Musical Ontology Convo

PETE:
2. How interesting is the question, it doesnt seem to be a matter of definition that 12 half tones make up the western musical cannon, cos it has coherence with some form of sensory representation, which maths (my logically necessary analogue) does not
MON 11:48AM
Music theory isn't true as a matter of logical or nomological necessity, but true relative to a theoretical framework. There's nothing empirical about it - or so I'd make the argument for.

MATT:
First however, I think it's useful to make the distinction between (a) the question of whether the objective features of music are dependent upon human sensory capacities, and (b) whether the entities posited by music theory are context invariant. I'd say yes to (a); there are empirical features about how humans perceive music, but no to (b), because holding those empirical features fixed there are still many different music theories you can produce. If our theory is descriptive however, you might say that common practice functional harmony theory for instance DESCRIBES the notable structure of sound that is cognated by humans most probably. I think that much is empirically dubious - we all hear musical structure and harmony differently, although music theory might still be descriptive rather than prescriptive in that sense.

Harmony conventions aside, you might say that the western 12 notes and tuning system is a set of descriptive propositions about the way we usually hear sound.

12 tones making up the western scale is contingent, of course there's a whole frequency of sounds that depend on humans hearing them. So we chose a particular frequency as opposed to another. Eastern music has different scales tuning systems etc, and these days all kinds of crazy music is being made with unconventional pitches. So too did the west's tuning system change from mean to equal temperament.

You may reply however that while it is true people make music with notes outside the 12 pitches, that it is still true that we define a microtone between A and B, an interval less than semitone, AS a microtone above A. I.e. We get some sense of the frequencies in between the 12 notes as 'belonging to' each of those 12 notes. The quick objection to this is enharmonics: A microtone about A could just be a microtone below B. Of course its empirical whether most humans think 'hmm that microtone sounds like it's an interval above A' or not. But since most listeners are familiar with our tuning system and 12 notes, we're likely to think about microtones relative to that.

However you may weaken your necessary entities to merely our perception of a pitch being higher or lower than another. But that's also a theoretical construct, and not really based on nomological physical laws. Empirically however you could make the argument that most of us hear A4 as higher than B4, and that so our theory should reflect this. But there's no reason A4 should be 'higher' than B4 just because of the empirical properties of the frequency (which is nomological). I.e. We can construct a system where A4 is higher than B4 but C4 is lower than B4 but higher than A4. Or something. That's just an algebraic structure you can put in any order you want, which is what music theory actually is.
So too with microtones, the only season we might orient them towards a conventional pitch is because we want to, when in reality there's no reason to think of it like that, as microtones could  for example be thought of entirely separately from the 12 pitches. E.g. As separate notes that aren't related to the 12 pitches at all. even if empirically the wavelengths are related, that doesn't matter.

There's a deeper issue lurking here though which pertains to thinking of music as abstract structures of TYPES, as opposed to physical TOKENS, the empirically analysable sounds that are produced uniquely, no matter to what pitch or rhythm. This is pretty intuitive because 'no one performance is the same'. Perhaps we think 2 performances are super similar, say 2 classically trained pianists performing a piece with technical precision very similarly twice. But consider an alien race - this alien race builds houses the same way we do, but when one brick is accidentally left out of it (or some insignificant to us change) they no longer deem the object as a house. The analogue with music is that the empirical aspects of which aren't in these abstract types of pitch and rhythm and maybe timbre are usually ignored. If you really wanted to, you could analyse music via its physical causal antecedents, via what the weather was that day, etc.

This is actually continuous with post-structuralism about literary theory. Any symbol can be analysed in terms of any other one. In this sense the signifier is the empirical properties of the sound wave and the signified is our theoretical significance. But saying that our theory has any logical or nomological necessity is like saying Pepe the frog as an alt right nazi symbol in 2017 has any necessity. Of course it's still incredibly useful to take pepe as an indication of alt right identification, and usage of music theory of course is useful in communicating with other musicians. For it to be useful needn't imply that it must have modal ontological significance

PETE:
Thanks for this, some of the stuff is helpful and others parts sound right but obviously fb messanger is hard to communicate with so I am kind of unclear. I guess my question really was this: Putting frequency aside and just focussing on the experience of music, it seems like, between A2 and A3, there necessarily is the "absolute value" of 12 half tones - that is to say, you can split the "musical space" up however you want, but it will always add up to the value of 12 half tones. This seems necessary, but based on experience. I don't know if anything you have said made that any less mysterious?

MATT:
My argument would be that labelling the events of sound as A2 and A3 are contingent identities

PETE:
I dont quite understand that, can you elborate?
you don't think the experiences of A in different octaves actually have any sililarities that ground them necessarily both being a's?

MATT:
You can say (E): that an event of the soundwave X and the event of the soundwave Y have some empirical properties to do with each other, i.e. the empirical properties that we ascribe to the sentence (S): 'A2 and A3 being an octave apart, necessarily A2 and A3 are both As'. But THAT X is A2 is contingent because that's naming convention of the language, and that Y is A3 is likewise. So too is them being an octave apart, A2 and A3 both being As, is a further claim above and beyond the empirical propositions (E) that are compatible with (S).
I think that the empirical proposition (E*): "that it is useful for humans to use music theory to say that A2 and A3 are an octave apart because for most humans their experience of these sound events is such that A2 and A3 belong to the same note-type, namely A", is probably true. Though it might not be, different cultures experience music slightly differently, although there is a lot of research into the biology/cognition of music perception etc.
All you need to show that (S) is not true in all worlds is to find a world in a constant domain modal logic (i.e. worlds where our sound events we want to be evaluating still exist, so the objects in consideration doesn't differ between worlds) where (S) is false. And because (S) is something to do with the way humans name things, use language, rather than anything to do with the physics of sound like (E) is, it can be false in a world that is nomonologically the same as ours
The view that there are some logically necessary features of music would be Platonism towards music. I suspect that it's more difficult to argue for than Mathematical Platonism however
Because there doesn't seem to be anything about music where supposing that abstract necessary truths hold is indispensable to our study of it or scientific theories.

PETE:
SO I think a lot of the empirical stuff here is a red herring, and we should focus on experiences. And the naming convention stuff just misses the point as far as I can tell - it's not about naming, it's about objective similarities between experiences, and whether they entail that A1 and A2 are tokens of a type
ohhhhhh, the similarities between experiences
isn't that empirical then if we're talking about a person's experiecne?
*experience?

MATT:
by empirical I mean scientific stuff about frequencies
I am asking if the experiences of A1 and A2 are such that necessarily they are both types of a token
well by empirical i mean empirical information about a person's experiences too
well there's 2 different things you could mean by that

PETE:
yeah sorry thats unclear
Are A1 and A2 such that necessarily they are the same note
an A

MATT:
No, as I've argued before.

But if you shift the focus onto experiences, whether I heard A1 and A2 as the same note and how my cognition works that around, as opposed to everyone else's, that's just a psychological question.

PETE:
to clarify: are the experiences of A1 and A2 such that necessarily they both represent A
that's not psychology IMO thats a priori reasoning

MATT:
Well if you disagree with the premise that you can empirically analyse experiences then it's just a non-starter, so yeah that's an assumption.
Then the debate just hangs on epistemological claims
But no, they can't be necessarily both A if there's a possible world in which they're not both A. In fact I can make such a possible world right now:
I devise a musical system where the pitch of A2 is actually B2, but the pitch of A3 is still A3. In this sense within the theoretical system the properties are different, even though the empirical stuff is all the same as normal music theory. Now of course the empirically equivalent translation for "A2 and A3 are an octave apart" will still hold true - in this sense the empirical properties of sound obviously depend on the laws of physics in the actual world. But the very numbering system and descriptions we provide for it isn't identical to the empirical proposition, it adds an extra layer of meaning.
type ur reply first, but i was gonna say maybe i don't need a claim as strong as that to get what i want to fall out

PETE:
Ok I dont buy any of this but its too hard to do over FB, some of the stuff your saying seems to be about taxonomy not about actual similariy between experiences, AKA. you can call whatever you want a1, but the experiences that "cohere" into a type of note will not change no matter what taxonomy you use

MATT:
I suspect I must be missing some point here or not following along
Isn't the actual similarity of experiences an empirical issue?
Unless we're going full phil mind or epistemology mode

PETE:
its empirical in the way that private experiences are empirical: there is a fact of the matter but no way to rpove it

MATT:
oh ok
yeah that's a non-starter LOL
I thought we were discussing the problem of whether, GIVEN physicalism and that we can hypothetically know empirical info about private experiences, objectively (that is, not dependent on private experiences) do certain musical facts hold true in every world?

PETE:
I dont know if it is though