This week's PG WiP Seminar will be led by Giulia Lorenzini (PhD)

Title: "On the Distinctiveness of Listening to Music"

Thursday March 9th 2023

5pm in S2.77 and on TeamsLink opens in a new window.

 Everyone welcome!

 Abstract:

In philosophy of auditory perception, taxonomic works, such as O’Callaghan (2021) and O’Callaghan & Nudds (2009), consider the perception of music as a distinctive case. Yet, the current literature on the matter does not furnish a standardised and generally accepted reason for which this should be the case. In this talk, I consider two possible ways to go to reply to the question regarding the distinctiveness of perceiving music. I start presenting what I call here “the Naturalistic View”, based on Budd (2008) and DiBona’s (2022) works. I then show how this view provides some insights on necessary, yet, not sufficient mechanisms, at play in the experience of perceiving music. I proceed considering Scruton’s account of the experience of music, to which I refer here as “the Metaphorical View”. After presenting some wide-spread criticisms to this view, I discuss the case of enculturated and unenculturated listeners to highlight a core, interesting element present in Scruton’s proposal which I consider worth saving.