I'm wondering about the capabilities that music has to express meaning. Neurologists have observed brain activity that is a direct response from musical perception. If one considers this brain activity to be the same thing as an emotional response, then music can directly express emotion. But does this allow one to consider music meaningful, or maybe even a language?
The definition of “meaning” is crucial. I'd split “meaning” into two parts. Meaning can be either conceptual or emotional in nature. Both temporal and spacial objects can express either type of meaning, and can be experienced through any mode of sensation. Objects that express conceptual meaning make reference to specific non-subjective information (for example, comprehensive text, speech, braille, and images). Objects that express emotional meaning do not refer to anything specific, but directly cause a subjective emotional experience. The vast majority of perceivable objects and events fall into this category (including music). Emotional responses can include moods, physical experiences like pain and pleasure, and everything on this list. It is not necessary to divide out all the types of emotions that music can express. It may in fact prove to be all types.
It seems true that perception of emotional meaning triggers conceptual responses, and visa-versa. These secondary responses are an indirect result of perceiving an object. They are subjective, and do not represent objective features of the object. Davies argues that a proper evaluation of music only describes features of the music itself, and not the listener's subjective response. I agree with Davies, but disagree with the implied notion the listener must ignore the concepts that she subjectively experiences as a result of perceiving music.
When I listen to music that causes conceptual responses (see my descriptions of Philip Glass's Metamorphosis and Bon Iver's The Wolves), I value the music for its ability to cause those responses. These conceptual responses are certainly found indirectly through direct emotional responses to the music. However, I feel like “I got it right” in the two examples mentioned above. I am pretty certain that the artists intended to evoke certain conceptual responses by expressing specific emotional meaning. But doesn't this suggest that music can contain in some significant way conceptual information?
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The last question I raised is complicated, and I intend on getting back to it later. To answer it, we might start by figuring out whether or not all conceptual meaning is inseparable from emotional meaning (thus making my division of meaning a false dichotomy).
I am also wondering if one type of meaning always occurs before the other. It does seem possible that we can experience emotion without reason (conception), but we might not be able to contemplate a concept without evoking some degree of emotional response. If this is the case, then conceptional meaning found from the perception of language would (in the same way as music) be found indirectly through the direct perception of emotional meaning.
(P.S. Sorry for my recurring use of passive voice. I'm trying to make these sentences manageable.)
Lots of interesting ideas here. I'm inclined to the view that a cognitive understanding (of a perception or linguistic utterance) is indeed parasitic on concommitant emotional states. This doesn't mean there is a one-to-one correspondence between emotions and thoughts (my emotional states may obviously be different in response to the same cognitive content at different times) but rather that it is hard to see how a thought could mean anything, or even exist, without some underpinning emotional state or other. (I'm reminded of Hubert Dreyfus' observation that the problem with computers is that they just don't give a damn; thus they contain data, but not information in any literal sense, and they don't think.)
But what does it mean for a piece of music to convey emotional content? Mightn't it be equally musical if it sometimes made you sad and other times thrilled? And if there is thus no determinate emotional content (though there may be an intended one) in a piece of music, maybe it's just not communicating in anything like a paradigmatically linguistic manner...
I am also inclined to believe that emotional states and cognitive understanding do coincide but do not necessarily have a one-to-one correspondence. Emotional experience is subjective and can differ in response to the same objective information. If the emotional accompaniment to objective information is what gives meaning, then all meaning is subjective and does not have proper truth value. Unless there is a mistake here, this means there is no meaning independent of our experience. Since there are no objective features to meaning, directly conveying emotion itself is impossible. People convey and sense objective information, and automatically couple it with emotional meaning. Therefore, music cannot convey emotional content.
This may explain why we emotionally respond to music (and any cognitive information) differently at different times. This also addresses the question that Davies raises about the possibility of non-sentient beings being able to express emotion. It becomes moot, because nothing can express emotion. The remaining significant difference is that sentient beings can self-reflect on their cognitive and emotional states. They convey objective information in ways that trigger common emotional responses in other beings.
Unless I made a mistake in the above argument, music only contains cognitive information. Music is emotional because it contains objective features that cause common emotional responses in people. Davies erred by dismissing this argument in chapter 11 (remember his pictures of the sad puppy, weeping willow, and happy car).
Of course, none of these arguments make our experience of music and the world any less beautiful or meaningful.
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