Keynote Speaker

Peter Kivy
Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy
Rutgers University

Title: 'Music, Science, and Semantics: What Can "Science" Tell us About Musical "Meaning"?'

Abstract: There has, over the past few years, been a growing cottage industry of experimental psychologists concerning themselves with listeners’ emotive responses to absolute music, not surprising because the belief that there is some special affinity of music with the emotions is already in place in the West as far back as Plato, and the human emotions an object of psychological speculation for as long as there has been psychological speculation that could be plausibly construed as “scientific.”  What is surprising is that psychologists have now turned their attention to musical meaning.  For just as emotion seems an uncontentious subject of psychological scrutiny and experimentation, meaning, at least artifactual meaning, as I will call it, the meaning that attaches to human artifacts such as language, written or spoken, and art works, seems obviously not such an object: not, as I shall argue, an appropriate candidate for the psychologist’s research program.  I am arguing, then, first, that it seems odd to think experimental psychology can be of any help in answering the question, “Is this human artifact a bearer of meaning?”  And if the answer is in the affirmative, I am arguing, second, that it seems odd to think experimental psychology can answer the question, “What is the meaning this human artifact bears?”  Furthermore, that the artifact is music makes no difference: the oddness remains.