Lawrence Kramer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520273955
- eISBN:
- 9780520953840
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520273955.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
Expression and truth are traditional opposites in Western thought: expression supposedly refers to states of mind, truth to states of affairs. Expression and Truth rejects this opposition and ...
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Expression and truth are traditional opposites in Western thought: expression supposedly refers to states of mind, truth to states of affairs. Expression and Truth rejects this opposition and proposes fluid new models of expression, truth, and knowledge with broad application for the humanities. The models derive from five theses that connect expression to description, cognition, the presence and absence of speech, and the conjunction of address and reply. The theses are linked by a concentration on musical expression, regarded as the ideal case of expression in general, and by fresh readings of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s scattered but important remarks about music. The result is a new conception of expression as a primary means of knowing, acting on, and forming the world.Less
Expression and truth are traditional opposites in Western thought: expression supposedly refers to states of mind, truth to states of affairs. Expression and Truth rejects this opposition and proposes fluid new models of expression, truth, and knowledge with broad application for the humanities. The models derive from five theses that connect expression to description, cognition, the presence and absence of speech, and the conjunction of address and reply. The theses are linked by a concentration on musical expression, regarded as the ideal case of expression in general, and by fresh readings of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s scattered but important remarks about music. The result is a new conception of expression as a primary means of knowing, acting on, and forming the world.
Lawrence Kramer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520273955
- eISBN:
- 9780520953840
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520273955.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This chapter develops the thesis that expression is description. Expression becomes description when it induces the special type of change in perception that Wittgenstein calls the “lighting up of an ...
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This chapter develops the thesis that expression is description. Expression becomes description when it induces the special type of change in perception that Wittgenstein calls the “lighting up of an aspect”; the best case—and test case—of this perceptual transformation is music; and the quasi-musical stream of expressive acts that induce aspect change alter not just how we see the world but the world itself. Truth follows expression as much as—or more than—expression follows truth.Less
This chapter develops the thesis that expression is description. Expression becomes description when it induces the special type of change in perception that Wittgenstein calls the “lighting up of an aspect”; the best case—and test case—of this perceptual transformation is music; and the quasi-musical stream of expressive acts that induce aspect change alter not just how we see the world but the world itself. Truth follows expression as much as—or more than—expression follows truth.
William G. Lycan
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190648916
- eISBN:
- 9780190648947
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190648916.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Nearly everything ever written by philosophers on aspect perception has been about vision. This chapter catalogs some views and lessons regarding “seeing as,” and argues that not all of them carry ...
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Nearly everything ever written by philosophers on aspect perception has been about vision. This chapter catalogs some views and lessons regarding “seeing as,” and argues that not all of them carry over to aspect perception in hearing. In particular, the attention theory, very attractive for the case of vision, is not plausible for hearing.
Hearing-as plays at least two central roles in human life. The chapter continues by illustrating them. One is in the appreciation of music: tonality, the ambiguity exploited in harmonic modulation, and the expressing of emotion. The other is in understanding speech: hearing sounds as speech at all, disambiguating utterances, and assigning illocutionary force.Less
Nearly everything ever written by philosophers on aspect perception has been about vision. This chapter catalogs some views and lessons regarding “seeing as,” and argues that not all of them carry over to aspect perception in hearing. In particular, the attention theory, very attractive for the case of vision, is not plausible for hearing.
Hearing-as plays at least two central roles in human life. The chapter continues by illustrating them. One is in the appreciation of music: tonality, the ambiguity exploited in harmonic modulation, and the expressing of emotion. The other is in understanding speech: hearing sounds as speech at all, disambiguating utterances, and assigning illocutionary force.
