We hear sounds, and their sources, and their audible qualities. Sounds and their sources are essentially dynamic entities, not wholly present at any given moment, but unfolding through their temporal interval. Sounds and their sources, essentially dynamic entities, are the bearers or susbtrata of audible qualities. Audible qualities are qualities essentially sustained by activity. The only bearers of audible qualities present in auditory experience are essentially dynamic entities. Bodies are not, in this sense, essentially dynamic entities and so are not present in our auditory experience. Though absent in auditory experience, we may, nonetheless, attend to bodies in audition, when an audible sound-generating event in which they participate presents a dynamic aural image of them

Kalderon, Mark Eli

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Sound and ImageMark Eli KalderonAbstractWe hear sounds, and their sources, and their audible qualities. Sounds andtheir sources are essentially dynamic entities, not wholly present at any givenmoment, but unfolding through their temporal interval. Sounds and theirsources, essentially dynamic entities, are the bearers or susbtrata of audiblequalities. Audible qualities are qualities essentially sustained by activity. Theonly bearers of audible qualities present in auditory experience are essentiallydynamic entities. Bodies are not, in this sense, essentially dynamic entitiesand so are not present in our auditory experience. Though absent in auditoryexperience, wemay, nonetheless, attend to bodies in audition, when an audiblesound-generating event in which they participate presents a dynamic auralimage of them.Suppose that the bearers of audible qualities, such as pitch and timbre, are es-sentially dynamic entities such as events or processes, not wholly present at anymoment, but unfolding through time. If we suppose further that only audible qual-ities and their bearers are present in auditory experience then a puzzle arises. Forwe seem to be able to attend to bodies in audition. We can listen to an animal’sapproach, say. But bodies are not essentially dynamic entities, nor do they inherein such. But only audible qualities and their bearers are present in auditory ex-perience. Which means that bodies, being neither, are absent. But if bodies areabsent in auditory experience how may we attend to them in audition?I believe that this puzzle may be resolved without rejecting the central claimupon which it rests, that the bearers of audible qualities are essentially dynamicentities. In the ﬁrst part of this talk, I try to motivate that claim. I do so bothdirectly and indirectly by criticizing an alternative. I end with a speculative reso-lution of our puzzle.What are the bearers of audible qualities? What are the kinds of things in whichsuch qualities inhere? I claim that the bearers of audible qualities are essentiallydynamic entities such as events, as opposed to bodies. If the bearers of audiblequalities are essentially dynamic entities, then audible qualities are qualities essen-tially sustained by activity.1Consider the following analogy: Colors are spatially extended, at least in thesense of being instanced only by spatially extended things. We can imagine smallerand smaller things being colored, but we cannot conceive of a thing without ex-tension exhibiting color. Audible qualities are temporally extended, at least inthe sense of being instanced only by temporally extended things. We can imaginehearing briefer and briefer occurrences of pitch, but we cannot conceive of a thingwithout duration exhibiting pitch. The temporal dimension of the bearers of au-dible qualities is not exhausted by their having a beginning and end, sounds have adistinctive way of being in time. Like events, at least as the three-dimensionalistconceives of them, sounds unfold in time. Unlike states that are wholly presentwhenever they obtain, sounds are not wholly present at every moment of theirsounding. They are spread over the interval of time through which they unfold.We hear sounds, and their sources, but we also hear their audible qualities. Audi-ble qualities, such as pitch, are not essentially dynamic entities unfolding throughtime. Rather, their mode of being is more akin to themode of being of states. Nev-ertheless, sounds and their sources, conceived as essentially dynamic entities, notwholly present at any moment, but unfolding through time, are bearers of audiblequalities. That the bearer of an audible quality is an essentially dynamic entity ismanifest in the conditions under which that quality may be instantiated. Thereis no instantaneous pitch since there is nothing instantaneous to instantiate it.For pitch to exist, it must persist over time. And that is because audible qualitiesare qualities essentially sustained by activity. The audible qualities of a sound willvary and extinguish as the sound’s activity varies and extinguishes. Sounds with-out audible qualities would be inaudible, but audible qualities without sound wouldsimply not be (or at least, those audible qualities that modify sounds, as opposedto other audible substrata, such as sources). Audible qualities, while not essentiallydynamic entities, are qualities that audible activity gives rise to. They are qualitiesof audible events or processes or phases of these.Kulvicki (2008) has argued that the bearers of audible qualities are not events butbodies. Like Aristotle, De anima 2 11 422b31–32, he accepts that an audible qualityhas a bearer. Being quality instances, they must inhere in something upon whichthey existentially and ontologically depend. However, unlike Aristotle, he deniesthat sound is the bearer of audible qualities. Audible qualities inhere in bodiesbut these bodies are not themselves sounds. Rather, they are ordinary materialsubstances. Instead, sounds are the audible qualities that inhere in these bodiesand are manifest in their audible activity. Thus, like Pasnau (1999) and Leddington(2014), Kulivicki endorses a broadly Lockean metaphysics that identiﬁes soundswith audible qualities. However, it is not the Lockean metaphysics of sound thatis our present focus, but whether bodies are bearers of audible qualities.Bodies have resonant modes determined by their material structure. Because of2their resonant modes, bodies are disposed to vibrate at certain natural frequencieswhen “thwacked”. According to Kulvicki, the sound a body has, an audible qual-ity of it, is the stable disposition to vibrate when thwacked. Just as the energy ofthe illuminant reveals the colors of things to sight, the energy of thwacking revealsthe sounds of things to hearing. And just as bodies retain their colors even whenunilluminated, bodies retain their sound even when unthwacked. The stable dis-position to vibrate when thwacked is a sound that a body has. Not every soundthat a thing makes is a sound that a thing has. Stereo speakers when thwackedproduce a dull thud, but when played they can make a wide variety of sounds.Why think that sounds are qualities of material bodies that are associated withtheir natural frequencies? Kulvicki provides an argument from perceptual con-stancy that, while not conclusive, is meant to speak strongly in favor of his view.Kulvicki draws our attention to an interesting feature of speech perception, outability to recognize voices. A speaker’s voice will vary in pitch, timbre, and so on,as they speak. And yet despite these variable auditory appearances, we seem to bepresented with a constant voice in our experience of their speech. This is due, inpart, to the resonant modes of the special parts of the speaker involved in speechproduction, such as their vocal cords and nasal cavities. And this is just the kindof auditory constancy one would expect if the sounds that we hear were stabledispositions of objects to vibrate when thwacked.We have our voices. At least as we ordinarily speak. But do we have them, aswell, in Kulvicki’s extraordinary sense? Or are they sounds that we make but donot have? The sound of a stereo speaker playing is a sound that it makes but doesnot have. I suspect that a person’s voice is more like the sound of a stereo speakerplaying than the sound that it makes when thwacked. Through a series of unfor-tunate events, I have ﬁrst hand experience of what I sound like when thwacked. Ican attest it sounds nothing like my voice. Like a stereo speaker, I produce a dullthud when thwacked. When playing, a stereo speaker produces the sounds thatit makes but does not have by an internal activity driving the vibration of specialparts of it. When speaking, I produce the sounds that I do by an internal activitydriving the vibration of special parts of myself. Are these not sounds that I makebut do not have? If the sound of my voice is something that I make but do nothave, then its being the constant element in an auditory experience provides noreason for thinking that sounds are stable dispositions to vibrate when thwackedsince these are sounds that bodies were meant to have rather than make.Kulvicki is right to emphasize that auditory experience can disclose the stabledispositions of bodies to vibrate at their natural frequencies and so auditorily man-ifest, albeit partially and imperfectly, material properties of those bodies. But inhearing that, is what we hear a sound or its source? Suppose that we hear soundsand their sources. And suppose that the sources that we hear are sound-generating3events. A body’s participation, if not the body itself, is part of the audible structureof that event. And those aspects of the body relevant to its participation in theevent are reﬂected, partially and imperfectly, in its audible structure. Stable dispo-sitions of bodies to vibrate at their natural frequencies given their resonant modesas determined by their material structure are aspects of bodies relevant to theirparticipation in audible activities, such as being thwacked. WhenDr Johnson, out-side of the church in Harwich, kicked the stone, his boot rebounding despite itsmighty force, the stone was well and truly thwacked. Doubtless, it could be heardas well as felt. And Dr Johnston could hear, as well as feel, that it was a stone, andnot a log, that he was kicking. He could hear his boot kicking a stone as opposedto a log because of their distinctive timbre. Their different resonant modes arerelevant to their participation in audible activities such as being kicked. Kulvickiis right to emphasize that auditory experience can disclose the stable dispositionsof bodies to vibrate at their natural frequencies and so auditorily manifest, albeitpartially and imperfectly, material properties of these bodies. But he was wrongto suggest that this requires bodies to be the bearers of audible qualities.We hear sounds and their sources. These are essentially dynamic entities, notwholly present at any given moment, but unfolding through time, or so I claim.Sounds and their sources have audible qualities, qualities essentially sustained byactivity. Are sounds and their sources, as well as their audible qualities, really allthat we can hear?According to Broad (1952, 4), we ordinarily speak of hearing bodies. So whenBig Ben strikes the time, and is in earshot, we may say that we can hear Big Ben.However, Broad concedes little in acknowledging this point of usage since he alsoobserves that it takes but a little pressure to convince “the plainest of plain men”that “hearing Big Ben” is shorthand for hearing the striking of Big Ben. If we ac-cept Broad’s suggestion, then we only hear Big Ben insofar as it is a participantin a sound-generating event or process. And when we do, what we strictly speak-ing hear is Big Ben’s striking and not Big Ben, that is, not the body, but an eventthe body participates in. We hear not the body in a condition of activity, but theactivity of the body.Allow me to engage in speculation about a hypothetical sense in which we maybe said to hear bodies consistent with the principle, if true, that audition onlypresents bearers of audible qualities with the distinctive temporal mode of beingof events or processes.Both sounds and the sources that we hear are like events in that they are notwholly present at every moment of their occurrence. Perhaps this is a general fea-ture of the bearers of audible qualities present in audition. Perhaps for a bearerof an audible quality to be present in auditory experience it must have a particulartemporal mode of being, it must unfold through time. This would preclude, by4their very nature, entities such as bodies from being present in auditory experi-ence. First, by hypothesis, bodies lack the requisite temporal mode of being ofbearers of audible qualities. And second, bodies do not inhere in essentially dy-namic entities the way that audible qualities do. But if what is present in auditoryexperience is either essentially dynamic or an audible quality that the essentiallydynamic substratum gives rise to, then bodies are not present in auditory experi-ence. Earlier we noted Broad’s helpful suggestion that perhaps “hearing Big Ben”is elliptical for hearing Big Ben’s striking.As plausible as this may be, a worry may still persist. One of the uses to whichaudition may be put is to track a body’s progress through the natural environment.We can listen to an animal’s approach, say. And it might be thought that we areattending to the animal in audition in listening to them. Moreover, it might seeminsufficient for the body to be attended to that an event in which that body par-ticipates is present in auditory experience. Not every part of a visible body is seen,so why assume that every participant of an audible event is heard? How can we lis-ten out for bodies even though they are precluded from being present in auditoryexperience?Bodies may not be present in auditory experience, but perhaps they ﬁgure inauditory experience in another way, if not as the intentional object of experience,then something very much like it. Bodies are, on the speculative hypothesis thatwe are entertaining, not present in auditory experience. Thus bodies are absent inauditory experience. And yet we can attend to bodies in audition. How could thisbe?Aristotle uses this kind of puzzle or aporia about presence in absence to arguefor, as we might put it, the intentional character of memory (De memoria et remi-niscentia 450a25–451a1, for discussion see Sorabji 2004). The Peripatetic responseto the puzzle is to straightforwardly accept the claim of absence and reinterpretwhat purported to be a presentation instead as a kind of re-presentation. Whenone remembers Corsicus in his absence one contemplates a phantasma caused bya previous perception of Corsicus and one conceives of the phantasma as a like-ness and reminder of Corsicus as he was perceived. How might the Peripateticresponse, so abstractly described, be applied to the perceptual case of attendingto bodies in audition?Perhaps what is present in auditory experience may constitute a natural imageof what is absent. That is, perhaps we can understand hearing the body’s sound-generating activity as providing the listener with a dynamic aural image of the bodyotherwise absent in audition. It is an image, indeed, as I have suggested, a naturalimage, like a fossil or a footprint. But unlike paradigmatic images it is not a visualimage but an aural image. And while visual images are static, aural images, if suchthere be, would be dynamic as beﬁtting their aural character. Hearing Big Ben’s5striking, while not the presentation of Big Ben in auditory experience, would nev-ertheless provide the listener with a dynamic aural image of Big Ben. We do notso much as hear Big Ben in a condition of activity as we hear Big Ben in its audibleactivity. In order for this to be so, the auditory presentation of a sound-generatingevent must involve at least the partial disclosure of the event’s participants. Audi-tion partially discloses an event’s participant by presenting it’s participation in theaudible event. It is the body’s participation in the event, and not the body per se,that is part of the event’s audible structure. The disclosure of such audible struc-ture is partial. Only those aspects of the body that are manifest in its participationin the audible event are disclosed, and perhaps only some of those. Furthermore,there is no guarantee that if a perceiver hears an event, they hear each of its par-ticipants, if any. But that is consistent with audition, in certain circumstances ofperception, partially disclosing at least some of the participants in the unfoldingaudible event. It is only if we can hear Big Ben’s participation in its striking thatwe can use that hearing to attend to Big Ben. It is only if we can hear Big Ben’sparticipation, can that hearing provide us with a dynamic aural image of Big Benand its activities that we exploit in attending to Big Ben in audition.ReferencesC.D. Broad. Some elementary reﬂections on sense-perception. Philosophy, 27(100):3–17, January 1952. Reprinted in Broad 1965.C.D. Broad. Some elementary reﬂections on sense-perception. InRobert J. Swartz,editor, Perceiving, Sensing, andKnowing, pages 29–48. Anchor Books, Doubleday &Company, Inc., Garden City, NY, 1965.John Kulvicki. The nature of noise. Philosophers’ Imprint, 8(11):1–16, 2008.Jason Leddington. What we hear. In Richard Brown, editor, Consciousness Inside andOut: Phenomenology, Neuroscience, and the Nature of Experience, volume 6 of Studies inBrain and Mind, chapter 21, pages 321–334. Springer, Dordrecht Heidelberg NewYork London, 2014.Robert Pasnau. What is sound? Philosophical Quarterly, 50(196):309–24, 1999.Richard Sorabji. Aristotle on Memory. Bristol Classical Press, second edition, 2004.6

Sound and Image

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