| Gillon, B. (2011-2023). Logic in classical Indian philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved October 3, 2023, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-india/. |
 
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| Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 10/3/23, 9:59 AM |
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Consider the following argument:
| THESIS: |
Sound is eternal |
| REASON: |
because it is audible. |
| SIMILARITY EXAMPLE: |
Whatever is audible is eternal. |
This syllogism, rejected as a bad syllogism by Dignāga, was put forth by a school of Brahmanical thinkers who held, for doctrinal reasons, that sound is eternal. To maintain this claim in the face of observation to the contrary, these thinkers maintained instead that what is transitory is the revelation of sound, not sound itself. According to them, in other words, sound is constantly present, but we hear it only when its presence is revealed. |
| Lefort, C. (2014). Maurice Merleau-Ponty (D. A. Landes, Trans.). In Phenomenology of perception (pp. xvii–xxix). New York: Routledge. |
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| Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 9/10/23, 8:16 AM |
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| Although Merleau-Ponty later studied touch, he could only do this "through the relation between seeing and the visible, for this relation reveals most clearly and all at once the exteriority of the world for the body that opens up to it, the distance of things in front of the body, their absolute alterity, the body's folding back outside of everything that it captures and yet its implication in the visible, the turning back of the visible upon itself that constitutes it as seeing and that causes it to perceive from the very foundation of being to which it adheres." |
| Merleau-Ponty, M. (2014). Phenomenology of perception. D. A. Landes, Trans. New York: Routledge. (Original work published 1945). |
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| Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 1/8/24, 7:05 AM |
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| Finally talking of sound . . . "there is an objective sound that resonates outside of me in the musical instrument, an atomospheric sound that is between the object and my body, a sound that vibrates in me "as if I had become the flute or the clock," and finally a last stage where the sonorous element disappears and becomes a highly precise experience of a modification of my entire body." |
| O'Callaghan, C. (2009-2020). Auditory perception. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved October 3, 2023, from https://plato.stanford. ... es/perception-auditory/. |
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| Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 2/12/24, 1:47 PM |
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| "Philosophical thinking about perception has focused predominantly on vision. The philosophical puzzle of perception and its proposed solutions have been shaped by a concern for visual experience and visual illusions. Questions and proposals about the nature of perceptual content have been framed and evaluated in visual terms, and detailed accounts of what we perceive frequently address just the visual case. Vision informs our understanding of perception’s epistemological role and of its role in guiding action. It is not a great exaggeration to say that much of the philosophy of perception translates roughly as philosophy of visual perception." |
| "we might attempt to determine whether any unified account exists that applies generally to all of the perceptual modalities. We can ask this question either at the level of quite specific claims, such as those concerning the objects of perception or the nature and structure of content. We can ask it about the relationships among perceiving, believing, and acting. Or we can ask it about the general theory of necessary and sufficient conditions for perceiving." |
| "Listening to music and being receptive to its aesthetically relevant features requires not listening to violins, horns, or brushes on snare drums. It requires hearing sounds and grasping them in a way removed from their common sources. . . . Musical listening thus may be thought to provide a prima facie argument against the claim that in hearing sounds one typically hears sound sources such as the strumming of guitars and bowing of violins." |
| Argues that sound is not a private sensation but is an object of public perception: a falling tree does make a sound even if not heard; we can hear sounds in common (but not headaches). |
| It is a phenomenological claim that sound is distal because that is what we experience. Perhaps, though, it is the sound source we experience in this way, an event-like individual, information of which is carried on a sound wave to become the proximal sensation of sound. |
| "crossmodal illusions are not mere accidents. Instead, they are intelligible as the results of adaptive perceptual strategies. In ordinary circumstances, crossmodal processes serve to reduce or resolve apparent conflicts in information drawn from several senses. In doing so, they tend to make perception more reliable overall. Thus, crossmodal illusions differ from synaesthesia. Synaesthesia is just a kind of accident. It results from mere quirks of processing, and it always involves illusion (or else is accidentally veridical). Crossmodal recalibrations, in contrast, are best understood as attempts “to maintain a perceptual experience consonant with a unitary event” (Welch and Warren 1980, 638)."
Welch, R. B. and D. H. Warren, 1980, “Immediate perceptual response to intersensory discrepancy,” Psychological Bulletin, 88(3): 638–667. |
| Wang, J. (2021). Half sound, half philosophy: Aesthetics, politics, and history of China’s sound art. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. |
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| Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 3/12/25, 1:08 AM |
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| Paraphrasing Needham, "Chinese acoustics is an acoustics of qi."
Needham, Joseph. 1965. Science and Civilisation in China Physics and Physical Technology Vol.4: Physics and Physical Technology. Part II: Mechanical Engineering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. |
| "Western philosophy can be seen as knowledge-centered and as a game of rationality. Chinese philosophy or Eastern philosophy at large is life-centered." |
| "the Song Dynasty scholar Zhang Zai (1020–1077), known as the philosopher of qi, defines qi as change, mutation, propensity, and transformation." |
| "Zhang Zai uses the perspective of qi to interpret the cosmos and human experience. Instead of using words like being and nonbeing, existence or nonexistence, Zhang Zai’s qi-philosophy favors another set of vocabularies, condensation and dissolution, coming to be and passing away, moving and resting, contraction and expansion, ascending and descending." |
| "Zhang Zai (1020–1077) describes sound as a result of qi riding each other. Song Yingxing (1587–1666), a Chinese scientist and encyclopedist during the late Ming Dynasty, extends Zhang Zai’s statement and adds that sound is qi disturbed in a certain way. Song stresses that to make sounds, qi has to possess shi (the advantage of position of force). Considering Zhang Zai and Song Yingxing’s interpretations of sound through qi, together with Needham’s discussion of ancient Chinese acoustic technology, the relation between sound and qi in ancient China can be summarized as: (1) sound is produced by qi; (2) sound is a manifestation of qi; and (3) acoustic technology is a facilitator of qi." |
| "Chinese thinking . . . does not distinguish the thing and its medium or the thing and its action. . . . François Jullien has convincingly argued that there is no ontology in Chinese thinking in the sense that Chinese thinking does not concern much with questions of being but more with the ungraspable, the evasive, and allusive (Jullien 2018b)."
Jullien, François. 2018b. Cong Cunyou dao Shenghuo: Ouzhou Sixiang yu Zhongguo Sixiang de Juli. (De l’être au vivre : lexique euro-chinois de la pensée). Translated by Zhuo Li. Shanghai: Dongfang Chuban Zhongxin. |
| "As Joseph Needham points out, just as form and matter dominated European thought from the age of Aristotle onwards, the notion of qi has molded Chinese thinking from the earliest times (Needham 1965, 133). In ancient China, qi was considered both the vital source breath for life and the driving force in the cosmic world. Qi was used to describe the human body as used in qi-blood, explaining how the human is a part of the resonant cosmic cycle, forming into a union with the heaven and earth. The notion of qi refers to the ceaseless fluctuation, interpenetration, and transformation of yin-qi and yang-qi. Through different historical periods, qi, from a vague idea, was developed into a cosmological, aesthetic, social, medical, moral concept, and eventually a philosophical system, reaching its maturity in the Song Dynasty." |
| "Based on the Confucian scholar Jung-Yeup Kim’s interpretation of Zhang Zai, it is one primary goal of Zhang Zai to realize in the cosmos and the myriad things the capacity for resonance, which is often veiled or hidden. This capacity for resonance is creativity. As Zhang Zai writes, that which interpenetrates through resonance (感) is creativity (诚) (感而通诚也). Resonance as a transformative interaction among polarities of qi leads to the great harmony, which further produces and sustains life vitality." |
| "The nature/culture divide and the temporal precedence is a highly Western way of thinking. . . . Through qi-thinking, myriad things (including humans) are constantly changing and resonating to known and unknown forces. It does not therefore make sense to ask “what it is.” Rather, what is important to ask is “what is its propensity?” or, in other words, to ask “what and how it is going to become.” . . . qi-thinking places things in relation to each other through resonance, an innate capacity of the cosmos and of myriad things, the secret of creativity." |
| Needham, presenting a story narrated in Chunqiu Fanlu (春秋繁露, The Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals) by the Western Han Dynasty (202 BC–9 BC) thinker Dong Zhushu (179 BC–104 BC), compares the 'correlative' thinking of the Chinese to the analytic thinking of the ancient Greeks:
"Try tuning musical instruments such as the chhin [qin] or the se. The kung [gong] note or the shang note struck upon one lute will be answered by the kung or the shang notes from other stringed instruments. They sound by themselves. This is nothing miraculous, but the Five Notes being in relation: they are what they are according to the Numbers (whereby the world is constructed)" (Needham 1965, 130).
Thus: "It means for Needham that the seemingly mysterious phenomenon of resonance fits well into ancient Chinese organic worldview" (p.13). |
| Needham (207–208) prefers the explanation of sound given by Tan Qiao, a Daoist of the Tang Dynasty, preceding Zhang Zai:
"The void (hsü) is transformed into (magical) power (shen). (Magical) power is transformed into chhi [qi]. Chhi [qi] is transformed into material things (hsing). Material things and chhi [qi] ride on one another (hsing chhi hsiang chheng), and thus sound is formed. It is not the ear which listens to sound but sound which of itself makes its way into the ear. It is not the valley which of itself gives out echoing sound, but sound of itself fills up the entire valley"
"An ear is a small hollow (chhiao) and a valley is a large hollow. Mountains and marshes are a ‘small valley’ and Heaven and Earth are a ‘large valley.’ (Theoretically speaking, then) if one hollow gives out sound ten thousand hollows will all give out sound; if sound can be heard in one valley it should be heard in all the ten thousand valleys"
This notion of sound arises from yin-yang thinking:
"Sound leads (back again) to chhi [qi]; chhi [qi] leads (back again) to (magical) power; (magical) power leads (back again) to the void. (But)the void has in it (the potential for) power. The power has in it (the potential for) chhi [qi]. Chhi [qi] has in it (the potential for) sound. One leads (back again) to the other, which has (a potential for) the former within itself. (If this reversion and production were to be prolonged) even the tiny noise of mosquitoes and flies would be able to reach everywhere." |
| "According to Zhang Zai, to use Needham’s translation,
The formation of sound is due to the friction (lit. mutual grinding) between (two) material things, or (two) chhi [qi] (or between material things and chhi [qi]). The grinding between two chhi [qi] gives rise to noises such as echoes in a valley or the sounds of thunder. The grinding of a material thing on chhi [qi] gives sounds such as the swishing of feathered fans or flying arrows. The grinding of chhi [qi] on a material thing gives sounds such as the blowing of the reeds of a mouth-organ. These are the inherent capacities in things for response" (Needham 206). |
| In the text Guan Yinzi (关尹子), (possibly written by the Daoist thinker Tian Tongxiu of the Tang Dynasty) is found: "The Sound of a drum is a matter of my responding to it." Needhams interprets this as "“it is the response (gan) of a sentient being which enables one to describe this process as sound” (Nedham 209). (Wang equates 'response' with 'resonance' throughout.)
Although Needham does recognise the importance of resonance in Chinese thinking about sound, Wang complains that he reduces resonance to just psychology of hearing, whereas resonance is a far more fundamental part of the "Chinese correlational cosmology of qi." |
| "Needham’s research into the history of Chinese acoustics is of great value to enrich our knowledge of sound technology in Chinese history. However, it is also important to notice his reduction of the notion of resonance and his materialistic understanding of qi. Needham reminds the reader, “Chinese acoustics . . . was from the first, if not analytical, highly pneumatic.” and “We must not forget that they thought of chhi [qi] as something between what we should call matter in rarefied gaseous state on the one hand, and radiant energy on the other” (Needham135). Pneumatic is a Greek word for breath, spirit, or soul, often used in a religious context. Defining Chinese acoustic as pneumatic steers Needham away from understanding some of the early examples of acoustic practice; it also explains Needham’s proposition that Chinese’s acoustics originates from Babylon." |
| "the ancient Chinese belief in sound’s function of regulating the cosmic order. Wind was an important form of qi. In pre-qin period (2100–221 BC), wind and qi was often used interchangeably. The sound of winds/qi coming from different directions were named differently in musical terms." |
| "Needham’s research into the history of Chinese acoustics is of great value to enrich our knowledge of sound technology in Chinese history. However, it is also important to notice his reduction of the notion of resonance and his materialistic understanding of qi. Needham reminds the reader, “Chinese acoustics . . . was from the first, if not analytical, highly pneumatic.” and “We must not forget that they thought of chhi [qi] as something between what we should call matter in rarefied gaseous state on the one hand, and radiant energy on the other” (Needham 135). Pneumatic is a Greek word for breath, spirit, or soul, often used in a religious context. Defining Chinese acoustic as pneumatic steers Needham away from understanding some of the early examples of acoustic practice; it also explains Needham’s proposition that Chinese’s acoustics originates from Babylon." |
| Wang points out that most (European) translations of qi have materialist tendencies. Instead, qi should be thought of "as a big verb, a proposition, and a small noun" (22). |
Wang explains that, int he pre-qin era (BC), it was the "primordial worship of cloud and wind" that later gave rise to the concept of qi. "Wind was considered a prototype of qi. . . . Qi is considered both the vital
source of life and the driving force in the cosmic world." |
| "Daoism tends to thinks of qi through cosmological questions (how the cosmos and the myriad things came to be and how to cultivate oneself to be immortal), while Confucianism concerns more with cultural and political problems." |
