3 philosophers are in a row boat. At the front of the boat, the first philosopher is playing a tuba, badly. A horrid spluttering Parp! Parp! To the rear the other philosophers are manning the oars. They face backwards, so they enjoy a view of where they have been. As the boat is going nowhere the rear view is the most agreeable, but these are disagreeable people by trade and by nature and so they are arguing. They are arguing about sound.
The philosopher on the left called Mick started the dispute by saying that he wished the person playing the tuba at the front would drown. The one on the right called Sara doubts the evidence that there is anyone playing the tuba.
Mick: “I can hear the tuba.”
Sarah: “No, you hear the sound of a tuba.”
At that moment, the tuba player paused to wipe his brow. Either the tuba has momentarily disappeared (or unsounded?) or Sara is right and it’s not possible to hear the tuba, just the sound of the tuba which isn’t the same thing at all. This is a muddle because we say ‘I hear a bird’ but we in fact mean the sound the bird makes. We correct this in common language when we add ’sound’ before appearance as in ‘I heard a bell, then the sound faded away’. Mick is aware of impending doom but isn’t going to be beaten that easily.
Mick: “So the sound of a tuba is at the front of the boat.”
Sarah: “Not at all. The sound exists in your perception, here in the back.”
“The sound comes from the front of the boat.”
“Vibrations spread from the front of the boat, but they aren’t sound until you hear them.”
“The vibrations make the sound.”
“Sound isn’t an object.”
That is the problem. Is sound an object? Because it needs to be some thing that holds a position before it can be some where. Mick doesn’t like the idea of it being an object because he knows that the vibrations are displacement of objects, which don’t actually travel to the ear.
Sarah added: “Sight isn’t an object either.”
She’s trying to be helpful (well not really). In general conversation we talk about ‘a sound’ and Sara is pointing out the uncomfortable comparison to saying ‘a sight’, as if ‘a sight came from across the room’. Both are kind of true in that waves propagate, but the waves aren’t the sight, or the sound. We also say that someone ‘looks a sight’, which is nothing like saying they ‘hear a sound’. Anyway she is just being nasty.
Mick turned around, spotted the tuba and worried that it might only be the sight of a tuba, and that the actual tuba was an unknowable tubaness. Yet there is no doubt that the horrible attempt at Yankee Doodle is being created by something and that they both hear it.
Mick: “Well I think we can agree that the music is rather diabolical.”
Sara: “The music?”
Mick isn’t sure either but persists: “Yes there’s notes.”
“How do you know there are notes?”
Surely that was a matter of physics. “In the frequencies … of the sounds.”
“But frequencies, if they exist, aren’t the same as pitch. You’re skipping over psychophysics. Mels don’t map to Hertz.”
The problem here is that although every text book says we hear frequencies as notes this too is a simplification – we actually perceive tonality on a scale that is neither logarithmic nor linear – and it varies on how loud the sounds are and their timbre anyway. We might both say we’re hearing ‘music’ but the actual numbers processed might not be the same at all – the brain is able to perceive musical structure despite large distortions. Sara can (and is determined to) deny that the music can be determined outside of a mental process.
“Even if there is music, it would be acousmatic experience anyway.”
You have to admire that bit of Jujitsu. Having just argued that we can’t declare that vibrational frequencies constitute musical pitches, she then makes the point that music involves an active process of listening that is distinct to recognition of sound sources. Simply put – detecting a melody is a different perception to hearing a sound.
At this point Mick looks sick. But he has a trick. His study being eastern philosophical tradition, he drops his oar, turns around and boots the tuba player off the boat with a satisfying burst of surprise and bubbles. The sound of the tuba having ceased he goes back to rowing.
Sara gains enlightenment.