We can hear silence because silence, an absence of sound, causes our hearing of it. Advocating this position, Roy Sorensen puts to use his own theory of the direct perception of absences. Sorensen’s theory, which relies on two theories of perception, certainly has its appeal. However, it also has its problematic aspects. On my reading, a weak point of his theory is that it does not provide a criterion for the identification of what exactly we hear. By elaborating this objection (...) in detail, I intend to demonstrate that Sorensen’s theory does not concern direct perception, and does not show that silence is causally efficient. Therefore, it fails to show that silence is the genuine negative object of hearing. I conclude by giving two further reasons for why the ontology that underpins Sorensen’s theory should not be endorsed. (shrink)

How does John Cage’s conceptual work 4′33" communicate its meaning and how can we appreciate it? In this paper, I develop two competing interpretations to tackle these questions. First, drawing on Peter Goldie and Elisabeth Schellekens’s account of conceptual art and on Cage’s commentary on 4′33", I elaborate an overlooked idea that the work creates a new art form of conceptual music, which can be appreciated exclusively through the ideas it conveys. However, I argue that the conceptualist interpretation of 4′33" (...) does not help us understand the work’s point, because it reveals a set of inconsistent claims about music and listening. The second interpretation draws on Julian Dodd’s view that the physical medium is irreducible in appreciating conceptual artworks. I develop this view by introducing a notion of a gesture to expand on how the performance of 4′33" contributes to its aesthetic appreciation and propose an alternative interpretation of the work’s meaning. (shrink)