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The sound of a stream is not the central purpose of thewater flowing, but, so what? In so far as any part of our biology is made to resonate in pleasant time to some sound, it is our biology which is the true musical instrument.

One of the basic functions of the organism is self-affirmation. Hence, the potential to have joy at the interactively critical vibrations of one’s domestic medium.

So, crafted sounds for sake of joy is crafted music, notmusic proper. Unless, of course, ‘muse’ is the sense of crafting something, only in which case is ‘music’ synonymous with crafted-sounds-for-joy-of-sounds, and not the sound byproducts of other craftings. Ah, but, all sound byproducts are coopt-able by the musical perceptual faculties, just as any sensory mediumwhatever is coopt-able by the referential (linguistic) faculties.

This does not entail that all mediums should be equally useful to those ends, as if we demand some inane kind of random association between all the different sensory mediums. In fact:

The biological organism requires not only an external sourceof gravity, but a pressure of a domestic medium as a function of gravity. And, so long as there is a normative spatial separation between the organism and all other important solid objects, it seems undeniable that vibration of the organism’s domestic medium is a primary stimulus to the organism, both in termsof itself and in terms of the primary dynamic objects in its environment. Can you say ‘music’ and ‘society’?

Gravity acts as counter-balance to the self-repetition/identification, and self-expansion activities which constitute every known biological organism. This implies, first, that the biological organism is not a self-contained set of all forces necessary to its own survival and development. Second, it implies that the biological organism is, in some way, a product of its gravity environment. In fact, given its own mass, a biological organism is constituted partly by gravity.

But, in so far as the biological organism depends on gravity, it also depends on basic external materials for its maintenance anddevelopment both post-conception and post-gestation. The most continuously necessary material to that end in post-gestation is a common domestic fluid (in land-based organisms, this fluid is the gaseous material that envelopes the Earth). In other words, a natural byproduct of gravity is atmospheric pressure, and, it is upon this pressure which a biological organism depends not only for maintenance of its own structure as an ongoing action against external gravity, but as the primary constant force allowing equitable intake of its own most constantly necessary substance. (It seems to me that this gravity/atmosphericpressure/organism system comprises a triad.)

I suspect that all known biological organisms require aminimum of compression of a domestic medium to survive (atmospheric pressure). Hypothetically, this pressure could be said to act as a necessary counterbalancing force to that of the self-repetition/identification, and self-expansion, activities of the autonomous biological system. In other words, it seems that atmospheric pressure, in conjunction with a basic minimumexternal gravity, is necessary to the long-term survival of a species.

Pressure of domestic medium is, for the most part, a staticforce. But, in order for an organism to identify other organisms without direct contact, and, thus, to develop internal systems to identify itself apart from other organisms, an organism’s domestic medium must include vibrations produced by other organisms.

Based on this theory that vibration of domestic medium iscritical to the normal development of an organism, I propose the hypothesis that music and language are basic cognitive functions prior to their respective conventional specializations. Think sense and reference. According to this hypothesis, only later are the sense and reference functions in humans channeled into conventions: the language function normally is channeled intospeech, and the music function normally is channeled into human artful sounds.

But, there is a problem. According to this hypothesis, theconventions intuitively are known to contain their respective basic functions, so, oftentimes, the conventions are mistakenly equated with their functions. Hence, the popular human notion that the essential roots of music and language are not naturally possessed by non-human animals. But, if vibration of adomestic medium is necessary to the survival of any given animal species, including to humans, and if that vibration is a key stimulus to biology, and, thus, to psychology, then non-human animals do possesses a level, however primitive, of both the referential and sense/aesthetic modes of cognition. How well or how often the non-human animals practice a distinction between these two modes is beside the point.

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tipareth's avatar

I'm just going to pick some fleas, so to speak. The auditory cheesecake argument is completely invalid and demeaning. I think the intra-group bonding idea is quite compelling. The main points this thread seems to be missing is what a signal is. Signals have intrinsic meaning. Music and language both have applied meaning. Also music is uniquely human. The paragraph about species singing for a mate is a bit off the mark. We call what birds and whales do singing but it is not the same thing as the human behavior of singing at all.

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