The Sound of Ontology

The Sound of Ontology

Author: Kenneth LaFave

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9781498551861

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This book provides a unique approach to some of philosophy's fundamental issues. It points to music as a model for exploring such questions as, "What does it mean to value?" This is not a musical study, per se, but a philosophical text that uses music as a vehicle for investigating these and other metaphysical, axiological, and aesthetic matters.


Book Synopsis The Sound of Ontology by : Kenneth LaFave

Download or read book The Sound of Ontology written by Kenneth LaFave and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a unique approach to some of philosophy's fundamental issues. It points to music as a model for exploring such questions as, "What does it mean to value?" This is not a musical study, per se, but a philosophical text that uses music as a vehicle for investigating these and other metaphysical, axiological, and aesthetic matters.


The Sound of Ontology

The Sound of Ontology

Author: Kenneth LaFave

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-11-15

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 1498551874

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The Sound of Ontology: Music as a Model for Metaphysics explores connections between Western art music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the ideas that dominated philosophy leading up to and during that period. In the process of establishing John Cage as Richard Wagner’s heir via Arnold Schoenberg, the author discovers that the old metaphysics of representation is still in charge of how we think about music and about experience in general. Instead of settling for the positivist definition of music as mere sound framed by time, LaFave provides a phenomenology of music that reveals pitch as the ontological counterpart to frequency, and music as a vehicle for understanding how, as Heidegger observed, the Being of “things of value” are invariably grounded in the Being of “things of nature.” Numerous musical examples and a poem by Wallace Stevens illustrate LaFave’s case that hierarchy is intrinsic to this understanding. Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy is brought to bear alongside Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology to show that not only music, but reality itself, depends on a play of interlocking hierarchies to effect the nature-value connection, making aesthetics first philosophy.


Book Synopsis The Sound of Ontology by : Kenneth LaFave

Download or read book The Sound of Ontology written by Kenneth LaFave and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sound of Ontology: Music as a Model for Metaphysics explores connections between Western art music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the ideas that dominated philosophy leading up to and during that period. In the process of establishing John Cage as Richard Wagner’s heir via Arnold Schoenberg, the author discovers that the old metaphysics of representation is still in charge of how we think about music and about experience in general. Instead of settling for the positivist definition of music as mere sound framed by time, LaFave provides a phenomenology of music that reveals pitch as the ontological counterpart to frequency, and music as a vehicle for understanding how, as Heidegger observed, the Being of “things of value” are invariably grounded in the Being of “things of nature.” Numerous musical examples and a poem by Wallace Stevens illustrate LaFave’s case that hierarchy is intrinsic to this understanding. Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy is brought to bear alongside Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology to show that not only music, but reality itself, depends on a play of interlocking hierarchies to effect the nature-value connection, making aesthetics first philosophy.


An Introduction to Ontology

An Introduction to Ontology

Author: Nikk Effingham

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-08-26

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0745665470

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In this engaging and wide-ranging new book, Nikk Effingham provides an introduction to contemporary ontology - the study of what exists - and its importance for philosophy today. He covers the key topics in the field, from the ontology of holes, numbers and possible worlds, to space, time and the ontology of material objects - for instance, whether there are composite objects such as tables, chairs or even you and me. While starting from the basics, every chapter is up-to-date with the most recent developments in the field, introducing both longstanding theories and cutting-edge advances. As well as discussing the latest issues in ontology, Effingham also helpfully deals in-depth with different methodological principles (including theory choice, Quinean ontological commitment and Meinongianism) and introduces them alongside an example ontological theory that puts them into practice. This accessible and comprehensive introduction will be essential reading for upper-level undergraduate and post-graduate students, as well as any reader interested in the present state of the subject.


Book Synopsis An Introduction to Ontology by : Nikk Effingham

Download or read book An Introduction to Ontology written by Nikk Effingham and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-08-26 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this engaging and wide-ranging new book, Nikk Effingham provides an introduction to contemporary ontology - the study of what exists - and its importance for philosophy today. He covers the key topics in the field, from the ontology of holes, numbers and possible worlds, to space, time and the ontology of material objects - for instance, whether there are composite objects such as tables, chairs or even you and me. While starting from the basics, every chapter is up-to-date with the most recent developments in the field, introducing both longstanding theories and cutting-edge advances. As well as discussing the latest issues in ontology, Effingham also helpfully deals in-depth with different methodological principles (including theory choice, Quinean ontological commitment and Meinongianism) and introduces them alongside an example ontological theory that puts them into practice. This accessible and comprehensive introduction will be essential reading for upper-level undergraduate and post-graduate students, as well as any reader interested in the present state of the subject.


All About Music

All About Music

Author: Guerino Mazzola

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-11-23

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 3319473344

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This book explains music’s comprehensive ontology, its way of existence and processing, as specified in its compact characterization: music embodies meaningful communication and mediates physically between its emotional and mental layers. The book unfolds in a basic discourse in everyday language that is accessible to everybody who wants to understand what this topic is about. Musical ontology is delayed in its fundamental dimensions: its realities, its meaningful communication, and its embodied utterance from musical creators to an interested audience. The authors' approach is applicable to every musical genre and is scientific, the book is suitable for non-musicians and non-scientists alike.


Book Synopsis All About Music by : Guerino Mazzola

Download or read book All About Music written by Guerino Mazzola and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-23 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explains music’s comprehensive ontology, its way of existence and processing, as specified in its compact characterization: music embodies meaningful communication and mediates physically between its emotional and mental layers. The book unfolds in a basic discourse in everyday language that is accessible to everybody who wants to understand what this topic is about. Musical ontology is delayed in its fundamental dimensions: its realities, its meaningful communication, and its embodied utterance from musical creators to an interested audience. The authors' approach is applicable to every musical genre and is scientific, the book is suitable for non-musicians and non-scientists alike.


Where Are You?

Where Are You?

Author: Maurizio Ferraris

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2014-09-01

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0823256189

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This book sheds light on the most philosophically interesting of contemporary objects: the cell phone. “Where are you?”—a question asked over cell phones myriad times each day—is arguably the most philosophical question of our age, given the transformation of presence the cell phone has wrought in contemporary social life and public space. Throughout all public spaces, cell phones are now a ubiquitous prosthesis of what Descartes and Hegel once considered the absolute tool: the hand. Their power comes in part from their ability to move about with us—they are like a computer, but we can carry them with us at all times—in part from what they attach to us (and how), as all that computational and connective power becomes both handy and hand-sized. Quite surprisingly, despite their name, one might argue, as Ferraris does, that cell phones are not really all that good for sound and speaking. Instead, the main philosophical point of this book is that mobile phones have come into their own as writing machines—they function best for text messages, e-mail, and archives of all kinds. Their philosophical urgency lies in the manner in which they carry us from the effects of voice over into reliance upon the written traces that are, Ferraris argues, the basic stuff of human culture. Ontology is the study of what there is, and what there is in our age is a huge network of documents, papers, and texts of all kinds. Social reality is not constructed by collective intentionality; rather, it is made up of inscribed acts. As Derrida already prophesized, our world revolves around writing. Cell phones have attached writing to our fingers and dragged it into public spaces in a new way. This is why, with their power to obliterate or morph presence and replace voice with writing, the cell phone is such a philosophically interesting object.


Book Synopsis Where Are You? by : Maurizio Ferraris

Download or read book Where Are You? written by Maurizio Ferraris and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds light on the most philosophically interesting of contemporary objects: the cell phone. “Where are you?”—a question asked over cell phones myriad times each day—is arguably the most philosophical question of our age, given the transformation of presence the cell phone has wrought in contemporary social life and public space. Throughout all public spaces, cell phones are now a ubiquitous prosthesis of what Descartes and Hegel once considered the absolute tool: the hand. Their power comes in part from their ability to move about with us—they are like a computer, but we can carry them with us at all times—in part from what they attach to us (and how), as all that computational and connective power becomes both handy and hand-sized. Quite surprisingly, despite their name, one might argue, as Ferraris does, that cell phones are not really all that good for sound and speaking. Instead, the main philosophical point of this book is that mobile phones have come into their own as writing machines—they function best for text messages, e-mail, and archives of all kinds. Their philosophical urgency lies in the manner in which they carry us from the effects of voice over into reliance upon the written traces that are, Ferraris argues, the basic stuff of human culture. Ontology is the study of what there is, and what there is in our age is a huge network of documents, papers, and texts of all kinds. Social reality is not constructed by collective intentionality; rather, it is made up of inscribed acts. As Derrida already prophesized, our world revolves around writing. Cell phones have attached writing to our fingers and dragged it into public spaces in a new way. This is why, with their power to obliterate or morph presence and replace voice with writing, the cell phone is such a philosophically interesting object.


Noise Matters

Noise Matters

Author: Greg Hainge

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-03-14

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 1441188673

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Everyone knows what noise is. Or do they? Can we in fact say that one man's noise is another teenager's music? Is noise in fact only an auditory phenomenon or does it extend far beyond this realm? If our common definitions of noise are necessarily subjective and noise is not just unpleasant sound, then it merits a closer look (or listen). Greg Hainge sets out to define noise in this way, to find within it a series of operations common across its multiple manifestations that allow us to apprehend it as something other than a highly subjective term that tells us very little. Examining a wide range of texts, including Sartre's novel Nausea and David Lynch's iconic films Eraserhead and Inland Empire, Hainge investigates some of the Twentieth Century's most infamous noisemongers to suggest that they're not that noisy after all; and it finds true noise in some surprising places. The result is a thrilling and illuminating study of sound and culture.


Book Synopsis Noise Matters by : Greg Hainge

Download or read book Noise Matters written by Greg Hainge and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone knows what noise is. Or do they? Can we in fact say that one man's noise is another teenager's music? Is noise in fact only an auditory phenomenon or does it extend far beyond this realm? If our common definitions of noise are necessarily subjective and noise is not just unpleasant sound, then it merits a closer look (or listen). Greg Hainge sets out to define noise in this way, to find within it a series of operations common across its multiple manifestations that allow us to apprehend it as something other than a highly subjective term that tells us very little. Examining a wide range of texts, including Sartre's novel Nausea and David Lynch's iconic films Eraserhead and Inland Empire, Hainge investigates some of the Twentieth Century's most infamous noisemongers to suggest that they're not that noisy after all; and it finds true noise in some surprising places. The result is a thrilling and illuminating study of sound and culture.


The Musical Representation

The Musical Representation

Author: Charles O. Nussbaum

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0262140969

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How human musical experience emerges from the audition of organized tones is a riddle of long standing. In The Musical Representation, Charles Nussbaum offers a philosophical naturalist's solution. Nussbaum founds his naturalistic theory of musical representation on the collusion between the physics of sound and the organization of the human mind-brain. He argues that important varieties of experience afforded by Western tonal art music since 1650 arise through the feeling of tone, the sense of movement in musical space, cognition, emotional arousal, and the engagement, by way of specific emotional responses, of deeply rooted human ideals. Construing the art music of the modern West as representational, as a symbolic system that carries extramusical content, Nussbaum attempts to make normative principles of musical representation explicit and bring them into reflective equilibrium with the intuitions of competent listeners. Nussbaum identifies three modes of musical representation, describes the basis of extramusical meaning, and analyzes musical works as created historical entities (performances of which are tokens or replicas). In addition, he explains how music gives rise to emotions and evokes states of mind that are religious in character. Nussbaum's argument proceeds from biology, psychology, and philosophy to music--and occasionally from music back to biology, psychology, and philosophy. The human mind-brain, writes Nussbaum, is a living record of its evolutionary history; relatively recent cognitive acquisitions derive from older representational functions of which we are hardly aware. Consideration of musical art can help bring to light the more ancient cognitive functions that underlie modern human cognition. The biology, psychology, and philosophy of musical representation, he argues, have something to tell us about what we are, based on what we have been.


Book Synopsis The Musical Representation by : Charles O. Nussbaum

Download or read book The Musical Representation written by Charles O. Nussbaum and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How human musical experience emerges from the audition of organized tones is a riddle of long standing. In The Musical Representation, Charles Nussbaum offers a philosophical naturalist's solution. Nussbaum founds his naturalistic theory of musical representation on the collusion between the physics of sound and the organization of the human mind-brain. He argues that important varieties of experience afforded by Western tonal art music since 1650 arise through the feeling of tone, the sense of movement in musical space, cognition, emotional arousal, and the engagement, by way of specific emotional responses, of deeply rooted human ideals. Construing the art music of the modern West as representational, as a symbolic system that carries extramusical content, Nussbaum attempts to make normative principles of musical representation explicit and bring them into reflective equilibrium with the intuitions of competent listeners. Nussbaum identifies three modes of musical representation, describes the basis of extramusical meaning, and analyzes musical works as created historical entities (performances of which are tokens or replicas). In addition, he explains how music gives rise to emotions and evokes states of mind that are religious in character. Nussbaum's argument proceeds from biology, psychology, and philosophy to music--and occasionally from music back to biology, psychology, and philosophy. The human mind-brain, writes Nussbaum, is a living record of its evolutionary history; relatively recent cognitive acquisitions derive from older representational functions of which we are hardly aware. Consideration of musical art can help bring to light the more ancient cognitive functions that underlie modern human cognition. The biology, psychology, and philosophy of musical representation, he argues, have something to tell us about what we are, based on what we have been.


Metaphysics and Ontology Without Myths

Metaphysics and Ontology Without Myths

Author: Fabio Bacchini

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-10-02

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1443868272

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Metaphysics and ontology feature among the traditional and fundamental concerns of philosophers. Gaining a picture of the world and the kind of objects that exist out there is for most philosophers (past and present) a preliminary aim upon which other theoretical activities depend. In fact, it seems that sound conclusions on topics relevant to ethics, aesthetics, psychology, and common and scientific knowledge can be achieved only after one has been given a picture of that sort. What is worth stressing, though, is that from time to time the tribunal of history has managed to put its finger on some flawed conclusions. To take a time-worn example, who would now accept Plato’s claim that the spatiotemporal world is just an imperfect copy of a world of abstract objects conceived of as perfect unchanging models of concrete things? The picture Plato gave us is nothing but a myth – an account which is too far away from what common sense and science could accept, too detached from the usual ways of conducting a rational discussion. Therefore, pictures of this kind appear to be supported by nothing but dogmas, i.e. uncompromising principles taken as true without any previous critical analysis. And Plato has no shortage of company. Issues of this kind revolving around metaphysics and ontology are tackled in the essays in this volume, which approach a secular debate in fresh and original ways, providing the necessary tools for clearing the field of unpalatable metaphysical and ontological items.


Book Synopsis Metaphysics and Ontology Without Myths by : Fabio Bacchini

Download or read book Metaphysics and Ontology Without Myths written by Fabio Bacchini and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-10-02 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysics and ontology feature among the traditional and fundamental concerns of philosophers. Gaining a picture of the world and the kind of objects that exist out there is for most philosophers (past and present) a preliminary aim upon which other theoretical activities depend. In fact, it seems that sound conclusions on topics relevant to ethics, aesthetics, psychology, and common and scientific knowledge can be achieved only after one has been given a picture of that sort. What is worth stressing, though, is that from time to time the tribunal of history has managed to put its finger on some flawed conclusions. To take a time-worn example, who would now accept Plato’s claim that the spatiotemporal world is just an imperfect copy of a world of abstract objects conceived of as perfect unchanging models of concrete things? The picture Plato gave us is nothing but a myth – an account which is too far away from what common sense and science could accept, too detached from the usual ways of conducting a rational discussion. Therefore, pictures of this kind appear to be supported by nothing but dogmas, i.e. uncompromising principles taken as true without any previous critical analysis. And Plato has no shortage of company. Issues of this kind revolving around metaphysics and ontology are tackled in the essays in this volume, which approach a secular debate in fresh and original ways, providing the necessary tools for clearing the field of unpalatable metaphysical and ontological items.


Agent, Person, Subject, Self

Agent, Person, Subject, Self

Author: Paul Kockelman

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0199926980

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This book offers both a naturalistic and critical theory of signs, minds, and meaning-in-the-world. It provides a reconstructive rather than deconstructive theory of the individual, one which both analytically separates and theoretically synthesizes a range of faculties that are often confused and conflated: agency (understood as a causal capacity), subjectivity (understood as a representational capacity), selfhood (understood as a reflexive capacity), and personhood (understood as a sociopolitical capacity attendant on being an agent, subject, or self). It argues that these facilities are best understood from a semiotic stance that supersedes the usual intentional stance. And, in so doing, it offers a pragmatism-grounded approach to meaning and mediation that is general enough to account for processes that are as embodied and embedded as they are articulated and enminded. In particular, while this theory is focused on human-specific modes of meaning, it also offers a general theory of meaning, such that the agents, subjects and selves in question need not always, or even usually, map onto persons. And while this theory foregrounds agents, persons, subjects and selves, it does this by theorizing processes that often remain in the background of such (often erroneously) individuated figures: ontologies (akin to culture, but generalized across agentive collectivities), interaction (not only between people, but also between people and things, and anything outside or in-between), and infrastructure (akin to context, but generalized to include mediation at any degree of remove).


Book Synopsis Agent, Person, Subject, Self by : Paul Kockelman

Download or read book Agent, Person, Subject, Self written by Paul Kockelman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers both a naturalistic and critical theory of signs, minds, and meaning-in-the-world. It provides a reconstructive rather than deconstructive theory of the individual, one which both analytically separates and theoretically synthesizes a range of faculties that are often confused and conflated: agency (understood as a causal capacity), subjectivity (understood as a representational capacity), selfhood (understood as a reflexive capacity), and personhood (understood as a sociopolitical capacity attendant on being an agent, subject, or self). It argues that these facilities are best understood from a semiotic stance that supersedes the usual intentional stance. And, in so doing, it offers a pragmatism-grounded approach to meaning and mediation that is general enough to account for processes that are as embodied and embedded as they are articulated and enminded. In particular, while this theory is focused on human-specific modes of meaning, it also offers a general theory of meaning, such that the agents, subjects and selves in question need not always, or even usually, map onto persons. And while this theory foregrounds agents, persons, subjects and selves, it does this by theorizing processes that often remain in the background of such (often erroneously) individuated figures: ontologies (akin to culture, but generalized across agentive collectivities), interaction (not only between people, but also between people and things, and anything outside or in-between), and infrastructure (akin to context, but generalized to include mediation at any degree of remove).


Merleau-Ponty's Ontology

Merleau-Ponty's Ontology

Author: Martin C. Dillon

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780810115286

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Dillon's general thesis is that Merleau-Ponty has developed the first genuine alternative to ontological dualism seen in Western philosophy.


Book Synopsis Merleau-Ponty's Ontology by : Martin C. Dillon

Download or read book Merleau-Ponty's Ontology written by Martin C. Dillon and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dillon's general thesis is that Merleau-Ponty has developed the first genuine alternative to ontological dualism seen in Western philosophy.