Abstract
It is widely assumed (and only rarely argued) that the principal objects of hearing are sounds.
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Notes
- 1.
Sorensen goes on to argue that “there is a single exception” to this view: “We hear silence, which is the absence of sounds” (126). So, more precisely, according to Sorensen, the immediate objects of hearing are sonic objects (sounds and silences), and when we hear an ordinary object, we do so in virtue of hearing a sonic one.
- 2.
Note that, even if only sound can be directly heard, it may still be possible to hear sounds indirectly—as in, say, hearing a recording or a radio transmission rather than being present at the live performance.
- 3.
Four points in passing:
First, it is important that (1) and (2) are mutually independent: that sound can only be heard—(1)—does not impose any restrictions on what else can be heard, whether directly or indirectly; and that only sound can be directly heard—(2)—does not exclude the possibility that sound is perceptually accessible by other means. Therefore, (1) and (2) require independent criticism.
Second, since (1) and (2) are mutually independent, it is unclear exactly what Sorensen has in mind when, in the quoted passage, he refers to “the principle” on which “all subsequent commentators agree.”
Third, Sorensen is too hasty in supposing Warnock to agree with either (1) or (2). Since facts about grammar generally don’t entail substantive metaphysical or epistemological theses, Warnock’s claim that ‘sound’ is the “tautological accusative” of the verb ‘hear’ at best suggests (2)—that only sound can be directly heard. By contrast, it doesn’t even suggest (1)—that sound can only be heard—since ‘sound’ might yet go perfectly well with perception verbs other than ‘hear’.
Finally, even if most philosophers accept (2)—that nothing other than sound can be directly heard—a much more extreme view actually seems common among psychologists: not even sounds can be directly heard. Here, for instance, is a passage from a textbook popular in undergraduate psychology courses on “Sensation and Perception”:
Smell and taste are…indirect because these experiences occur when chemicals travel through the air to receptor sites in the nose and tongue. Stimulation of these receptor sites causes electrical signals that are processed by the nervous system to create the experiences of smell and taste. Hearing is the same. Air pressure changes transmitted through the air cause vibrations of receptors inside the ear, and these vibrations generate the electrical signals our auditory system uses to create the experience of sound. (Goldstein, 68)
The idea seems to be that, because experiences of smell, taste, and sound lie at the ends of largely intra-cranial causal chains, they cannot be direct experiences of extra-cranial phenomena such as smells, tastes, and sounds. This extreme view of what we directly hear—not sound, but (perhaps?) neural activity—is not only wildly implausible (for one thing, neural activity is, as such, pretty quiet), but it would appear to depend on mistaking the representational content of a neural state for the vehicle of that content. In any case, the arguments of this paper are directed at a less extreme view—claim (2)—that is without question the most common view among philosophers, as the opening quote from Sorensen (2010) attests.
- 4.
Further imagine someone whose visual, tactile, and auditory systems regularly fail. We might devise for her a prosthetic that “translates” an auditory stimulus into a gustatory (and/or olfactory) stimulus in a manner that enables simple communication. She might then literally be said to taste (and/or smell) sounds (but perhaps not directly?). Such “sensory substitution devices” are the subject of extensive and ongoing empirical study. For discussion, see Bach-y-Rita and Kercel (2003).
- 5.
For a related discussion, see Roxbee Cox (2011, 104–6). Also, note that (1′) remains independent of (2). Claim (1′)—that sound can be directly perceived only by hearing—does not impose any restrictions on what else can be directly heard; and claim (2)—that only sound can be directly heard—does not exclude the possibility that sound is directly perceivable by other means.
- 6.
This requires qualification. Many contemporary philosophers believe that the immediate objects of visual and tactile perception are not full-blown ordinary objects, but parts of them. On this view, what we see or touch, strictly speaking, are not horses, but horse-parts (viz., surfaces). For the purposes of this essay, I will ignore this complication, and I will write as if what we immediately see or touch are ordinary objects, simpliciter. (For considerations in favor of this commonsense view, see Leddington (2009); for arguments against it, see Bermùdez (2000)).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
And it’s precisely for this reason that “to hear a bare sound we have to listen away from things, divert our ear from them, i.e., listen abstractly.” The idea is that we cannot fail to hear sound sources in hearing sounds, but we nevertheless have the ability to take a distinctively intellectual—and so, not merely experiential—attitude toward the sounds that we hear, regarding them apart from their material sources. As O’Callaghan and Nudds describe it: we have the ability to “attend to sounds as independent from their sources” (2009, 15). Arguably, this sort of listening-as is necessary for the appreciation of music (cf. Scruton 1997 and 2009). Note, however, that the ability to perceive abstractly is not restricted to audition. We are able to do the same sort of thing in seeing color and shape, and it is arguably integral to the appreciation of much abstract visual art.
- 10.
A terminological note: I use the verbs ‘to hear’, ‘to auditorily perceive’, and ‘to auditorily experience’ and their cognates interchangeably throughout this paper. Also, I often use ‘to perceive’ and ‘to experience’ as short for ‘to auditorily perceive’ and ‘to auditorily experience’. Context should make this clear. (Mutatis mutandis for other sensory modalities.)
- 11.
Thanks to Matthew Nudds for drawing my attention to the distinction between stronger and weaker forms of Phenomenological Independence in his commentary during the 3rd Online Consciousness Conference (2011, 1). At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate its importance.
- 12.
Elsewhere, O’Callaghan writes that “a sound seems like such a different sort of thing from a commonplace material object or occurrence” (O’Callaghan 2008b, 319). This superficially resembles (SPI), but it actually doesn’t speak to phenomenological independence at all. After all, a color, too, perceptually seems like such a different sort of thing from a commonplace material object or occurrence, but colors don’t exhibit phenomenological independence to any degree.
- 13.
Note that, in saying that our experience of sounds is as of “things which are distinct from the world of material objects,” Nudds cannot mean simply that sounds auditorily appear non-identical to the world of material objects. After all, any material particular is non-identical to the world of material objects, and Nudds presumably means to capture the way in which auditory experience suggests that sounds are unusual among the furniture of world. For this reason, he presumably also cannot mean that sounds auditorily appear non-identical to or different from material objects, since this wouldn’t distinguish the perceptual appearance of sound from the perceptual appearance of color or any other property-type (cf. the previous note). The only plausible reading seems to be that our experience of sounds is as of things which somehow hang apart from material reality, which is SPI.
- 14.
I ignore the complication introduced by the possibility of hearing silences, but Sonicism is easily generalized to accommodate it: we hear non-sonic phenomena either in or in virtue of hearing sonic phenomena (sounds or silences).
- 15.
- 16.
For Russell’s view of acquaintance and its relationship to demonstrative thought, see Russell (1992). For more recent discussion, see, for instance, Campbell (2002). Thanks to Matthew Nudds for encouraging me to introduce the topic of acquaintance into this discussion of Phenomenological Intimacy (2011, 2–3).
- 17.
Note that Sonicism rules out the possibility of hearing non-sounds without hearing any sound as well as the possibility of hearing non-sounds alongside sounds.
- 18.
Thanks to Casey O’Callaghan for helpfully introducing the distinction between two different ways of hearing sounds as bound to their sources (2011, 2–3). A third but, I think, implausible possibility is: (3) sounds auditorily seem bound to their sources, but the manner of apparent binding is non-specific.
- 19.
Note that the analogy with color experience holds here, too. Imagine trying to identify objects solely on the basis of their colors, without much, if any, information about their shapes or locations. The difficulty is obvious. As in the case of hearing, you would often wish to employ other means, especially touch, and, if this sort of thing occurred often enough, you might be led to think of vision as presenting colors as separate from their bearers; but this, of course, would be a mistake.
- 20.
This is consistent with the idea that we can think of a sound without thinking of it as having any particular cause. After all, we can think of a color without thinking of it as having any particular bearer. For, just as qualitatively the same color may be borne by very different objects, qualitatively the same sound may be caused by very different events.
- 21.
Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at the 2010 Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association at University College Dublin, the Third Annual Online Consciousness Conference (CO3), and the 2011 meeting of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association. I am grateful to Matthew Nudds and Casey O’Callaghan for their very helpful and detailed commentaries at CO3, to Sam Wheeler for commenting at the APA session, and to the audiences at all three events, particularly Mark Kalderon and Heather Logue at the Joint Session. Finally, thanks to Matthew Slater and Gary Hardcastle for allowing me to hijack a meeting of our reading group to pick their brains about a much earlier version of this paper.
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Leddington, J. (2014). What We Hear. In: Brown, R. (eds) Consciousness Inside and Out: Phenomenology, Neuroscience, and the Nature of Experience. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6001-1_21
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