# Scratch Pad ## Abstract for Spatial Hearing Audition is spatial, but not in the way that vision is. We can hear that something is behind us, above us, or moving away, but we do not hear voluminous three-dimensional objects spread out across a structured visual field. This should not be taken to mean that spatial hearing is simply a less fine-grained version of spatial seeing. There are various controversies as to _what_ we hear in space, as well as _how_ we hear it. This chapter considers a range of arguments and questions about both. In doing so, we shall see that spatial hearing has a richness and uniqueness all of its own. Three things are at issue in the recent literature, and they cannot be pulled apart. There is the ontology of sounds: what they are and where, if anywhere, they are located. There is auditory content: what auditory experience presents as being where. And there are the limit cases — silence and reverberation foremost — through which the other two get fought out. What one says about ontology constrains what one can say about content; the limit cases force revisions in both; and a position taken on any one tends to fix the available moves on the others. A specific conflation has been doing damage. The metaphysical question of where sounds are has often been treated as if it answered the perceptual question of where, in auditory experience, anything is heard as being. The two come apart. Underlying the recent disputes is a broader shift away from treating audition as epistemically or phenomenologically thin: the question is no longer whether audition is spatial but what kind of spatial richness it provides. Reverberation is taken in detail. We can tell from a sound's reverberation whether we are in a cathedral or a cupboard, but it is not obvious what this awareness is of, and the answer one gives turns on whether the visual model of locating is being smuggled in. The same diagnosis applies to disputes about the auditory field and to recent work on the spatial content of silence. The chapter closes by recommending a soundless account. What auditory experience presents as occupying space is not sound but the bodies that produce it and the spaces around them. --- # What's Happening *Active threads and today's activity — updated by /harvest* ## Active ## Sessions ## Actions ---