# please use the following as the inspiration for one of the monks with the other pushing back. mak... ## Retrieval Notes - Session id: `79a11afd-fbf5-434b-8020-ad64096a56a8` - Last activity: `2026-03-03T22:03:09.013Z` ## My Notes <!-- Add your notes here. This section is preserved across syncs. --> ## Conversation ### User please use the following as the inspiration for one of the monks with the other pushing back. make sure that we go through this step by step Audible Presence 1. Image and Appearance 1.1 Visual Images The zebra on the cover of National Geographic does not look like something you could reach out and touch. You are presented with the appearance of a zebra, but it is clear that it does not belong to a real-life, flesh and blood zebra that you could reach out and pet. One way of putting this is to say that real-life objects look materially present, but depictions of them do not. Versions of this idea are fairly common in the philosophical literature on image perception. Martin says that the things we see in pictures are mere visibilia, in that they, like rainbows and shadows, do not look as though they have an “existence and impact...beyond the visible realm” (2012, p. 334); Matthen, describes depicted objects as “display[ing] certain important visual characteristics of material objects while at the same time looking as if they are not actually material objects''(2018, p. 323; see also 2010); and Noë says that “Pictures enable us to undergo a visual sense of the presence of something in its manifest absence”(2015, p. 85; see also, for example, Nanay 2015, Wiessing 2010, Hopkins 1998, Ferretti 2016). In this paper I will argue that auditory experience divides the world up in much the same way that visual experience does. If I strike a real-life bell or strum a real-life guitar, these events will sound materially present –what you hear will auditorily appear to have an existence and impact in the material realm; when recordings of events like these are played through stereo speakers or headphones, they will, almost always, sound absent –what you hear will auditorily appear as though it does not have an existence and impact beyond the audible realm. If this is correct then auditory experience is rich in the same way that visual experience is rich: it asserts whether or not the events we hear are actually occurring. It would also go some way towards showing that there are such things as auditory images. Indeed, on one view of what images are, it would go all of the way. According to Martin, all a visual image is is something which “presents the appearance of something which it does not exemplify” (2012, p. 343), and so if a recording of a guitar being strummed is recognisably a strumming, yet manifestly, audibly, absent, we have an example of an unexemplified auditory appearance, and thus an auditory image. It is, however, more common to think that there is more to being an image than simply presenting an unexemplified appearance. Typically, the claim that depicted objects look absent is presented as part of the idea that there are two ‘folds’ to image experience: looking at a photo, you not only see a manifestly absent object, but also a manifestly present picture surface: we see the absent zebra and the glossy cover of the magazine, with the experience of one seeming to be –somehow– tied up with the experience of the other. While I will say a little more about the possibility of auditory twofoldness and Martin’s account of images in Section 5, my main focus here will be on whether or not things can sound present or absent and so, as regards images, the arguments that follow can be read in a stronger or weaker way. If one agrees with Martin as to what makes images images, then the following can be taken as an argument for their being auditory images. If one disagrees, and thinks that something like twofoldness must be involved in image experience, then what follows can be thought of as providing half of an argument for auditory images, with further work required to show that listeners also hear some auditory analog of a picture surface. 1.2 Auditory Austerity The idea that auditory experience divides what we hear into the materially present and the materially absent is explicitly denied by Martin, who says “audition does not provide the materials to generate a form of representation analogous to...visual images” (p. 344). Nudds (2018) agrees: The auditory world does not seem to contain purely auditory objects alongside the ordinary environmental events that we take ourselves to hear...Some audible objects may in fact turn out to be more than mere audibilia, but that fact about them is not auditorily manifest to us, and there need be no audibly apparent difference between an auditory scene that contains audible environmental events and one that contains only pure audibilia. (ibid., p. 60) Nudds is not denying the possibility that we are able to hear real-life events involving actual material objects, only that the materiality, or lack thereof, of what we hear is not marked in auditory phenomenology: material objects look different to the objects we see in photographs, but real-life events do not sound different to recordings. According to Nudds and Martin, audition is somewhat impoverished compared to vision: visual appearances are determined both by ‘ordinary’ visual features such as such as colour and shape, and material presence (or lack thereof), whereas the appearance of the things we hear is fixed solely by “acoustic features...such as pitch, loudness, and timbre” which do not reveal “how their bearers would extend into physical space or interact with material objects” (ibid.). In what follows I will argue that we have good reasons to reject this austere view of auditory experience. The appearance of the things we hear is not only fixed by their acoustic features but also by their sounding, or not sounding, materially present: real-life events sound like they have an existence and impact beyond the audible realm, recordings of events do not. In the next section I will deal with a preliminary objection to this aim: it might just seem obvious that the pitch, timbre, and loudness are the only features that fix auditory appearances. I will give some reasons for thinking that it is not as obvious as we might think. In Section 3 I will argue that real-life events do, in fact, have a different auditory appearance to recordings. In Section 4 I will give some reasons for thinking that this difference is a matter of real-life events, but not recordings, sounding materially present. 2 Austerity is not Obvious 2.1 Austerity and Common Sense Prima facie, the austere view of auditory experience might seem very plausible indeed. We might even think that it is obvious that auditory appearances are entirely fixed by pitch, timbre, and loudness. The aim of this section is simply to show that it is not as obvious as one might think. One reason why we might assume that austerity is correct is that it fits with our common sense ideas about auditory perception, which I take to be something like the following: we hear sounds, sounds are sound waves, and sounds instantiate the properties pitch, timbre, and loudness. In and of itself, however, common sense cannot be our sole reason for accepting or rejecting any philosophical claim. This is especially true when it comes to auditory perception given that almost all philosophical theories of audition depart quite considerably from our everyday ideas about what we hear. First, according to almost all contemporary views of auditory perception we not only hear sounds, but also sound sources –the movements and interactions of material objects which produce sound waves. That is, we do not simply hear a chime and judge that a bell has been struck but hear the chime and the strike, with the hearing of one somehow connected up to the hearing of the other. Second, many philosophical accounts of audition do not identify sounds with sound waves. To mention three examples, sounds have been identified with vibrations (Casati and Dokic 1994), disturbances of the air (or some other medium) surrounding to vibrating objects (O’Callaghan 2007), and stable, dispositional properties of material objects (Kulvicki 2008). The fact that these ideas depart from our unreflective ideas about what we hear is no reason to dismiss them out of hand; similarly, we should not assume that austerity is true simply because it fits with our common sense intuitions. A related reason for accepting austerity might go as follows. If we think about the physical properties of sound waves, they have three obvious features: frequency, spectral composition, and amplitude. We might therefore think that auditory appearance is fixed by audible properties that supervene on, or are identical with, each of these features, namely pitch, timbre and loudness. However, regardless of whether sounds should be identified with sound waves, there is no reason to think that auditory appearances are fixed by these features and no others. It is quite common to argue (although not uncontroversial) that objects can be seen to bear properties other than those that match up one to one with their physical properties, such as natural kind properties (e.g. being a pine tree), aesthetic properties (being beautiful) or dispositional properties (being edible). Indeed, if we were to say that visual appearances are fixed solely by low-level physical properties of objects, this would seem to block the idea that things can look or not look materially present. There is no reason to think that things are any different for audition. 2.2 No Auditory Eden Another reason we might think that austerity is correct is that it is introspectively obvious that it is correct. That is, we might think that when we attend to our auditory experience it is clear that the appearance of all the things we hear is fixed entirely by some combination of loudness, timbre, and pitch. However, just as we should not rely on common sense when evaluating the truth of a claim, neither should we rely too heavily on introspective seemings. If it were introspectively obvious which features or properties fix perceptual appearances then various controversies in the philosophy of perception would be solved at a stroke. It would be clear, for example, whether or not we see ‘higher level’ properties, such as those mentioned in the previous paragraph, or whether we perceive ‘negativities’ such as empty space or silence (e.g. Sorenson 2008). Moreover, what little agreement there is about visual appearances has no counterpart in discussions of auditory phenomenology. Consider the following remarks by Chalmers (2010) on what visual experience is like: At some level, perception represents our world as an Edenic world, populated by perfect colors and shapes, with objects and properties that are revealed to us directly (p. 382)....Phenomenologically, it seems to us as if visual experience presents simple intrinsic qualities of objects in the world, spread out over the surface of the object (p.398) Some might baulk at the use of the word ‘representation’, and there are myriad views as to what colours are, but almost everyone would agree that this description gets something right about visual phenomenology: colours seem to be properties on the surfaces of objects. However, when it comes to auditory phenomenology, there is not even this much consensus. Nudds, for example, takes auditory phenomenology to reveal sounds as property bearing particulars, detachable from source events: Because sounds appear to be individuals that instantiate properties and can be individuated as such, I think it’s right to say that sounds appear to be independent of the material objects that produce them—independent, that is, of their sources (2013, p. 343; my emphasis). Leddington, on the other hand, describes auditory phenomenology in precisely the opposite way: “sounds auditorily seem bound to their sources qualitatively, as properties” (2014, p.330, see also p. 332). While other accounts of what sounds are (medium disturbances, vibrations etc.) rely on phenomenological seemings more or less than others, we can suppose that the proponents of all of them believe their view to be at least compatible with how things seem auditorily. But if introspection does not make it obvious what sorts of things sounds are, it does not seem as if we should be any more confident that it reveals auditory appearances to be fixed by pitch, timbre, and loudness alone. Indeed, if there is disagreement as to whether sounds seem to be particulars or seem to be properties this means that there is also a disagreement as to what pitch, timbre, and loudness seem to be. If sounds appear to be individuals, then pitch, timbre and loudness would appear to be properties of sounds. But if sounds themselves appear to be properties, then pitch, timbre, and loudness would seem to be something like qualities which constitute these properties –similar to how hue, saturation, and brightness constitute colours properties (Leddington). The moral that I think we should take from these considerations is that we should be generally wary of relying on introspection to make strong claims about what we do and do not perceive, but especially so in the auditory case. In the absence of any further arguments in favour of austerity, it seems we should at least consider the possibility that material presence, or lack thereof, contributes to the appearances of the things we hear. In the next two sections I will put forward my reasons for thinking that such a feature, or lack of it, does contribute to the appearance of the things we hear. 3. The Real and The Recorded In this section I shall argue that real-life events and recordings of events differ in their auditory appearance, in the next I will argue that this is a matter of the former but not the latter sounding materially present. The first reason for thinking that recordings and real-life events differ in appearance is that we can, almost always, be quite sure whether what we are listening to is one or the other. The second is that the sensory stimulation produced by recordings of events differs significantly from that produced by real-life events in almost all circumstances. 3.1 Believing our Ears In the following passage, Nudds suggests that stereo speakers are capable of generating auditory illusions: stereo loudspeakers...produce experiences of sounds that don’t correspond to events that produced them...To hear a sound that doesn’t correspond to what produced it is to experience a kind of auditory illusion: that of merely seeming to hear sound-producing events. It is possible to have the auditory experience of someone coughing over on your left when in fact there’s no one there. (REF) Illusions are deceptive perceptual experiences. Unless you have some reason to believe that what you are experiencing is an illusion, you will be fooled into thinking that the world is one way when it is in fact another. Do stereo speakers, or other types of playback device, elicit experiences capable of misleading us in this way? The answer, I think, is yes, but very, very rarely. The following I take to be uncontroversial. In most ordinary situations we can effortlessly differentiate the real from the recorded. On a train, it is obvious that the conductor is making his announcement over the public address system and not from the back of the carriage; in a bar, it is easy to tell that the song you hear is coming from a live band and not the jukebox; at home, you feel no alarm at the gunshots on the other side of the wall because it is clear that they are coming from your neighbours TV. Regardless of whether the real and the recorded sound different, we are very often very sure as to whether we are hearing one or the other. One might be tempted to argue that in cases like these the reason why we realise we are not hearing a real event is due to the low quality of the speakers which are producing the sound waves. Listeners might be tipped off by the crackle that the PA system adds to the conductor’s voice, or the hum that accompanies each song played through the jukebox, but when sound waves are produced by high quality speakers their auditory experiences would be indistinguishable from those produced by real-life events. While this type of response might seem initially compelling, it becomes less so when we consider how often we come across high quality speakers, and how infrequently we are fooled by them. Imagine playing a high quality digital copy (that is, encoded in a ‘lossless’ format such as a FLAC or a WAV file) of the stereo mix of A Love Supreme by John Coltrane on your brand new stereo system. Your stereo is high-end, although fairly unremarkable for the 21st century, in that it has “very low levels of distortion, a wide frequency range, a flat frequency response, and low noise, with specifications that match or exceed the limits of human perception” (Rumsey 2002, p. 652). In other words, for any recording you play on it, your stereo will be able to produce sound waves with the same spectral composition (the same combination of component frequencies) as the sound waves produced by the musicians’ instruments when the track was originally recorded. Unlike an old transistor radio, your stereo does not cut out low frequencies, and unlike the souped-up, window-rattling sound system that a teenager might have in his car, neither does it boost the bass. If you blindfolded a friend and tried to pass off A Love Supreme as a real-life performance, would she be fooled? I contend that she almost certainly would not: it will still be obvious to her that she is hearing a recording and not a real-life band, and it would be obvious due to the auditory appearance of what she heard, rather than because she knows that Coltrane died in 1967, or because she knows that your living room is too small to contain a fully-equipped jazz quartet (plus two person audience). The reasons for my confidence that the recording will have a different appearance to a live performance will become clear in the following subsection, but first, consider the following: if you reflect on your own real-life experience, can you remember an occasion on which you mistook a recording for a real-life event, or a real-life event for a recording, or were unsure whether you were listening to one or the other? Can you remember witnessing someone else being fooled in this way, or being uncertain? I suspect the answer will be no. Occasionally, novels or films use the idea of listeners being deceived by recordings as a plot device, but we should not let the ease with which we can imagine someone being fooled by a recording lead us to think that such a thing happens very often at all. Even if you can remember times when you have been fooled, we might still ask why we encounter convincing auditory illusions so infrequently. Given how easily speakers in the 21st Century can replicate the spectral composition of sound waves, should we not find ourselves fooled, or at least unsure, fairly often? 3.2 Speakers and Sound Scenes The reason why recordings and real-life events differ in auditory appearance is straightforward: the appearance of the things we perceive (in any sensory modality) is determined, at least partly, by the way in which our perceptual faculties are stimulated, and the sensory stimulation produced by stereo speakers will almost always differ significantly from that produced by real-life events. Imagine that we are sitting in your kitchen. Standing in front of me and to my right, you cough. Some of the sound waves you produce will travel directly to my ear drums. Because of where you are in relation to me, these direct sound waves will arrive at my right ear ever so slightly before they reach my left. Due to the extra travel distance, and the absorbent properties of my head, the sound waves at my left ear will also have a slightly lower amplitude, as well as slightly fewer high frequency components. Other sound waves that you produce will bounce off the walls, floor, or ceiling before they reach my ears, and will arrive slightly late because of this. They will also have been altered by the properties of the surfaces from which they reflected: the bare wooden flooring and plaster walls of your kitchen will absorb some frequency components and reflect others. If I start to move around the room as you are talking, this will have an effect on which sound waves reach which eardrum when: if I take a step to the right, the direct sound waves will reach my left ear slightly more quickly; moving away from you and towards the back of the room, will increase the time it takes for the direct sound waves to reach my ears, but decrease the travel time of the sound waves which reflect from the back wall. Now imagine that, for some reason, I am recording our encounter using two microphones attached just above my ears. They are powerful enough to pick up all of the sound waves rippling through the room, meaning that they are creating a near perfect copy of the patterns of stimulation at my ears, including the subtle, interaural differences in timing, frequency and amplitude, the slight delay between the arrival of the direct and indirect waves, and the ways that this stimulation varies as I move around. The result is a high quality stereo recording of you coughing in your kitchen. That evening, I decide to play the recording back on the stereo in my living room. While my speakers will produce sound waves with the same spectral composition as were produced originally, this will not lead to the same patterns of sensory stimulation at my ears. First, unless I am standing in exactly the right place in relation to my speakers, the sound waves at each ear will differ from the originals in terms of their arrival time, amplitude, and spectral composition. If I am standing closer to the left speaker than right, for example, the sound waves picked up by the left microphone will reach my ears slightly earlier, and with a slightly higher amplitude than they did in real life. The further away I stand from the ‘sweet spot’ between the speakers, the more pronounced these differences will become. Even if I am standing in the perfect location I would also need to stay very still, as even small turns of my head will affect the stimulation my ears receive. Playing back the recording will also produce quite different patterns of reflected sound waves. Imagine that my living room is larger and has higher ceilings than your kitchen; there is a carpet on the floor and the walls are unplastered brick. The larger room leads to reflected sound waves taking longer to reach my ears than they did in your kitchen, and the carpet and brick will reflect and absorb different frequencies to your wooden floor and plaster walls. Moreover, all of the reflected sound waves which were originally recorded by my microphones are themselves being reproduced by my speakers: some of these will travel straight from the speakers to my ears, but some will bounce off the walls before they reach me. The reverberation that was captured originally is now itself reverberating! Even in this very simple example, then, we can see that it is very close to impossible for stereo speakers to recreate the sensory stimulation that would be produced by a real life event. It would be harder still to do so for more complex events such as a performance by the John Coltrane Quartet. Stereophonic stimulation that would be produced by a real-life event. Even when played back on very high end stereo equipment, a recording will produce patterns of sensory stimulation at listeners’ eardrums that differ significantly from those that would be produced by a real-life event. If there is a significant difference in sensory stimulation we should expect that to lead to a difference in auditory appearance. Despite being able to create sound waves with the same frequencies as those produced by real-life events, stereo speakers have great difficulty replicating real-life sound scenes. A sound scene is the spectral, spatial, and temporal profile of all the sound waves at some location, for some period of time (REF). Consider the sound scene that was instantiated when The John Coltrane Quartet recorded A Love Supreme’s opening track: Part 1: Acknowledgement: The air surrounding the musicians would be a sea of sound waves of different frequencies and amplitudes, some sound waves emanated from the musicians’ instruments and ripple through the room, started to play, sound waves were produced by their instruments and began to ripple through the room, blending together as they did so. When they reached a wall, floor, ceiling, or the surface of some other object in the room (such as the body of one of the performers) some frequencies of sound waves were absorbed, and some reflected back across the room. This continued until the musicians stopped playing, and all the sound waves were absorbed. It is almost impossible for stereo speakers to replicate this sound scene, meaning that it is almost impossible for them to recreate the patterns of sensory stimulation that a listener would have enjoyed if they had been standing in Coltrane’s recording studio. When it comes Part 1: Acknowledgement these sorts of differences will be magnified Something about the stereo mix 4 Why Recordings Don’t Sound Real So far, I have argued that we can differentiate the real from the recorded in almost all cases, and considerations about what stereo speakers can and cannot do provides us with an explanation as to why this is: stereo speakers are unable to replicate real-life sound scenes, meaning that listeners receive different sensory stimulation from a recording of an event than they would from the original. Differences in sensory stimulation lead to differences in perceptual appearance, so it is plausible that the reason why we are so good at differentiating the real from the recorded is that recordings have a different auditory appearance to real-life events. What has not yet been shown is that this difference in appearance is a matter of things sounding or not sounding materially present. This is what I shall try to do here. 4.1 Material Presence and Ego-centric Location Let us return to visual images. In Section 1 we saw that the things we see in pictures do not look materially present, but did not consider why they look that way. What is it about the sensory stimulation that images produce which causes experiences of manifestly absent objects? A popular answer to this question is to say that depicted objects do not supply the visual system with the cues it uses for egocentric spatial location (REFs). If you encounter a real-life zebra you will see it as standing in two sorts of spatial relation. First, you will see its distance and location relative to other objects in your field of view, such as it standing some distance in front of some trees and slightly in front and to the right of a bush. This sort of relative depth information is specified by cues such as occlusion, texture gradients and height in the visual field. Second, you will see it as having a location and distance relative to you, such as being in front and to your left, or within touching distance. This type of egocentric depth information is specified by cues such as “motion parallax, defocus blur, and the oculomotor cues of convergence and accommodation” (Briscoe 77). Images, it has been suggested, only provide the visual system with the former sort of cue. The figure depicting the National Geographic’s zebra ‘interrupts’ the texture of the trees, and to to be on the right of the figure depicting the bush, making the animal look to be in front of the trees and to the right of the bush. If you pick up the National Geographic and hold it at arm’s length the magazine will look to be further away than if you held it closer, but the same is not true of the zebra: it is not as if you can make the zebra recede into the distance by moving the magazine further away. Neither does the image provide motion parallax cues: as you move your head the trees do not seem to move across your visual field any slower than the zebra does It is unsurprising, then, that the zebra does not look to be a “denizen of the material realm” as it fails to provide the cues required for properly locating it within that realm. It does not look like something that one could reach out and pat because it does not seem to be at a location that one could reach out towards. 4. 2 Recordings of Events are Unlocatable “the best that stereo can do is to provide a credible illusion that between and beyond the pair of loudspeakers there exists another acoustic environment within which the musicians are located and performing. [...] The only major question is how to produce at the listener’s ears from the two source loudspeakers such differences as will be interpreted by the hearing mechanism as representing a credible image between the loudspeakers” (Lipshitz 1986). In Section 3 I argued that, even when played back on high-end stereo equipment, recordings do not sound the same as their real-life counterparts. Stereo speakers cannot recreate real-life sound scenes, meaning that they cannot recreate the patterns of sensory stimulation at listeners’ ears as would be produced by real-life events. I want to suggest now that this makes the sensory stimulation produced by speakers deficient in the same way that the visual stimulation produced by pictures is deficient: while recordings provide relative depth cues, they do not provide the cues that the auditory system uses to locate its objects in egocentric space. If this is correct, we have a good reason for thinking that recordings and reality sound different in much the same way that depictions and material objects look different. In the case of pictures, a lack of egocentric locatability leads to a lack of perceptual presence, and so it is very plausible to think that the same is true when it comes to recordings. Just as the visual system makes use of binocular cues, interaural differences in the timing, frequency and amplitude help the auditory system to determine the direction in which a sound source is located. For example, I hear you coughing on my right, because the sound waves you produce reach my right ear slightly earlier, with a slightly higher amplitude, and slightly more high frequency components than they do my left. Similarly, the auditory system determines the elevation of sound sources, as well as whether they are located in front or behind the head, through the characteristic way in which the shape of the ears affects the spectral character of the sound waves they produce. If, for example, you were coughing behind where I am standing, the pinna –the curved edge of the outer ear– would attenuate the higher frequencies of the sound waves that you produce, thereby leading to me to hear your coughing as taking place behind me. As well as direction, the auditory system also uses monocular cues to calculate the distance at which an event is occurring. This is achieved in part by a sensitivity to the amplitude of sound waves (those that are travelling a longer distance will have a lower amplitude) and partly through comparing the ratio of direct to indirect (reflected) sound waves. Reflected sound waves are also used as a means of determining more general information about your surrounding environment: the larger the environment, the longer the gap in arrival time between direct and direct waves (REF). While the above descriptions do not come close to describing the complexities of spatial hearing, it is nevertheless easy to see that these sorts of cue are severely degraded when we listen to stereo speakers. If I listen to a recording of your cough, and am not standing in the ‘sweet spot’ directly between the speakers I will not receive the interaural cues necessary to properly locate what I am hearing as coming from a particular direction. If I am standing... Even if I were in the correct location I would need to remain extremely still, as “even a subtle turn of the head can alter the acoustic pathways to the ears enough to affect the spectral, directional, and spatial attributes of a stereo program. (Geloso 2017, p. 64). More significant movements will lead to more dramatic distortions: walking around the room will make it sound as if I am being ‘followed’ by what I am hearing (Toole 2017 p. 404). Finally, we have seen that the recording will also produce different patterns of reflected sound waves (caused by differences in room size, properties of the reflecting surfaces, and recorded sound waves being reflected again), thereby distorting one of the primary cues that the auditory system uses to estimate both the distance of a source, and the size of the listener’s environment. We saw in Section 3 that recordings do not produce the same patterns of sensory stimulation as real-life events. We now have an explanation as to the effect that this difference has on the auditory appearance of what is heard. Like the things we see in pictures, the things we hear on speakers are impossible to locate in egocentric space. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that, like the things we see in pictures, the things we hear on speakers do not have a present appearance. 4.3 Other Playback Devices So far, I have ignored one of the most common ways for sound waves to be reproduced: headphones. We saw in 3.2 some of the reasons why stereo speakers cannot replicate real-life patterns of sensory stimulation: the listener has to be at a very specific spot between the two speakers, and sound waves reflected from the walls of the listening room reach the eardrums as well as sound waves from the speakers. Listening on headphones, on the other hand, would avoid these sorts of problems: interaural differences in arrival time, amplitude, and frequency will not be affected by the location of the listener; no errant, reflected, sound waves will find their way to the listener’s ears. On the other hand, headphone listening does not usually produce convincing auditory illusions: even on excellent headphones, listening to A Love Supreme does not sound like a real-life jazz performance is taking place nearby; rather, it sounds like it is taking place between your ears. This is because, despite reproducing some of the cues we require for egocentric location, headphones do not produce all of them. First, sensory stimulation does not vary in a realistic way if a listener turns her head; indeed, it does not vary at all. Second, headphone listening does not reproduce the location cues provided by the pinna... Quote about headphones from the spatial audio book There are many theories speculating the cause of IHL. These theories include: 1) an unnatural bone conduction and pressure on the head caused by the headphones (Sone, Ebata & Tada- moto, 1968), 2) the invariability of the signal under non-static head conditions, and 3) natu- ral resonances of microphones and headphones (Blauert, 1983) as well as various theories of reproduction equipment, e.g. coupling between the ear and the headphone. The understanding of the cause of IHL was advanced with studies performed by Reichart and Haustein in 1968, as reported by Blauert (1983). The two scientists concluded that IHL occurs under two conditions: 1) when both ear signals are similar enough that the sound is fused into one auditory event, and 2) when each of the two sources must be perceived to be originating close to the ear. They also suggested that the alteration or the elimination of the acoustical effect of the pinnae con- tributes to this effect. In other words, a highly distorted pinna cue may lead to IHL. A binaural reproduction system may distort a spatially processed signal for two reasons. First, a headphone reproduction system of even the highest quality has its own characteristic. Second, placing head- phones over a listener’s ears produces an acoustic cavity that has its own transfer function. Thus, compensating for the effect of the headphone and ensuring a true free-field representation of a signal can minimize (or eliminate) IHL. There is not one theory currently that can fully explain IHL, or predict its occurrence. However, presenting a more natural sound to the listener can Audio engineers are getting better at creating illusions Give a very brief description of binaural audio It is possible that in the future auditory illusions will be more common This however, in no way counts against the arguments I have made in this paper. What I have shown is that we do have experiences which are recognisably of an event (have the appearance of a cough, or a jazz performance) but which we do not mistake for an actually occurring event. Even if auditory illusions were already a common occurrence, it would still be enough to show that they can occur in particular circumstances to disprove Martin’s claim that audition does not have “the materials to generate a form of representation analogous to the visual images” (p. 344). 5. Pure and Twofold Auditory Images Introduction: I have shown what I wanted to. In Section 2 I argued that the possibility of auditory images should not be dismissed out of hand. In Section 3 we saw that we can almost always differentiate between real-life events and recording, and that there are good reasons for thinking that this is due to a difference in auditory appearance. In Section 4 I put forward reasons for thinking that this difference is a matter of real-life events, but not recordings, sounding present. If this is correct, then, pace Martin, audition does have the materials to “​​generate a form of representation analogous to the visual images”. Auditory Images make for better examples of pure images than holograms I mentioned in Section 1, that Martin thinks of holograms as pure images: manifestly unexemplified appearances which do not seem to be being realised by any sort of material object. We also saw that some have argued that, pace Martin, holograms might not provide a counterexample to the idea that twofoldness is an essential feature of image experience. Even if the holographic zebra is not seen as being realised by anything material, it is, in Martin’s own words “manifestly a creature of light”, and so perhaps light itself is playing the role of the second fold. We might think, however, that recordings make for better examples of pure, unfold images, than holograms do. Listening to John Coltrane (or a cough) on a stereo presents you with a manifestly non-solid event, yet there does not seem to be any potential candidate for the second, configurational fold: there is no auditory analog of a material picture surface, nor of a play of light. Auditory Twofoldness Irrespective of this possibility, we might still wonder whether there is an auditory equivalent of twofoldness: are there cases in which we hear something which manifestly lacks physical presence, being presented by something which manifestly does? I think that auditory twofoldness is a possibility, but will here limit myself to a tentative sketch. I have so far mainly focussed on hearing recordings played through high quality speakers (reminder of how they are good), Auditory twofoldness occurs, I suggest, on low quality, non-transparent, speakers. Consider how John Coltrane might sound played over the tiny, tinny speaker of a transistor radio, or very cheap mobile phone. Here, you are still presented with the appearance of a jazz performance, you would be able to identify what instruments are playing the recording is of, but you are also aware of the speaker itself, and your experience of the recording seems to be ‘mixed up with’ an experience of the crackly speaker itself. Recall the dorsal ventral stuff from Nanay and Ferretti. On both their accounts while the depicted object is not represented dorsally, the picture surface is. It is represented as having some determinate location in egocentric space. Same thing with the phone or the radio. You do not hear the saxophone as playing in some determinate location, but you do hear the phone to have a determinate location. I do not pretend that this is anything like a complete account. In particular, more would need to be said as to whether the connection between hearing the speaker and hearing what is playing through the speaker is very much like seeing a zebra as being instantiated by the marks on the magazine cover. 5.4 Summing Up We can now see why it is plausible that recordings are heard as non-solid. The sensory stimulation provided by recordings do not provide the cues necessary to locate the events heard in egocentric space. The difference between hearing an actually occurring event and hearing a recording is that the former, but not the latter, appears to be located in egocentric space. This distinction is what makes SD possible: your friend is not fooled by A Love Supreme because although she hears a jazz ensemble playing, she does not hear it to be playing in the same space, the same location, as she is. What More Here? Bibliography Casati, R., Di Bona, E., & Dokic, J. (2013). The Ockhamization of the event sources of sound. Analysis, 73(3), 462-466. Hopkins, R. (2020). The Sculpted Image?. In Philosophy of Sculpture (pp. 187-205). Routledge. Matthen, M. (2010). “Two Visual Systems and the Feeling Of Presence,” in N. Gangopadhyay, M. Madary and F. Spencer (eds) Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dynamics and the Two Visual Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 107–124. Matthen, M. (2018). Ephemeral Vision. Perceptual Ephemera, 312-36. Nanay, B. (2015). “Trompe l’oeil and the Dorsal/Ventral Account of Picture Perception,” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6, pp. 181–197. DOI:10.1007/s13164-014-0219-y. Nudds, M. (2018). The Unitary Nature of Sounds. Perceptual Ephemera, 50-67. O'Callaghan, C. (2007). Sounds: a philosophical theory. OUP Oxford. References Ferretti, G. (2016). Visual Feeling of Presence. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 112–136. https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12170 Martin, M. G. F. (2012). Sounds and Images. The British Journal of Aesthetics, 4, 331–351. https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ays036 Noë, A. (2012). Varieties of Presence. Harvard University Press. Plack, C. J. (2018). The Sense of Hearing. Routledge. Roginska, A., & Geluso, P. (2017). Immersive Sound. Taylor & Francis. Toole, F. E. (2017). Sound Reproduction. Routledge. Wiesing, L. (2010). Artificial Presence. Cultural Memory in the Present. ### Assistant I'll read the required knowledge file and today's daily note, then we'll begin Phase 1 of the dialectic. ### Assistant Good, I have the context. Now let me check if there's a session file for the audible presence paper, since this is clearly from an active research project. ### Assistant Now I have full context on the project. This is your "Audible Presence" / "Auditory Images" paper. Let me set up the dialectic properly. ## Phase 1: The Electric Monks — Elenctic Interview Nick, here's how this will work. I'm going to set up two Electric Monks — agents that fully, unreservedly believe opposing positions — so that you can operate from a belief-free position and analyse the structural contradictions between them. Given the material you've provided, here's how I'm reading the dialectic space. Let me lay out the framing and check it with you before spawning the monks. ### The Paper's Argument (Monk A's territory) Your draft argues that auditory experience marks material presence and absence — real-life events sound materially present, recordings do not. The argument runs through several stages: the austerity view is not obvious (Section 2), recordings and real events differ in auditory appearance (Section 3), and this difference is specifically a matter of egocentric locatability and thus material presence (Section 4). The upshot: recordings are auditory images, at least on Martin's account of images as unexemplified appearances. ### The Opposition (Monk B's territory) The Martin/Nudds austerity view: auditory phenomenology is fixed by pitch, timbre, and loudness alone. Material presence is not marked in auditory experience. We can tell we're hearing recordings, but this is due to cognitive/background knowledge, not a phenomenological difference in the experience itself. Audition simply does not have the structural resources to generate image-like representation. ### What I want to check with you The obvious setup is: Monk A defends the audible presence thesis (your paper), Monk B defends the austerity view (Martin/Nudds). But you said you want one monk to use this material as "inspiration" with the other "pushing back." A few questions: 1. Which monk do you want inspired by the paper — Monk A arguing *for* audible presence, or should I assign it differently? 2. Where do you feel most uncertain yourself? The egocentric location argument in Section 4? The move from "recordings sound different" to "this difference is a matter of material presence specifically"? The twofoldness sketch in Section 5? The dialectic will be most useful if the monks hammer at the place where you're genuinely unsure. 3. What's the belief burden you want outsourced? Is it something like: "I believe recordings sound different but I'm not sure I've shown it's *material presence* rather than just *a different kind of spatial cue*"? Or is it more: "I believe the whole argument but want to see what a fully committed Martin defender would say"? Take your time with this — Phase 1 determines everything downstream. *L'orecchio distingue ciò che l'occhio dà per scontato: e proprio in questa capacità si nasconde il problema filosofico.* ### User i want monk a to defend the view put forward in the paper, but at the same time boit be slvishly devited to any or all of the details. this is a draft i am resurecting from 5 years ago ### Assistant Good — so Monk A defends the *thesis* (recordings lack audible material presence, auditory experience is richer than the austerity view allows) but is free to improve on, depart from, or criticise the specific argumentative moves in the draft. It's not a lawyer for the text, it's a believer in the position. Monk B fully believes the austerity view — auditory phenomenology is fixed by pitch, timbre, loudness, and nothing else marks material presence in auditory experience. Let me nail down a couple more things before writing the monk prompts: Where is the pressure you most want applied? Let me suggest some candidates — pick whichever resonates (or say something else): (a) The move from "recordings sound different" to "this difference is *specifically about material presence*" rather than just degraded spatial cues or some other explanation (b) Whether the visual analogy actually holds — whether the egocentric location story that works for pictures genuinely transfers to the auditory case (c) The claim that we "almost never" mistake recordings for real events — is this really true, and does the argument depend too heavily on it? (d) The twofoldness sketch — whether the low-quality speaker case is genuinely analogous to seeing a zebra in the magazine cover (e) Something structural about the paper's overall dialectic that you sense is wobbly but haven't pinpointed Which of these (or which combination, or what else) would be most useful to stress-test? *Il monaco che difende senza servire è il migliore alleato di chi cerca la verità.*