Music raises many problems for those who would understand it more deeply. It is rooted in time, yet timeless. It is pure form, yet conveys emotion. It is written, but performed, interpreted, improvised, transcribed, recorded, sampled, remixed, revised, rebroadcast, reinterpreted, and more. Music can be studied by philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, mathematicians, biologists, computer scientists, neuro-scientists, critics, politicians, promoters, and of course musicians. Moreover, no single perspective seems either sufficient or invalid. This situation is not so different from that of other (...) arts, but perhaps more intense, due to the pervasiveness of pop, the inaccessability of much contemporary classical music, the strong cultural associations of many styles, the infusions of technology, and the combination with lyrics. (shrink)

We address the thesis recently proposed by Andy Clark, that skill-mediated access to modality implies phenomenal feel. We agree that a skill theory of perception does indeed offer the possibility of a satisfactory account of the feel of perception, but we claim that this is not only through explanation of access to modality but also because skill actually provides access to perceptual property in general. We illustrate and substantiate our claims by reference to the recently proposed 'sensorimotor contingency' theory of (...) visual awareness. We discuss why this theory offers a distinctively attractive access-based approach to perceptual consciousness because it 'dereifies' experience and permits otherwise problematic aspects of phenomenal perceptual consciousness to be explained. We suggest our approach thus offers the prospect of 'naturalizing phenomenology'. (shrink)