Denis Fodor makes some points regarding James Tobin's post:

>>Whether one can take my claims about perceiving quality in music any
>>further than I have is something I have been banging around for decades
>>myself, but I have mostly given it up because (1) I don't really feel
>>musically qualified enough--the "objective" consideration"....
>
>[..] For if anyone claimed to have a taste all his/her own, and then act
>on the strength of that conviction, that person would surely figure as a
>candidate either for the insane asylum or jail.  One's judgements are
>mental processes that are bred and then developed by the teaching, or
example, of >others.  [..] Music is wrought and enjoyed by social animals.

Part of the problem is that there is no point where the subjective world
and the objective world meet.  For example, you and I might be moved to
tears by the same passage of music, but there is no way to tell if we
really felt the same.  Another example: what if we had the technology to
build robots that perfectly mimicked human behavior.  We still wouldn't
know if those robots had inner experiences like we humans do.

The other issue addressed in Denis's point is individual vs. collective.
I believe that there are both individual and collective aspects to our
Appreciation of music.  I like Ken Wilber's view on the subject, which
he explains in "A Brief History of Everything" (and in some of his
other writings as well).  He proposes two axes, one being collective vs.
individual, and the other being outer vs.  inner, and states that all
human experience (or something like that) has elements of all four, i.e.
collective & individual, and inner & outer.  For example, when someone has
a thought, the inner component (i.e.  subjective) is that person's inner
experience, which cannot be measured objectively, the outer component is
the physical activity (e.g.  electrical signals in the brain) which can be
measured objective.  The individual component is the individual aspect of
that person's thought, and the collective component is the social and
cultural context in which that thought resides.

I don't know if I explained that very well.  It's been a long time since
I've read Ken Wilber's book.  (Sorry if this is a little off topic).

Mike