Santarcangelo, V., & Terrone, E. (2015). Sounds and other denizens of time. The Monist, 98(2), 168–180.
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 09/01/2024, 12:21
"A purely temporal individual entity is such that we can establish when but not where it is. One can think of these individuals (for example, a sound) as having only temporal parts and temporal features in spite of their being dependent on more basic entities that have also spatial features (such as a body emitting the sound). But could such individuals exist entirely independently of any commitment to space? Strawson explores a positive answer to this question in chapter II of his Individuals, by means of a thought experiment concerning what he calls a No-Space world. In the first instance, this experiment aims at putting pressure on the Kantian thesis that space is a necessary condition for any “objective” experience, by which he means any experience of individual entities as existing independently of their being experienced. Strawson, however, adopts the Aristotelian view according to which our most basic schemes and categories provide us with crucial clues as to the basic structures of reality, and thus he conceives space and time as structures of reality and not just as forms of experience. Given our experience of the world, the world must be such that it makes this kind of experience possible. So, Strawson is here discussing the thesis that space is a necessary condition not only for any objective experience, but also for any objective reality."
"It is worth noting that sounds are here just the means to the end of investigating an ontological claim about space and time. Strawson is not making an empirical claim in the philosophy of perception about the nature of hearing in human beings. Nor is he making an ontological claim addressing questions like: are sounds individuals? are they events? are they properties of sounding objects? Rather, he is building up a thought experiment aimed at testing the metaphysical claim according to which the notion of space is necessary for any conception of an objective reality."
