Abstract
This paper defends two theses about sensory objects. The more general thesis is that directly sensed objects are those delivered by sub-personal processes. It is shown how this thesis runs counter to perceptual atomism, the view that wholes are always sensed indirectly, through their parts. The more specific thesis is that while the direct objects of audition are all composed of sounds, these direct objects are not all sounds—here, a composite auditory object is a temporal sequence of sounds (whereas a composite visual object is a spatial composite). Many composite objects are directly heard in the sense just mentioned. There is a great variety of such composite auditory objects—melodies, harmonies, sequences of phonemes, individual voices, meaning-carrying sounds, and so on. This diversity of auditory objects has an important application to aesthetics. Perceivers do not naturally or easily attend simultaneously to auditory objects that overlap in time. Yet, aesthetic appreciation depends on such an allocation of attention to overlapping objects.
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Notes
It is generally thought that one senses an extended object by sensing some, but not necessarily all, of its parts. For example, one sees a cube by seeing its facing surfaces. Thus, one does not have to see all of a thing’s minimal parts in order to see it. The empiricist doctrine takes note of this by maintaining that one sees something in virtue of seeing those minimal parts that are in view.
Jonathan Schaffer points out that it is at least metaphysically possible that there could be an uncaused vibration of air. (Indeed, this is physically possible: the air-molecules in a certain location could by chance become coordinated in a way that corresponds to the effect of a bowed string.) In such a case, there would be no last event of the sort mentioned. Is there then no sound? I am inclined to think that this is the right conclusion to draw. As currently constituted our auditory systems are focussed on events that are not vibrations of the air, but which cause vibrations of the air. But this is compatible with our hearing things that are not there to hear. Schaffer’s case can be subsumed under this category—it is an auditory hallucination.
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Many thanks to Nicolas Bullot and Casey O’Callaghan for detailed written comments and extensive discussion of issues covered in this article. A short version of the paper was delivered to the Australasian Association of Philosophy (New Zealand Division) in December 2007. Comments from the audience were very helpful.
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Matthen, M. On the Diversity of Auditory Objects. Rev.Phil.Psych. 1, 63–89 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-009-0018-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-009-0018-z