What is your theory of music? Life, the universe, everything and the number 42. All in relation to the topic of "What is Music" come and read, have fun, enjoy and comment if you will grab a cup of coffee and a few years worth of knowlege in the feild of academic research and wrap your minds around THIS! yeeehaw!

Philosophy? Purpose? Why? What does it do for you? What does it do for other people? How does it "work" and I don't mean the mechanics, how does it acheive the effect it acheives? Why does it unite so deeply with the human condition? Why is it here? Why do you do it? Where did it come from? This is the philosophic rambling thread... have at it 

(god i love that evil smiley face! lol)

I have a theory that what we call music comes about from our innate ability to perform mathematical computations very quickly and the endorphin rush we get from this. I think music begins in the hind brain (monkey brain) which we share with all animals and is part of, or related to, our fight and flight responses.
  When we catch a ball, we make incredibly complex calculations regarding actions and consequences within space and time. When we get it right, we feel good. The more complex the action relative to space and time, the better the buzz, ie, more endorphins.
  Space and time are a mathematical phenomenon which can be represented in numerical patterns. These same numerical patterns are present in music, therefore it stands to reason that we will also get endorphins, (and other neurotransmitters) released as a response to music.
  The difference between us and animals is that we have language. This is why we can hear and remember patterns of sounds as music rather than as a fuctional set of noises which help us navigate space and time.
  In short, our hind brain recognises these patterns and gives us a reward. Our forebrain gives meanings to these patterns and is able to retain and/or alter them. This is why some music makes us sad and some happy.  (maybe,,,, I think)

props to OrlandoDibskitt for having the ballz to post his own theory of music. most people aren't this creative.

well... i'm glad someone got this thing started... and yes i've got my theory but i'm gonna wait to share it until some more people become active... for now i'll play devil's advocate and rhetorical logic buster. this might come across as harsh but just imagine me laughing like a big fat buddha while i say everything and that'll keep this from starting a flame war. i do mean what i say but i also mean it to be light hearted. also please don't get hung up on my semantics... even i fail to qualify my phrases at times. i.e. if i say that "all blueberries are blue" please don't start an argument with me. just assume that i mean to say "most blueberries are blue... when they are ripe" just try to figure out what I mean rather that figuring out all the exact grammatical possibilities of what my words mean.

I Also don't like the quote feature of this forum so i'll use my own style anything in italic is a quote, and my replies are in plain text.

I have a theory that what we call music comes about from our innate ability to perform mathematical computations very quickly

well this is less of a theory and more of a straigh up fact. number one our brains are indeed fantastic mathematical calculators when it comes to things like perceptics of distance. take for example the ability to play tennis. in particular, our ears are in fact one of the most precise mathematical instruments we have. the human ear can detect between 2-10 cents difference in a note and can detect with almost complete accuracy the mathematical ratio projected by two simultaneous notes. on a side note, the "hind brain" as it has been called is a rather primitive term in itself. brain theory IMHO is a pointless field of research (more on that when i post MY theory of music) but regardless there are a few known areas of the brain... the back of the head is known as the occipital lobe and is usually understood to be responsible for vision. i don't remember where the hearing portion is but i don't think it's in the back.

and the endorphin rush we get from this.

well this is indeed a nifty theory but i think it oversimplifies the situation. it's essentially the "brain chemical" argument. and while we know we have them (brain chemicals that is) there are no lab tests proving anything regarding their balance or imbalance. this could be a very probable scenario but i just think there's more to it, and that this is not the crux of the issue concerning "why we like music so much" or "why we are musical creatures."

I think music begins in the hind brain (monkey brain) which we share with all animals and is part of, or related to, our fight and flight responses.

and i obviously disagree but we've already established that... I don't see how music is related to fight or flight in any way. and in this case, then monkeys can play and enjoy music as well. my dogs seem to have an uncanny preference for certain types of music, as does my cat. and, no... i don't think this has anything to do with the brain.

When we catch a ball, we make incredibly complex calculations regarding actions and consequences within space and time. When we get it right, we feel good. The more complex the action relative to space and time, the better the buzz, ie, more endorphins.

so musicians = drug addicts? well... that's already obvious! lol this is a rather oversimplified argument IMHO of a stimulus response mechanism. by this argument then i'd be satisfied by playing my scales faster than any person alive - which by the way i don't care about. one of the things I've learned personally over the years is that, now that i can play fast, playing fast or playing in a complicated manner doesn't really make the best music. sure there is some great music which is complicated and fast, but there is also great music which is not fast or complicated at all... which, in fact, a monkey could probably physically execute.

Space and time are a mathematical phenomenon

whoa! that opens a whole can of theoretical worms right there but i won't delve into it very far. i think (yeah i know i'm being semantic but i wanna clarify this) that what you mean is that "Space and time can be mathematically represented.

which can be represented in numerical patterns.

yes i thought that's what you meant but the exact way it's phrased lends one to think that The Physical Universe = Math. which i don't beleive is true.

These same numerical patterns are present in music, therefore it stands to reason that we will also get endorphins, (and other neurotransmitters) released as a response to music.

ok, but you probably know what i think about this by now... this is a rather weak supporting argument if i do say so myself. no ad-hominem attack here mind you, i just don't really see much evidence in this peice of supporting data. still just an interesting theory, which i don't agree with.

The difference between us and animals is that we have language.

hmm... no, animals have language, we just don't speak the same one. dogs and cats and dolphins and fish and bugs and reptiles all have ways of communicating. koko the monkey knows sign language. so what if their vocal chords are not as dextrous as ours? i think what separates man from the animals is a much greater overall gap in physiology (just look at us for instance lol) which when all the differences combined are considered, gives a human. in the end a body is just a peice of meat.

This is why we can hear and remember patterns of sounds as music rather than as a fuctional set of noises which help us navigate space and time.

hmmm.... no i don't think thats why, especially given that the "language" reason for this argument doesn't seem to be logical to me, this would not follow. dogs can see hear and remember... "sit" "stay" "rollover". can they remember music? i really don't know, that'd be a hard one to proove in either direction. but my guess is yeah.

In short, our hind brain recognises these patterns and gives us a reward.

this is also too simple to me. if music was a pure stimulus response, reward punishment type of thing, i doubt anyone would much care about it any more than they cared about going to work. and yeah, some people love their jobs but many many more people seem to hate them. and the person who doesn't like ANY type of music is few and far between indeed. i do agree there are elements of reward-punishment/stimulus-response in the world of music but i don't think that the essence of music is hinged on this concept.

and also by these statements you are (perhaps) increasingly contradictig yourself. you have at least an implied argument that humans are musical and animals are not. i know this may not be your main intention but by way of what you've said this argument IS at least implied here. however have you ever seen dogs howl at the moon? ever listen to whales sing? ever listen to birds sing? i think that nature is full of musical animals.

Our forebrain gives meanings to these patterns and is able to retain and/or alter them.

hmm... actually i don't think its our forebrain that retains them. it's been mathematically prooven in neurological science that if memories are stored as energy in our brains then our brains don't actually contain enough mass or room to hold more than 3 consecutive months worth of memories... now factor in that we do such things as learning, in which we often cram in much more information than just the pysical perceptics we receive and one must ask... where does it go?

This is why some music makes us sad and some happy.  :)
hmm... well this argument, even if the previous statement was true, just doesn't seem to follow at all. simply because our frontal lobes retain memories doesn't in any way indicated to me the reason for which some music makes us happy and some makes us sad. yeah i know you have your language argument... but essentially for this purpose that is a different beast and also void by way of other animals have language as well. also in that case it would primarily be the words in a song which create the intended emotional effect, which is partly true, but even music without words conveys emotion.

(maybe,,,, I think)

lol! you seem a little uncertain... heheh 

hope i didn't just bring your world crashing down... anyone else interested in posting their theory of music for me to tear to shreds? lol... naw, i won't do this with every idea, i just saw some particulars in these ideas i personally have rather fundamental differences on. nothing personal, i just wanted to help keep this thread alive by expressing my view as well. aight peace yall

"[i]hope i didn't just bring your world crashing down... anyone else interested
in posting their theory of music for me to tear to shreds?"...

   Not at all, I summed something up in a couple of hundred words that would take
thousands to go through fully therefore it was obviously gonna be simplified.
  No offense m8 but the idea that my world could come crashing down because of your
comments sounds a little pompous, (probably not intentionally), especially when
most of your arguments are qualative and in response to what is, afterall, simple
speculation on my part.
   I'm just trying to say that I have noticed some correlations that could point to the idea that what we perceive as "music" is, at its simplest level, an extension of our
ability to recognise patterns in space and time and this, in turn, is rooted in our own fundamental survival mechanisms. At its highest level, I see some correlations that suggest to me that those patterns ARE space and time.

   "The Physical Universe = Math. which i don't beleive is true."

   But I DOOOOO believe this is true, The two are totally interchanagable and
therefore the same thing. It is what we experience as humans in our normal, every
day  environment that is not a true representation of the universe. It is what's 
left after our brains have received mathematical data and processed it according
to what we need to survive.
   I read another post of yours which touched on this, (very interesting and
informative btw), and am surprised you don't see what I am getting at here.  
   Although the effect of "music" feels "magical", I don't think that the
mechanisms by which it happens are magical.
   Everything in the universe needs a mechanism including the experience  of
"liking or disliking". The mechanism for us is simply an interaction between
various chemicals and the information stored in our brain. It really is that
simple whether we "like" it or not. Its obviously not a simple matter to know how
an individual arrives at the particular chemical interractions they do but the
fact remains that, in order to assign an emotional value to anything, one needs
brain chemicals!. Without brain chemicals, "music" would simply be noise.
   The other factor needed for the perception of music is some hardware capable of "language".
   By this I mean the ability to represent and express ideas about space, time, objects and abstract ideas, within a system of sounds and/or gestures, which uses a set of grammatical rules. as far as we are aware, NO OTHER ANIMAL ON EARTH DOES THIS TO THE SAME EXTENT WE DO!. This is because they don't have the same hardware we do.

   "and also by these statements you are (perhaps) increasingly contradictig yourself. you have at least an implied argument that humans are musical and animals are not. i know this may not be your main intention but by way of what you've said this argument IS at least implied here. however have you ever seen dogs howl at the moon? ever listen to whales sing? ever listen to birds sing? i think that nature is full of musical animals."
 
   Precisely. But these "noises" are formed in the hindbrain that we all share as animals, (first paragraph- first post). The difference is that there is no "language" involved. Have you ever heard a dog howling in pitch perfect semi-tones, (don't know what that means actually but you get the point , or a cat tap its paw in precise time to its chaotic meowing?. Animal noise is functional and simply serves a purpose The sounds follow no "musical" rules and are motivated by brain chemicals. In this sense, animals are not "musical"
  As humans, we do the same but we are able to assign linguistic rules to sound, thereby creating "music". as opposed to the "shag-me!" sounds of animals. Bird song is lovely, (sometimes!), but its not "music". If one decides it is music, it is a human attributing something of his own to a basic, animal instinct...( the "music" is still happening inthe human brain!).  The difference is in the linguistic abilities of our forebrain. (How many linguists do you know who are also highly competant musicians btw? because I know a few).

  "if music was a pure stimulus response, reward punishment type of thing, i doubt anyone would much care about it any more than they cared about going to work."
 
  Again,I DOOOO believe that music IS about the reward from brain chemicles because its objective is, ultimately, the search for pleasure and pleasure IS a function of brain chemicles. Your statement makes no sense. We ARE ALL addicted to endorphins to some degree. Without them we actually feel pain Anything that releases them will ALWAYS be interesting to us.
    
  "by this argument then i'd be satisfied by playing my scales faster than any
person alive"

   Firstly, are you saying you don't get pleasure from playing scales quickly and
accurately because I do :P.
   You are right though because scales are simply a means to an end and this is just practice. Speed alone has nothing to with complexity in music. The important thing are the ratios and patterms of the overall piece, not just between the notes themselves but between changing volumes, spaces, changing time signiatures, etc...   My favourite classical piece is the Adaggio Sostenuta from Moonlight Sonata. Its soooooo slow and seemingly simple but the underlying pulse is very complex indeed. I get a definate endorphin rush from this. It makes me melancholy but that is still a response caused by brain chemicals combined with pre-aquired data. 

   "there are no lab tests proving anything regarding their balance or imbalance."
 
   There HAVE been some tests and experiments regarding such things but you are right that nobody knows exactly what's what. We know enough though, to be able to mess about with SSRI's and other drugs when it comes to depression etc... Knowledge is improving all the time.
   I disagree that brain research is pointless btw... because a thorough knowledge of its workings could help many, many people. I don't believe its not possible either if that's what you meant.
 
    "I don't see how music is related to fight or flight in any way."

  Firstly, why then, have armies throughout history used rousing music to cause an
adreneline rush and rally soldiers in battle?.
  Why does some music make you drive faster, (and more accurately imho),?         
Obviously there IS a very definate link between music and our fight and flight
responses. As you say, I don't think that anybody knows exactly what ratios of
what chemicles are released as a response to what types of music but I'm sure
that any studies would show quite a uniformity of such reactions for most people
within a given culture when exposed to certain types of music.
       Secondly, You already said that our ears and their corresponding brain
structures, (wherever they may be), have extraordinary mathematical abilities. I really do think that this is simply part of the mechanisms with which we keep ourselves safe in our environment.
       The best example I can think of is that of high speed motor sport. You will
often hear drivers talking about the "rythm" of a track and making the engine
"sing". You will also hear them talk of the incredible pleasure that they get from
this. This is because the driver is making complex mathematical calculations based
as much on sound as any other sense. Failure to do so would result in either a
very slow time or probable death or injury.Space and time, in this instance, are
being represented as much by sounds as  by shapes and sensations.  If one were to rely only on eye sight at 200mph whilst sitting almost on the floor, one would crash into an object shortly after one had seen it. Memory of the shapes and preplanning accounts for some of it but in order to go really quickly, one needs to be able to hear the rev' point that signifies its time to brake for a given corner or the the traction point that signifies that the gas needs to go back on. In short, "music" or our ability to represent space and time as repeating patterns of sound are able help us navigate safely through our environment.  

   "it's been mathematically prooven in neurological science that if memories are
stored as energy in our brains then our brains don't actually contain enough mass
or room to hold more than 3 consecutive months worth of memories..."

   Firstly, the relationship between brain mass and computational power is itself
not a  "proven" fact. That whole concept is quite a qualatitive and annectdotal
one. Also, an assumption is being made here that our brains are working as a
classical computer does but that would be far too inefficient an architecture to
explain some of our ablities.
  I think there is good reason to believe that the brain, (in particular the hind brain), works more in line with quantum computers, ie, we are able to utilise
super states etc... This may explain how we can instantly "know" musical signiatures who's mathematical structures are "unknowable".
    Such speculation aside, my idea is that "music" happens due to the interaction of basic survival functions located in the lower brain, the linguistic  functions in our upper brain and  a coctail of brain chemicals.
  The only thing to add is that either the music is an unavoidable result of this interaction or, more likely, we have found / evolved a way of using our forebrain to dupe our hind brain into releasing more endorphins with no risk. (unless your a particularly bad musician playing to a very hostile crowd that is

precisely mate!

i'm glad you took the time to respond and i love a good debate. though i see this as less of an argument and more of simply sharing of ideas but the two cross boundaries.

anyway... lets see... from the top

firstly, whenever one discourses it's important to have common definitions. Obviously our definitions of what music IS are quite different. I think we share common experiences related to music and in that our definitions are similar but our ideas of where it comes from and why it is etc etc ultimately form different definitions for both of us. This is the beauty of our world. As einstein said about relativity, neither of us is right neither is wrong, in order for someone to find the right answer they must actually accept that we are BOTH right at the same time. Fascinating premise if i do say so.

So that's cool... i see this thread evolving more towards "what is your definition of music" because by the end of your most recent post that's what i was left with, which is what i was asking for in the first place, but it's been much further clarified now where you're coming from. I would like, for the sake of debate to adress one or two things. awww hell who am i kidding, i'd like to adress everything LOL!

as for the "world crashing down" comment, yeah i am at times a pompous ass, simply ignore my arrogance 

I'm just trying to say that I have noticed some correlations that could point to the idea that what we perceive as "music" is, at its simplest level, an extension of our ability to recognise patterns in space and time and this, in turn, is rooted in our own fundamental survival mechanisms.

well i do agree with the first part about recognizing patterns in space and time.

I don't, however, think that the survival mechanism is enough to explain it for me. Again it's too simple... but that's just me and not really worth debating because in our own ways we are both right I'm sure. I just wanted to express my view yet again.

I would also like to comment on the fact that yes, this more recent post of yours IS much more well constructed and shows much more precisely the nature of what you're saying, so nice work.

as for the stimulus response comment we are debating different topics which is rather pointless. i didn't explain my statement very fully so i see why it makes no sense to you. i was also speaking about one very specific subject and my statement did not in any way directly concern brain chemicals or endorphins even if they are as you claim involved in stimulus response mechanisms so that response of yours while perfectly valid is a little bit of a departure from what i intended. The monetary systems of the world are a very blatant example of crude stimulus response systems. Pavlovs dog was the first testing of reward based conditioning. This is the type of thing i'm referring to when i talk about stimulus-response. I guess i perhaps should have said "reward conditioning" as in we are told we must jump through hoop A to receive prize B, then we must jump over hurdle C to receive prize D. Jump through the hoop, get the prize. Tada, good way to teach people to jump through hoops... or is it? I'd like to note that this system of conditioning has worked flawlessly on many animals but has failed in one primary notable realm, that of the human. We have countless individuals who don't give a rats arse about going to work to get paid. Sure, lots of people do care about money, but lots don't. So that stimulus, the stimulus of money is not very effective. Many people dislike going to their jobs, but they do it anyway because of the "reward" of money, or perhaps it's because of the punishment of being homeless, who knows probably both. My point was that if that's the only mechanism pushing people to play music, i doubt many people would play music, there's just not enough reward there in my opinion. We do know there IS some sort of great reward to be gained through the perception of aesthetically pleasing music, but i mean the actual act of the playing it. There is some other different center of the brain responsible for computing aesthetic pleasure which I think is different from the one responsible for calculating surival actions based on stimulus response reward mechanisms. I don't think it's the stimulus response portion responsible for the, well the whatever regarding music, the playing of it the doing of it the enjoying of it.

also, as for the playing scales comment... you twist my words a bit... i never said "i don't get pleasure from playing my scales quickly and accurately" what i meant, which is more important than what i said, is that if the only basis for music was stimulus response, then i'd probably be SATISFIED with having played my scales quickly and accurately and it would probably end there, it wouldn't go any further into the realms of creating beautiful harmonies or slow emotionally evocative compositions. anyway, i see that you did get my point because you agree with me at least in a certain respect and i understand your initial comment was in jest.

ok... lab tests... which ones? can you show me? that is my challenge... show me which ones. There are no lab tests proving the theory of brain chemical imbalance. That previous sentence is exactly what i mean and is true afaik. As far as SSRIs "working" for depressed people... hmmm... i dunno, i ask myself if they really work of if they're just a bandaid over the more fundamental root cause of the problem, which yes i think they're just a band aid.

I understand your reasoning for why you think brain research is important and with your line of thinking i agree with you, except that i've got another theory which I think trumps the need for brain research and renders the world of that subject null void and pointless. That's all I'm saying, you'll get my argument on this topic later as it is also much too long to be described without horrid logical jumps of incomprehension.

Ok, I see your connection to fight or flight... i still don't think that makes the essence of music fight or flight. Music is connected in that way to LOTS of emotional mechanisms, not just fight or flight. I'm not saying your point is that music is fundamentally fight or flight, but if one were to argue that music is fundamentally fight or flight related, i don't think that works.

Well.. it has been mathematically prooven, go look it up I can point you to the reference via PM if you like. Also you make a mistake in apprehending what I said when you speak of "computational power" which i made no reference to at all. Obviously we have no prooven facts regarding this. This mathematical proof is after all a theory, just as the theory of gravity is STILL a theory. By way of inductive logic even if you've seen something happen 9999 times out of 9999 times the same way, you can't say for sure that it WON'T happen the other way. You can say that probability and statistic wise it won't, but you can't say for sure that it won't. No proof is not proof of nothing, in other words. Anyway this theory states that IF... yes IF, memories, not computational power, are stored in our brains as energy then our brains do not contain enough mass or room to hold more than 3 consecutive months. This is memories, and this is a theory, and by the way is not just anecdotal. However even by your own estimation there is something else we don't understand going on there which allows us the comprehension of much more than 3 months worth of memories and far greater "computational power" than would seem available based on the mechanics and wiring of the brain system. Regardless, my main point was about memory not computational power, and in the end we agree on this premise anyway.

And you are correct, our brains most likely function in a very different manner from the classical computer, but our brains probably DO function in many very similar ways to a classical computer. In fact i would go so far as to call our brains a type of biological computer, as certainly apprehended as different from the classical computer.

Ok that's about all for me, i do understand your point though and why you think that way... when all is said and done and the dust clears I do think you've got an interesting theory, I simply don't agree and that's the ultimate kicker in the end. Truth. What is true for you is true for you. What is true for me is true for me. And yeah we can say things like up down on off stay constant in this world, but so much does not stay constant, the most we can do in an exchange of ideas or in a debate is qualify the thought flow of the other until it makes sense to us, but once we hit the core, your truth is your truth and truth is not very debatable... very strange beast that beast of truth. thanks for participating in this thread... hope to see some more of yall step up and give a shout out to your favorite musical origins.

 

1) In truth m8, I've no idea if I'm right . I, like you, (obviously), often wonder about where music comes from because when I try and step back and look objectivly, music is a really strange and interesting phenomenon. Who'd have thought that a bunch of monkey descendents would become so transfixed when listening to or playing a bunch of frequencies and rythms. This explanation is the best I've managed to come up with . It would be great if somebody could pop up one day and say, "no actually, it's like this!!". (Actually I'd prefer it if somebody popped and said, "actually m8, I've done some test and experiments and you are exactly right... youre very clever btw, have a nobel:)).

2) you're right that there is no Laboratory based proof around the neorotransmitter based theories of depression in terms of measuring the actual  amounts physiological and interractions of the chemicals themselves. Behavioural "proof" however does exist but, like you, I greet it with some sceptisism
   Actually. I totally agree with you about SSRI's being a band aid for underlying causes but there have been test on mice etc... which do show alterations in behaviour, mood etc... Either way,SSRI's are unfortunatly the best we've got presently and they can provide a nice break from feeling crappy in the short term.
   I was more talking about endorphines,(technically neurotransmitters but more observable in their effect). Again, although, as far as I know there is no laboratory proof for this either,I am convinced that the pain gate theory is pretty damned close to the truth if not spot on.   I adminster morphine to people in pain on a daily basis and also come into contact with opiate addicts daily. The patterns of behaviour of both groups "prove" the theory to me.
   If you watch these people and read between the lines, you kind of realise that pleasure is the absence of pain and not the other way around. With opiate users, there are so many receptors open that they don't produce enough morphine of their own to cover them. In short, the more you have, the more you need. This is why we do progress from simple scales to more complex things.
  When I was a child I could happilly listen to nursery rhymes and Old Macdonald for hours. With experience, however, those patterns are now deep in my brain, I get no reward from playing them unless I was to alter the pattern somehow. These days, In order to get the required shot of endorphins I need to play more complex things.

3) As far as other emotions are concerned, I'm sure they all have a physiological basis. I don't believe in cause without effect and I am pretty sure that emotions are also created by monkey brain, human brain and brain chemicals. Music, (either played or listened to), in my theory, is a kind of software "work around" for our own hardware. This allows us access to those emotions and the relevant endorphins,  whilst avoiding the dangers and/or unpleasentness we would have to subject ourselves to to achieve a similar effect. I think that's very clever of us and not simple at all.

4) From my own personal experience, money in itself means very little to me. I go to work 'cos it pays the bills therby avoiding the unpleasent sensations of being evicted etc... and allows me to buy instruments etc... Its still a long term strategy ,for the delivery of endorphins, devised by my higher brain.
   However, when it comes to doing other things like going the bank or post office to sort out my financial life, I've lost count of the ammount of times I've picked up my guitar at 11am and the bank's been shut by the time I remembered to put it down again. Too many immediate endorphins can be very bad in the long run

5) come on then, where's your theory m8. I've bared mine to you so I need to read yours. Maybe, we will be able to combine them somehow and somebody will give us a joint nobel for extreme cleverness

hehehe... maybe they will maybe they will...

Actually I'd prefer it if somebody popped and said, "actually m8, I've done some test and experiments and you are exactly right... youre very clever btw, have a nobel :)

LOL!!! I hear that!

i'll think about how to devise mine... it's soooo long...

you are making more and more sense now... even though i still don't think the same fundamental principle is the main root of it all... endorphins... though you do present a good case and I certainly see the reality of how they exist and affect people... your particular analogy of the opiate addict is pretty spot on... there's a minor point concerning opiate addicts on which i disagree but I think that's a semantic argument so i'll leave it alone.

ultimately i think you've got a good point... in the mean time i'll write up my theory as best i can... it's actually a sort of treatise hehehe, and it includes all the songs I've ever written, which is many more than two... plus all the thoughts and realizations i've garnered about life over the years...

i think based on what we're relating this subject to we'll both agree that music = life in a major way... or at least most things in music deeply paralell those things in our lives in a major way... so that is, i think, the thesis of my treatise for now...

Music = Life

but there's soooo much more to it than that, in fact that equation is much too broad and simple and is only one of the few equations that i've got, AND that thesis requires a fundamental investigation of what it means to be alive, have a life, to be living and to be human... in essence by that logic... if we figure out the answer to the question: What is life? then we know what music is... and a whole lot more! lol...

for all these reasons is why i cannot just whip up my theory and slap it on the page here... but i think through this discourse we've essentially uncovered our common ground here... which does paralell my main theory... thanks

i want at least a couple more people to put their ideas down here... cmon guys! even if it's one sentence

nothing is wrong... i might slap you around a bit with a large trout, or some syllogistic ramblings, but in the end what you think is what you think...

i've GOT the answer... so before i say to yall "Ok here it is mate" i want yall to pipe up... i really do wanna hear what you guys think...

aight, ENOUGH rambling from me... laterz

Theres always one little kid isn't there...
...Sits on Santas lap...
Then pulls his beard off...
Christmas is never the same for that kid after that.

I read OrlandoDibskitts original post, Entheons reply and OrlandoDibskitts second post...
I am but a simple child and didn't understand a word of it...
But heres what I think...

My reason behind the little santa thing at the begining:
In my opinion, as soon as something 'magical' is explained, it loses something important.
If people actually knew the meaning of life, the universe and everything, where would we be as a species? If we knew what it was all about then what would be he point in carrying on?
The impression I got from your posts is that you think the world and everything in it is just a mixture of maths and chemistry. If thats the case then its we're like a part of some huge cold computer and emotions aren't real at all...Maybe I interpreted it in the wrong way, but if this is the case, its bloody scary and makes me want to give up, as I'm sure lots of other people would if it was true.

I see the correlation between languages and music, like OrlandoDibskitt explained. That was one of the ideas I actually understood.

The theory that music is a series of mathmatical patterns, does not wash with me at all. I know that there is some mathmatical process involved but its not all about that.
For example, one of my friends who was in my music class at school, straight A student, briliant at all things achademic, with a mathmaticallly correct and logical brain, could read music fluently bla bla...and me...who doesn't do well achademically, is the most ilogical and irrational person you could ever meet and can't read music at all...Well we both did compositions as part of the course and she wrote all hers out on the stave and everything, and it was all shiney and perfect from her mathmatically correct computer mind, whereas mine came directly from somewhere else. From pure emotion (only cause I had no other choice though)...and guess who got higher marks...? Me.

I had a load more other points to add but I have the concentration span of a 2 year old and 'stuff to do' apparently...I will come back to this thread though! Its very interesting, even if I don't understand.

In my opinion, as soon as something 'magical' is explained, it loses something important. If people actually knew the meaning of life, the universe and everything, where would we be as a species? If we knew what it was all about then what would be he point in carrying on?

I agree with you fully... it comes back to one of my many fundamental theories that life is a game. And that's more than just a jesterly comment. Living live, for us humans, is all about games. Life is also all about control. A game we can win too easily is never really very fun for very long. Thus after Santa's beard comes off, the jig is up... game over. No more interest. Same thing with life... if we knew all the answers and more precisely if we had fully mastery and absolute control over everything... essentially if we had the powers of God... there would be no more Game left and we'd be bored and there would really be no point. Sure it seems like a great idea to be able to summon in the snap of a finger the sexiest peice of meat you can imagine and have ravaging animal intercourse... but even that would bore eventually if absolute control were available. This fits into Orlando's picture by way of his dolphin argument hehe... er I mean endorphins sorry, yeah... anyway, a game which is not challenging doesn't release endorphins, simple as that.

The impression I got from your posts is that you think the world and everything in it is just a mixture of maths and chemistry.

Let me be very very clear about this and state for the record: I think that the world and everything in it is much more than just a mixture of maths and chemistry. In fact this is the fundamental area in which Orlando and I disagree and have been discoursing. Orlando and I do have some fundamental common ground which we share, but interestingly we both arrived at those conclusions which we have in common from a deeper beleif and approach in regards to the univers. So at the lower level we disagree, yet where those lower levels find us ending up is rather similar. I'd like to state again, that I do not beleive that Physical Universe = Math. Math is an abstract linguistic concept invented by humans. An apple is an apple and an apple will be whatever color it will be, it will exist... and all independently of whether we call it an apple or call it red. Ceasing to call it an apple doesn't make the apple cease to exist.

If thats the case then its we're like a part of some huge cold computer and emotions aren't real at all... Maybe I interpreted it in the wrong way, but if this is the case, its bloody scary and makes me want to give up, as I'm sure lots of other people would if it was true.

I understand where you're coming from however I do think that this conclusion is a fundamental misunderstanding of our discussion. By your own admission there was a lot you did not understand directly after first reading. I don't mean to insult your intelligence at all so don't take this the wrong way, but a good idea is to go grab a dictionary and sit down with it and re-read over our posts and look up any of the words you don't know. Afterall if you don't know what the words mean, how can you know what the concepts mean. I do this all the time actually... anytime I ever read a book, whether it be fact or fiction, I have my trusty dictionary with me.

As far as "living in a computer where emotions aren't real" well that's a little too much of a sweeping emotional statement for me to deal with shortly... so I'll address it... mmm... shortly First off I do think we're living in a computer simulation of sorts... more on that later, in fact I think the theory proposed by the Matrix is very novell and very real in many ways. But regardless of if we are or aren't the fact occurs that we arrive at a point at which we say "well if we are here, then what do we do about it and what do we do with it." It's all well and good to debate the question "What is reality?" Except for the fact that it never really got anyone anywhere. Your emotions are as real as they feel. Should it matter how they are created? I think not. I think it should matter what you do with them and how you deal with them.

The theory that music is a series of mathmatical patterns, does not wash with me at all.

nor does it "wash" with me either hehe... being american it's fun to hear new brittish slang. anyway, I don't beleive that music is primarily a math based endorphin rush. I beleive that both math and endorphins are components which are present in the realm of music, but I beleive that music comes from an even more primal place, more primal than the hind-brain, more primal than the nervous system, and more primal than the body itself. I know that our nervous systems have a lot to do with our perceptions and thus they have to do with our interactions involving music, but I don't think that the mathematical responses of our brains and nerves dictate music.

As for your anecdote about your friend, I've seen that many times. The best music doesn't come from the hyper organized mathematically precise minds. The best music comes from the most creative most balanced most intuitive most open and most emotionally solid minds.

As for you having an attention span of a two year old... well, no you have the attention span of a distracted 16 year old. I'm plenty older and my attention span is crap on most subjects aside from music so you're not alone and no you don't have a brain chemical imbalance because those are fake, so you don't have ADD or ADHD and you certainly don't need ritalin. Just had to make my stance clear on that end of it as well... less for you 'Doll and more for the general everyone who reads this. Anyway... looks like it's time for me to cut a worthy version of my first bandamp.com posted song. bbiab.

1) I do think the universe is a mixture of maths and chemistry!, even chemistry is really physics at its lowest level and physics boils down to a heap of mathematical probabilities.  I find this very beautiful.  Science, ("the search for reality"), throws up really beautiful paradoxes and philosophical conundrums, far more beautiful than can be conceived of from from the day to day emotional world of humans but when humans look at the result in an emotional context, its utterly beautiful. Einstein said it was like mind of god and I'd like to think I know what he meant. The universe is more than the sum of its parts as is all the "best" music.
      Music gives us more than the sum of its parts but it remains mathematical and physiological at its heart. Again, I don't find that scary or pointless. I find it to be quite a beautiful paradox and the numerical universe is full of such things.
    From Newton , Darwin, Einstein, Bohr and beyond, the search for reality has taken us to where we are. without it, there would be no computer on which to have such discussions. There would be no aircraft for us to go on holiday, no modern medicine and no freezer for me to store my ice-cream in.
    Musical notation IS a scientific, numerical process discovered by the ancients who explored the mathematical patterns INHERENT in cogent sound. Those patterns HAVE to be processed somewhere in our brains in order for us to recognise and manipulate them!... we know when something is out of tune and this seems "instinctive" but we are actually measuring whole heaps of frequencies, timings etc...,, very quickly, if one tried to do it on paper, it would take hours and hours. 
   I think that the initial calculations  happen in the same place responsible for making calculations in space and time. This is because they are the very same calculations.... musical ratios also describe space and time, this is what is meant by "the music of the spheres", (Fibonacci, pythagoras, Kepler etc...),.  Therefore, It would make no architectural sense to have a separate area for music when the processing ability required is exactly the same as that for catching a ball or making a cup of tea, playing doom3 or driving a race car. Evolution is too stingy to give us anything so unnecessary as a "music gland" because it is concerned with survival and has no emotional sense of aesthetics or "fair play". Those things are our own.
 
 2) I do think emotions are not "real" in any absolute sense. I think they exist as a result of physiological response to stimuli. This doesn't make them meaningless, just subjective. "Feelings" simply serve a purpose. When I was a baby I would cry my eyes out if I needed my bocky but as I've got older, less things can put me in that kind of emotional state. In short, the more one learns and experiences, the less emotional impact things will have. I see death often. When I first started I would become emotional. These days, however, I feel very little and react in a more intellectually based manner. I believe this is known as "stoicism", an ancient Greek philosophy which I have a lot of respect for.
   If one experiences the idea of a "cold computer" being "scary", this is simply an emotional reaction, ie a bucket of chemicals swimming around different areas of the brain. The idea then, that music isn't worth carrying on with is a conclusion arrived at through subjective means and only valid for the person who "feels" that.I think it makes music MORE imortant because its a way we can esperience structures and form that we otherwise couldn't. Looking at it like this, we could almost see it as a 6th sense, (7th if you already believe in the 6th).
  I really do believe that the universe is a huge, (from our perspective),  computer of sorts. I see enough evidence ,in what little I know of physics, to "prove",to myself at least, that the universe and everything in it is built on fundamental mathematical laws governing the "movement" of energy. Scary at first but quite comforting and aesthetically pleasing now I'm used to it.

3) Two posssibilities could account for poor preformance in academic maths. If one can make a cup of tea or catch a ball, one must have quite a grasp of maths already present in their brain.
   firstly, What we learn in school is the "language" and "technnique" of maths, not maths itself, at least not in any real context. Its more like playing scales ovr and over again with no greater purpose in mind. We all know that this can be quite boring and boring means no endorphins!. No endorphins means no practice, no practice means no development, no development means low performance.
   Secondly, In order to fully utilise the counting abilities of monkey brain, higher brain must communicate with it. Maybe higher brain is missing something in this particular area of language or maybe the connection hasn't been made for some reason. (There is some evidence to suggest that these things happen as a result of not practicing btw.)
   Either way, performance in academic maths does not equate to mathematical ability innate in monkey brain, just to the ability to access it efficiently.

4) (and final... honest!).. This is what I had to reply to in the first place btw..
 
  Where on earth did this come from?...

    "The best music comes from the most creative most balanced most intuitive most open and most emotionally solid minds."

  How the hell could you know that???. More importantly, there is tons and tons of evidence to suggest that nearly all the greats in all of the fields you can think of, had at least one sort of emotional imbalance at some time, to some level. Even in common knowledge, great poets, musicians, scientists and artists  are always portrayed as tortured geniuses who are misunderstood by the peer group.
   There is evidence of this gained from letters and descriptions of how some of these people lived etc and it doesn't surprise me in the least....
     , Einstein... High level autism. Van Gogh... Bipolar. Michelangelo... High level autism. Virginia Woolf.. Bipolar. Mahler... BiPolar. Emily Dickenson... Bipolar. Charles Mingus... Depressive. Ludwig Van... Depressive, (not surprising really). The list goes on and on. I would even go as far as to say that it would be impossible to make the "best" music WITHOUT some sort of compulsive drive to do so.The medium of such compulsion is opiates... ie endorphins! 
  Anyway,logging off now must sleep!

don't be sorry hehe i for one am glad at least someone is making this thread interesting...

Science, ("the search for reality"), throws up really beautiful paradoxes and philosophical conundrums, far more beautiful than can be conceived of from from the day to day emotional world of humans but when humans look at the result in an emotional context, its utterly beautiful.s

well an interesting mix of a few very critical ideas there... the basic implication that science is in some way more beautiful than emotion and vica versa is a rather... i dunno... the way you phrased this statement makes it almost uterlly impossible to argue with it... but i yet again disagree...

taking it step by step...

beautiful paradoxes and philosophical conundrums, far more beautiful than can be conceived of from from the day to day emotional world of humans

i'm gonna have to disagree with this, though it's hard to understand exactly what you mean by the wording... did you perhaps mean "perceived" instead of "conceived" and in what sense of the word conceived did you intend...

conceived as dictionary.com defines it usually means:

• 1 To become pregnant with (offspring).
  
• 2 To form or develop in the mind; devise: conceive a plan to increase profits.
  
• 3 To begin or originate in a specific way: a political movement conceived in the ferment of the 1960s.
  
• 4 To apprehend mentally; understand: couldn't conceive the meaning of that sentence.
  
• 5 To be of the opinion that; think: didn't conceive such a tragedy could occur.
  
• 6 To form or hold an idea: Ancient peoples conceived of the earth as flat.
  

in which sense did you mean it? or were you redefining it in a new sense which is not there? because i don't particularly agree with any of the above senses if it is used that way. I suppose you probably mean it as in the sense of number four.

the idea that something is too beautiful to be conceived by emotion just doesn't make sense to me or ring true... in fact i find it often to occur the other way... I often find that emotion is often too beautiful to be "conceived" by the intellect or science. this is really not much worth debating because we could easily both be right. i think a better word would be perceived. for example there has been many a time when the intricacies of quantum physics gave me a startling emotional response. that might sound strange, but I think the emotional centers of the brain are in fact capable of conceiving much more than the intellectual centers. I like to watch PBS, yeah I'm a geek, and particularly I like the show NOVA. Often time the "scientific" ideas they present on there are things which I've already previously "perceived" "conceived" and or "apprehended" with the emotional centers of my brain... i.e. they are things that I already felt to be true.

Einstein said it was like mind of god and I'd like to think I know what he meant. The universe is more than the sum of its parts as is all the "best" music.

total agreement here

Music gives us more than the sum of its parts but it remains mathematical and physiological at its heart. Again, I don't find that scary or pointless. I find it to be quite a beautiful paradox and the numerical universe is full of such things.

fair enough... I personally don't find that idea scary either... it seemed to be mostly 'Doll's reaction to which I was responding. Oh and to set the record straigh, I love mathematics and science, I think they are beautiful and wonderful concepts. But I see them as concepts, not physical reality.

Musical notation IS a scientific, numerical process yes but it is like all the things you previously mentioned, only a tool. and the musical notation is not the music any more than the ink on the page is the story or the alphabet is the language.
 
Evolution is too stingy to give us anything so unnecessary as a "music gland"

yes of course, but I think we do have musical glands... just maybe not the variety that most people think of... in order to find them you've gotta think "outside the box"... that's a riddle... so if you can figure out what I mean more power to ya.
 
2) I do think emotions are not "real" in any absolute sense.

I know there was a lot more you said about this point but I just fundamentally don't agree. I think emotions are some of the most real things we have. I'll get to that later in my full treatise.

I really do believe that the universe is a huge, (from our perspective),  computer of sorts.

me too... but i think our notions of what this thing consists of are greatly different... i don't know... we seem to have interesting areas in which we have almost identical common ground but then the little spaces between are filled with innumerable differences... as they say "the devil is in the details"


3) Two posssibilities could account for poor preformance in academic maths. If one can make a cup of tea or catch a ball, one must have quite a grasp of maths already present in their brain.

I'd like to point out that there is quite a large discrepancy between the motor brain and the intellectual brain. The mathematical calculatory processes of the motor brain are "hardwired" in that they are pre-existing programs or peices of hardware which are already present. The computation of CONCEPTS relating to math uses an entirely different portion of the brain. For example, Stephen Hawking's motor cortex is not as agile as those of the mass populace (an understatemet) yet his conceptual cortex is perhaps much more active and altert than possibly anyone alive. This is almost proof to me that the pysical universe is not math. Math is an infinitely precise conceptual tool and idea which we map onto the physical universe. The actual physical universe is a much different beast entirely, even though it may follow mathematical laws. The fact that we have different sections of the brain for apprehending different "kinds of math" is proof enough of this fact to me. In my view this boils down to a discrepancy in how one wishes to use and create the definition of the word "math"

"Well, that depends on what the definition of the word 'is' is"
- President Clinton

LOL! But yes it does come down to this. Essentially in (my interpretation of) your view math can be a global concept, as in "everything is math" but in my view even if this is somewhat true... we must declare departmental categories of math, each one relating to different areas of existence. In my view, math is an infinite, theoretical, concept in that it is ONLY A REPRESENTATION of what is actually there.

By the way, we know that emotions are essentially rushes of brain chemicals... which ones are not always known, and lab tests which proove the "chemical imbalance theory" of insanity and depression do not exist. I think that's an oversimplification of the process though. The brain chemical is not the emotion. It may create the neurological circumstances for that emotion, but to confuse the brain chemical with the emotion is I think a critical mistake. We do have some data based on radioactive measurement studies of serotonin, wherein radioactive particles have been attached to brain chemicals and or SSRI's and then MRI or other similar brain imaging techniques have been used. Even this data however is too limited to conclude much.

    "The best music comes from the most creative most balanced most intuitive most open and most emotionally solid minds."

How the hell could you know that???.


Because I know what I know and I know what is true for me. I find it likely that you will not like this answer, Orlando, because it perhaps lacks the normal proof provided by a scientific method and a "valid" path of inductive logic. What is true for me is true for me. What is true for you is true for you. This is obviously not true for you. I've had too much experience with this in my life. By way of inductive reasoning this could be purely false, but it works for me and has held true in my life. My life is, after all, only one out of billions of lives on this planet, so just as I am unqualified to speak for men as I am only one man, I am also inqualified to speak for humans because I am only one human. I know all the possible logical falacies of this argument, but then logic doesn't proove anything in this world. If we had to use logic cannot find truth. Logic can only make valid correlations between already existing truths. Truth we have to make on our own. If you don't beleive me read some socrates. It's true for me. I know it, and I'm sure plenty of other people know this too. Anyone else care to voice their opinion regarding this matter?

More importantly, there is tons and tons of evidence to suggest that nearly all the greats in all of the fields you can think of, had at least one sort of emotional imbalance at some time, to some level.

tons and tons of evidence huh? please do share. I highly disagree. By way of this argument then you must be in severe pain or emotional torment in order to write great music. This is not the case, and I guarantee it. Can I proove it? Mmmm, no... but I can guarantee it's true. I can also guarantee there are other people who agree with me, whether they think it's absolutely true or not.

Even in common knowledge, great poets, musicians, scientists and artists  are always portrayed as tortured geniuses who are misunderstood by the peer group.

The key word is portrayed. This is someone else’s evaluation and estimation of their character. A writer looking to do a story on Einstein in his day would, I imagine, often perhaps be pressed to make it sensational as most any writer would.

There is evidence of this gained from letters and descriptions of how some of these people lived etc and it doesn't surprise me in the least.

Again the key piece here is letters and descriptions. Psychiatric diagnosis of someone long since dead is ridiculous, even more than psychiatric diagnosis itself.

IMHO though this is a popular theory but just totally wrong. I have a fundamental disagreement with psychology and psychiatry which is to detailed to go in right here. As you just asked me… but more importantly in this case… how the hell can you know this:

Einstein... High level autism.

Prove it

Van Gogh... Bipolar.

Prove it

Michelangelo... High level autism.

Prove it

Virginia Woolf.. Bipolar.

Prove it

Mahler... BiPolar.

Prove it

Emily Dickenson... Bipolar.

Prove it

Charles Mingus... Depressive.

Prove it

Ludwig Van... Depressive, (not surprising really).

Prove it

Psychiatric doctors love the diagnosis of Bipolar yet they still have no clue what it is or how to cure it. I could in fact call you Bipolar if I wanted to. I think Psychiatrists are often ill suited to be in the positions they are. It’s another interesting logical rhetorical mechanism which can be used and unfortunately I think is often confused by psychiatrists: that is “I’m write and you’re wrong because I can prove you’re insane because I’m the one who tells you what is sane and what is not because I’m a psychiatrist and that’s what we do. So, you’re insane, therefore you’re wrong.”

Note: Orlando I’m not claiming that you are doing this. But it is a convenient method of logical invalidation and one used more often than we might like to think.

Interesting also that the title of the science should be an oxymoron. The word “psyche” means soul. And psychiatry and psychology find themselves in the odd positions of being sciences decidedly dedicated to the denial of the existence of a soul.

The list goes on and on. I would even go as far as to say that it would be impossible to make the "best" music WITHOUT some sort of compulsive drive to do so.

The medium of such compulsion is opiates... ie endorphins!

By the way I often try to stay away from using things that are proovable, not because I think that proof is bad or that any should accept most ideas without proof, but because  real truth is beyond proof. A real truth is something someone can read and agree with without needing proof, in other words they can instantly find enough real life examples of evidence in their own lives or wherever to understand the truth inherent in the concept. I try to speak the truth. I don't get caught up in beleiving I always speak the truth because we can all be wrong. I do however get caught up in debates because they are fun! lol so cheers Orlando! you're a worthy opponent and I could not have asked for more.

holy.  eff.

kids, that took way too long to read through. i swear, this thread wasn't here the other day.  you're both lucky this is interesting, b/c i would have been dual-wielding stapleguns had it turned out to suck by the end.

now, i don't have much time b/c i'm already running into my recording time, however, i wanted to at least make a fumbled attempt to make a comment.

i DID read everything, and i feel confident that i understand it all.  i may not have percieved it the way it was intended to be percieved when written, but that's about the point of this thread, i'd say 

okay, now, just to be difficult, i want to say upfront that i agree / disagree with both of you at certain points (i don't mean to kick miss porcelaindoll out of this, it's just that you two are the main ones holding this .. .uh... debate?  i believe that's what entheon called it )

i don't care to go back and point out every little point that i DO or DON'T agree with, because plenty has be reitterated already, and i care not to repeat it any more.

this is completely off of my thought pattern, but before i forget:

the matrix was a great movie.  not because of visuals or anything, just by concept, as entheon pointed out

okay, back on track.

i can't even remember who said this now, but i would like to emphasize it:

In short, the more one learns and experiences, the less emotional impact things will have.

i do agree very much.  i believe that this has something to do with our individual purposes in life.  (by that, i mean the purpose that we feel we have, not some purpose that is percieved by another.)  now, you've both mentioned the emotions that we have in life.  i can't pick sides because i can't remember who said it which way any more.  so i'll just state it again, MY way:

i can't say that anybody "understands" emotions in a scientific way.  well, to qualify that statement, i mean the word "understand" to be comepletely comprehensive.  we know about these chemical reations sometimes, but altogether, it's so complex to us that we can't always just diagnose it.

which is why i do not care for magic depression medicine.  i've been there.  i've done that.  i can't say that i'd rather NOT have been and done that, because i feel like i have learned a lot.

but the fact remains that i still don't understand it.  consequently, i don't feel confident enough to agree with entheon and say that chemical imbalances are fake. but--that aside--i can simplify and reiterate it and say that they are vaguely understood, and if i'm wrong, then it would mean that the knowledge we have is farily misunderstood.  it's all pretty relative to where we stand, but regardless, we simply don't have perfect explanations for everything.  like entheon said, just because something happens the same way 9999 times, doesn't mean that it CAN'T happen a different way.  there's so much we don't take into account that (in many cases) happens to NOT influence our experiment those 9999 times.  i don't believe that we create anything in this life, other than assemblies of things and ideas that simply were not paired before.  in a brake-the-peices-down point of view, it all already exists, we just fail to understand it all

and so consequently, it's impossible to just label something as "EXPLAINED".  impossible.  there's too much to take into account, and despite all of everything that we consider, there's something more that we didn't even fathom before.

science is perfect example of this.

science is an emulator.  just like ZSNES.  just like Gens.  just like Nemu64.  

science emulates what we understand to be truth.

now, part of my point that i wanted to originally bring up:

the science is there, but i can't say i understand it.  science can't say that it understands the universe.  science admits that it has no idea why many scientists think that the universe is actually expanding at an accelerating rate.  apparently a force beyond that of gravity as developed over the course of time since the "beginning" of time.  (may want to read in-depth analysis of the big bang theory if you are unclear on what force i am talking about)  science can't just pop up and give reasoning.  many people are working to try to better emulate this celestial sphere of a universe we live in, but it's just like a readme file that comes with an emulator.  there's always a section labled "Known Bugs."

this is why i call science an emulator.  i believe science tells a wonderful story that is both full of awe and also inspiring in the ways of knowledge, but i cannot take it any further than that, because i can't prove any of it's theories on the big bang, or chemical imbalances, or any of it.

(there was something else i was thinking just a second ago that i wanted to point out, but i forget right now.  maybe i'll remember later.)


and for my second thought, on the idea that even the "crippled" people of history were the best musicians (or however it was put.  i have not the patience to look for the exact quote.  you all owe me the same grace leadway that entheon asks when it comes to semantics of the words i write)

now, there is much to be said here, but once again, i can't confess to understand it, and because i will not completely deny the existance of possible chemical imbalances (which term is completely relative to what is considered "normal" , by the way.  but that is another can of worms in and of itself.)

... i lost where i was.  i'll take out the parinthesis and try again:

because i will not completely deny the existance of possible chemical imbalances, i can't say that these people were simply problematic in terms of their normality, and thus were able to explore music more efficiently.

(i hope that came out right... i'm getting a headache.)

i believe that such persons did not perform as they did because they were "hindered" at the time by some condition.  perhaps they had one.  i can't say. i can't prove any of the bipolar or depression arguements.  however, obviously they were different that the average joe shmoe.  i think that they had specific challenges that made it harder for their particular self to overcome, and the recovery of their inner mind made them take on a vision of life and music that was astounding to the rest of us.

i believe the RECOVERY of a condition (regardless of how "real" it may be) ... the recovery of some emotional onslaught brings us to an understanding within ourselves that allows us to create something that can never be fully appreciated.

wanna know why?

because i think i would say that music is another emulator.  it's presence is more than satisfactory, and is comprehendable to us as people, but it is almost just another language with which we use to attempt to communicate with.

one might say that music is the most failed language in existance, because of the fact that music can mean almost everything concievable to an audience, yet none of those concieved emotions may be the intended feeling in it's entirety.  time and time again people ask me what their song means, and my answer is very biased by my own experiences.  this is no fault of my own, it's simply a fact.  it is impossible to just sit a group of people down, play a song, and make everyone to walk out in complete understanding.  that is where music might be considered "broken."  it is a boundary it cannot transcend.  on the other hand, music is able to transcend the boundaries of all other languages and backgrounds, if allowed.  but looking beyond that, music has it's own "known bugs".

i want to make a complete u-turn for just a minute and tell you that i don't believe that previous paragraph very much at all.  just like we come to love a spouse or other family member for their imperfections, we love music because of it's imperfections (despite how "precisely" it is designed, built (in a way)  off of mathmatics).

such imperfections keep us looking for ways to get the upper hand and better perform what it is we seek.  if we had cheat-codes for music, it wouldn't be any fun, which is exactly what one (or both) of you said above, that if we had complete control, we would begin losing that emotional impact.

and so we are on this never-ending quest to aquire all of this knowledge, a quest to perfectly emulate, even when we know the result of achieving the highest "rank" , if you will.

so... is that what we really want?  that's what our actions say!  but to u-turn again (and alude to an previous comment) human behavoir shatters all attempts to predict.  besides, we look retarded jumping through hoops for prizes 

it is my firm belief that my life is in existance for it's own sake.  i may very well assist others, but ultimately, it's my "buddha-complex" per-say that matters.  and so i attempt to recover and break down my preformed complexes that life and "beaten-paths" create.

to quote entheon's song now, in a new context:  break down "the wall" that stops you from achieving that which you deisre.  if that "wall" is obtaining more scientific knowledge, then so be it.  but for me, it is something i can't put into words, much more grand than science.

much more.

(read a paper called "The Loss of the Creature"  by a person named "Percy".  if you have not read this and come to the same enlightenment that i have found in it, you will not understand my position in the slightest.)

au revoir, good sirs.

Sorry m8 but this is getting a bit too much now Entheon, To be honest I'd prefer a normal debate to a seperate thread.
  I'm not really happy with my use of English being picked at either... when I say "conceived of", I mean exactly and preciely, "conceived of". Its a perfectly legitimate expression and I'm surprised you are having trouble with it. Maybe its a UK English thing but either way, its dissection is irrelevant and not welcome.   
  I'm trying to discuss with you and anybody else who may want to contribute to your thread. I'm not really interested in some sort of public shouting match. I don't want to post in any thread entitled Orlando vs anybody because that's not the objective here. I just want to know what music is for and where it comes from, bearing in mind that I don't believe in god, the soul or any kind of sentient divinity.
  I've got the beginnings of what, to me, seems  quite a logical,  physiologically based explanation. I'm well aware it's probably totally and uttely wrong and even if it is along the right lines, things are gonna be out of place at times because it's work in progress. for example, Motor co-ordination must be in there somewhere too but I'm not sure where to put it.
  I have many retorts to your last posts but I don't really want to get into this "vs" thing. Also, . I think I've said all I can on my ideas. the only thing I do want to add is that I work with the mentally ill all the time and believe me, "mad" people are "mad" people!. I'm not talking about alternative but equally valid realities, I'm talking about true, honest to goodness mentally ill people.
    Yes there is misdiagnosis and yes there are problems with the way people are catagorised but its the best we have and we DO help lots and lots of people.
 These people are often highly competant with various art forms and tenacious in their pursuit. take it from me, there is at least some truth in the addage, "genius goes hand in hand with madness".

actually m8 can I take that back, I re-read and can see the relevance of the linguistic dissection,,, sorry m8, my bad!
  I have got a kind of stage fright tho', even when I play live I hide behind anybody I can find and draw as little attention to myself as poss

but the fact remains that i still don't understand it.  consequently, i don't feel confident enough to agree with entheon and say that chemical imbalances are fake.

all I said was that it's not prooven, or perhaps I called some nasty names like "fake" or "stupid" or "slut" but what I mean, which is more important is that it's not been prooven. No proof is not proof of nothing as I pointed out earlier. So I'm not totally claiming they are fake.

then it would mean that the knowledge we have is farily misunderstood.

and I would agree that much of our knowlege is misunderstood.

science emulates what we understand to be truth.

my philosophy exactly... it's a representation of true physical nuts and bolts grains of sand atoms and molecules real existence as we experience it. IS it the SAME thing? no only a representation. anyway, i find myself repeating

there's always a section labled "Known Bugs."

wonderful way to put it!

this is no fault of my own, it's simply a fact.  it is impossible to just sit a group of people down, play a song, and make everyone to walk out in complete understanding.  that is where music might be considered "broken."

this I am in total understanding of and fundamental agreement with except for the semantics of it, and in this case semantics matters because the connotations of the words imply a different conceptual and emotional framework on which the comprehension of this idea rests. So in the end essentially you point out that this is ultimately one of the great things about music... so lets call it that...

"that's not a bug it's a feature!"
- Random Software Developer

all too often I hear this phrase hah! anyway, lets not call it broken. calling it broken implies a little bit of sadness for the fact that it is of no more use. I beleive this is a "feature" of the musical language which instead of impairing the original functionality of music in fact enhances it. This is what ALLOWS us to each walk away with a different meaning after fully digesting the perceptics of an artistic composition. It allows us to walk away with something meaningful to us. If we always had to follow the strict intepretation of what the artist meant then we might care a whole lot less. Usually there's gotta be something that "speaks to" the individual and has relation to their lives. So how the hell do I write a song to which millions of people can all find something to relate? Well, I'm working on that, but in the meantime lets be glad that this is possible and so lets call it a "feature"

Anyway, I'm saying I actually fully agree with what I perceive to be your concept, but I just think that a re-wording is in order to lift that concept up out of the mud of sadness and into the light of joy. It makes a difference to me at least. Its the exact same concept looked at from the other angle: is the glass half full or is it half empty?

i want to make a complete u-turn for just a minute and tell you that i don't believe that previous paragraph very much at all.

well and I think you do beleive that last paragraph because even I find a lot of truth in it. I just think that you too realized the untruth of the way in which you expressed it and the connotaions of your defining terms i.e. broken.

if we had cheat-codes for music, it wouldn't be any fun

fully

we look retarded jumping through hoops for prizes

LOL! Hell yeah!

it is my firm belief that my life is in existance for it's own sake.

Ahhh, good ol Existentialism. Wonderful philosophy. Perhaps you would enjoy reading some philosophy by the existentialists then? Jean Paul Sarte is the father of existentialism, and while others may suggest Neitche or Kant or Heiddegger, I don't like any of them, they were all to long winded, mysogonistic or depressed. Sarte was wicked cool, and one of his introductory books is rather short.

i may very well assist others, but ultimately, it's my "buddha-complex" per-say that matters.  and so i attempt to recover and break down my preformed complexes that life and "beaten-paths" create.

"*GASP* Ohhh how sad... he thinks he's..."

very interesting... you know you should be taking meds for that... people with buddha-complexes generally have what is known as acute-borderline-bipolar-paranoid-schizophrenic-multiple-personality-disorer so you might wanna think about checking into a mental hospital and getting some electric shock therapy. (did he just say that? omg!) yup I think I did

to quote entheon's song now, in a new context:  break down "the wall" that stops you from achieving that which you deisre.  if that "wall" is obtaining more scientific knowledge, then so be it.  but for me, it is something i can't put into words, much more grand than science.

See? that to me is a feature... when a song can bring new truth to an area where it never was specifically intended. yet the intention was just that, to be that universal.

(read a paper called "The Loss of the Creature"  by a person named "Percy".

I most certainly will

Read a document called "Psycho Politics"

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/7006/psychopolitics.html

so wait... why don't I like psychology or psychiatry... why is "mental health" bullsh*t? oh yeah read that document...

peace
-entheon

that's known as Acute Paranoid A Good Little Slave Should Live His Life In Fear So He Doesn't Rock The Cradle Syndrome. Take some viagra, that can help... all you need to overcome that is some big balls my friend!

"I got big balls! Big 'ol balls!"
- Dan Bern

awesome.  now i wanna write a song called "Acute Paranoid: A-Good-Little-Slave-Should-Live-His-Life-in-Fear-So-He-Doesn't-Rock-the-Cradle Syndrome"

you've given me inspiration.

it won't be about anybody on here though 

oh, and--

"that's not a bug it's a feature!"
- Random Software Developer

i believe that was a comment about the Chrono Cross menu screen resolution change, was it not?    though, if it isn't what you intended to quote, i'm sure there are many other instances where that was said

i'm still in the process of reading your posted link---very interesting so far

perhaps "broken" was a little bit strong to use as a term to describe music.  i don't mean it in the traditional sense anyway, for sure

i liked your take on my idea:

(quoting myself first, then entheon)

it is impossible to just sit a group of people down, play a song, and make everyone to walk out in complete understanding.

This is what ALLOWS us to each walk away with a different meaning after fully digesting the perceptics of an artistic composition. It allows us to walk away with something meaningful to us.

this was an idea i had, but failed to express.  it is true that it is impossible to have everyone walk away with your intended feeling, though-- if your intention was to have others walk away with their own feeling (like many of us do, even if by accident, or without realization), then we have achieved our goal anyway, yet managed to avoid becoming the "God" of music, wherein we have discussed:  it becomes plain and boring.

... i think that was a run-on sentence, let me simplify:

we can't make everyone come away with an identical feeling, but if that wasn't our intention, then we've "beaten" the idea of creating a homogenous emotion across the people, yet we have not become bored with music.

ah, here was the quote i was searching for, by entheon:

the intention was just that, to be that universal.

even simpler:  that means you've won, if that's what you were after

well and I think you do beleive that last paragraph

i began writing the paragraph trying to express my belief, but then i realized my deeper outlook upon it.  it isn't that i don't believe it at all, it is simply that i find it to be a flawed way of thinking to be taken as a whole.

i have never fully considered myself an existentialist, though i do feel there are parallels

you might wanna think about checking into a mental hospital and getting some electric shock therapy

been there.  done that.  hated that.

though i take no offense whatsoever.  i believe that my ideas of phsycotherapy and whathaveyou share some common ground with your own.

i'm out.  laterz everybody

i've just seen this thread and thought it looked interesting.  havent actually read any of the posts yet though - i'll put a side a couple of days next week to have another look at it!!

You guys all get the prize for the LOOOOOOOOOONGEST posts EVER!!

so, does this sound like the movie good will hunting to anyone else?

well, i just wanna clarify a few things that seem to be misunderstood throught most of the posts.  this is strictly fact and not my opinion for the most part.

starting with brain anatomy and physiology:

you are both incorrect on the hindbrain/forebrain discussion.  the hindbrain, forebrain, and midbrain are classifications of areas in the brain, not specific to any on lobe.  the occipital lobe is in the back of the brain and is responsible for vision yes, but it is included in the forebrain classification. heres how it is:

forebrain - this is the largest part of the human brain.  it produces behaviors such as thinking, creating, eating, speaking, and EMOTIONS. 

midbrain - this is the smallest of the 3 parts.  it consists of 2 major parts, the superior colliculi, and inferior colliculi.  the superior colliculi is important for processing visual information.  the inferior colliculi is involved in relaying auditory information to the cerebullum and forebrain.  there is also the tegmentum, which plays a vital rle in attention, pain control, emotions, and sensory processing.

hindbrain - this portion of the brain contains the medulla, pons, and cerebellum.  basically together these realy information to higher brain centers, regulate life-support functions such as breathing...

so from all of this, you both have severely misunderstood the basic anatomy of the brain and have linked some of your discussion to incorrect information.


now....to even begin to try and formulate your own theories, you must first understand music perception:

melody consists of various sequences or patterns of certain frequencies.  rhythm is the temporal componenet that dictates the length of time that these individual frequences are heard as well as the length they pause.  from the cochlea to the cerebral cortex, neurons in the auditory system are organized in such a way that they respond only to specific frequencies.

now for the fun stuff, which is taken directly from a reliable source.

as with the perception of language, perception of music involves many different parts of the brain and appears to be lateralized.  however, the localization of music functions in the brain appears to be different for musicians and non-musicians.  for nonmusicians, music is divided between the left and right hemispheres, with melody being processed on the right, and rhythm on the left.  musicians tend to use the left hemisphere almost exclusievely when playing or listening to music.  in musicians, large areas of the cerebral cortex are involved in processing music.  in general, the earlier the age at which musical training begins, the larger the music processing areas in the brain.  for example, MRI studies have revealed that the corpus collosum is 10-15% thicker in musicians who began studying music before the age of 7, compared to nonmusicians and people who study music later in life.  a thicker corpus collosum would allow abundant communication between the two hemispheres to coordinate movements that produce intricate musical compositions.

now, to prove this, when certain areas of the brain are damaged, people have shown impairments in musical perception, called amusia.  damage to the frontal areas of the cortex result in expressive amusia, which is the inability to produce music, and damge the a more posterior region in the temporal lobe results in receptive amusia, which effects different things based on which hemisphere is damaged.


now, with fight or flight:

no, fight or flight does not have an effect on music.  fight or flight is a result of the sympathetic nervous system.  this basically can speed up heart rate, speed up sweat glands, etc.  to do this, there must be a severe emotional response such as fear.  this then changes certain chemical balances to speed heart rate and so on.  and as far as i know, ive never heard of music bringing on that kind of emotion in someone.  fight or flight is not the increase of endorphines.  yes it does that, but many more things come with it, none of which i would ever relate to sound or music.  fight or flight is much more intense then that.


now there was some discussion on stimulus response, conditioning, and pavlovian conditioning.  id like to get into that, but theres just not enough time.  yes pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate to a bell, but that was just his INITIAL experiment.  it went much much further than that and there are so many more factors that i dont think any of us would have the time to get into.  as for the work example, i dont feel that applies.  yea there are certain reward and punishment factors, but there are also so many more facturs that play an underlying role in that, so its impossible to sum that up.  but in short, the work example is not just a reward/punishment example. 

now emotions:

to even begin to undersand emotions, you have to know the 3 parts in the definition of emotion.
    1.  cognitive experience
    2.  affective reaction
    3.  physioligical response

so by saying this, an emotion involves a thought process, which then alters ones mood, and then is followed by a bodily reaction.  now back to the sympathetic nervous system, this is activated when you experience an emotion.  however, it takes a very strong emotion to elicit signficant chemical release, in which music is not a strong enough stimulus.  of course i could go on, because there are other theories of emotion, such as the james-lange theory, the shachter-singer theory, and the cannon-bard theory.  but again i dont have the time.

now teh comments about "memories are stored as energy mass and if we had 3 months of memories they wouldnt fit" or something like that.

yea, obviously if memories were stored that way theres just no way it would fit.  good thing its not.  its pretty commonly known that learning and memories form new connections in the brain, not stored as any form of mass.  the brain is capable of storing billions upon billiions of new connections throught the whole brain.  thats how we form memories and learn, not by storing energy in the form of mass.

as for geniouses with disorders:

biologically, depression can be explaned.  it was explained biologically since ancient times.  if you recall ancient theories regarding body fluids, youll know that an excess of what was thought to be black bile, caused for depression, or melancholy.  this however we know now is not true, but still shows how certain disorders are in fact biological.  now we know of certain monoamines, such as norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin are found in the brain.  a shortage of these chemicals has been shown, through chemical and imaging techniques, to lead to certain disorders, such as depression.  other disorders, like biploar, can also be explained through biology.

also, it is not that hard to determine through passages that famous people themselves have written, and also what others have written about them that they do have disorders.  as a psyhologist, it is easy to rate people through reading.  its pretty widely known and used.  so yes, i can prove it because it has been proven by those who are able to rate personalities, thus finding imbalances in people in history. 

now for my 2 cents on the discussion:

forget about all the chemicals and whatnot.  people are different.  yes, people have chemical inbalances and thast what causes people to be different.  if you say people are the same chemically, then everyone would be the same, all the same chemical make up, and there would be no difference.  truth is there are chemical inbalances.  now im very surprised no one has brought up PERSONALITY in any of this discussion.  its a pretty big thing with this stuff.  personality too can be said to be chemical inbalances which differe between people.  this can completely related to music, and what i base my theory of music on.  for example, take one of the 5 factors of personality, introversion extraversion.  this difference between these to has been proven to be chemical varations...extroverts having too little, introverts too much.  when it comes to music, studies have shown that introverts prefer quiter, less intense music, because there level of sensation is higher, due to higher levels of chemical balances.  extroverts prefer louder, mor intsense music because they have a higher level of sensation seeking, because they have a lower level of chemicals.  this has all been proven in studies, and can be measured through various equipment.  and this can also be shown in the other 4 main personality groups.

so basically, my theory is that music preference comes mainly from ones personality.  yea, it has some to do with the fact that this comes from different level in chemcial production in the body.  but overall, forgetting all that stuff, people are different.  so people enjoy different things.  and i say this is based on personality, not fight or flight, or your presence in space and time.  thast like saying i enjoy drinking a beer because the movement of my hand through space, grabbing the beer, and tilting it, then the beer going down through my throat is the reason i enjoy beer.  thats nonsense.

but hey, you can disagree with the last part...but the earlier statements...purely facts, please consider them and alter your theories based on the correct anatomy and physiology, and not your own stubborn views on what you like or dislike about what others have discovered.

ok... so if it can be prooven... proove it... show me the lab tests and show me the written published repots and who did them and give me more than one example in which each of these tests was repeated and concluded with the exact same results. You're making the claim, so in this case for me to beleive you the burden of proof rests on you my friend. I often try to stay away from claims that "can be prooven" and if I do make such claims I always try to have my studies at hand ready to show anyone who should care to ask. So I ask you... show me the proof. When you start speaking about proof you'd better have it.

I'd like to state for the record that despite what blundered attempts I may have made to state something regarding the structure of the brain, I think it's clear that I have been, but I will make it clear now, that I am not attempting to relate anything here in regards to brain structure. If I am incorrect it is of little consequence in my view because brain structure was not the hinge of my argument. WIthout re-reading the posts the only thing I recall addressing concerning brain structure was the fact that I didn't think that Orlando's appraisal of brain structure was very accurate. That's all I intended to express. If I went further or too far and offered my thoughts on what I know about brain structure and they were wrong... well I'm admitting I was wrong. So what?

I continue to maintain that music has nothing to do with brain structure except in the very superficial aspect wherin our brains are responsible for the translation of the real essence of what music is, into the medium of physical space... i.e. coordinated motor movements and theoretical conceptual frameworks such as scales, which may be used.

As far as chemical imbalance, I'd LOVE to see your lab tests prooving the theory of chemical imbalance. That is my challenge. Show me the lab tests prooving the theory of chemical imbalance and the theory that chemical imbalance causes mental disorders. Not just lab tests suggesting, but lab tests with unequivocal proof.

There are over 300 documented psychiatric diagnoses for mental disorders. Yet the sciences which proclaim to have discovered these diseases still do not know how to cure any of them. The best they've got is more chemical bandaids, electric shocks and lobotomies. This is just going from bad to worse in my view. A lobotomy doesn't fix anything. It just takes something that is percieved as broken - which by the way is probably NOT broken, I'll get into the inherent flaws in this type of value judgement in a moment - and "breaks it further" to the point that it cannot but function except to the lowest possible meanial controllable standards. Psychotherapy has an admittedly poor rate of progress and, what little it does, generally only works on those currently "sane" enough to engage in standard linguistic communication in the first place.

One of the problems I've found with psychology and psychiatry is that they do not provide a standard picture of what IS mentally healthy. The only thing they consider is what is NOT mentally healthy. That's an approach which just begs to declare the entire world insane, or as you've already pointed out: something to the effect of "everyone is chemically imbalanced"...

I do and don't beleive that just as I do and don't beleive what TLS had to say about the broken state of musical interpretation. Even if differences exist in the relative amounts of chemical levels within people's brains, that does not imply to me imbalance. Imbalance means that there is a state of balance. And if everyone is imbalanced, well the there is no one who is balanced. So if there is no one who is balanced in the first place, it's impossible for there to be the reverse of the state of balance... thus it would be impossible for an imbalance to exist.

This is all very semantic I know. But my point is that I would simply call it differences. Putting a value judgement on it like "imbalance" is the beginnings of what has spawned such practices as ethnic cleansing and created people like Hitler. I'm not saying we cannot be discerning or judgmental in proper circumstances. I am saying we should remember where we needn't and thus ought not to be. We can just call it differences and that suffices. Adding the value judgements inherent in the word "imbalanced" creates a problem regarding a mapping of new data - a value judgement - onto an otherwise very neutral concept. This leads to false data and this in turn leads to false actions and this in turn leads to more problems in society.

These are hefty claims, but I'm also not claiming to be able to proove this last sentence. I am claiming it as truth because it's statement is self evident to me and I hope to others. One merely has to look at history, life and the current existing infrastructure in the world to see this pattern played out. What we don't know can hurt us. What we speculate beyond what is real can hurt us. This is not to say we should stiffle imagination or creativity or speculations. Can does not mean will. We must use our better judgement to tell use how to reserve our judgement for only that which needs it.

Oh and by the way... no one has yet offered any other theory than meat. So far, where we stand, music comes from meat. I don't beleive that could ever be true. Again I ask you brain scientists and psychologists... where and what is a person. I don't mean the meat. We can see the meat. We can dissect the meat. Where is the PERSON. No, my brain is not me any more than my toe-nail is me. By the same token my body is not me any more than my posessions are me. Where and what is the force which drives living oranisms. What is it that makes a person struggle against the immense force of gravity, every day, to pull himself off the ground and into an upright position. What is that life force which animates the little puppet doll of a body you are so fond of prodding and probing with your needles and MRI machines. You haven't found it yet. In all your searches you still don't know. You can kill it and you can stop it and you can look straight at it without seeing it. There is only one problem. You still don't know how to put humpty back together again.

well, to me it looks like most of your claims come strictly from your own opinion.  i just pulled out facts from what ive learned over the past few years.  if you really want my sources...

fifth edition: social psychology.  elliot aronson, timothy wilson, robin akert

psychology of learning and behavior fifth edition.  barry schwartz, edward wasserman, steven robins.

biological foundations of human behavior.  joesphine wilson.

human physiology: the mechanism of body functions.  eric widmaier, hershel raff, kevin strang.

human anatomy.  martini, timmons, talltsch

those are my sources, if you wanna go ahead and read, be my guest.  but mine come from sources, everything you say is opinion.  so to me what im saying is more credible then you, because im recalling from sources and you are rambling off the top of your head.

i just cannot undersatnd how little credit you are willing to give to brain physiology in music.  if it wasnt for those unimportant chemicals in your brain, you wouldnt know what music was.

yes we are all meat.  we are all made up of various chemicals.  and if you challenge the question of what makes us who we are, well you are asking a question that has been asked since existance.  and the way you talk, you talk as if you know and have some higher intellect that researchers and brilliant scientists have not even come across.  so whether you are willing to believe it or not, much of our make up is indeed those chemicals you deem unimportant and irrelevant. 

and for one thing, who ever said and imbalance is a bad thing?  no one ever said having a slight imbalance in chemicals was frowned upon or anything in a negative light.  youre takin the ball and running with it in your own direction here.  there are stable environments which are seen as just that "stable".  any variance from that can be called an imbalance, whether good or bad.  you only see it in a negative light, but infact imbalances can alter in a good way too.

now, if you really want to get into the aspect of music beyond the perception of music and what we hear and why we hear it which you so strongly refuse to believe, we can get into the philosophy of it.  philosophy can be one of the soul factors in music.  there is a great quote from a book ive read by musician oh the philosophy of drumming that goes "there are, of course, thousands of useful drum methods that deal with every aspect of the technical side of the art form; but there are very few books that consider the drummer as a HUMAN BEING FIRST, rather then merely a coordination machine."  and this entitles that everything matters, those techniques and the way music is percieved, your so called "meat", and the person as a being.  i know you are completely against it, but have you ever thought that it might just be both?  you can then go into objectivism (things have a nature, things are, things exist, there is a reality outside of yourself, outside of the mind) or relativism (there are no fixed principles, everything is in constand flux).  and then there is also the theories of natural order, and that everything is a result of this so called natural order.  of course people have dedicated their lives to all of this, and you demand that everyone else and people that devoted their lives to things im saying is false.  i call that selfishness.

your sources were just rambling too. i don't care what they've done or what they've documented, simply because you can rehash someones ideas doesn't make them any more credible than the ideas which I propose. Simply because I can quote einstein doesn't make einstein smarter or any more true than I am. I think the credibility of an idea is iherent upon it's analyzation with respect to normal application. Authority is a rather weak support for an argument.

And when I said proove it I was suggesting you point me to exact references. In the bibliography of a research paper you wouldn't be able to get away with just listing each book and assuming that the reader would go pick up each book and read the whole thing now would you? If you did that on a paper in school the teacher would give you an F most likely because she probably wouldn't have beleived that you actually read them given the fact that you didn't take the time to point out the fact that you knew where the exact proof occurred in the reference material. So... if you please, page numbers, exact study titles, theses, names, dates, results and how it relates to and prooves the theory of chemical imbalance. I know you hardly intended this to be a research paper... but again... i refer to the concept of burden of proof. The cursory "RTFM" style of proof you have provided me is much less than satisfactory. All it has told me is that you study something resembling the subject of neuropsychology. So what? You still haven't actually given me what I've actually requested.

Also as far as the semantics of "Imbalance" the fact is that there is a negative connotation to the word whether you would regard it or not. These connotations can insidiously seep into our thought patterns whether we like it or not. This is the fundamental basis of Politically Correct speech. If we all called african americans the N word to this day, there would still be a lot of cultural baggage attached to it. Regardless of how jokingly you intended it - in calling a woman a bitch, the connotations and implications of that label have a high degree of effect upon the human conciousness and can affect the resultant outcomes of decisions and actions. Call her a bitch in jest enough times and soon you'll be calling her a bitch for real... and perhaps treating her like one. I know this because I've experienced it. I don't expect you'll accept that as proof and I don't intend it as such. But it is true to the extent that I've witnessed this mechanism in action.

I do grant that we have bodies. I do grant that the meat exists. I just don't think it's enough. If the meat is all there is... then by that token (yes this is hyperbole folks) you could stick some electrodes into a steak, send 50,000 volts through it and produce a symphony. Or perhaps by some of the arguments here-in that all the greats were mentall ill or chemically imbalanced, then you could medicate a person so highly as to tip the chemical scales causing him to spiral into a depression and thus if he were a musician you would immediately yeild from him a great work of art.

Yes. There is a lot about brains and their chemistry that is amazing and useful. But explaining music by that alone is not capturing the whole picture. And yes, I've got the balls to say I think I know something you don't. I've got the - what's known to Freud as - ego to beleive that I am smarter than you in some way. Am I spouting opinions? Or am I delivering truth? How do you estimate truth? Truth is that which is true for you. If you evaluate something and it works in your life and it brings you success, then it is true. If you evaluate something and use it and it destroys your life and brings you failure, it's rather obviously false. Theories are not self evident. Truth is self evident. Theories need proof. Truth needs no proof.

Even socrates had to admit that all of the laws of logic could not create truth. Validity of logic can be debated, but if all the validity of logic is sound, then the only thing left to debate is truth. Is abortion right or wrong? That's an issue that trancends logical validity. I will not express any views on that because it would be a gross mistake to turn this into an abortion debate thread.

I'm not challenging the question of who we are. I'm challengin you about who we are. I know who we are. Consider that two people can hold equally opposite truths and each is still true though they yet oppose each other. I look at my clock and say it is midnight, someone in Asia looks at a clock and says it is noon. For each person these are both truths. Yet they oppose each other.

I'm also not completely against anything. That is a gross logical blunder and a childsplay falacy of logic. Generality my friend... yes I understand that this too is hyperbole. I think you misunderstand my point, or perhaps I have misrepresented it. Either way it has been misunderstood through no fault of anyone in particular. I'll re-iterate for the sake of clairty. Meat and meat only does not compute. It's more than that. Meat is a part of the equation, but only a part. How large a part? I don't know. I obviously grant it much less importance than others. This is certainly an area of opinion. To me, however, it is truth that meat is not the whole equation. And as for whether I'm objectivism-inclined or relativism-inclined, that's yet another falacy of logic. The classic either or falacy. Almost never do we find either or situations. Other options are possible. Consider that I may be both or neither or something else entirely.

I don't demand that anything is false. I demand that we re-evaluate the usefulness of that feild of human endeavor known as "psychology" and also as "psychiatry" as a science considering that in it's 100+ year history it has only found only diseases and no cures. As for me invalidating the lives of those who pursue these subjects: tough... bite the bullet. We routinely tell scores of people their lives are incorrect by labeling them as criminals. The theory that 1,000,000 cannot be wrong is a poor one.

Interesting to note that in the end, there is one common quotation on which we agree. And I'll end with that:

"there are, of course, thousands of useful drum methods that deal with every aspect of the technical side of the art form; but there are very few books that consider the drummer as a HUMAN BEING FIRST, rather then merely a coordination machine."

Funny that you should acccept the exact overall concept I've been expressing from this "Authority" but not from me. Oh well I guess when I say it it's not true.

all i am gonna say is...no this is not a research paper and honestly...i dont care enough to point to you exact references because its not worth it to me.  like you said, i know it is truth, so i dont need to walk you through all of my research.  you are not a teacher, you are not grading me, so its unimportant to me.  if you care enough, you could thumb through and find anything you want to in any of those sources. 

also, i never said anything about not thinking its both the human as a being and the human as meat.  you jumped to that conclusion on your own as i was backing up things that had been previously said.  i never once argued the point of not being something else there.  i just made my claim of the importance of the so called "meat" in the whole equation.  of course i think theres somethin else there.  i have been studying psychology, neurospychology, anatamy and physiology long enough to know most of the angles in which people study.  ive seen the holes in research, and ive seen research that has come out succseful.  you may be ignoring some of the smaller sides to things that have worked and going over the top to say not everything works.  of course not everything we do will work.  there have been tons of studies in psychology particularly that have lead to some pretty brilliant things, and whether or not you believe that is your own deal.  as for modern medicine, yea a lot of the stuff out on the market is complete crap, and yea people are completely overmedicated.  but dont say all of its unnecessary.  you are starting to sound like a scientologist.  and to me, they are completely unrealistic.

oh well... looks like we've degenerated to name calling... that's fine...

for the record: i've been pissed at the institutions of mental health since before I ever heard that scientology was pissed at them and before Tom Cruise ever went on TV ranting and raving about it.

I've had friends unjustly, I guarantee you fully unjustly, imprisoned in mental wards. They perpetrate some horrible crimes in the name of "mental heath" and it's total BS and I've known it for a long time. It's the politics that get me. I'm not opposed to anyone studying the brain just as I'm not opposed to someone studying how to heal the brain and the mind. But the field of mental health has an admittedly horrible track record especially given all the other technological advancements we've made to date. So my beef with psychology is more political than anything else... it's how it gets used. I quite enjoy the concept of psychology - that we might be able to understand some things about the brain and how it works... in practice though the subjects have ended up being the stomping grounds for some rather attrocious crimes of humanity.

Refer to the document Psycho Politics if you don't beleive me.

obviously we have some critial misunderstood communications... so we'll let tired dogs sleep or whatever the phrase is... and we'll see if anyone else has anything to say...

btw... why is that it seems to be only the neuro-scientists and psychologists who have anything to say on this thread? i mean... the bulk of what has been said at least...

any normal people out there?

oh and by the way... does that make christians and buddhists and hindu's completely unrealistic... because by that standard, then the entire world is one big hoax...

i was out for most of the weekend, and i had to do some catch-up reading   i apologize, hehe.

i support entheon completely in his recoil from the comment:

mine come from sources, everything you say is opinion.  so to me what im saying is more credible then you, because im recalling from sources and you are rambling off the top of your head.

i want to second the motion entheon made about knowing people that have been unjustly made to be part of a mental institution.  i do not care to think of my own experiences, because i know the way they treat you.  they render you useless and try to convince you that you've got a problem, and that they are fixing "with" you.

nightmares that never die come from mental insitutions.  they never die.  what's worse is that the fact that i've said that is going to make people look at me and say "well, OBVIOUSLY, he's not alright, otherwise he wouldn't have those nightmares."  but such things DON'T just die.

i believe that overcoming such personal obstacles such as "depression" or other "imbalances" from the norm is something that our meat cannot fix for us.  I define "us" as the part this is NOT the meat.  the meat alone can't survive without the pilot, and consequently, another seperate piece of meat cannot just fix my pilot.  i believe that there are internal struggles that we go through (in a mental perspective) that cause us to tweak ourselves.

(by the way, i support the ideas that nicu24 suggests, that the importance of the meat is very monumental.  it's a miracle to be honest with you, i think)

because certain "bandaids" exist, and because we DO have brains that handle information, these bandaids may phsycologically help us, but not because of the direct application of such a bandaid.  i believe that it comes back to analyzing that one's "pilot" makes, and the consequent adaptations that s/he tries to make.

this is all well and good, but as you both have somewhat pointed out, there hasn't been an offered idea for what this "pilot" or "person" is.  i cannot just offer a source, as that would get us nowhere.  i would like to take the liberty to point out that this thread is about philosophy, and as such, shouldn't depend on sources to do the talking for us.  such sources as brought up by nicu24 are somewhat applicable, but that is only because that was about the Meat.

so as for the Person, i offer this... (though it may not be significantly original)

i define the "soul" to be a pair of things:  the body and the spirit.  i do not know how to effectively convey what i think this spirit is "made" of, other than an intelligence that provides our bodies with a power source, if you want to think of it that way.  i'm not going to say that a spirit carries the same appearance as our actual body, because that's not the way i see it.  i believe though that as human beings that try to emulate life with science, we have a limited ability to understand.  i believe that there are more than just the typical dimensions of existance that we can percieve... more than the typical ideas of coordinate plane movement or time our however you define "typical" dimensions.  in an attempt to use the emulating terms of science, i trust in a higher dimension that our spirits exist in us.  this means that there is no solid matter that is literal overlayed on the inside of our bodies.  i mean that such spirits exist on a plane of movement that is higher than the one our brains are currently percieving.

or ... perhaps they DO percieve it, but not as directly as we may think... for instance, our EYEs don't just "see" a spirit.  that thought is very ambiguous, but that is what theories are all about sometimes, especially when dealing with philosophy.

i believe in a higher being, a God, that possibly dwells in such a higher dimension that we can't even begin to understand "where" he is.  "where" is a word relative to position.  if there are more dimensions that we are capable of taking advantage of with our limited bodies, then how can we possibly make an accusation as to "where" and "how" a being such as a God could exist?  we cannot, despite all the science we gather, it is limited to our current state of existance, which is limited to what our bodies can percieve.

all we know how to percieve is (excuse any little technicalities with the rest of my sentence, as i do not wish to argue it) our three dimensions of movement.  heck, we can't even manage to live past 90 years of age most of the time... how can we expect to just "understand" (once again, i define understand to mean complete comprehension) the workings of a universe that has been in an ever-changing state for as long as it has been existing itself??

science enables us to understand bits of it, but not the whole picture.  what i suggest is that "We" are beings of more dimension that we seem to understand by terms of an XYZ plane's coordinates.  i can't give an specifics as to what sort of dimension this may be, but we exist in more ways (or "axies", to be painfully scientific) than that.

as for "personality"... i believe that this resides with such a spirit.  i can't say how, because i can't, by grace of my own arguement.  but no matter how, i believe that our sould is much more than just a piece of meat that is responding to local stimuli.

i feel that i've left something out, though this may just be because i can't effectively convey my thoughts.

i hate words.  they're too linear in process.

there was a comment i meant to say something about, made by nicu24:

no, fight or flight does not have an effect on music.  fight or flight is a result of the sympathetic nervous system.

uh... the comment WE made was not that fight or flight had an effect on music.  the idea that was brought up was that music has an effect on fight or flight.  you got it backwards.

beyond that, what you said about the heart rate speeding up and yada yada is all true, but the point that was being made was that music can trigger strong emotions like fear (the emotion that YOU brought up), thus music can have a direct effect on fight or flight.

just wanted to clarify.

Thanks to TonightsLastSong for being bold enough to go where no atheist has gone before. LOL!

I too have a rather similar outlook being that I consider concepts such as Divinity and Spirits to be actual tangible realistically explored concepts. After all, probably over half the worlds population seems to ascribe truth to theses concepts and their existence. Again the theory that millions of people can't be wrong is a bad one, however... the theory that something which millions of people are interested is worth studying is a good one.

I for one, rather not directly in relation to the topic of this thready which is "your theory of music" propose that we need another field of study in the sciences. The science of spirituality. What would such a science look like? Well, perhaps very much like currently existing sciences, except that it would study questions like "what is a soul" and "what is divinity"... and it would perhaps be able to conduct actual lab test style studies to conclude various hypotheses regarding these questions. This as opposed to the current studies of Theology and Religion, where-in one simply studies the current cultural conclusions, biases, agreements and pre-conceived notions.

Anyway, I think this field of study would illuminate many areas in all the sciences here-to-for left as quagmires and paradoxes. This includes music, though I think that those already "in the know" don't need a science such as the one I am proposing to help them figure it out. Those of us that know just know and it comes from our own experience. We don't need proof because we have our own understanding which is complete unto itself and effectively functions as truth. This is usually called "belief" or "faith" and those of us who have it often look silly to the other side. From what I've observed, the other side simply desires proof... it's the "believe it when I see it" state of mind. Their current paradigms in thinking function as truth for them as well but as they have no proof yet they simply do not consider the other side.

I am waiting for the day when science and spirituality once again become the same subject as I beleive they were meant to be long ago. Note that I do understand for example that scientists exist who also follow a particular religion, just as any profession in the human field often crosses over between all different religions. There are scientists who are Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Jewish etc. What I mean though is that there should be an actual field of study in this world dedicated to the exploration of these spiritual concepts in a scientific manner - which is not particularly dominated by any one religion and is not particularly interested in prooving any one religion wrong. In fact, I think those people who are agnostic in this world would perhaps be the best folks to lead such a mission. Atheists, I'm sorry to say are perhaps a little too biased, but agnostics would be perfect because I think they would acheive the highest level of objectivity in this endeavor. Actually I'm sure it would be wise to include members from all realms of beleif, atheist agnostic, sprititualist and fundamentalist alike.

I'll end off with a simple illustrative note.

Often times when we see performing, those musicians who have an extraordinary amount of emotional passion and who play the tastiest licks around, people are often heard to remark that the musician has "a lot of soul"...

do the math

As far as what nicu said: my point about the references, is that unless you point me directly to the exact studies and lab tests within the book, then you are no more prooving your point than if you told me that the proof was on the surface of Uranus and that I had to go there to see it myself. If you don't point me to the exact references then you are simply spouting someone elses opinions, which I think portrays you to be much less intelligent than you really are because it implies that you cannot even form your own opinions, much less think for yourself. So don't try to make a false argument that you are somehow more correct than I am and that I am only spouting opinions. You too have yet to do more than spout opinions. None of your so called "facts" are common knowlege whatsoever so you as of yet still have to proove them.

I know I'm not a teacher. I was simply pointing out that your approach to proving your statments doesn't fly with anyone except yourself, and to "proove" it I pointed to a certain common knowlege circumstance in which the consequences of your "I don't give a f8ck" based actions would be highly negative and would have actual repercussions in your own life. You insult my intelligence when you participate to the degree you have and then claim that you don't care. You insult my humanity when you say (yes this is not explicitly stated but it is implied) that you do not care enough about me as an intelligent being to actually put forth the correct and required effort to proove the things you are saying. There are obviously no repercussions on this thread aside from name-calling and thus there are perhaps (by Orlando's argument) not enough endorphins pumping through your blood pushing you to back up your argument correctly. As they said in Mental Wards: Empire Strikes Back "May the catecholamine and a phenethylamine be with you."

I said it and I'll say it again, because this time I know I am right. If you don't point me to exact studies then you are simply spouting someone elses opinions (WARNING: end knowlege begin name calling) and that, to me, is lame.

Bear with me. Music has order- sense to it that normal "sounds don't have.The brain subconsciously percieves and ponders the order without the help of the conscious mind-when this happens, pleasure is created, like any other instance of the body or brain doing something by itself without conscious thought. Like laughter, in which the subconscious ponders something that is illogical (and creates pleasure) or sex, in which the body is doing something instinctive without the help of the conscious mind.......

I'm going to come back and read this thread sometime, but not tonight as it's already too late for me to be up.

I'm just going to throw this out, because I think about this stuff too.
OK, I study theory sometimes, and sometimes I just try to play.  Occasionally, when I'm getting deep into modes, and "target" notes, and "altered" notes, and playing "outside", and chord substitutions, and how to apply all that, and trying to "think" about music, I have an epiphany (OK, a recurring epiphany, since it happens whenever I get theoretical). 

And it goes like this: "Did the early blues guys know this stuff?"  The answer, of course, is always "no."   So then I ask, "why the hell is it important then?"  See, the blues moves me like nothing else, and all that music comes out of their soul, not their head.

Just my humble opinion,
sunburststrat

that's a very valid point!  some of the ledgends came out of nothing!

as entheon will surely say at some point in the near future, knowing this stuff can certainly help you improve upon existing methods, so it IS important in that light.

if you're looking to break though and do something compeletely new, then of course you can't read text books to find out how to do it.

i may have more thoughts on this later, but i've got to go home now   later everyone!

You can't possibly say that music comes "out of the soul, not the head". The soul one speaks of contains emotion, and emotion is really a manifestation of logical thought. Even if someone who is "mathematically correct and logical" does not write music as well as someone of the opposite traits, it does not refute the use of logic in music. Logic is the only operation in music, but there are different types of logic. The mathematically correct and logical one has high usage of left brain logic, which only determines individual pieces to its satisfaction, and looks at things in an analytical fashion. This is good to have, but some musical elements, such as the I - IV - V - I chord progression are totally against the left brain logic, as IV - V is not a valid chord change. Things like that rely on greater intuition and to realize that IV can be extended as IIm, and therefore makes some amount of sense, and the determination of the whole to realize that the V is necessary to resolve to the I. All of this is a new type of logic, that is entirely unguided by emotion.

Music comes out of the soul, not the head...

there...

I said it...

Impossible to say? I think not... certainly impassable for some of the more enslaved minds among us... but not impossible

as for this:

emotion is really a manifestation of logical thought

huh, that's interesting... then how come emotion has the ability to skew logical thought to the point where it doesn't work anymore? that doesn't seem like a logical thing for a logical thought to create... seems to me we've got a little Catch-22 here...

how come my emotions can be affected by the sun rise... how come my emotions can be affected by drugs... how come my emotions can be affected by religion... how come my emotions can be affected by the government... how come I can evoke and invoke my own emotions at will... how come my emotions can be affected by the perception of beauty... beauty is IMO not a logical computation process... how come the centers for emotional processing and the related hormone secretion in our brains are (from what i understand, feel free to correct me if i'm wrong but i beleive nicu has already covered this) rather distinct from and much older than the more recently developed intellectual cortexes... no math problem in the world has ever made me feel the intensity of emotion which has been brought about by love and hate... and I enjoy math

by the way XenoX where the f8ck do you get your information? by what system do you determine who's who and what's what in the world of music which allows you to claim that some of the most well known and most often used chord progressions constitue what you claim to be not a valid chord change...

allow me to *ahem* *ahem* *ahhchhaaaBULLshfhaheemit* *cough* *ahem*

ok XenoX lets see... the phrase "pulled it out of my arse" comes to mind... as does "totally arbitrary"

apparently you know your modes... apparently you've studied your theory... but where do you get your data, or how do you come up with your data regarding what is valid/not or right/not in the world of harmony and chord changes

if it sounds right, man... it's right... that's all there is to it... I use theory as a tool to help me compose faster by pointing out which things are similar or semi-closely related to what i'm playing vs/compared to what i want... or even to point out which things are different... simply to point out the ways in which things are related whether similar or different...

when you declare things "invalid" that essentially sort of declares them as off limits... so i say wtf? why do that? you're just restricting yourself... the only good i can forsee coming of that is less creative music...

in the world of music nothing is off limits...

playing a dominant with a major seventh seems to be "invalid" by your book and certainly is seen as unconventional if not invalid by The Book... i don't mean to speak for you, i can only infer, but it seems that based on some of the other much more simple items you have presented as invalid that this would easily qualify... there's no existing symbol for it... it's not in any way standard harmony, not expressable in standard terms... it contains 3 notes each a half-step apart... yet there's a place for it

if you don't beleive me look it up:

http://carl.ript.net/wp/index.php?p=9

i've heard it more than once... i play it myself sometimes... i love it

tritones were once a death sentence in the dark ages... haven't we come far enough to quit harboring predjudice within ourselves for what contitutes correct or valid musical harmony? just cuz we can't name it doesn't mean it's not valid... just cuz it doesn't follow the perfect mathematical rules that we'd like to beleive this universe is made of doesn't keep it from existing... lets expand our conciousness to form a place for every one of these musical structure concepts...

in that way our world grows only larger, richer and more fruitful... there is no limit

in the reverse method, the method of elimination, our universe grows only smaller and more restrictive, less interesting and more predictable... there is a limit to this method and we CAN reach it if we start to push the limits of this method (a natural tendency in most humans, to push the limits of things)...

well, the limit is zero and it is attainable - i've never known a human who wouldn't reach for some sort of goal... this method gives us a target... and a target is just begging to be hit ...

once we've denounced every musical structure as being invalid... there is no more music left...

what then?

first off...

the rules of music are meant to be broken.  thats the whole purpose behind music.  every different culture has different sets of rules and ideas behind their music and alter standard theory slightly to suit their own ideas of what music they prefer.  to say we must stay within certain limits is completely rediculous.  as entheon said, it would render all music from now on completely useless as it would all be the same and lack the main purpose behind music...creativity.  yea music is mainly a left brain activity, as i believe i stated in more detail in a previous post, and yes musicians have some more highly developed areas which help them along in the musical process.  but i also dont believe that is the "only" reason we process music.  its just a very important part of it.  in my opinion, from studying both music and psychology, its foolish not to say both the brain and "being" play important roles.  i know some refuse to really acknowledge the full purpose of brain functioning in music perception and appreciation, but thats opinion, and whats right to some  people is just right to some people.  but i really believe to say "only" one or "only" the other, is just rediculous.  i mean there are machines (which some people i understand dont find relevant), that can study brain activity, and pretty clearly show the brains response to music as well as pretty much every sensory response.  so obviously the brain plays a vital role in this process.

now, this part of my post im going to say is more of a question then anything else, so please regard it as just that.  a question, and not my attempt to "prove" anything or push my opinion of what occurs on anyone.

as ive said before, i completely agree with the idea of both the "soul" and the brain and its chemicals, and that we are made up of chemicals, or "meat" as weve been referring to.  but, were does this soul come in?  i mean we are born from sperm (strictly chemicals, i dont believe each sperm has its own soul or "being") and an egg, which is the same, just chemicals.  they meet, undergo several processes, cells multiply etc, etc. (the whole process in detail isnt really necessary in my point).  so basically, chemicals meet, combine, form new chemicals, and multiply, thus in the end creating the fetus, which as we all know become us.  so in this sense, its hard to argue that we come from strictly chemicals, and that the brain starts from strictly chemicals.  my question is, where does this "soul" or being come into action.  in my opinion, its nowhere in the process of birth.  i guess what im trying to say is, we are born as chemicals, and once we are born, we start to become "ourselves" or "individuals" by that whole nature vs. nurture deal, which is another endless argument for some that i dont think we need to get into.  so in a sense, doesnt this "soul" come from our perception in the world as it happens to us from birth.  and as "chemical beings", dont a lot of these senses since birth and how we precieve all of the senses play an important role in the formation of our "soul" or "individual".

now i understand you might not all agree with this, but my ultimate question is again, where does this "soul" come into affect or where does it come from?

i'll admit that i didn't quite follow the logic behind the two posts above me, but i certainly had the same thoughts as entheon when this was said:

XenoX - emotion is really a manifestation of logical thought

certainly some emotions can be triggered by (and be an apparent reflection of) logical thought patterns, but as i stuck my neck out and said, i believe in a particual portion of us that i called a soul.  this is where i believe our personality "dwells", if you will.  together with the idea that i hold to, that science is an emulating language for what really does exist, i can't possibly just bow down and accept the idea that all emotion comes from logic, as i believe that "logic" is another scientific word that we use to try to classify things that "make sense".

i'm not refuting the fact that logic exists, by any means.  i just want to express the idea that i can't believe something like "emotion is really a manifestation of logical thought" as a general blanket-statement.

qualify this statement if you wish, and i may change my outlook on what you have said.

but i can't accept that as is.

the reason why i can't accept this is that everyone who seems to come to me with the thought that science and logic are the governing themes of life, the universe, and emotion... these people all take such an objective outlook on existance, i think.

science in it's current application in society is far too objective for my taste.  i can use it and attempt to have it emulate what i am actually percieving, but "understanding" is something that is far more subjective, rather than objective.  it's different for everybody. yes, it's a series of connections made by the person's brain and whatever, but there's more to it than the "meat", the human body, just processing electrons.  that's where i think the soul comes in.  but i don't want to rehash the whole thing and distract from the current points at hand.

anyway, this leads me to second the motion that entheon just made.  we can't just simply sign a waver to the idea that emotion does not "guide" the mechanics of music, because music itself is subjective by it's very application in human beings!

emotion may not have necesarily played a part in your basic assembly of the chord progression, but certainly it played a part in the original concept that made you begin the assembly.

and how is it that a person can perfectly assemble the chord progressions (such as one that you have demontrated in your post) and then expect that every person among your audience was intrigued by it?  people like music.  some people don't like the same kind of music.  is there a logical explanation for that?  i'd love to see some science report done on a person who DIDN'T like the music, and to see what freakin chemical the brain has an apparent "imblanace" of that caused their dislike.

music is more than just the assembly thereof.  "music" is the dream, the making, the performance, and the perception.  ... and consequently, i cannot bring myself to accept the idea that all of is "entirely unguided by emotion."

don't smack a label on what "music" is, because everybody you talk to will have a different idea, and thus your label will be "invalid" to them, just as our you tried to demonstrate that the emotional view of music is invalid.

don't be so scientific and logical about it.  i don't have a clue about a single chord progression.  i understand the ideas and theories behind them, but i don't sit down and think about a chord progression.  i search for the sound that is most in tune with what my emotion is.

i'm not interested in demonstrating my ability to make a I - IV - V - I progression.  i'm a bit more interested in trying to convey my emotion.  i'm not saying that's the way it is for everybody, but that's my take on it.  i have a very "stream of consciousness" voice in my music.  i don't give a flying rip what chord progression it uses, so long as it's doing it's job from my standpoint.

perhaps "it's job" means something different to you, in which case, i stand in respect for that view point.  but i still wish to say that even the assembly of the music is guided by emotion.




k, now i wanna say something about nicu24's post...

as you said, there's not much room for arguement about the fact that we come into existance by the way of chemicals.

i view ourselves in a way that is rather simplistic, and like every analogy, it has it's techinical problems, but i wish to share it anyway as a way of percieving what you have asked.

i would think of our bodies, the "meat," as something that is being crafted from the begining of our being concieved.  i htink of it like a car or an aircraft.  now, obviously, the airplain has no life in it whatsoever anyway, and would be capable of nothing even after assembly if it weren't for the person that pilots the machine.

i think our bodies are fairly similar.  i think that our bodies are the vessels in which our spirits pilot, in a sense.  without our spirits, the body would not function, because it has no pilots.  it's still capable of perception of data, but it has no interpreter on the inside to make up it's mind, so to speak.  without a pilot, an airplane has all of it's intruments still in tact.  it's certainly not broken... all of the stuff still works, but without the pilot, nothing happens.  again, this is the way i think of our body / spirit connection

as for when such a partnership truely begins... nobody can just lay it down on the table and say "hey this is how it is."  it's my beliefe though that the spirit becomes part of the body shortly before the actual birth process.  when exactly??  i cannot say, because i was too young to remember it first hand   but since (as i explained in a previous post) i think that our existance is more dimensional than just the 3 basics taht we tend to percieve with our eyes, a spirit could come and pair itself with our body at any time since it wouldn't really need a cleared area in order just push itself into the body

anyway, that's my thought.  i'm not sure if that exactly hits it on the head for you, in terms of my opinion, but hey. i tried.

huh, that's interesting... then how come emotion has the ability to skew logical thought to the point where it doesn't work anymore? that doesn't seem like a logical thing for a logical thought to create... seems to me we've got a little Catch-22 here...

I'm going to assume you didn't look up the definition of logic, because if you had, it would have surely ruined a whole half of your argument. I quickly googled a definition, and found one I liked:

"Logic is the the process whereby new assertions are produced from already established ones."

Logic can contradict itself. Take two ENTIRELY logical pieces of work, classical physics and quantum physics. Both follow extremely concise logic, but are contradictory in many points. So, we take both of these theories and utilize them where needed. Similarly, extreme hate for broccoli can overcome the urge to eat healthy. Both have true logical arguments: I hate broccoli because it tastes bad, and shall not eat it hence, or, I love broccoli because it keeps me healthier, and shall eat it hence. Your logic is action, my logic can be either action or passion. Your logic isn't what I had explained my ideas around.

And don't argue me about "action" vs. "passion". Look it up if you don't know.


by the way XenoX where the f8ck do you get your information? by what system do you determine who's who and what's what in the world of music which allows you to claim that some of the most well known and most often used chord progressions constitue what you claim to be not a valid chord change...

By valid chord change, I was referring to the left brain's point of view, so to speak.  As I had said earlier, "Things like that rely on greater intuition and to realize that IV can be extended as IIm, and therefore makes some amount of sense, and the determination of the whole to realize that the V is necessary to resolve to the I.". There is logic behind that chord progression, but logic which requires an insight to the reason behind following different logic.

playing a dominant with a major seventh seems to be "invalid" by your book and certainly is seen as unconventional if not invalid by The Book... i don't mean to speak for you, i can only infer, but it seems that based on some of the other much more simple items you have presented as invalid that this would easily qualify... there's no existing symbol for it... it's not in any way standard harmony, not expressable in standard terms... it contains 3 notes each a half-step apart... yet there's a place for it

I've got to say, what you just showed me is really cool. It's a very interesting *coughlogicalcough* look at the validity of the three semitone chord. But you present it in a way which is flawed, as one, my definition of a true musical scale is only a guiding principle, which can be relaxed to allow other things which do not fall by the principle, and is not a strict law as you made it out to be. See it as an instruction guide to building a house. Obviously, there's going to be things not covered in the guide. There might be a small hole where the living room should be, but you can stray from the ideals in the guide. Move the living room to the back of the house instead of the front, or fill up the hole by adding a cellar. Flexibility is key. Two, I'll quote the article in saying"To sum that up, we may not be hearing dom7+maj7, but instead a minor chord + a bVI7 chord.". You said the harmony could not be expressed in standard musical terms, but it just was. I'll admit that I did not think of this possibility in my theory of musical scales, but I'll conclude that my theory was not a law, and that we're not even speaking of scales but of chords. Ultimately, you mistook my ideas for laws, and that was a bad assumption to make. Remember that little ditty about the word "assume"? I think you do.


I'm going to skip over repeating arguments for further posts.


as entheon said, it would render all music from now on completely useless as it would all be the same and lack the main purpose behind music...creativity.

Alone, by the most simple of musical rules that exist, the number of possibilities are endless. Even the most basic of rules will yield many possibilities. Think of how many songs were composed long enough ago that classical music rules were still strict. Their chord progressions were varied, and that doesn't even delve into how many time signatures, key signatures, tempos, motifs, and such there were. I'm not even suggesting that my rules be followed completely, in fact quite the opposite, and the possibilities under even my PARTIAL set of rules are almost innumerable.


now i understand you might not all agree with this, but my ultimate question is again, where does this "soul" come into affect or where does it come from?

After reading your statements before this question, I was impressed at your analysis at chemical being and soul. However, I am tempted to disagree entirely with the existence of soul at all. I am not speaking of the fictitious recognized in blues, when one musician would say to another, "play it with more soul". That soul, and maybe even the one you acknowledge, are really the shifting of the musical incorporation of the brain to the right, playing from experience, without the almost imperceptable tendency to hesitate and play without the perfect feel accomplished otherwise. I do not believe in souls, rather that what most believe as a soul is really just a ever growing contemplation of experience, as any two things that occur within reasonable margin, or within reasonable importance, form a link within the vast bundles of neurons, and whenever one is thought of, the other is activated, which may or may not lead to different actions on part of the body.

Also, if you believe in souls, then does a soul carry memory? If you agree, then what about people in car accidents that lose long term memory, or people with amnesia? Did whatever affect them cause them to lose part of their souls? Does a soul carry sensory perception? If you agree, then what about people who are blind, or deaf? Are they missing parts of their souls? If you agree to all the questions I could ask, then what is a soul? Nothingness? That is why I don't believe in souls.


i believe in a particual portion of us that i called a soul.  this is where i believe our personality "dwells", if you will.

Personality is logical, in it's own way. I have a really bad habit of saying "I'll be honest..." before saying something of typical importance. This stems from when I first thought of saying that, and a friend of mine said, "That sounded quite stupid". I annoyed him for a while by repeating that before every sentence. Then it stuck. It's now part of my personality due to correct logical function. I also have a tendency of getting angry over liberal/conservative political matters. I have a logical reason for that too, that most people are too ignorant to even argue about them, or at least to acknowledge a point. All of this constitutes my personality, none of it soul.

i believe that "logic" is another scientific word that we use to try to classify things that "make sense".

Things make sense in the strangest of ways. For example, can you explain the photoelectric effect? I barely can. Our common sense tells us it is implausible, but logic makes it work through abstract and difficult principles. Almost anything can be said to be logical in this way, even emotion.

science in it's current application in society is far too objective for my taste.

Isn't that what science is supposed to be? Without objectiveness, Newton would have never pondered the apple falling from the tree. He would have thought that it was meant to happen, and gravity may have never been discovered.

i can use it and attempt to have it emulate what i am actually percieving, but "understanding" is something that is far more subjective, rather than objective.

Understanding is finally ascertaining the knowledge of the logic used behind a situation. You may see the formula c=pi*2r and say, "that makes no sense". But looking closer, you see that 2r is really the diameter, and that pi is really the amount of times the diameter fits around the circumference. This is understanding based on logic. Some understanding requires deeper logic, like music. You may not even conciously understand it, but somewhere in the recesses of your mind, your brain uses logic to decipher it. Subjectiveness is complicated logic.


anyway, this leads me to second the motion that entheon just made.  we can't just simply sign a waver to the idea that emotion does not "guide" the mechanics of music, because music itself is subjective by it's very application in human beings!

Emotion does not guide music because music relationships are mathematical in form. The information for musical understanding is drawn from the neurons, not from emotion. Emotion is just the consequence of certain neurons firing. Happiness does not cause you to hit an F, an A, and a C. This principle is guided by the left brain neurons deciding that these notes would fit mathematically. This may stem from the same neurons emotion does, but it is not emotion.

emotion may not have necesarily played a part in your basic assembly of the chord progression, but certainly it played a part in the original concept that made you begin the assembly.

Of course. But whether or not you choose to make a sad song or a happy song due to emotion does not guide whether you decide to do a descending bass line theme or a typical circle pattern one.

and how is it that a person can perfectly assemble the chord progressions (such as one that you have demontrated in your post) and then expect that every person among your audience was intrigued by it?

Logic differs from person to person. I may like it more or less, but it still remains that our mind makes sense of it.

Continued from previous post...


I actually don't like that chord progression at all. It's too simple. I've heard it to many times. My neurons are tired of that. In fact, I really don't like too many simple chord progressions. I like Thelonious Monk. He uses progressions that are new to me, and are harder to compute. However, I still recognize the dissonance, harmony, and resolution of the I - IV - V - I chord progression.

i'd love to see some science report done on a person who DIDN'T like the music, and to see what freakin chemical the brain has an apparent "imblanace" of that caused their dislike.


Ooh, sarcasm.

music is more than just the assembly thereof.  "music" is the dream, the making, the performance, and the perception.

The dream, the making, the performance, and the perception all are logical. Each one has nearly predictable consequences as to whether it goes to the fourth, or the third. But this is uncharacterized by emotion.

don't smack a label on what "music" is, because everybody you talk to will have a different idea, and thus your label will be "invalid" to them, just as our you tried to demonstrate that the emotional view of music is invalid.

That's like saying you can't smack a label on soft drinks in general because some people don't think some are sweet enough, or because they don't like them. Of course music will forever defy definition, but isn't that what this thread is about, defining music, coming up with a base pattern, a philosophy of music? Does your statement mean I'm free to say your view is invalid? I think it is, but does that make it not so? If not, then why not for mine?

don't be so scientific and logical about it.  i don't have a clue about a single chord progression.  i understand the ideas and theories behind them, but i don't sit down and think about a chord progression.  i search for the sound that is most in tune with what my emotion is.

That's not true. Your logic stems from your sound that is most in tune with what you feel like it should be. Really, what you feel like it should be is your subconscious deciding, "should it be a happy step? or a sad step? maybe we should make it complex, and complicated, like jazz... or maybe a steady, but interesting flatted fifth substitute. For the sound i hear in my head, the correct answer is sad step, let's do that...".

perhaps "it's job" means something different to you, in which case, i stand in respect for that view point.  but i still wish to say that even the assembly of the music is guided by emotion.

I think our conversation is inherently inaccurate, as I think that when you have an emotion, and want to write a song about it, you have precharacterized emotions for set songs. You may think "Hey Jude" is sad, so you drag a little of those chord progressions into your head, and ponder them. But whether or not those chords alone are sad or not for you don't matter. I can think of five songs that I feel are "sad", and use chord progressions from them to make a happy sounding song. I'll name them too...

- Tune Up (Miles Davis) Em7 - A7 - Dmaj7
- Take Five (Dave Brubeck) Dorian Mode
- Bemsha Swing (Thelonious Monk) Cmaj7 - Am7- Abmaj7
- Somewhere Over The Rainbow Fmaj7 - Fm7
- Goodbye Porkpie Hat (Charles Mingus) Adim (Am7 in this case) - Ebm7

Em7 - A7 - Dmaj7 - Bm7 - Bbmaj7 - Bbm7

This does not sound sad at all. Don't believe me? Try it out. It actually sounds really like strange and twisted, much unlike the plain nature of many of the songs on there. Thanks for the inspiration. And thanks for not having your cranial cavity in the other cavity that kind of rhymes with it. 

This article is entitled

"Say it again sam!" or "How many times can you say the same thing?"

by the way XenoX don't ever assume anything. as for your cough cough logical cough cough comment: I never said I was not a highly logical person, I love logic in fact. I'm quite familiar with the definition of logic and I've studied it rather in depth. I know what a syllogism is and I know what constitutes the valid syllogistic path of reasoning etc etc etc.

Logic is the the process whereby new assertions are produced from already established ones.

Exactly! key phrase: Already established ones. Then we have to keep asking ourselves, from what were THOSE conclusions established. Eventually we reach the chicken and the egg connundrum. Because it is the already established assertions which make logic work. Without already established assertions logic has nothing on which to operate. Logic cannot create assertions it can only connect them. Thats it. Logic connects things, it does not create them. Without things to connect, logic is useless. We must create our own assertions first, test them for truth, and then and only then can we proceed to use them amongst logically valid structures to find new connections between these already established ideas. Q.E.D. it is rather impossible for logic to contradict itself because valid logic is valid logic, end of story. Once logic is valid the only thing we have left on which to hinge our arguments is the truthful basis of the assertions made.

So... no. Logic cannot contradict itself. Logically valid structures are logically valid. That quantum physics usese logically valid structure does not deem the logical structure of general relativity to be invalid. The conclusions arrived at are what contradict each other, not the logic. As I've said already, one can debate logic very successfully but one will have a very difficult time debating truth. Truths can contradict each other. Logically valid thought patterns are still logically valid.

By the way... where in my last post did I attempt any argument relating to "action vs. passion" because I don't recall doing so nor do I see it. Apparently you have again assumed and taken the liberty of applying a label to me which you don't have any real knowlegable basis for the application therof. Apparently you are claiming to know what "my logic" is which would imply that there are multiple versions of logic. Even if there is such a thing as "my" logic, I in fact think you are incorrect as I would consider my logic in my world is neither action nor passion. I think what you refer to is the originating root ideas from which logic proceeds: the assertions. And yes, any root idea is fair game, because if the logic is valid the logic is valid regardless of if the idea from which it stems is true or not. Therefor you could stem a logical flow from two contradictory ideas which come from passion and arrive at differing conclusions. The logic is still valid, but the conclusions may contradict. This is my point. I'll illustrate.

The classic validly correct syllogism of logic:

    If all humans (B's) are mortal (A), (major)
    and all Greeks (C's) are humans (B's), (minor)
    then all Greeks (C's) are mortal (A). (conclusion)

for the logic to be correct the flow must be correct... B to A, C to B, thus C to A... any other flow is invalid logic.

    If one who wants to be healthy (B's) will eat brocolli (A), (major)
    and I (C's) am one who wants to be healthy (B's), (minor)
    then I (C's) will eat brocolli (A). (conclusion)

    If something that tastes bad (B's) is brocolli (A), (major)
    and I (C's) won't eat something that tastes bad (B's), (minor)
    then I (C's) won't eat brocolli (A). (conclusion)

The contradiction does not occur in the logical flow it occurs in the truth of the premises. These thought patterns are in fact both technically logically valid afaik, though I'm only human and prone to error... however based on the two brocolli statements which XenoX presented, these would be the underlying logical arguments. It is their conclusions that are contradictory, not their logic, and that was my point. What I mean to say is that there is no My Logic and there is no Your Logic, there is one logic, there are many beginning premises. It is these premises which we must debate. De-bunking logically invalid arguments is the easy thing to do. De-bunking untruths is the difficult thing to do. If truth were as evident as logic then holy wars would not exist. Each religion has premises from which it stems. If you've got book which tells you the truths of the universe and then you are able to draw logically sound conclusions from those truths, and another person has a different book with different truths and he draws logically valid conclusions from those truths... who is right and who is wrong? My answer is simple. No one. In fact everyone is right but that doesn't mean one must accept both or even either of the conclusions. In the brocolli example what if one realizes the conundrum. Well... one must find what is more true. Perhaps one does wish to be healthy yet to them brocolli tastes bad. One might hold both originating premises to be true, yet one must decided which truth has more weight. I always seem to manage finding ways around contradictory conclusions... for example:

"I know brocolli will make me healthy but can't stand the taste so I eat peas instead"

or

"I know brocolli will make me healthy and I hate the taste but I just eat it anyway cuz it's good for me"

I've known enough people in my life to see both of these solutions put into effective motion and used to satisfy the great brocolli conundrum. Which person is more right? To me the person who is more right is the person who has accepted the connundrum and gone on with their lives using an effective solution. The person who is more wrong is the one stuck, like a computer, in an infinite loop saying "but, but, but, but, but" and flip flopping between the two conclusions simply because they both contain equally valid logic. It's not the logic that matters, it's the value judgement of the original assertions. Effectively speaking: truth is ultimately a value judgement. More specifically truth is an evaluation of importance of data. This evaluation of importance is truth when it provides the most number of solutions to the most number of areas of life under which it is subject. In this manner truth is a sliding scale. Some things are more true than others. That brocolli is good for you is more true in some ways than it is in others. That brocolli is good for your health might be true... that brocolli is good for your taste buds (and thus your psychological health) might be false.

Both options seem to be perfect solutions in my world and I'm sure there are perhaps other solutions as well. You see, simply because the conclusions of logic contradict each other does not make the logic invalid. In fact, I think that contradicting conclusions are the why logic exists and also why it serves a purpose and also, just like TonightsLastSong's ideas concerning musical interpretation... that contradictory conclusions are a thing of beauty to be held in regard. If there were only one conclusion to be drawn from any topic in the universe there would be no need for logic in the first place and thus logic would not serve much of a useful purpose. Besides, if there were only one conclusion to be drawn then there wouldn't be much of a reason to live because IMO we'd know it all already. Even if we didn't know it all and there were only one set of conclusions to draw, then we could simply follow the yellow brick road of logical thought until we arrived at enlightenment or heaven or where ever it is supposed to take us.

Well, there's been brough up the question of a soul now and what it is and whatnot. I knew it was only a matter of time before this topic crept up, but I'm glad it did because to me it is an important consideration in the realm of philosophy.

WARNING WARNING: Armchair philosophy is and has been going on for some time now on this thread. If you only accept authoritative sources for your philosophic ideas please consult your physician and preist before reading any further!

First of all, for the purposes of clarity, I will be defining a soul as that classical concept of what it is. Some sort of invisible infinitely small entity which is not actually made of physical energy or matter but which does posess conciousness and also that souls do exist.

So... what do I have to say about it? Well... I do consider all the questions which have been posed very worthwhile. Nicu proposed something like exactly WHEN does this soul combine with the chemistry.

If I had to take a stab at that... my guess would be that it merges with the chemicals approximately at the time at which it realizes that the survival potential of the vehicle has acheived an ample balance and stability. My guess at when this is would be approximately right after the sperm which won the race has won the race and actually merged with the egg. I mean, if I was a soul looking for a new vehicle, that's approximately when I'd consider it viable for use. After all, as nicu pointed out, the survival potential of a solitary sperm is rather appalling. In fact my guess is that one has a better chances of winning at the track than one does gambling on sperm riding. However, once a sperm and an egg have fused, the survival potential of that chemical system is now extremely high and will in fact more than likely increase. This is, obviously disregarding unfortunate mitigating circumstaces such as premature termination for whatever reason. This last statement obviously borders on the abortion debate but as I've said once before I absolutely do not want this thread to turn into an abortion debate. If you care, suffice it to say I have views on the topic which I will not express here but which you may be able to garner if you care enough to send my a private message. Anyway.

This theory of maximum and balanced vehicle survival viability seems like a good one to me. There is however another theory which I have come accross which seems to be a plausible one. It does require a bit more acceptance of some metaphysical concepts.

There is a theory which has been proposed which I beleive actually follows quite naturally in line with the desire for linkage between the concepts of chemistry and spirituality. This theory states that a soul actually enters the body 49 days after conception. From what I understand, it is at this time when there is an initial release of a rather massive quantity of Di-Methyl Triptamine from the pineal gland in the brain. This release of DMT as it is called is thought to act as and be responsible for "kick starting" the fetus into actual life, rather than remain in a state of wrote cell multiplication. Sort of like turning the key in the ignition. It is at this juncture when the limbs are tested for motor controll and it is after this point at which the baby is able to and begins to kick and move about.

The pineal gland has in fact been termed the "seat of the soul" by some. In classical Buddhist understanding, after death and prior to re-birth one must walk through a number of other realms or planes of existence known as the "Bardos" during which one will undergo various trials and tribulations. This process is supposed to take exactly 49 days to complete. Thus these numbers seem to corollate. Truth? You decide. Interesting theory for sure.

what most believe as a soul is really just a ever growing contemplation of experience, as any two things that occur within reasonable margin, or within reasonable importance, form a link within the vast bundles of neurons, and whenever one is thought of, the other is activated, which may or may not lead to different actions on part of the body

hmm... and we arrive yet again at the theory of meat... which I disagree with entirely but I respect your opinion. logically I have no real issues with it. it is not however truth for me.

does a soul carry memory?

yes, it is often called Karma by some. I just call it memory.

If you agree, then what about people in car accidents that lose long term memory, or people with amnesia?

Your logic in this carries some unseen assertions which I don't think logically fit together. In one respect this asserts that a soul and memory are distinct and separate entities, and in one sense it asserts that a soul is the same thing as memories or that a soul is actually nothing but a stack of memories. It all comes down to these initial assertions. This is the realm in which logic works wonders. Whenever one sees a statement such as "if this then that" or "since blah all blurpies must blink" we are dealing with logic, and whenever we deal with logic there is always some sort of assertion being made from which the conclusions stem. In fact, there are multiple assertions.

Essentially we are assuming here that the soul carries memory AND that memory can actually be lost erased or destroyed in the first place AND we are assuming that a soul is actually just a pile of memory or perhaps simply a memory shelf, a memory container... and not some more intelligent concious creature. In which case if we asserted that a memory is a soul or that a soul is just memories, then if you don't beleive in souls then you don't beleive in memory either, obviously this is only true when we are also asserting that something called a soul does exist because this could be prooven logically invalid if souls do not exist. Here we are yet again in the realm of assertions, and remember that for the purposes of my argument I am asserting that a soul is a real and existing entity. Memory seems to be rather obvious and evident as a real existential fact of life to me. I don't think memory can actually ever be lost, I simply view it to be inaccessible. Just because a brain does not have direct and immediate access to a memory doesn't mean that memory does not exist. For illustration: there is a concept known as "repressed memories" in which a memory is not destroyed but merely inaccessible.

Did whatever affect them cause them to lose part of their souls?

no, because it's not lost, it's just inaccessible. By that token, then if re-incarnation is a real fact then we've infact been loosing parts of our souls for millions of years. In this manner of logic, living a life and experiencing time would (probably) equate rather directly to the size and growth of a soul and thus each live would make our souls grow larger and smaller larger and smaller. I don't feel this to be true. I don't think a soul ever enlargens in size. If a soul were able to increase or decrease in size then in that way, even, you'd never loose your soul because you'd always be in a constant balanced flux of sorts wherein your soul never looses all of it's "mass" and never gains infinite mass either. This is also assuming that a soul has some sort of mass anyway, or that memory is the same thing as a soul. If a soul contains memory and memory is actually in fact destructable I don't think that would automatically equate the loss of memory with the loss of soul. Memory and soul are two distinct items in this case.

Does a soul carry sensory perception?

yes. roughly speaking, if a soul can carry memory then it would pretty much follow that a soul can and does also carry sensory perception. Memories are simply recordings of sensory perceptions. So essentially you are asking the same question you just asked.

If you agree, then what about people who are blind, or deaf? Are they missing parts of their souls?

not at all, because as I have just pointed out this would require an equation in which soul and memory are equivalent which I don't think is true at all. I think a soul carries memory. Memory is not the essence and make up of a soul. A soul is a soul, distinct from memories. Memories cannot function, compute, evaluate, enjoy, enrage, act, befriend, create, employ or otherwise engage in any of the complex activies known to concious beings. Memories just are, they are static recordings. Anyway, these types of people are indeed missing large portions of their perceptory data banks, but they're not missing portions of their souls.

If you agree to all the questions I could ask, then what is a soul? Nothingness? That is why I don't believe in souls.

It's rather impossible to agree with all the questions you ask because only about half of them are actually able to be agreed to in a yes or no fashion, the other half require some explanation. For the most part, for you critical questions, I seem to agree with them. For their resultant logically derived questions I don't agree with them. I beleive your logic to be invalid in this respect though I have not conducted a thorough analysis of it and I also cannot speak for you and thus won't try to assume that I know exactly what your originating assertions and thus syllogistic thought pattern flows consisted of.

Why you don't beleive in souls doesn't seem very logical to me is what I'm saying. Most of what I proposed is indeed what many would consider straight opinion. It is what some would consider straight fact. The only fact is that it is subject to interpretation. The only other fact is, most of us don't really know for sure one way or the other, the best we have is our educated guess. The best I have is personal experiential first hand knowlege to corroborate what I say. But then again that's just me... and for the purposes of the general populace I might as well be hallucinating. Therfore I am a cheese hamburger

if i were judging this pissing contest, i'd say you all lose.  i don't doubt that you are all very smart people, but i bet that the only person who reads a post and says, "man, the author of this post is one smart dude," is the author of the post.  i also enjoy debating philosophy, but you guys aren't even debating you are just trying to sound smarter than the last post, or trying to make the last post sound stupider than it was.

Good day to you sirs.

*ahem*

i believe jkomdl has just slapped a label on us.  man i hate that.

now, to continue:

(and please note that i could care less who "sounds" smarter, because as entheon has said several times, truth is what i hold true for myself, and so i feel absolutely no desire to "out-do" any other person on here.  i might retaliate because of an inaccurate accusation, but i do not wish to get a one-up on someone.  i am here simply because i enjoy the reading, the views, and the thoughts that are brought into my mind.)

oh, yes.  to continue:

science in it's current application in society is far too objective for my taste.

Isn't that what science is supposed to be?

i guess i should clarify:  the mindset in people that science has a habit of creating is far too objective for my taste.  science MUST be objective, i do admit, in order to function.  i am not arguing that objectivness should be done away with.  sometimes, it is all that we can rely on to draw up facts.

Emotion does not guide music because music relationships are mathematical in form. The information for musical understanding is drawn from the neurons, not from emotion. Emotion is just the consequence of certain neurons firing. Happiness does not cause you to hit an F, an A, and a C. This principle is guided by the left brain neurons deciding that these notes would fit mathematically. This may stem from the same neurons emotion does, but it is not emotion.

perhaps you do not understand the word "guide" in the context you use it.  i say once again:  emotion certainly does guide music.  it is not necessarily responsible for every little placement of a note on a staff, but the keyword is "guide"!  if i were to guide someone in trying to teach them how to play the guitar, they are still responsible for actually learning a chords.  since their brain did the actual work, does that mean that i didn't guide them?  emotion guides music in the very same way.

Ooh, sarcasm.

i did not intend sarcasm, though my vocabulary i see suggested it.  i apologize.

Does your statement mean I'm free to say your view is invalid? I think it is, but does that make it not so? If not, then why not for mine?

of course it does, but you wish to render all other statements but your own, as false.  i am not so naive to think that i can make up rules and forget that others might use them as well.  it was not my intention whatsoever to try to render you "dead in the water."  i know that you may say the same, but the difference in our views is that i say "hey, don't just label the so-talked-about music-emotion relationship as 'invalid.' " and you say "hey, your view is invalid."  i am trying to stop you from just closing all doors of consideration.  i am trying to keep them open.  or at least, more open than you seem to want it to be.

That's not true.

bull crap, dude.  i now take my liberty to stop you from just slamming that door in my face.  do not tell me that my emotion does not steer me, but rather my idea of a chord progression.  the chord progression is the last thing i'm thinking about.  of course some chords sound "sad" or whatever, but there's more to it than just picking a chord progression.  and i would like to point out (randomly) that your own paragraph here suggests the idea that emotion guides music.

i apologize.  i do not have more time to continue writing.  perhaps i can finish tomarrow before someone else posts

just a few things and i think im done with this whole topic, because its not really goin anywhere...thanks to all its been fun, i enjoyed it.  i will however keep myself updated on what others say, because it is still very interesting.

so, the way its looked to me with the last couple of posts is science vs. opinion.  and thast fine i guess, but yes my personal opinion is to agree with science.  the way i "personally" see it is this:

all of the examples XenosX gives he backs up scientifically.  all of the examples entheon and tonightslastsong give are strictly opinion. i also back up all of my statements scientifically. 

i guess what im trying to say is that for every example ever given thus far, minus a few, such as memory loss (which i agree is not lost, but inaccessable...however still scientifically because its neurons that are no longer able to associate with each other)...are able to be explained through science, but nobody to this date can explain what role the soul actually plays in any of these examples.  so why is it that science is wrong or not quite right when researchers in every area of knowledge have only come up with scientific explanations not explanations of the soul? 

now if humans have souls, do animals and plants have souls too?  animals certainly react to many things the way humans do.  animals have personalities.  animals have memory.  so do they then have a soul too?  we can do all of the same experiments on animals (psychologically) and get the same results.  so there is no difference in how humans and animals form memories and learn (except that humans are of course able to process more information).  so since  humans are naturally i guess "smarter" than animals, do they have less (not speaking in terms of mass or size, rather than in terms of character) of a soul because animals souls are not able to "pilot" its "meat" as well as human souls? 

well i guess ill leave it at that for now and if i really feel necessary either clarrify or add to that.  but ill end with a nice little quote since eintstein has been quoted several times already...

"the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible" - einstein

jkomdl, hehehe... insert foot into mouth...

hmmm.... so.... you come in and piss on it by calling it a pissing contest thereby becoming a participant in a pissing contest and then claim that you're not going to participate in a pissing contest cuz you don't like pissing contests but that you're only going to piss on the pissing contest and then leave... very insightful way of doing things...

and for the record... I am the only one who sounds smart on here, and I love the sound of my own voice, and the only reason i post is, obviously, because i love to read my own posts and see how smart i sound... obviously it's not because i have any interest in expressing my own views or having a good natured well tempered debate on musical philosophy... no... couldn't be that... and I like vanilla ice cream, and I have 3 dogs a cat and a llama, and I can use big words that you can't understand, and I can type faster than any of yall...

so eat my shorts!

P.S. oh yeah and i'd like to point out to yall that this was in fact intended to be an opinion thread in the first place... if it's scientifically prooven already then it's not really much of a philosophy is it? just a thought... carry on

yet again, Nicu i find the logic in the flow of your questioning to miss some critical details...

do animals and plants have souls too?  

yes, why wouldn't they... they are life forms...

animals certainly react to many things the way humans do.  animals have personalities.  animals have memory.  so do they then have a soul too?  

uhhh, repeating yourself... but.... yes, they do

so since  humans are naturally i guess "smarter" than animals, do they have less (not speaking in terms of mass or size, rather than in terms of character) of a soul because animals souls are not able to "pilot" its "meat" as well as human souls?

no... not at all... this logical flow would only work if we stemmed from the idea that a soul and a memory are the same thing... or if we stemmed from the idea that a soul and a brain are the same thing... which as I defined "soul" prior to this in the widely known "classical sense" of some sort of detached infinitely small concious entity... no... animals have in fact, i beleive, exactly the same variety of souls that humans do. same for plants.

plants actually have been prooven to be concious... yes... scientifically... in fact plants have been prooven to be psychic... yes... scientifically... read a book called "The Secret Life of Plants" by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, ISBN: 0060915870 ... if you don't beleive me. There's your "scientific proof" for you in the same format which you provide the "proof" of which I asked.

Anyway... a soul is able to pilot the "meat" of an animal just as well as it is able to pilot the meat of a human. The ability to pilot it is no less... the limitations of the meat itself may be greater for sure, but the ability to pilot it would not seem to me to be any different.

And yes, we obviously fall into this trap of thinking that this whole debate is Science VS. Opinion... but may i remind you that maybe... just maybe... it's not a battle or a contest here at all... maybe we could view it as a meeting and melding of the minds.

I've never once said I don't accept scientific principles. I am a fan of science, it has brought us many things. I do however feel that science has lost track of sight of it's original purpose and original goal. Now i must qualify this and state that, sure not all scientists are like this... however, many a scientist and branch of science estimates those things which it studies and just so many molecules and evaluates those systems as such. Evaluating and estimating a human as just so many molecules is rediculous to me. Again, i'm not saying all sciences do this, however a tendency I see in the sciences is to render objects essentially devoid of inherrent meaning or worth other than their physically measureable properties quantities and actions. It would be rediciulous to study a computer as a combination of plastics and ignore the electricty running through it. It would be rediculous to study a computer as metals plastics and the electricity running throught them and ignore the logical patterns and functional actions and abilities it posesses. It would be rediculous to study a computer as only it's mathematical processing capabilities and ignore the ideas and intentions of the creatore behind it. Similarly it seems to me to be rediculous to study a tree as just so much xylem and phloem and sun-energy-food-converting processor appendages and ignore the greater meaning and depth of it in regards to it's overall place in the ecosystem and world culture... and ALSO perhaps, the creator of it... who came up with idea for a tree?

For now, yes... in the realm of the soul, we have naught but opinions and ideas. But that is where science began as well. Science is no different from opinion. Science simply investigates ideas to see if and how often they naturally occur. So what? Scienctific "fact" in the end is just opinion which has been observed to occur more often than not. The best we can do with science is a high percentage of inductive logic. So why don't we combine these two fields? These two endeavors? Even the first scientists would have been considered just as crazy as any modern New Age Wiccan Spiritualist... thousands of years ago, considering that disease was caused by tiny things so small they were invisible would have labeled you as insane. Considering even further that perhaps the entire universe was actually made out of even smaller but similar particles would have probably gotten you shipped off to the funny farm. Yet there were people brave enough to pose these ideas without any actual way, at the time... to proove or measure them. Yet they had the knowlege and conviction within themselves to beleive it true.

So... is there REALLY that much of a difference between science and opinion? I think not... science is just a specialized "structurally observed" form of opinion. We must learn that all things in this world are really just ideas and opinions at their core, and if we want to actually GET somewhere by using logical thought, we must not only analyze the logic flow itself but we must critically analyze the base premises from which the logical conclusions stem and evaluate them for importance, workability and truth. Otherwise we go on wild goose chase digressions into the emotionally charged landscapes of our own minds. Just as in the brocolli connundrum... we should all be equally able to reach the conclusion that a soul does exist and that it does not. Once we're there we must then weigh all the initial assertions from which that logic stems and then evaluate the conclusions for their importance in regards to our own lives.

No amount of science in the world can provide me with what is right, wrong, good or bad... i can have all the scientific data in existence and still that doesn't give me a way to make a value judgement. In the end, i've still got to form my OWN thoughts, otherwise known as "opinions" based on this data...

SO... Science and opinion are not so far from each other.

what he said.

i agree with it all, i think.  nothing's popped up as a big red flag, so i'm going to just come out and say that i think i agree with entheon's previous post wholeheartedly

now, if i edit this post later, it might make for some funny read-back commentary, but i'll leave that for a future time 

specifically, i agree about the animals and plants having souls as well.  i do not think that their sould is any less complete, as entheon sorta said, but rather that the meat that they pilot does not have the same abilities that the human race has.

also, i embrace the idea that memories are not lost, but rather, the connection to which we might have to access them is severed.  it's like if my arm got chopped off... it's not that it's not existant anymore, just rather... i can't exactly move it at my will...

sorry, that was a sloppy analogy, but still, it illustrates to the degree that i intended to show.

i also believe that science is a matter of opinion.  it is not so fluxy as other "armchair" opinions, because it is in a constant forming processes, never complete, never resting.

i do not wish to cast science off, as i touched in my previous post, but rather, i do not wish to use it to close doors that we cannot possibly rule out...

like... "souls don't exist."  that's a big reach.  just as in science and other experiments, and similar to the "innocent until proven guilty" idea, we can't just say that souls don't exist by just analyzing the meat.  as entheon said, it would be shameful to judge a computer while only looking at it from a limited point of view.

likewise, we shouldn't look at a human being with such a limited viewpoint.  we can't rule out the existance of a soul because of science's current understanding.  understanding is almost always incomplete.  that's the great quest in life, if you ask me.  not to understand EVERYTHING, but to achieve an understanding of life that you know to be truth.

this is why i use the word "understanding" with much caution and disclaimer to what it means.

the equation that was presented earlier... it's not that i can't understand it right at first, until i start applying knowledge to dissassemble it...  TRUE, that is what i must do, but i do it to better comprehend the task at hand, not because i perfectly understand the mathmatical manipulation and visual affects that it has by applying such numbers to each other.  i do it because it is a process that i have become familiar with.  and hey, i was the math wiz in my graduating class.  i was at least a year (a lot of times 2 years) ahead of anybody else in my age group.  it's not that i'm un-learned in the ways of math, but i cannot confess to having a perfect understanding of mathmatics.

anyway, i took the long way around saying that above paragraph.  sorry.

beyond that, i believe that we can achieve understanding within science, but it is incomplete because science is incomplete.  it may have analyzed it to death, but science is still in the making.  it constantly is.  and once again, i do not wish to discard science when i said that it was too objective for my tastes.  science is wonderful, but it is limited to our 5 reliable senses.  i cannot see how science can lead one to believe that a soul does not exist if it can't directly "prove" (there's that bad word again... sorry) that a soul isn't there.

now, likewise, one cannot necessarily "prove" that a sould DOES exist, because once again... we are limited by the senses.  that's why there is so much opinion within philosophy, because there can be no facts other than what we literally see.  even then, this becomes tainted by personality or by more opinion.

this is the nature of theory.  it is based on what we percieve and believe, and left for others to consider, one such "other" is the self.  sometimes we ponder this stuff so much that maybe we convince ourselves otherwise, but regardless, it is a big, unending, role-playing, ever-changing game.

(hurrah for RPGs!  ...sorry, i could not resist.  i did not mean to make life sound like an rpg, b/c i'm certainly not out to save the world  ... or the planet.  not that i don't care about the .... nevermind.)

To the thin line beyond which you really can’t fake.
 - Robert Hunter

Never understood what my body was for
 - Tom Marshall

Scientists have yet to notice any life on other planets in the universe, including ours
 - entheon

They're just afraid of change
 - Shanon Hoon

I remember throwin' punches around
And preachin' from my chair
 - Pete Townsend

Give me things that won't get lost
Like a coin that won't get tossed, rollin' home to you
 - Neil Young

Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
 - Pink Floyd

All you need is love
 - John Lennon

ill add a good one for ya...


Music is a language that speaks directly to the divine
- Trey Anastasio

nice.

double nice! nicu you're cooler than i thought you were LOL!

i freakin love Trey... damn he's good

haha.  whered you think the name "NICU" came from.  phish is my favorite band.  too bad they broke up but oh well i guess, right.  just because i like to debate (and yes many of my posts on here were strictly for the fun of posing things to have an intellectual debate about...notice how most of my later topics were questions) doesnt make me a bad guy.  and yea, trey is more then damn good, hes amazing.  we should ask XenosX if trey plays by reciting notes in a single scale or mode because thats when they are supposed to be played, or if its creativity.  because im sure we both know the answer to that question.

"that's known as Acute Paranoid A Good Little Slave Should Live His Life In Fear So He Doesn't Rock The Cradle Syndrome. Take some viagra, that can help... all you need to overcome that is some big balls my friend!"

   what that mean?

Orlando:

hah! just as i suspected! btw... that's old news

Entheon... what did you suspect? I've been away so not been on the board.

 Nicu...  I know that I've not been specific about the specific brain structures invovled in our processing of music because I dont think its that important at this point (left hemi vs right hemi etc... you prolly know about the experiments regarding this better than I do)
     All I'm getting  at is that music is  physiological phenomena and serves no greater, ethereal purpose or devine function, the minutia here aren't that important. When all is said and done, I suppose that that's the crux of this.

music ... serves no greater, ethereal purpose or devine function

i wouldn't go so far as to say that music has an ethereal purpose or devine function... my main purpose in writing is simply to refute the idea that music is a... a... (i can't come up with the word...)

when you all talk about music, you make it sound like a reflex or somethin.  people keep saying that personality effects it, but then someone comes back with a big stick made out of science, and they say that i make the kind of music i make because my brain says that these two notes or chords should follow one another.  i speak mainly for myself (as i do not mean to impose my opinion on anybody else) when i say that ... "well, dang.  that's not how i do it."

i know that XenosX is reffering to the much more subtle processes of the brain, but still.  XenosX, you make it sound like i've got absolutely no say in what i write,that it's just a natural reflex or occurance that my brain is trying to pattern.  there's plenty of people throughout history that write music that i don't even wish to CALL "music."  some of it even follows all of your lydian and dorian and hypodorian and ionian modes.  i understand how they work and all of that, but my brain certainly does not manifest that.

wanna know why?  because i don't like it.  that's a very simplified way to explain why i don't do it, but ... isn't that at the core of the matter?  at least for me, that is.  like i said, i wish to speak for no one else.

i think that's how this all ties in with the soul.  "I" dwell in this body as a spirit, which forms up a soul.  my personality is something that i believe to be part of my spirit, not of my meat.  generally speaking, the meat for every human body is the same, and thus the variance between personality and likes and dislikes for certain sounds come from my spirit.

now... how can one possibly explain how a spirit contains personality?

nobody's ever gonna know until they're long dead.    i believe in a life after death, as in a spirit life, and then also a ressurection, as I am a christian.  the only reason i bring that up is to say that i trust in the fact that we'll all figure it out someday.  but it'll have to be beyond this mortal life, and not a day sooner.

XenoX said, by now quite a while earlier...

if you believe in souls, then does a soul carry memory? If you agree, then what about people in car accidents that lose long term memory, or people with amnesia? Did whatever affect them cause them to lose part of their souls? Does a soul carry sensory perception? If you agree, then what about people who are blind, or deaf? Are they missing parts of their souls? If you agree to all the questions I could ask, then what is a soul? Nothingness? That is why I don't believe in souls.

wait... what? so basically you just asked a bunch of questions you don't know the answer to and that's why you don't beleive in souls?

that seems a little silly to me

phew... took me all that long winded reasoning to finally realize that this is what doesn't sit right with me

when you all talk about music, you make it sound like a reflex or somethin.  people keep saying that personality effects it, but then someone comes back with a big stick made out of science, and they say that i make the kind of music i make because my brain says that these two notes or chords should follow one another.  i speak mainly for myself (as i do not mean to impose my opinion on anybody else) when i say that ... "well, dang.  that's not how i do it."

there is this beautiful thing called "the unconcious".  you may not "think" you are composing your songs based on any thing, but your unconcious is.  you may not directly be thinking of what two chords should go together or what notes will sound good together, but most likely your unconcious is.  if you wanna call your unconcious your soul, thats fine i guess.  but if such a thing of a "soul" exists, i wouldnt link it too much to the unconcious.  simply because in many psych experiments the unconcious has been sort of "tapped" and altered and all sorts of fun stuff like that.  so unless you are open to the idea that the soul too can be altered, then you might wanna consider your unconcious and your soul two different things.

i do consider my unconcious and my spirit two different thing.

though... ( i quote myself ... )

i know that XenosX is reffering to the much more subtle processes of the brain, but still.  XenosX, you make it sound like i've got absolutely no say in what i write,that it's just a natural reflex or occurance that my brain is trying to pattern.

i don't deny that my unconcious mind helps out, but to say that music is unguided by that soul or spirit...

that's too far... that's something that nobody could prove as fact.

i know that XenosX is reffering to the much more subtle processes of the brain, but still.  XenosX, you make it sound like i've got absolutely no say in what i write,that it's just a natural reflex or occurance that my brain is trying to pattern.  there's plenty of people throughout history that write music that i don't even wish to CALL "music."  some of it even follows all of your lydian and dorian and hypodorian and ionian modes.  i understand how they work and all of that, but my brain certainly does not manifest that.

It's not that you have no say, it's rather that the reflexes of the brain, after forming patterns, heavily influence the music you write. If you think that you "choose" to follow one chord with a certain other, then what is choice, exactly? Your brain chooses for you, it chooses whichever chord sounds the best to it. Your conscious self is not a discrete entity, rather it is a amorphous display of a path percieved originally from your subconscious mind. When you choose, say, chocolate over vanilla, really your choice is a gathering of past experiences of choosing between these two, a comparative perception of the two, and an analysis of the consequence of choosing one over the other. Your favorite might be vanilla, but your subconscious brain is really what makes the decision. Sometimes conscious thought breaks through, when you might realize that chocolate is cheaper than vanilla, and you only have enough money for chocolate, but it's mainly a subconscious decision.

wanna know why?  because i don't like it.  that's a very simplified way to explain why i don't do it, but ... isn't that at the core of the matter?  at least for me, that is.  like i said, i wish to speak for no one else.

That's no longer a matter of theory, true, but instead it may be how varied the notes are, or how complex the harmonies are, or anything. Still though, if it makes sense musically, your mind will comprehend the harmonies, whether you like it or not. If I painted your bedroom rainbow, you would probably dislike it, especially if I did it in the brightest, most luminous paints I could find. Still, you could probably tell how the colors blend into eachother, the way they make sense next to each other, really how they are arranged in descending order of wavelengths of reflected light. Regardless of how you 'like' it, you can see the mathematical sense of the walls.

generally speaking, the meat for every human body is the same, and thus the variance between personality and likes and dislikes for certain sounds come from my spirit.


In 'general', it may be true, but subtle differences in arrangements of neurons cause huge differences in personality, the same way switching two tiny functional groups on a comparatively huge strand of dna may change your eye color, or may make you unable to process certain proteins.

wait... what? so basically you just asked a bunch of questions you don't know the answer to and that's why you don't beleive in souls?

I was asking someone to refute the answers which I thought would be entirely visible as to what I meant. I thought wrong. I meant that when you lose part of your memory in a car accident, or for an even better example, if I chopped a piece off of your frontal lobe, then if your soul carries memory, how can this be if heaven is an 'eternal paradise' where true happiness would include memories of good events in your former life? If you discount memory from the soul, you can continue to discount other features through cases where changing something physical in the human body led to a change in what appeared to be in the soul.

Your brain chooses for you, it chooses whichever chord sounds the best to it.

false, I choose the chords... my brain is only one part of me

Your conscious self is not a discrete entity

false

Your favorite might be vanilla, but your subconscious brain is really what makes the decision.

Perhaps, but if we're talking about brains then I'd argue that it's my concious brain that makes the decision. I know I like vanilla better. If I didn't know that but still liked vanilla better, that would be a subconcious desire. Since I do know it, that means that it's my conciousness which is making the decision, not some part of me of which I am unaware.

If I painted your bedroom rainbow, you would probably dislike it, especially if I did it in the brightest, most luminous paints I could find.

X^5 + (8*3) / (6^33) = 57

therfor that was a bad analogy

subtle differences in arrangements of neurons cause huge differences in personality, the same way switching two tiny functional groups on a comparatively huge strand of dna may change your eye color, or may make you unable to process certain proteins.

Sure, but we're talking about music, not DNA. Though there might be some corollations they are very very distinct and entirely different subjects.

I was asking someone to refute the answers which I thought would be entirely visible as to what I meant. I thought wrong.

yes I would say you did... especially since I already refuted the answers which were "obvious" to you.. no, which you assumed... there are no obvious answers - the obvious answers are the ones that don't matter... 2+2=4 never payed my bills.

when you lose part of your memory in a car accident, or for an even better example, if I chopped a piece off of your frontal lobe, then if your soul carries memory, how can this be if heaven is an 'eternal paradise' where true happiness would include memories of good events in your former life?

your logic is F8CKED my friend... f8cked!

you make WAY too many assumptions. there is absolutely no way you can arrive at some of your conclusions or even arrive at the questions you ask without an entirely twised and warped perception of the assumptions you are using and then logic which connects them. Your current thought flow requires WAY too much assumption regarding the nature of things like a soul and heaven and hell and all kinds of other metaphysical issues which you have no real basis in reality for arriving at the conclusions you've arrived at. Essentially you would, here, be claiming to have knowlege of the fundamental nature of "heaven" itself in order to be able to think with the data you have presented. It would also pre-suppose that heaven actually exists, which is rather detrimental to your argument.

If you discount memory from the soul, you can continue to discount other features through cases where changing something physical in the human body led to a change in what appeared to be in the soul.

this requires altogether too much to say. first you must define "memory from the soul" then you must dfine "features" then you must define "change" and THEN you must define "appeared to be the soul" ...

then you must actually have a valid thought flow pattern. you simply amaze me with your ability to connect two entirely unconnectable things via your ability to make assinine assumptions. your ideas are rediculous to me, honestly... rediculous... and I am a very open minded person, I can put myself in just about anyone's shoes... your "propositions" however, defy all the most fundamental bases of logic I can comprehend.

i was tryin to read as much as i could but it all got a bit crazy, i thought it was music philosiphy not the meaning of life

yup... it is supposed to be... that's why I'm gonna move this to The Pit pretty soon

cuz it no longer really belongs in the Music Theory thread

Just because the debate happens to involve life the universe and everyything doesn't mean its not a debate about music theory... I think its the most interesting discussion of music theory I've ever read

heheh, true dat Orlando... though in general... this has sort of trancended most people's calssical notions of music theory and begun to delve into many other areas

I'll agree that it's still music theory, because for me music is life, so anything that's debated in regards to life is also debated in regards to music, and they're all theories... however "music theory" in the classical sense usually involves those constructs such as the notions of chords and how they move and etc etc melody harmony blah blah, the technical components of music... the word theory in this case has begun to take on two different distinct meanings, though related. which is why I will probably move this to "the pit" eventually... and, actually, eventually I'll probably turn it into a stickie once I get that feature up and running...

but yeah, I agree, still the most interesting discussion on music theory I've ever read

Alright- I lost some post stats after the server went wacko- time to get down to business!

My theory on music: It is for the you- you the preformer, you the listener, you the critic, etc. If you play music to impress people, get chicks, or "just for the money" that's not music. It's as pure as any human experience, so it can naturally be as corrupted as any human experience.

But... what makes good music to listen to? hmmmm...

maybe that will get some long posts* (hears to hope)





*that is, long music-related posts

just realized, i forgot to share reoger water's teory on what makes music good... but i'll keep that to myself until this topic becomes alive!

becomes alive eh? when will that be?

i suppose it's "alive," just in ill health 

mmmkay just for answering the original question, from my point of view, keeping it as short and basic as reasonably possible:

Music is... metapsychology, capable of causing mass hysteria and driving individuals to (and over) the edge of sanity.

It can also be used for transcendent(al) meditation, it can soothe little children, it can also disturb and even upset old people.

It may very well be matricised telepathy. In this case it's a fairly direct translation of the artist's mind to something other people can instantly access and explore. Since different artists take different stands toward making music (some just want to bounce around on boinky beats while others make great effort at creating something terribly aesthetically complex, if not complicated, and some just want to physically abuse their instruments, be politically (in)correct about something and completely wear themselves out in the process), there are a lot of different soundscapes out there, just like there are a lot of different ways human beings can align, calibrate and set their minds to perceive and act to what's up next in life, the universe, and everything... and everything in between.

It has probably all been said before and perhaps somewhere up this thread even but I didn't bother to read it all. I understand that physically speaking, music is vibrations through air (usually) that set off the mechanics of hearing, but also vibrate through the entire body, causing both positive and negative physical sensations. Now "brown notes" have sufficiently been disproven, but certain frequencies can cause distress and nausea while other frequencies generally make you feel more relaxed, awake. The difference between listening to music through headphones (however top quality they may be) or having sonic waves wash all around you - is pretty obvious in this light. My theory on this is the effect of sound vibrations on H2O molecules, quite a large component of the human body, even more so: a quite important ingredient for life itself, as we know it. Staccato saw and square waves cause way different resonation than smooth sines do (this effect can be seen in the different shapes of ice crystals forming while being exposed to different types of music and / or waveforms), and I believe that it is the resonation which eventually cause a person to feel comfortable with the presented audio, or not: all things associated with feeling good or bad - metalheads prefer a different set of resonations than trance clubbers do. It is that simple.

Didn't understand much of what I did read from earlier in this thread, so I thought, well, let's start all over again, and see what it brings. It's also what I usually do when I position myself in my sort of studio, so I guess that's pretty much what music means to me. 

(sorry, I just finished reading "Mostly Harmless" and it left me a bit... I don't know)

as for smileys... this one    sometimes appears really weird to me. The "disappointed face" just seems to scroll from one side to the other, it's not like an actual shake where the head rotates, it's more like looking through a tiny hole and seeing some weird being wobble about behind it. Try it, focus on the smiley and try to see what I mean... 

good times

it's funny to look back on what you wrote 5 years ago and realize how you didn't really know anything but you thought you knew everything... lol

my, how things change

- peace

Holy sh*t!

I disagree...unless you were 10 years old 5 years ago!
You've always known everything you just haven't known how to say it.
And anyway it's a bit like a Monday....you may hate it but you've got to get through it to get to Tuesday ! 

GO ROGER WATERS!!!!