Leslie Kinton wrote:

>... isn't the position you are outlining more Platonic than Aristotelian?
>I thought Aristotle said that only *particulars* exist, and that we aquire
>our knowledge of universals by perceiving particulars and abstracting the
>universals (forms) from the particulars themselves.  What I said in my post
>is that the score is a representation of the sound, which in turn, is an
>embodiment of the idea, and that the music is in fact this *embodiment* of
>the idea, and is neither the sound in and of itself (materialism), nor the
>idea as separate from its concrete expression (Platonic idealism).  Is this
>not closer to an Aristotelian position than the one you've outlined above?

The platonist would say that only the idea is substantial - that it
is the "real" music, and that particular manifestations reflect an
imperfect vision of them.  The aristotelean would say that the form does
not exist, an sich, but is instead a pattern which is known through its
manifestations.  For Aristotle an idea is a created thing, and it is
entirely possible to have an idea of an idea which one is incapable of
knowing in its whole.  Those who have no patience for metaphysics and
mysticism have no patience for Aristotle, he is, in fact, quite mystical
as a philoshper, and of course, a pre-eminent metaphysical thinker.

The Platonist would appeal to the idea an sich as the justification for
the musical structures that we see, and requires no further examination
of mechanism, indeed this is its appeal to the Neo-Platonist (cf Rothstien
*Emblems of the Mind*).  Strict Aristotleans would provide a teleological
explanation - that music reaches towards its perfection, and the purpose of
music guides all musical actions.  From this a strict Aristotelean would
argue that we may come to understand this "Good" of music by studying the
particular uses of it, and finding the goal at which each of them aim.

For myself I am very far from the Platonists, I have yet to see
any evidence that an idea exists as an idea separate from some
symbolic system, and have yety to see a proof which eliminates all
other alternatives.  However Aristotle's teleological approach is long
since shown to be incomplete, in that it must assume a goal as a separate
reality toward which things move, and that this is not the way the
universe actually functions.  I mention Kepler again, because it was
Kepler who established that the orbits of planets are elliptical, rather
than circular as Aristotle had maintained.  This conclusion was, in
fact, a result of the doctrine of perfection...

The idea I am presenting, while cleary descended form Aristotelean thinking
isn't from *Aristotles* himself.  It avoids the problematic neo-Platonic
assumption by introducing the idea of the limits of the possible as the
guiding mechanism, and states that our conception of music (*or anything
else) may thus encompass not only the music which is, but all of the
possible forms of music in their superimposed state.  That is the mechanism
produces a pattern which is distinct to it, we conjoin mechanisms and
patterns into a concept.  In this symbolic view - particular artifacts or
expressions of music will then have meaning in many different ways.  In
music I propose that the *doing of music*, the *perception of music* and
the *organisation created mentally by music* are the three which have the
most power over us, and that all are indespensible for the musical value of
the work.  All three are governed by the symbolic nature of music, and
hence all may be termed "musical" and contribute to our concept of music.

In the case of perception the point which contravenes the Aristotelean
world view is that our perceptions arise from patterns encoded in our
genetic material - the gene produces a protien which results in development
which results in a structure which is primed to find pattern.  The
Aristotelean invokes the idea that the pattern "knows" its end, its
perfection.  But we see this is not so, since given other stimuli - it is
happy to develop in other directions.  It does not "know" what it is
looking for, it is merely that the normal result is the one which will
occur under most circumstances.

Stirling S Newberry <[log in to unmask]>