A critique of physicalist ontologies of sound
Guest lecture, Tuesday 22 October 2013 at 5.15 pm, SR 15.17 (Resowi F1)
All welcome!
For centuries, the “Western” philosophy of perception has mostly been occupied with visual perception and its objects. Other sense modalities, such as audition or olfaction, were mostly treated marginally or even neglected in philosophical discourse. Nevertheless, recent decades have seen growing philosophical interest in auditory perception and sounds. In my lecture, I will review some current and influential philosophical theories about the ontology of sounds. The large majority of these theories give a physicalist-reductionist account of sounds. I will assess these physicalist ontologies in respects to their value for research on the role of sounds in human life, for instance, musicological research.
the author
Malik Sharif studied musicology and philosophy at University of Graz, the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG), and the University of Halle-Wittenberg. He holds a BA and MA in musicology (specialised in ethnomusicology) and a Mag.phil. in philosophy. He is currently a university assistant and Ph.D. student at the Institute of Ethnomusicology (KUG). Sharif has presented papers at various international conferences in (ethno)musicology and philosophy and published articles in collections of articles and journals. He is also co-editor of two musicological collections of articles. In 2012, he received the Würdigungspreis des Bundesministers für Wissenschaft und Forschung.
