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Towards a rich view of auditory experience

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Abstract

In this paper I will argue that the gender properties expressed by human voices are part of auditory phenomenology. I will support this claim by investigating auditory adaptational effects on such properties and contrasting auditory experiences, before and after the adaptational effects take place. In light of this investigation, I will conclude that auditory experience is not limited to low-level properties. Perception appears to be much more informative about the auditory landscape than is commonly thought.

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Notes

  1. The rich/thin debate (Siegel and Byrne forthcoming) is also sometimes labeled as a conflict between the “rich view” and the “sparse view” (Macpherson 2011), the “thick view” and the “thin view” (Masrour 2011), or between “conservatives” and “liberalists” (Bayne 2009). “Sparse” and “rich” are also used to characterize the debate on the extent to which we are aware of our bodies (Schwitzgebel 2007).

  2. “Conservatives [the thin view] give similar accounts of other perceptual modalities: the phenomenology of audition is exhausted by the representation of volume, pitch, timbre and so on; the phenomenology of gustation is exhausted by the representation of sweetness, sourness, and so on. […] On [the rich view], what it’s like to see a tomato, taste a strawberry, or hear a trumpet is not limited to the representation of various sensory qualities but also the representation of various ‘high-level’ properties—being a tomato, a strawberry or a trumpet” (Bayne 2009: 17).

  3. In the contrast case I propose, we can focus only on one single vowel-consonant–vowel syllable, such as/aba/. So E1 is the experience of hearing an androgynous voice (50/50 % male/female proportion) uttering/aba/, and E2 is the experience of hearing the same androgynous voice as the one heard in E1, immediately after hearing a female (or male) voice uttering/aba/. The androgynous voice is heard as female when adapted to a male voice and as a male when adapted to a female voice.

  4. My characterization of perceptual experience as epistemically immediate is similar to Masrour’s characterization of it as (2011: 372) “epistemically privileged”.

  5. Siegel (2010: 109) provides a similar explanation when arguing in favour of the representational content associated with the feeling of familiarity.

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Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this paper have benefited from discussions with Claire Benn, Ned Block, Roberto Casati, Bence Nanay, Matthew Nudds, Casey O’Callaghan, Krisztina Orban, Olla Solomyak, Alberto Voltolini, and Uri Weiss. I am particularly grateful to Sharon Berry, Stefano Ercolino, Susanna Siegel, Hong Yu Wong, and the anonymous referees for their insightful comments. This work has been initially supported by the Fondazione Franco and Marilisa Caligara and the University of Turin.

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  1. Polonsky Academy Fellow, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, 43 Jabotinsky St., P.O.B 4070, 9214116, Jerusalem, Israel

    Elvira Di Bona

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Di Bona, E. Towards a rich view of auditory experience. Philos Stud 174, 2629–2643 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0802-4

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