I can explain why I like some things but not others.
I don’t believe you can. All you can do is point to surface features like ‘I like how red the explosions in Star Wars are and the feeling you get when they win at the last moment’, all of which is merely description of the parts you like and not what actually you like, and which do not serve to convey the qualia. If someone who just saw flickering lights on the screen asked you why you liked movies and that’s what you said, they would not be satisfied any more than you would be satisfied by a music fan going ‘the 4/8th time and the timpanni descending into a glissando in the third measure thrill my heart, and that is why I like music’.
If you really want to know what red looks like, you could try getting your hands on a psychedelic; they seems to be heavily linked to musical enjoyment.
Psychedelics are not interchangeable for this purpose, and if it weren’t for the war on drugs they could probably be used for some interesting science on auditory processing. Information from TIHKAL on two otherwise not unusual psychedelics with specific auditory effects:
N,N-diisopropyltryptamine specifically messes with pitch perception in such a way as to destroy the perception of harmony. From one of the experience reports: “No effects were noted with respect to clarity of speech, and both comprehension and interpretation were normal. Music was rendered completely disharmonious although single tones sounded normal.”
Meanwhile, 5-methoxy N,N-diisopropyltryptamine distorts “musical character and interpretation.” From one of the experience reports: “The program was a program of Irish music… What I heard were three distant, fraudulent selections with generically meaningless words, mumbled so as to sound authentic. Everything was faked.”
Maybe if I could get my hands on one of these I could understand what it’s like to be James Miller (in the musical respect only). Perhaps he’s totally lacking the hard-to-explain satisfying feeling that comes when you hear notes played together whose frequencies are at a small-integer ratio.
Psychedelics are not interchangeable for this purpose, and if it weren’t for the war on drugs they could probably be used for some interesting science on auditory processing.
Sure. If I had to be more specific than just ‘psychedelics’, I’d probably say either LSD (due to Deadheads) or mescaline (due to Huxley).
And those two excerpts are fascinating. What does it mean for something to sound ‘distant, fraudulent’? I can’t even imagine. Maybe it’s like a musical version of Capgras delusion.
Generally, sentences that start out “I (don’t) like X because” and don’t finish with a description of neuronal states are, with highish probability, confabulation. :)
I don’t believe you can. All you can do is point to surface features like ‘I like how red the explosions in Star Wars are and the feeling you get when they win at the last moment’, all of which is merely description of the parts you like and not what actually you like, and which do not serve to convey the qualia. If someone who just saw flickering lights on the screen asked you why you liked movies and that’s what you said, they would not be satisfied any more than you would be satisfied by a music fan going ‘the 4/8th time and the timpanni descending into a glissando in the third measure thrill my heart, and that is why I like music’.
If you really want to know what red looks like, you could try getting your hands on a psychedelic; they seems to be heavily linked to musical enjoyment.
Psychedelics are not interchangeable for this purpose, and if it weren’t for the war on drugs they could probably be used for some interesting science on auditory processing. Information from TIHKAL on two otherwise not unusual psychedelics with specific auditory effects:
N,N-diisopropyltryptamine specifically messes with pitch perception in such a way as to destroy the perception of harmony. From one of the experience reports: “No effects were noted with respect to clarity of speech, and both comprehension and interpretation were normal. Music was rendered completely disharmonious although single tones sounded normal.”
Meanwhile, 5-methoxy N,N-diisopropyltryptamine distorts “musical character and interpretation.” From one of the experience reports: “The program was a program of Irish music… What I heard were three distant, fraudulent selections with generically meaningless words, mumbled so as to sound authentic. Everything was faked.”
Maybe if I could get my hands on one of these I could understand what it’s like to be James Miller (in the musical respect only). Perhaps he’s totally lacking the hard-to-explain satisfying feeling that comes when you hear notes played together whose frequencies are at a small-integer ratio.
Sure. If I had to be more specific than just ‘psychedelics’, I’d probably say either LSD (due to Deadheads) or mescaline (due to Huxley).
And those two excerpts are fascinating. What does it mean for something to sound ‘distant, fraudulent’? I can’t even imagine. Maybe it’s like a musical version of Capgras delusion.
Marijuana also has a reputation for making music more enjoyable.
Generally, sentences that start out “I (don’t) like X because” and don’t finish with a description of neuronal states are, with highish probability, confabulation. :)