This is already a weaker claim than the one you seemed to be presenting before
This is my first post in the conversation. Are you thinking of a different person maybe?
you are now saying that there exists a “consensus agreement” regarding which music is better.
Nooooot exactly. What I’m saying is that questions of whether music is pleasurable to listen to or holds up to sophisticated aesthetic analysis do not dissolve even if we assume the criteria are arbitrary (and indeed, different musical traditions around the world have different tone scales, different ideas about what constitute good lyrics, rhythm, et cetera—so while two humans from entirely different social contexts may disagree with each other’s tastes in music, it is still rather likely they both have a taste in music).
I like listening to Tuvan throat singing (no, really). I know plenty of people who can’t stand it (one of my spouses being a prominent example, but she adores heavy metal). There’s no a priori reason why I’d dig phase-shifting and simultaneous harmonies in a raspy voice while she prefers electric guitar and heavy thumping drum beats.
So you’re right that it’s arbitrary, but the statement “these preferences are arbitrary” is kind of meaningless—I still have the brainbits that respond well to Kongar ool-Ondar, and my spouse still has the brainbits that respond well to Apocalyptika and Sammael, and this will lead to important, meaningful social behaviors on our part.
Don’t get too confused by my money analogy—it’s true that money stands in for trade balances in a sense and so relative valuations between currencies can be expected to vary in response to economic conditions, but that doesn’t make any instance of the symbols or tokens of trade-balance valuable unto themselves.
What I’m saying is you can’t make meaningful statements about music quality outside of context; you should taboo the word “arbitrary” here.
Yeah, I seem to be doing that a lot, lately :-( Sorry about that.
and indeed, different musical traditions around the world have different tone scales, different ideas about what constitute good lyrics, rhythm, et cetera...
Is this actually true ? I was under the impression that there were a handful (maybe as few as two, IIRC) tonal scales that persist across cultures, but I could be wrong. Lyrics are another matter entirely, and are probably out of scope for this discussion, as they are closer to literature than to music.
...but that doesn’t make any instance of the symbols or tokens of trade-balance valuable unto themselves.
No, but it does mean that there’s something else besides social consensus that governs the value that people place on these currency tokens.
...you should taboo the word “arbitrary” here.
Fair enough.
My point is that, if the measure of quality that we assign to a piece of music is completely independent on any properties of that piece of music, as the original commenter seemed to be suggesting, then it makes no sense to even recognize music as a discipline. And I argue that the reverse is also true: if we are willing to claim that music is a thing, and that some pieces of music are better than others in some way, then these pieces of music must possess some properties which are relevant to their quality. It would therefore be possible—just as an example—to identify these properties, and to predict whether a given piece of music will be successful or not.
Note that such properties need not be completely objective, in a way that mass and length are objective. They just need to be relatively stable within our current culture.
This is my first post in the conversation. Are you thinking of a different person maybe?
Nooooot exactly. What I’m saying is that questions of whether music is pleasurable to listen to or holds up to sophisticated aesthetic analysis do not dissolve even if we assume the criteria are arbitrary (and indeed, different musical traditions around the world have different tone scales, different ideas about what constitute good lyrics, rhythm, et cetera—so while two humans from entirely different social contexts may disagree with each other’s tastes in music, it is still rather likely they both have a taste in music).
I like listening to Tuvan throat singing (no, really). I know plenty of people who can’t stand it (one of my spouses being a prominent example, but she adores heavy metal). There’s no a priori reason why I’d dig phase-shifting and simultaneous harmonies in a raspy voice while she prefers electric guitar and heavy thumping drum beats.
So you’re right that it’s arbitrary, but the statement “these preferences are arbitrary” is kind of meaningless—I still have the brainbits that respond well to Kongar ool-Ondar, and my spouse still has the brainbits that respond well to Apocalyptika and Sammael, and this will lead to important, meaningful social behaviors on our part.
Don’t get too confused by my money analogy—it’s true that money stands in for trade balances in a sense and so relative valuations between currencies can be expected to vary in response to economic conditions, but that doesn’t make any instance of the symbols or tokens of trade-balance valuable unto themselves.
What I’m saying is you can’t make meaningful statements about music quality outside of context; you should taboo the word “arbitrary” here.
Yeah, I seem to be doing that a lot, lately :-( Sorry about that.
Is this actually true ? I was under the impression that there were a handful (maybe as few as two, IIRC) tonal scales that persist across cultures, but I could be wrong. Lyrics are another matter entirely, and are probably out of scope for this discussion, as they are closer to literature than to music.
No, but it does mean that there’s something else besides social consensus that governs the value that people place on these currency tokens.
Fair enough.
My point is that, if the measure of quality that we assign to a piece of music is completely independent on any properties of that piece of music, as the original commenter seemed to be suggesting, then it makes no sense to even recognize music as a discipline. And I argue that the reverse is also true: if we are willing to claim that music is a thing, and that some pieces of music are better than others in some way, then these pieces of music must possess some properties which are relevant to their quality. It would therefore be possible—just as an example—to identify these properties, and to predict whether a given piece of music will be successful or not.
Note that such properties need not be completely objective, in a way that mass and length are objective. They just need to be relatively stable within our current culture.