Pères, 75270 Paris cedex 06, France Ned Block, Departments of Philosophy, Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University, 5 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA Journal Review of Philosophy (...) and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158. (shrink)

Sound and Grammar: A Neo-Sapirian Theory of Language by Susan F. Schmerling offers an original overall linguistic theory based on the work of the early American linguist Edward Sapir, supplemented with ideas from the philosopher-logicians Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Richard Montague and the linguist Elisabeth Selkirk. The theory yields an improved understanding of interactions among different aspects of linguistic structure, resolving notorious issues directly inherited by current theory from (post- ) Bloomfieldian linguistics. In the theory presented here, syntax is a (...) filter on a phonological algebra, not a linguistic level; linguistic expressions are phonological structures, and syntax is semantically relevant relations among phonological structures. The book shows how Neo-Sapirian grammar sheds new light on syntax-phonology interactions in English, German, French, and Spanish. (shrink)

Whilst arguing for sounds as repeatable objects does not seem suitable to our auditory experience, considering them as events can then help us understand some of their main features. In this sense, sounds are events happening to material objects; they have a beginning and an end; they are ephemeral entities that we cannot grasp as ordinary objects. Nevertheless, supporters of event theory usually focus on the autonomous status that sounds manifest from the things in the world. Conversely, when we hear (...) sounds, we hear what and where they are sounding even in those theories that I will call detached-sound theories; in hearing them we hear how different materials create different sounds. Within the different positions of the event theory to pure-event or acousmatic proposal, the importance and role that the material has in the creation of diverse sounds does not always seem to be recognized. In this paper, I therefore aim to show how the materiality of resonating bodies and objects is given in all forms of auditory experience, not until analyzed the differences between object and event accounts in the philosophy of sound. (shrink)

This book traces the development of the notion of self throughout the Western intellectual and religious tradition. While using the historical thread as its guiding norm, it presents a dynamic model of selfhood.

Recent neuroimaging studies of language processing are examining the neural substrate of phonology because of its critical role in mapping sound information onto higher levels of language processing (e.g., words) as well as providing codes in which verbal information can be temporarily stored in working memory. However, the precise role of the inferior frontal cortex in spoken and written phonological tasks has remained elusive. Although lesion studies have indicated the presence of selective deficits in phonological processing, the location (...) of lesions underlying these impairments has not revealed a consistent pattern. Despite efforts to refine methods and tasks, functional neuroimaging studies have also revealed variability in activation patterns. Reanalysis of evidence from these neuroimaging studies suggests that there are functional subregions within the inferior frontal gyrus that correspond to specific components of phonological processing (e.g., orthographic to phonological conversion in reading, and segmentation in speech). (shrink)

Studies of affect and emotions have blossomed in recent decades across the humanities, neurosciences, and social sciences. In music scholarship, they have often built on the discipline's attention to what music theorists since the Renaissance have described as music's unique ability to arouse passions in listeners. In this timely volume, the editors seek to combine this 'affective turn' with the 'sound turn' in the humanities, which has profitably shifted attention from the visual to the aural, as well as a (...) more recent 'philosophical turn' in music studies. Accordingly, the volume maps out a new territory for research at the intersection of music, philosophy, and sound studies. The essays in Sound and Affect look at objects and experiences in which correlations of sound and affect reside, in music and beyond: the voice as it speaks, stutters, cries, or sings; music, whether vocal, instrumental, or electronic; our sonic environments, whether natural or man-made, and our responses to them. As argued here, far from being stable, correlations of sound and affect are influenced by factors as diverse as race, class, gender, and social and political experience. Examining these factors is key to the project, which gathers contributions from a cross-disciplinary roster of scholars including both established as well as a wealth of new voices. The essays are grouped thematically into sections that move from politics and ethics, to reflections on pre-and post-human "musicking," to the notions of affective listening and music temporalities, to are examination of historical understandings of music and affect. This agenda-setting collection will prove indispensable to anyone interested in innovative approaches to the study of sound and its many intersection with affect and emotions. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that composer John Cage’s so-called ‘silent piece’, 4’33”, is music. I first defend it against the charge that it does not involve the organization of sound, which has been taken to be a necessary feature of music. I then argue that 4’33” satisfies the only other condition that must be met for it to be music: it bears the right socio-historical connections to its predecessors within its tradition (Western art music). I argue further that (...) one cannot understand the organized sound condition and the socio-historical condition separately and that understanding their interaction has theoretical benefits—not least of which is providing a groundwork for a more culturally inclusive philosophy of music. Finally, I consider a number of outstanding questions concerning the content of the organized sound condition for Western art music in the wake of 4’33”. (shrink)

Defining qualified reasoning as reasoning containing such loose qualifying words as 'probably,' 'usually,' 'probable, 'likely,' 'ceteris paribus,' and 'primafacie, Ennis argues that typical cases of qualified reasoning, though they might be good arguments, are deductively invalid, implying that such arguments fail soundness standards. He considers and rejects several possible alternative ways of viewing such cases, ending with a proposal for applying qualified soundness standards, which requires employment of sufficient background knowledge, sensitivity, experience and understanding of the situation. All of this (...) takes place as part of the process, introduced elsewhere, of successively applying different legitimate sets of standards until one is found that is satisfied, or none is found, the latter calling for rejection of the argument, the former calling for its acceptance. (shrink)

This essay is a commentary upon "Race and Kant" by Thomas Hill, Jr and Bernard Boxill. They argue that although Kant in his anthropological writings took blacks to be inferior, his moral theory requires that they be shown the proper moral respect since blacks are persons nonetheless. I argue that this argument is sound, because the conception of inferiority that Kant attributed to blacks does not permit showing them the proper moral respect. Imagine a defective Mercedes Benz and (...) a Ford Pinto. These two cars are not inferior in the same sort of way. For Kant, I argue, the inferiority of blacks is more akin to that of a Ford Pinto; for he undoubtedly took blacks to be perpetual children. Chilren are persons, too; however, no one has ever supposed that moral theory applies to children in the full way that it applies to adults. (shrink)

Sounds are heard, sometimes even felt, but in most cases they remain unseen. This ephemeral and invisible nature of sound was already considered a problem when the science of acoustics took form in the seventeenth century. The fact that sound could not be seen was described as a significant hindrance to its understanding. But it was precisely during this time that a wide variety of sounds attracted broad scientific attention across Europe. Scholars, natural philosophers, and mathematicians investigated and (...) experimented with sound and musical instruments and developed theories of hearing. This article looks at the role of images, diagrams, and visualization techniques in late seventeenth-century acoustics, bringing together the history of sound and the history of scientific images. Focusing on water and light as the dominant analogies for sound, the article demonstrates that visualization was an important tool for thinking about sound and allowed for the circulation of theories and experiments. At the same time, the epistemic status of these images remained contested, as there was no single model that could explain the different ways sound behaves as it moves through space and that could be visualized. (shrink)

What is the relationship between sounds and time? More specifically, is there something essentially or distinctively temporal about sounds that distinguishes them from, say, colors, shapes, odors, tastes, or other sensible qualities? And just what might this distinctive relation to time consist in? Apart from their independent interest, these issues have a number of important philosophical repercussions. First, if sounds are temporal in a way that other sensible qualities are not, then this would mean that standard lists of paradigm secondary (...) qualities offered by Locke, Galileo, and other modern philosophers — lists which include colors, odors and sounds without any significant distinctions — overlook significant metaphysical differences. This, in turn, would threaten to undermine the coherence of the modern understanding of secondary qualities itself. Moreover, a number of authors have recently urged that the essential temporality of sounds makes it impossible to understand sounds as properties (except on a trope theory of properties; see note 3). If true, and given the more or less universal view that colors are properties, this last conclusion would make potentially inapplicable to sounds much of the comparatively well-developed philosophical taxonomy and apparatus that has arisen in philosophical disputes over the status of colors (for presentations of this taxonomy and apparatus see, for example, Byrne and Hilbert (2003); Cohen (2008b)).1 Therefore, the conclusion that sounds are distinctively temporal would be a serious blow to hopes for a theoretically unified treatment of the sensory qualities.2 For all these reasons, quite a lot seems to hang on the question of the temporality of sounds. (shrink)

Defining qualified reasoning as reasoning containing such loose qualifying words as 'probably,' 'usually,' 'probable, 'likely,' 'ceteris paribus,' and 'primafacie, Ennis argues that typical cases of qualified reasoning, though they might be good arguments, are deductively invalid, implying that such arguments fail soundness standards. He considers and rejects several possible alternative ways of viewing such cases, ending with a proposal for applying qualified soundness standards, which requires employment of sufficient background knowledge, sensitivity, experience and understanding of the situation. All of this (...) takes place as part of the process, introduced elsewhere, of successively applying different legitimate sets of standards until one is found that is satisfied, or none is found, the latter calling for rejection of the argument, the former calling for its acceptance. (shrink)

Wittgenstein is apparently contending that it is simply linguistic habit that gives us the impression that the question “who or what…?” fits the subject expression of the sentence. The logical conclusions in this chapter show that the strong reading of the proposed thesis developed here of a purely sound‐oriented character of the grammar of a single language (in this case, English) cannot be entirely right, and might not even be what Wittgenstein intended, because he only spoke of the (...) class='Hi'>sound as one characteristic of the concept of a sentence. The author seeks a twofold understanding of the grammatical: on the one hand it should grasp sentences as whole units (not aggregates of the “singing from the score” type); on the other hand it should help us better understand the motivation for Wittgenstein's thesis that the grammatical concept of a sentence is oriented by (among other things) sound. (shrink)

Can Levinas’ thought of the other be extended beyond the relation to the other human being? This article seeks to demonstrate that Levinas’ philosophy can indeed be read in such a sense and that this serves to open up a new way of understanding human thinking. Key to understanding such an extension of Levinas’ philosophy will be his account of the face and, more particularly, his claim that the relation to the face is ‘heard in language’. Through explicating what is (...) at stake in this claim, we will work to show how Levinas’ philosophy leads us away from what might be called a tradition of understanding human thought through the medium of light and takes us toward a conception of thinking that is conditioned by sound. In the final section of the article, we consider what such a shift might suggest for the ways we understand thinking in both educational and everyday contexts. (shrink)

In this paper we wish to bring together two seemingly independent areas of research: synaesthesia and sensory substitution. Synaesthesia refers to a rare condition where a sensory stimulus elicits not only the sensation that stimulus evokes in its own modality, but an additional one; a synaesthete may thus hear the word “Monday”, and, in addition to hearing it, have a concurrent visual experience of a red color. Sensory substitution, in contrast, attempts to substitute a sensory modality that a person has (...) lost by transforming the information it provided so that it can be accessed through another, intact sensory modality. To make visual information accessible to a blind person, for example, data taken by a camera would be transformed into tactile or auditory information. What do synaesthesia and sensory substitution have in common? Research in both of these areas contributes to our understanding both of cross-modal cooperation and of sensory sensations or qualia, asking under what circumstances these can arise in a modality that is not stimulated. Synaesthesia reveals that this “sensory cross-activation” is possible, and sensory substitution research hopes to induce it. In this article, we will review briefly the literature on synaesthesia, and discuss the issue of qualia for this domain of research. We will then address the evidence for synaesthesia and visual qualia in the blind, and the research on sensory substitution, to finally ask whether sensory substitution may induce a ‘synthetic’ form of synaesthesia by taking advantage of the nervous system’s capacity for generating visual images in the absence of retinal input. (shrink)

This book addresses a very real gap in existing introductory texts that define, explore, and apply key theoretical concepts within the field of film studies.' Alison L. McKee, Assistant Professor, Department of Television-Radio-Film-Theatre, San Jose State University, USA 'This is the book that film students have long been waiting for: a clear, well-written and accessible introduction to film theory. Lucid theoretical exposition and case study film analysis offer readers the most intelligible summary of theory that I have yet encountered.' Paul (...) Sutton, Head of Media, Culture and Language, Roehampton University Film theory has a reputation for being difficult. It is challenging, it takes time and it can frequently leave students feeling inadequate and frustrated. Furthermore, theory can often seem intimidating and oldfashioned and therefore it can be difficult to appreciate its modern-day relevance. Understanding Film Theory aims to disassociate theory from these negative connotations and bring a fresh, modern and accessible approach to the discipline. Each of the fifteen chapters provides an insight into the main areas of debate by introducing key ideas and thinkers. Taking the application of theory as its central theme, the book incorporates a number of exciting and innovative features: 'Reflect and Respond' sections encourage readers to engage critically with theoretical concepts, while seminal texts are concisely summarized without oversimplifying key points. Throughout the book the authors illustrate why theory is important and demonstrate how it can be applied in a meaningful way, with relevant case studies drawn from both classic and contemporary cinema including: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Run Lola Run (1998), Moulin Rouge! (2001), Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), Old Boy (2003), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Mamma Mia! (2008) and Avatar (2009). Additional case studies address key genres ('swashbucklers' and the film musical), film movements (Dogme 95), individual actors (Christian Bale, Judi Dench and Amitabh Bachchan) and directors (Alfred Hitchcock and Guillermo del Toro). Understanding Film Theory is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to film theory. It is the ideal entry point for any student studying film, using clear definitions and explaining complex ideas succinctly. Christine Etherington-Wright is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at University of Portsmouth (UK) where she teaches a course on Film Theory. She is the author of Gender, Professions, Discourse (Palgrave, 2008). Ruth Doughty is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at University of Portsmouth (UK). She is one of the co-founding editors of the journal Transnational Cinemas and co-edited Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media (2008). (shrink)

This paper aims to establish a distinction and relationship between two types of noise – active noise and passive noise – while giving emphasis to the latter. Active noise is the discourse of negativity and violence that some theorists associate with noise’s materiality, an association particularly pronounced in engagements with Japanoise. The problem with this discourse is that it relies on a culturally normative understanding of noise as well as novelty. This narrative inevitably leads to a dead end. Noise, and (...) artistic practices like Japanoise that draw on noise sounds, have a short lifespan if their entire purpose is one of shock and disturbance. However, Japanoise is not dead: it persists both as a genre and as a sonic idea/gesture. This article suggests that noise persists, and Japanoise remains relevant, because it comes from a region not exhausted by categories of negativity and violence. This article will show how underneath active noise there resounds a deeper, more profound a-cultural noise. Drawing on Maurice Blanchot’s account of passivity, which names the anarchic region of absence in his thought, this noise will be described as passive noise. In this context, passivity must be understood differently from the conventional sense as something opposed to activity. Likewise, passive noise does not refer to background noise. Instead, passive noise will be described as the interiority of excess that manifests as a breach in the closure of active noise. This breach will be shown to be consistent with Blanchot’s view of the inexhaustibility of art and will be described, specifically in the context of Japanoise, as the intimacy of excess that is the lifeblood of maximalist forms of noise-making. This will also amount to a reconsideration of the idea of transgression by reframing Japanoise in terms of inertia. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest among epistemologists in the nature of understanding, with some authors arguing that understanding should replace knowledge as the primary focus of epistemology. But what is understanding? According to what is often called the standard view, understanding is a species of knowledge. Although this view has recently been challenged in various ways, even the critics of the standard view have assumed that understanding requires justification and belief. I argue that it requires (...) neither. If sound, these arguments have important upshots not only for the nature of understanding, but also for its distinctive epistemic value and its role in contemporary epistemology. (shrink)

When beginning to think about the relation between experimental music and the thought of Gilles Deleuze, this quotation seems to be a natural starting point. In Deleuze and Guattari’s affirmation of this phrase from John Cage they suggest a resonance between music and philosophy: in both fields the experimental approach entails a dismantling of predetermining codes and hierarchies, and with this arises the opportunity for an open-endedness that accommodates singular events and encounters. This understanding of experimentation, however, is not as (...) transparent as it seems. In the context of the uptake and critique of Deleuzian ideas in the theorisation of music and sound, as well as recent re-evaluations of the milieu of “experimental music,” critics have argued that a range of normative demands, ideological assumptions, and metaphysical reductions undermine the purported freedoms of both Cagean and Deleuzian experimentalism. -/- Here I can only deal with a small aspect of the wide historical and theoretical problem this involves; but in short my aim is to begin to construct a means through which Deleuze and Guattari’s thought can be used to help us examine some strategies that composers and performers in post-Cagean musical experimentalism developed to navigate around the demands, assumptions, and reductions of Cage’s thought. (shrink)

In ‘Aesthetics Problems of Modern Philosophy’ Stanley Cavell proposes, first, that Kant's characterization of judgments of beauty may be read as a Wittgensteinian grammatical characterization, and, second, that the philosophical appeal to ‘what we say and mean’ partakes of the grammar of judgment of beauty. I argue first that the expression of the dawning of an aspect partakes of the grammar of judgments of beauty as characterized by Kant, and may also be seen—on a prevailing way of thinking about concepts (...) and how they relate to their instances—to have the same kind of significance that judgments of beauty have according to Kant. And then I argue that there are good reasons for being suspicious of the prevailing conception of concepts, and therefore good reasons for being suspicious of the proposed understanding of the significance of aspect perception—an understanding that has attracted many readers of Wittgenstein's remarks on aspects. This leads me to suggest that it is actually the philosophical appeal to ordinary language that has the kind of significance that the Kantian picture attributes to judgments of beauty and to the seeing of aspects. In this way, I offer a way to vindicate Cavell's second proposal. (shrink)

UNDERSTANDING SCIENTIFIC REASONING develops critical reasoning skills and guides students in the improvement of their scientific and technological literacy. The authors teach students how to understand and critically evaluate the scientific information they encounter in both textbooks and the popular media. With its focus on scientific pedagogy, UNDERSTANDING SCIENTIFIC REASONING helps students learn how to examine scientific reports with a reasonable degree of sophistication. The book also explains how to reason through case studies using the same informal logic skills employed (...) by scientists and to analyze a complex series of propositions and hypotheses using sound scientific reasoning. (shrink)

This special issue arose from a joint conference of the History of Education Society, UK and the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society, held in Malvern in Worcestershire, England in 2016 on the theme ‘sight, sound and text in the history of education’. The conference drew together media and educational historians, as well as archivists and museum professionals, to examine both methodological issues and a range of examples of sensory and textual histories. The three-day event, as well (...) as being enriching for its international character, proved that although much work has already been done in this area, there is so much more to consider and exploit when it comes to the study of the ‘new’ sonic and visual sources and their intertextual relationship with the documentary, as well as traditional understandings of ‘text’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies.1.1 (2001) 129-130 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Sound of Liberating Truth: Buddhist-Christian Dialogues in Honor of Frederick J. Streng The Sound of Liberating Truth: Buddhist-Christian Dialogues in Honor of Frederick J. Streng.Edited by Sallie B. King and Paul O.Ingram. Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999. Fred Streng was a close friend of mine. We were born the same year, 1933, and shared many interests. The (...) last time I saw him was in 1992, in Boston.We both took part in the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies' fourth Buddhist-Christian Dialogue Conference, we both also delivered sermons at Boston University's chapel, and both of us gave commemorative addresses at a memorial service for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I was in exile at the time, fleeing from the oppression of the Thai National Peacekeeping Council, which had staged a coup d'etat the year before. Fred offered sincere concern for my well-being and safety, and he encouraged me, when it was most needed, to complete my work on socially engaged Buddhism. Not long after that, I received the tragic news that Fred had died of cancer at age sixty.I've always admired Fred Streng's positive disposition. His metta karuna,.oving and compassionate way, deeply shone through him. And his religious views, though different from mine, were always captivating. Fred was a Christian, yet his attitude and works greatly benefited a Theravada Buddhist like me. I especially learned from his Emptiness: AStudy in Religious Meaning.1974) and the textbook series, "Understanding Religious Life," that he edited.We are in need of different ways of perceiving and understanding reality, ways in which the brain and mind/heart are able to unite as one. In his summary of Dr. Streng's thinking, Paul Ingram summarizes his commitment to interreligious dialogue as a path in itself: [H]e was convinced that religious knowledge and authentic living at their deepest level are dependent upon seeking out alternative forms of religious experience, comparing them, and entering into dialogue with them. Interreligious dialogue, he believed, may involve (1) a mystical sense of unity underlying the diversity of humanity's ways of being religious, (2) the perception that the religious ways of humanity are alternative or complementary means of ultimate transformation, (3) a focus on enriching one's personal faith and participation in one's own religious tradition, or (4) a combination of all three of [End Page 129] the above. Fred also developed these themes further in an essay entitled "Selfhood without Selfishness: Buddhist and Christian Approaches to Authentic Living" (pp. xiv-xv). Reading The Sound of Liberating Truth,.he new collection of writings in Frederick Streng's honor edited by Sallie King and Paul Ingram, evokes fond memories of this kayanamittata(spiritual friend). The book's title is not just appealing and meaningful, it was the "life koan" that Fred grappled with during his final years: what is the sound of liberating truth? Religions can be more harmful and corrupting than even Marx thought. But the highest intention of religions remains unsurpassed--the ultimate transformation from selfishness to selflessness. In a genuine way, this book is a vehicle for helping us realize this noble outcome.I am truly impressed by the wide range of ideas I have picked up reading this volume. In addition to the important contributions by the book's two editors, there are thought-provoking articles by David Chappell and Winston King on "Interreligious Dialogue," by Bonnie Thurston and Paula Cooey on "Nature and Ecology," by Sallie King and John Keenan on "Social and Political Issues of Liberation," and by Tom Kasulis and Ruben Habito on "Ultimate Transformation or Liberation." In each of these, there are challenging dialogues and good responses, too. The Buddhist and Christian epilogues by Taitetsu Unno and John Cobb, respectively, crown all the other dialogues in depth and thoughtfulness.This volume is a well-deserved tribute to Frederick J. Streng, whose memory will be with his many friends--Buddhists, Christians, and so many others... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Gary Borjesson A SOUNDING OF WALDEN'S PHILOSOPHICAL DEPTH It is hard to make up one's mind about Waiden. One expects die spiritual landscape to be familiar, so familiar perhaps diat you need not read die book to feel you know it. But Waiden disappoints this expectation. Having read it, one may wonderjust what is so familiar or American about Thoreau's sensibility. And righdy so. Waiden is long on observation (...) and short on plot, as tedious in its detail as it is devoid of action. It is a wondrously slow, contemplative work and would be demanding enough for this reason alone, to say nothing of the enormous vocabulary, the abundant allusions to classical mythology, and die Latin and Greek scattered tiiroughout—all of which hint that despite his democratic rhetoric, Thoreau addresses himself to a rather small audience. Like the lusty chanticleer, "standing on his roost, ifonly to wake his neighbors up," Waiden speaks to the best part of the soul, to that in us which is divinely awake or mindful.1 Such speeches necessarily transcend not only America's borders, but common-sense understanding as well, "the sense ofmen asleep, which they express by snoring" (p. 325). As Thoreau puts it: "I desire to speak somewhere widiout bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in dieir waking moments" (p. 324). This desire "to speak somewhere without bounds" is philosophical. Waiden witnesses to die philosophical experience of the world. Originating in wonder and die desire to understand, Waiden moves dirough die senses, experience, the arts, and science. But its specifically philosophical character lies in Thoreau's evident desire to situate all tilings, including himself, in dieir ultimate context. Recognizing the integrity of this desire means appreciating that the full realization of one's nature requires discovering one's place in die cosmos. Philosophy and Literature, © 1994, 18: 287-308 288Philosophy and Literature The tiiree parts of this essay articulate what I take to be philosophical about Thoreau's sensibility. The first part considers Thoreau as a surveyor of the whole of things, a traditionally philosophical endeavor. The second part examines Thoreau's desire for truth and shows how it must be distinguished from the tenets of transcendental philosophy generally and Emerson's transcendentalism in particular. Contrary to a common opinion, a true estimation of Walden's philosophical depth hinges on seeing why Thoreau is not a transcendentalist. Some may worry that attention to these universal, theoretical features ofThoreau's workjeopardizes doingjustice to his famously idiosyncratic individualism. But Thoreau does not ask one to choose either allegiance to oneself or to universal laws: such a dichotomy is false and must be sublated. Thus the final part of this essay explicates how Thoreau envisions the web of particular and universal, the alignment of individual and cosmos. I conclude by framing my disagreement with Stanley Cavell's reading of Waiden. As the only well-known philosopher to have devoted a book-lengtii study to Waiden, his influence has been great, and on central points his reading sanctions the common emphasis on subjectivity.2 Two last prefatory remarks. First, Waiden is not a work in philosophy, at least not a treatise, for Thoreau does not explain his insights thematically. Nevertheless, the work has a distinct philosophical character, one I shall try to sketch with die degree of precision appropriate to it. This raises my second point. Precision does not sit easily with comprehensiveness or with the need to praise. All three are relevant to philosophical understanding, yet Thoreau evidently felt that synoptic contemplation and all its fruits, including "any memorable praise of God," were in die shorter supply (p. 78). As Thoreau tells it, he wished to "cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms," "to front only the essential facts," "and if [life] proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to die world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion" (pp. 90—91). If Thoreau is right... (shrink)

Background: The intrauterine hearing experience differs from the extrauterine hearing exposure within a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) setting. Also, the listening experience of a neonate drastically differs from that of an adult. Several studies have documented that the sound level within a NICU exceeds the recommended threshold by far, possibly related to hearing loss thereafter. The aim of this study was, firstly, to precisely define the dynamics of sounds within an incubator and, secondly, to give clinicians and caregivers (...) an idea about what can be heard “inside the box.” Methods: Audio recordings within an incubator were conducted at the Pediatric Simulation Center of the Medical University Vienna. They contained recorded music, speech and synthesized sounds. To understand the dynamics of sounds around and within the incubator the following stimuli were used: broadband noise with decreasing sound level in ten steps of 6 dB, sine waves (62.5, 125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, 8000 and 16000 Hz), logarithmic sweep (Chirp) over the frequency band 20 Hz to 21 kHz, singing male voice, singing and whispering female voice. Results: Our results confirm a protective effect of the incubator from noises above 500 Hz in conditions of “no-flow” and show almost no protective effect of an incubator cover. We, furthermore, observed a strong boost of low frequencies below 125 Hz within the incubator, as well as a notable increase of higher frequency noises with open access doors, a significant resonant effect of the incubator, and a considerable masking effect of the respiratory support against any other source of noise or sound stimulation even for “low-flow” conditions. Conclusion: Our study reveals high noise levels of air supply at high flow rates and the boost of low frequencies within the incubator. Education of medical staff and family members as well as modifications of the physical environment should aim at reducing noise exposure of preterm infants in the incubator. Audiovisual material is provided as supplementary material. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:In Sounds and Silences:Acknowledging Political EngagementJulia Eklund KozaThis symposium grapples with such questions as "Should music educators participate in political understandings?" The term "politics" often brings to mind "Big P" political matters, including citizenship, governance of the state, the election of officials, and the formation of public policy. Another way of thinking about politics is to associate it with power relations in social interactions of any kind. If one (...) thinks about it in the second way, then wherever there are two or more people, there are politics. Questions such as "Should we participate in politics?" and "How engaged should we be?" become meaningless. Michel Foucault's discussions of the pastoral forms of governance employed by the modern state, specifically the uses of technologies of the self, challenged long-held views about relationships between the individual and the state. In particular, his claim that major dominations are the effects, not the causes, of myriad local and particular mobilizations of power provides a rationale for examining these local mobilizations.1 If major dominations and "Big P" politics are the effects of local mobilizations, then everyone participating in social interactions participates in "Big P" politics, as well.This more global conception of political engagement stands in sharp contrast to a narrower one, which can be described using a "swimmer-on the-shore" metaphor. The swimmer stands on a beach looking out at the sea and decides whether this is a day for a toe dip, wading to the knees, total immersion, or staying out of the water altogether. The swimmer can choose to stay dry (unless inundated by the tide or a tidal wave). This conception is evident in a comment reportedly made by a music education professor in response to two back-to-back annual meetings of the music education researchers at Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) institutions. Both meetings had been devoted to critique of MENC's policies and practices, and the disgruntled professor reportedly remarked, "That's enough about politics; let's get back to talking about music." In his view, which is shaped by the "swimmer" conception, some discussions are political, others are not; while some curricular areas, such as civics and sex education, are political, music is not, nor should it be. If, however, we assume that there is power in all social relations, then the "swimmer" conception has no salience because everyone is immersed; music, because it is a social activity, is political. Its engagement in politics is neither good nor bad, in and of itself; rather, it is inevitable. [End Page 168]Some may concede that although it is not possible to be disengaged, it is necessary and good for scholars and teachers to be politically "neutral." Conceptions of neutrality rely on a one-dimensional linear integers model of political engagement. On the line representing the integers, there is a plus side, a minus side, and zero, the zero presumably being the point of neutrality. People and views associated with the far ends of the line are extreme, while those closer to the zero point are moderate. In addition, positions on the line are assigned a moral value; depending upon the issue and the perspective from which the line is being viewed, plus can be good but minus is bad, plus can be bad but minus is good, neutral can be good, or neutral can be bad. If every issue and every social relation is political, however, and if we assume that people and relationships change, then the linear integers model is inadequate because it fails to embody the dynamic, multi-dimensional character of the complex social relations in which all of us engage. Another problem with the linear integers model is that it fails to interrogate the power vested in whomever or whatever decides what will constitute extreme, moderate, or neutral—what will be deemed reasonable and what outrageous. Sometimes this responsibility has been assigned to a fictitious "reasonable" person without much thought having been given to the political dimensions of the construction of reasoning. What is deemed outrageous in one system of reasoning may be perfectly reasonable in another.Belief that education can and should be objective and neutral comes from... (shrink)

In ‘Aesthetics Problems of Modern Philosophy’ Stanley Cavell proposes, first, that Kant's characterization of judgments of beauty may be read as a Wittgensteinian grammatical characterization, and, second, that the philosophical appeal to ‘what we say and mean’ partakes of the grammar of judgment of beauty. I argue first that the expression of the dawning of an aspect partakes of the grammar of judgments of beauty as characterized by Kant, and may also be seen—on a prevailing way of thinking about concepts (...) and how they relate to their instances—to have the same kind of significance that judgments of beauty have according to Kant. And then I argue that there are good (Wittgensteinian) reasons for being suspicious of the prevailing conception of concepts, and therefore good reasons for being suspicious of the proposed understanding of the significance of aspect perception—an understanding that has attracted many readers of Wittgenstein's remarks on aspects. This leads me to suggest that it is actually the philosophical appeal to ordinary language that has the kind of significance that the Kantian picture attributes to judgments of beauty and to the seeing of aspects. In this way, I offer a way to vindicate Cavell's second proposal. (shrink)

I do not by any means with to take on the philosophy or aesthetics of music as a whole. In his review of Edward Lippman’s Humanistic Philosophy of Music, Monroe Beardsley lists six areas in which an ideal philosophy of music ought to provide guidance: an ontology of music, an answer to the question What is a musical work of art? a taxonomy of music, a categorical scheme for the basic and universal aspects of music; a hermeneutics or semiotics of (...) music, an answer to the question What, if anything, can music refer to? an epistemology of music; a theory of music criticism, an answer to the question What makes one musical work better than another? the foundations of a social philosophy of music.4 My subject here is the third item. I want most particularly to separate it from the fifth item, for to arrive at an interpretation of a particular piece is not to arrive at an evaluation of it. I shall also try, particularly in my discussion of Nelson Goodman’s seminal Languages of Art, to avoid the first item.5 And I shall try throughout to avoid embroilment in the question of how the aesthetic experience can be separated from the nonaesthetic.My subject is in fact only a part of the third item above, namely, current theories of musical expression. “Expression” is not equivalent to “meaning”; I understand and shall use the word “expression” to indicate a kind of meaning that entails some kind of reference outside the internal syntax of the artwork itself. As Goodman remarks, “rather obviously, to express is to refer in some way to what is expressed.”6 How this reference is made by the artwork is interaction with the listener, and what sort of purpose it serves—these concerns will be the focus of this essay. To choose this focus is not to deny something of which I have no doubt, both from Peter Faltin’s careful arguments and from my own experience: there is a kind of musical meaning that is purely syntactic, that operates without reference outside the internal operations or procedures of musical systems themselves.7 But through this may be ontologically the most fundamental kind of musical meaning, it is not the only kind. To listen for this alone is not the only way to approach music. Indeed, I should guess it is not the most fundamental way for many listeners. 4. I paraphrase and abbreviate from Monroe C. Beardsley, review of A Humanistic Philosophy of Music by Edward A. Lippman, Musical Quarterly 66 : 305.5. See Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols ; all further references to this work, abbreviated LA, will be included in the text.6. Goodman, “Reply to Beardsley,” Erkenntnis 12, pt. 1 : 171; and see Edward T. Cone: “Expressive values in any art … cannot arise from analytical values alone. How could they? Unless one wishes to explain what it could possibly mean for a work of art to ‘express itself,’ then one must agree that expression, by its very definition, implies a relationship between the work of art and something else; while analytical values are derivable purely from internal structure” . Anthony Newcomb, professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of The Madrigal at Ferrara. He is currently at work on a book on musica ficta, Understood Accidentals in Renaissance Vocal Polyphony, 1450-1600, and a study of the relationship between structure and expression in nineteenth-century music. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal, David Botting defended pragma-dialectics against epistemological criticisms by exponents of the epistemological approach to argumentation, i.e. Harvey Siegel, John Biro and me. In particular, Botting tries to justify with new arguments a Functional Claim, that the function of argumentation is to resolve disputes, and a Normative Claim, that standpoints that have the unqualified consensus of all participants in a dispute will generally be epistemically sound. In this reply it is shown that Botting’s (...) arguments are fallacious, that the two Claims are false and that the epistemological approach to argumentation, of course, outclasses pragma-dialectics epistemically and is at least as good as it in other respects. (shrink)

From its use in literary theory, film criticism and the discourse of games design, Salomé Voegelin expands 'possible world theory' to think the worlding of sound in music, in art and in the everyday. The modal logic of possible worlds, articulated principally via David K. Lewis and developed through Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological life-worlds, creates a view on the invisible slices of the world and reflects on how to make them count, politically and aesthetically. How to make them thinkable and (...) accessible as the possibility of the everyday and of art: to reach a new materialist understanding from the invisible and to develop an ear for the as yet inaudible. This revised edition continues Voegelin's exploration of the sonic possibility of the world into the sonic possibility and impossibility of the body. Listening to work by Áine O'Dwyer, Hannah Silva and Jocy de Oliveira, it considers sonic possible worlds' radical power to rethink normative constructions and to fabulate a different body from its sound: Hearing the Continuum Between Plural Bodies ; between humans, humanoid aliens, monsters, vampires, plants, things and anything we have no name for yet but which a sonic philosophy might start to hear and call. (shrink)

Is there anything peculiarly "photographic" about photography—something which sets it apart from all other ways of making pictures? If there is, how important is it to our understanding of photographs? Are photographs so unlike other sorts of pictures as to require unique methods of interpretation and standards of evaluation? These questions may sound artificial, made up especially for the purpose of theorizing. But they have in fact been asked and answered not only by critics and photographers but by laymen. (...) Furthermore, for most of this century the majority of critics and laymen alike have tended to answer these questions in the same way: that photographs and paintings differ in an important way and require different methods in interpretation precisely because photographs and paintings come into being in different ways. These answers are interesting because, even within the rather restricted classes of critics, photographers, and theorists, they are held in common by a wide variety of people who otherwise disagree strongly with each other—by people who think that photographs are inferior to paintings and people who believe they are superior; by people who think that photographs ought to be "objective" and those who believe they should be "subjective"; by those who believe that it is impossible for photographers to "create" anything and by those who believe that they should at least try. Joel Snyder teaches criticism and history of photography at the University of Chicago and is presently compiling a book of his own photographs. His contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Picturing Vision" and "Reflexions on Las Meninas: Paradox Lost", written with Ted Cohen in the Winter 1980 issue. Neil Walsh Allen produces educational audio-visual materials and has designed eight permanent exhibits on the history and applications of photography for the Smithsonian Institution. (shrink)

Recently, it has been debated as to whether understanding is a species of explanatory knowledge. Those who deny this claim frequently argue that understanding, unlike knowledge, can be lucky. In this paper I argue that current arguments do not support this alleged compatibility between understanding and epistemic luck. First, I argue that understanding requires reliable explanatory evaluation, yet the putative examples of lucky understanding underspecify the extent to which subjects possess this ability. In the course of defending this claim, I (...) also provide a new account of the kind of ‘grasping’ taken to be central to understanding. Second, I show that putative examples of lucky understanding unwittingly deploy a kind of luck that is compatible with knowledge. Finally, appealing to a number of works on explanation and its attendant epistemology, I argue that alleged instances of lucky understanding that overcome these two obstacles will invariably violate certain norms of explanatory inquiry – our paradigmatic understanding-oriented practice. By contrast, knowledge of the same information is immune to these criticisms. Consequently, if understanding is environmentally lucky, it is always inferior to the understanding that a corresponding case of knowledge would provide. (shrink)

Background and Objectives: In this research article, the researcher addresses the issue of creating public understanding in a democratic society about the progress of science, with an emphasis on pluralism from philosophers of science. The idea that there is only one truth and that there are just natural laws awaiting discovery by scientists has historically made it difficult to explain scientific progress. This belief motivates science to develop theories that explain the unity of science, and it is thought that diversity (...) in the way different ideas presented by scientists is a problem that results in time being wasted in search of the most accurate theory. Some scientists perceive a benefit in having a range of scientific hypotheses, though. One benefit that is frequently cited is that scientific diversity as a whole contributes to the development of a democratic society that permits the expression of a range of viewpoints. The road to accountable scientific pluralism is fraught with difficulties, though. Therefore, it is crucial to take into account both pluralism's advantages and disadvantages. This research aims at: 1. analyzing in an epistemological way the interpretation of scientific theories and the progress of science from the perspectives of scientific pluralists; 2. analyzing the relationship between science and democracy in explaining scientific significance and progress; and 3. synthesizing new knowledge on epistemic dependentism and to argue that it plays a significant role in evaluating research issues related to scientific pluralism. Methodology: The research methodology involves the application of documentary investigation along with philosophical discourse. The method of philosophical argumentation involves analyzing the lines of arguments found in relevant academic publications in order to assess their validity and soundness. Main Results: One key argument of the pluralists is the use of the concept of theoretical pluralism, which suggests that scientific knowledge is created from a variety of perspectives according to the social and cultural context of knowledge creation. It is found that part of Longino's argument is based on the negation of rational/social dichotomy. Moreover, her theory is a departure from philosopher of science Philip Kitcher, who advocates the creation of scientific knowledge and the evaluation of scientific progress through the means of democratic society. He explains that these procedures will lead to "well-ordered science" in democratic society. Discussions: The researcher examines the underlying ideas accepted by these two philosophers of science and finds that although their opinions differ, they have common ground in the acceptance of consensus. However, the views of both philosophers still lack weight in explaining the knowledge itself. The researcher argues that the acceptance of pluralism as a way of understanding scientific progress necessarily lends itself to dependentism, which points to interdependence in comparisons of superiority/inferiority between scientific theories. It is undeniable that the situation has emerged all the time, even though the success of the scientific theories being compared to each other comes from different social and cultural grounds of thought. Conclusions: Some popular models of scientific pluralism in the philosophy of science still lack a compelling justification, particularly on the epistemic grounds. By elucidating the epistemic significance of the interdependence of these things, scientific pluralism can be strengthened by incorporating the notion of epistemic dependentism into the analysis of scientific progress. (shrink)

This book traces the profound impact of technical media on the sound of music, asking: how do media technologies shape sound? How does this affect music? And how did it change what we listen for in music? Based on the information theoretical proposition that all transmission channels introduce noise and distortion, the argument accounts for the fact that technologically reproduced music is inherently shaped by the technologies that enable its reproduction. The media archaeological assessment of this noise of (...) sound media developed in the book draws from a wide range of sources, both theoretical and historical, conceptual and technical. Together, they show that noise should not be understood as unwanted by-effect but instead plays a foundational role in shaping the sonic contours of technologically reproduced music. Over the course of five chapters, the book sketches a broad history of the problem of noise in sound recording, looks at specific analog and digital noise-related technologies, traces the ideal of sonic purity back to key developments in nineteenth century acoustics, and develops an analysis of the close interrelation between noise and the temporality of sound. This relation, it argues, is central to the way in which recorded sound and music resonate with listeners. Ultimately, this media specific analysis of the noise of sound media thereby greatly enriches our understanding of the way in which they changed and continue to change the sonorous qualities of music, thus offering a new perspective on the interaction between music, media and listeners. (shrink)