Joseph Sowa wrote:

>Is emotion really extra-musical?

Boy, isn't it!--at least according to the most modern speculations of
the most modern of cognition scientists.  Richard Dawkins, a BIG name in
this field, in his The Meme Machine has theorized, though only tentatively,
that ideas may be composed of fundamental particles, memes, which, like
genes, are susceptible to natural selection.  Except that memes have
reference to the workings of consciousness and genes to the workings of
the body.  Susan Blackmore, a researcher in the same field, has extended
Dawkins's speculation, proposing a number of quite specific ways in which
memes may inculcate the mind with patterns of thought.  She doesn't explore
the problem of music in consciousness, but I'm sure someopne else will.
Music is after all, one of the constructs of consciousness.

Denis Fodor                     Internet:[log in to unmask]