# created ```dataview LIST WITHOUT ID file.link FROM -"windsurf" WHERE file.cday = date(this.file.name) AND !startswith(file.folder, "windsurf") SORT file.cday ASC ``` # modified ```dataview LIST WITHOUT ID file.link FROM -"windsurf" WHERE file.mday = date(this.file.name) AND !startswith(file.folder, "windsurf") SORT file.mday ASC ``` --- # [[diary and thoughts]] #thought #diary --- # refereee report 16 Dec 2025 #refereeing I am afraid I must recommend rejection. While the paper is interesting, well written, and clearly comes from a position of knowledge, it leans heavily on phenomenological cases—*the silent room* and the *ambulance siren* examples—but neither supports the [[conclusion the]] author draws from them. Since the argument for an auditory [[spatial field]] turns on [[the structure]] of these experiences, if the phenomenological analysis does not hold up, the rest of the paper doesn't hold up [[The author]]'s notion of a spatial sensory field is built on a specific interpretation of the [[visual field]]. A field is supposed to mark out a region where items appear located and, crucially, to support experiences of both presence and *absence* within that region. Absence here means absence *at* a place—hearing a region as empty—rather than just not hearing anything. [[The author]] argues that this structure relies on an awareness of sensory limitations: within experience, we are supposedly aware of a contrast between the region where perception is possible and a larger space beyond our reach. The paper acknowledges that, unlike in vision, the auditory boundaries are indeterminate, but maintains that this awareness of "only hearing so far" is sufficient to establish a [[spatial field]]. A visual comparison helps clarify the kind of phenomenology at stake. Consider [[the experience]] of watching an object, like a person, walking away from you into the distance. In the visual case, the awareness of sensory limitations (that we can "only see so far") is grounded in a rich spatial presentation: we see [[the object]] occupy successively more distant locations through an extended region of space until it finally disappears. [[The experience]] is structurally organized around a region of potential locations that extends away from the viewer. When we turn to the auditory ambulance case, however, the phenomenology is different. [[The author]] claims that hearing a siren recede makes us aware of our auditory reach and its limits—that as the sound moves away, we experience it falling into a larger region beyond the field. But this experience seems quite different from the visual case. For a start, there are changes in [[auditory qualities]] such as intensity and and spectral/pitch (the further away something is the bassier and less trebly it sounds). Eventually, the signal drops below threshold and ceases to be heard. These facts—the change in loudness and the shift in spectral balance—seem sufficient to account for the phenomenology of the receding sound. On the face of it, there is no need to posit an additional, field-like awareness of auditory limits or a bounded region to explain what it is like to hear the siren fade away. This in turn generates a challenge for [[the author]]’s overall picture. The paper claims that an auditory field structures our experience of distant sounds, but if the impression of distance is already carried by these qualitative acoustic features (in particular, intensity and spectral profile), the field posit risks becoming explanatorily redundant. Moreover, it introduces an interaction problem: [[the author]] owes an account of how the putative spatial field relates to those features. Does the field generate the experience of distance, or do the spectral cues? The paper does not address this question, leaving it very natural to conclude that the acoustic qualities are doing the explanatory work on their own. There is also the worry that the distance/limitation strategy proves too much. If the idea is that awareness of perceiving only so far creates the contrast needed for a field, the same reasoning would apply to smell. Odors fade with distance, and it can certainly seem that one can "only smell so far." Without some additional requirement—for example, that the modality presents places as such, rather than merely signalling source distance via changes in intensity—the argument invites parallel "olfactory field" conclusions. The paper notes that such arguments are not standard for smell, but the current reasoning offers no principled way to block this extension. The silent room also has some problems. It is introduced to show that we can experience a region as "empty of sounds" without needing to move (unlike the tactile glass-rim case). The author argues that in a silent room, we are aware of no sounds "in our vicinity." But this observation establishes, at most, a knowledge claim: we know there is no sound nearby. It does not show that auditory experience presents a *spatial region* as empty in the relevant sense. No sound being heard is fully explained by the absence of suprathreshold auditory stimulation combined with background assumptions about one's hearing and the environment. There is nothing in the phenomenology that forces us to describe this as perceiving a field that is empty; it is simply a state of not hearing anything. The move from "I hear nothing" to "I experience a spatial field as empty" is a theoretical leap not supported by the evidence provided.