A PLATONIC MODEL
Brian D. Josephson
Cavendish Laboratory, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HE, U.K
email: bdj10@cam.ac.uk
and
Tethys Carpenter
Department of Music, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College,
Egham, Surrey TW2 0EX, U.K.
(conference proceedings to be published by MIT Press)
ABSTRACT
We present an account of the phenomenon of music based upon the
hypothesis that there is a close parallel between the mechanics of
life and the mechanics of mind, a key factor in the correspondence
proposed being the existence of close parallels between the concepts
of gene and musical idea. The hypothesis accounts for the
specificity, complexity, functionality and apparent arbitrariness of
musical structures. An implication of the model is that music
should be seen as a phenomenon of transcendental character,
involving aspects of mind as yet unstudied by conventional science.
Running title: Music and the Nature of the Mind Keywords: music,
self-organisation, universal mind, Platonism
The following text is based on a paper presented at _Toward A
Scientific Basis for Consciousness_, a conference held at the
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA in April 1994.
* * * * * * * *
Tristan und Isolde (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Is the phenomenon of music to be understood in conventional
biological terms, or is it instead an activity dependent upon
subtler aspects of mind? Conventional explanations may be able to
explain certain capacities in music (such as the ability to
recognise and define particular categories of pattern, structure or
relationship), on the basis of the fact that possession of such
abilities may confer selective advantages. What is more difficult
to account for, using such arguments, is the specific forms that
appear to be favoured in music, and which appear to possess a
curious generative capacity or 'fertility' not possessed by
arbitrary patterns of sound. Specifically, one often finds at the
beginning of a piece of music a short and usually discrete unit
(typical examples being the first theme of Mozart's Symphony No. 40,
the opening bars of Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 95 and, on a
larger scale, the leitmotif which begins Wagner's opera Tristan und
Isolde), containing distinctive harmonic, melodic and emotional
patterning, which functions as the germ of elaborations in the
course of the subsequent development. The fertility of such special
forms or musical ideas is emphasised by the way a composer may
develop an existing idea in a new way (cf. Schubert's use of the
initial idea in Mozart's String Quintet in C major in his own String
Quintet in C). These 'musical ideas' resemble the memes of Dawkins
(1989). It will be argued here that the specificity of these forms
cannot be readily accounted for within conventional frameworks of
explanation, and that better explanations are likely to be obtained
by involving subtler aspects of mind than those normally taken into
account.
The phenomenon of interest can be defined as the special effects on
consciousness of the specific constituent patterns or ideas found in
good music, the striking effects of the latter being in clear
contrast to those of the forms created by mediocre composers or by
mechanical procedures. Skilled composers do not produce innovations
in a mechanical way; rather they appear to possess an intuitive
ability to be aware of the creative potentials of particular
patterns of sound even when considered in their most elementary
forms, and then develop a composition from these 'germs' (cf.
Schoenberg 1977, 1984).
At a superficial level, the specificity that has been discussed
resembles that of a resonance, but this analogy does not appear to
be a very helpful one since we are dealing with a highly non-linear
system; the true mechanism must be rather different in nature. We
shall dismiss explanations based on conditioning, because the
differences in style between an innovative composition and music
that a listener has been exposed to previously account for a
considerable part of its interest, and while conditioning can
account for a listener's ability to process competently a new piece
of music in a familiar style it cannot explain why particular
innovations should have particularly powerful effects. Apart from
this there are two main categories of possible explanation:
1) genetic explanations, to the effect that for each musical idea
there is a corresponding gene coding for nervous system structure
corresponding to selective sensitivity to that idea. Regarding this
type of explanation, while some musical ideas may have correlates in
the natural world, the majority do not, so that there would be no
selective advantage in possessing such sensitivity. It also seems
unlikely that the collection of sensitivities to musical ideas can
be explained as accidental consequences of other adaptations. It
seems to us that the only way of avoiding these problems would be to
postulate that during the course of evolution there had been a
species that used as a means of communication music very similar to
the kind produced by human composers, and which had undergone a
process of evolution that was the genetic equivalent of the human
cultural evolution of music, by this means evolving genes
corresponding to the musical sensitivities that have been
postulated. This seems unlikely to have been the case.
2) 'theory of everything' type explanations: the idea that there may
be some universal formula or principle that distinguishes effective
musical ideas from ineffective ones (in the same way as in the case
of chemistry there is a universal formula, viz. Schroedinger's
equation, that can distinguish between stable and unstable
molecules). A related perceptual mechanism would provide the
observed discrimination between good music and bad.
Attempts have been made by musical psychologists (e.g. Lerdahl and
Jackendoff 1983, Narmour 1990) to discover such principles, but
these attempts seem to us, in their present stage of development,
grossly inadequate to the purpose, and to provide us with little
illumination concerning the problems addressed here. There is in
addition a further argument against 'theory of everything' type
explanations of musicality. This kind of explanation, in contrast to
the other kinds of explanation discussed (viz. cultural and genetic
explanations), allows essentially no scope for arbitrary factors to
enter into the determination of the preferred forms. Given the
apparently capricious nature of musical regularities, the kind of
explanation that does allow arbitrary factors to enter seems
considerably more plausible.
While none of the above arguments is conclusive, the difficulties we
have been noted provide some motivation for seeking alternatives.
Elsewhere (Josephson and Carpenter 1994) the authors have commented
on the existence of interesting parallels (principally involving
matters concerning information and regulation) between aesthetic
processes and life processes. These parallels will now be developed
further.
In the present context, the most basic parallel is that between
effective musical pattern and gene, both being informational
structures playing a key role in the activities of those structures
that contain them (organism and musical mind). In the case of
life, the genes help to determine the forms and activities of the
structures that cause the genes to be replicated so that they
survive. Particular gene structures generate particularly effective
functional systems, and this very often entails high complexity
since complex means are generally needed to produce simple results
in an effective manner. Other contributions to complexity come from
the complexity of the chemistry involved and the fact that genes
often do not produce their effects in isolation. Further, in
organisms there are clear means-end relationships related to the
functionality of structures, by virtue of which the functional
structures can be considered 'significant'. In contrast to the
perspicuity of the processes involved at the functional level, the
details at the structural level are complex, and related to function
in a complex way, which generally has arbitrary aspects as a
consequence of the way that nature operates opportunistically rather
than logically.
We now observe the ways in which music possesses features
paralleling those discussed in the case of life:
(i) effective musical structures are highly specific, as well as
being (subjectively) functional;
(ii) while there is an overall logic behind the way that a given
piece of music works, many of the details of form appear essentially
arbitrary. The functional descriptions are considerably simpler
than descriptions at the detailed level of the structure.
A further fact about music that is clarified by this picture is its
perceived semantic aspect. Biological structures in general can be
considered to have a semantic connected with means-end
relationships. These semantic aspects can be divided into internal
ones (related to direct maintenance of the organism independent of
its environment) and external (maintenance dependent upon
interactions with the environment). Correspondingly, in the case of
music, some components appear to have external reference (that is to
say they appear to relate in a general way to ordinary events in the
world) (Meyer 1959), while others appear to be significant only in
relation to the piece of music in which they appear.
These features of music could be understood if the mode of operation
of mind were in general terms similar to that of life. According to
this view, intelligence would be the product of a collection of
adaptations capable of being specified by a coding system related to
that of music. The fertility of particular musical patterns would
reflect the operation of the specific adaptations specified by these
patterns. Individual minds would make use of such adaptations in
the same way as in ordinary biology individual organisms make use of
genes. While the development of the organism, excluding mind,
centers around the use that can be made of chemistry, the
development of mind centers around the use that may be made of ideas
and thought.
The question arises, which is the mind-system in which the processes
we have been discussing occur? It cannot be the minds of
individuals, since the preferences that the model is intended to
explain are not those of individuals. Neither can it be the
cultural mind (consisting of individuals communicating with each
other musically) because, as discussed in connection with
explanations based on conditioning, the selective response to
innovations cannot be explained purely culturally. What remains is
activity involving some kind of collective or universal mind. Our
model thus entails a Platonic picture of the mind, where much of the
intelligence of the individual is the consequence of preexisting
ideas in some mind-sphere. It follows that the study of music is at
the same time the study of the quasi- genetic kinds aspects of this
subtler realm of mind. Such studies may thus be able to inform us
of aspects of mind not accessible to conventional studies that tend
to focus on the more intellectual aspects of mind to the exclusion
of its more intuitive ones. It may be worth pointing out here also
that the idea that there is a fundamental connection between sound
and form is an ancient one, dating back thousands of years in the
Eastern philosophical tradition.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We wish to thank Prof. Robin Faichney and Dr. Marek Lees for helpful
comments.
REFERENCES
Dawkins, R. 1989. The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Josephson, B.D. and Carpenter, T. 1994. Music and Mind -- a Theory
of Aesthetic Dynamics: On Self-Organization (Springer series in
Synergetics Vol. 61): Heidelberg: Springer, 280-7.
Lerdahl, F. and Jackendoff, R. 1983: A Generative Theory of Tonal
Music. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.
Meyer, L. B. 1959. Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Narmour, E. 1990. The Analysis and Cognition of Basic Melodic
Structures: the Implication-Realisation model. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Schoenberg, A. 1977. Fundamentals of Musical Composition. London:
Faber and Faber, chapter III.
Schoenberg, A. 1984. Folkloristic Symphonies. Style and Idea:
Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg (ed. Leonard Stein). London:
Faber and Faber. 161-166.
