Music cognition as musical culture, a philosophical investigation of cognitivist theory of music

grantor: University of TorontoIn the field of cognitivist theory of music, the major philosophical thesis that has emerged is that music cognition is caused by a dedicated information processing system which manipulates musical symbolic codes. These codes are said to be neurally encoded, musically evaluable representations of an external musical reality that mediate cognitively between a knowing subject and a world of known musical objects. Cognitivist theory of music is premised on the formalist philosophical view that music consists of a set of aesthetic objects to be comprehended solely in terms of the audition and subsequent cognition of its tonal, rhythmic and structural properties. This thesis is a philosophical investigation and critique of cognitivist theory of music and its correlative theory of mental representation as cognitive mediators. Using Wilfrid Sellars' framework of the manifest and scientific images of "man" in the world, salient features of the aesthetic point of view are analyzed in order to bring out the irresolvable difficulties that have been inherited in cognitivist theory of music due to an adherence to a representationalist theory of the nature of mind. I argue that the difficulties inherent in the cognitivist "scientific-image" theory of music are compounded by an outmoded conception of science (and of causality in particular) which leads to a rejection of the person for a theory of the musical mind. I claim that cognitivist theory of music cannot ignore the priority of the manifest image of music as a continuing context for scientific theorizing. As a positive alternative to the representationalist notion of the cognitive mediator, I advance the beginnings of a theory which regards the musical mind as involving a direct, dynamic, cognitive interaction between persons as subjects and the familiar, "manifest-image" world of musical culture. This kind of interaction is an interpretive one which is conditioned by a socio-cultural set of concepts and practices, including those of scientific theorizing. It is within this context that a theory of the musical mind relevant to music education research must be set.Ed.D