The music of morality and logic
Musical theory has built on the premise that musical structures can refer to something different from themselves (1). The aim of this work is to statistically corroborate the intuitions of musical thinkers and practitioners from Plato to Boethius to the purveyors of the Baroque Doctrine of Affection...
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doaj-792086b0288945fb8dc3b7aae6b9b9e92020-11-25T00:07:56ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782015-07-01610.3389/fpsyg.2015.00908134256The music of morality and logicBruno eMesz0Pablo H Rodriguez Zivic1Guillermo A Cecchi2Mariano eSigman3Marcos A Trevisan4University of QuilmesUniversity of Buenos AiresBiometaphorical ComputingUniversidad Di TellaUniversidad Di TellaMusical theory has built on the premise that musical structures can refer to something different from themselves (1). The aim of this work is to statistically corroborate the intuitions of musical thinkers and practitioners from Plato to Boethius to the purveyors of the Baroque Doctrine of Affections that music can express complex human concepts beyond merely happy and sad (2). To do so, we ask whether musical improvisations can be used to classify the semantic category of the word that triggers them. We investigated two specific domains of semantics: morality and logic. While morality has been historically associated with music, logic concepts, which involve more abstract forms of thought, are more rarely associated with music. We examined musical improvisations inspired by positive and negative morality (e.g. good and evil) and logic concepts (true and false), analyzing the associations between these words and their musical representations in terms of acoustic and perceptual features. We found that music conveys information about valence (good and true vs. evil and false) with remarkable consistency across individuals. This information is carried by several musical dimensions which act in synergy to achieve very high classification accuracy. Positive concepts are represented by music with more ordered pitch structure and lower harmonic and sensorial dissonance than negative concepts. Music also conveys information indicating whether the word which triggered it belongs to the domains of logic or morality (true vs. good), principally through musical articulation. In summary, improvisations consistently map logic and morality information to specific musical dimensions, testifying the capacity of music to accurately convey semantic information in domains related to abstract forms of thought.http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00908/fulllogicmoralitymusic psychologymusical structureSemantic content |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Bruno eMesz Pablo H Rodriguez Zivic Guillermo A Cecchi Mariano eSigman Marcos A Trevisan |
spellingShingle |
Bruno eMesz Pablo H Rodriguez Zivic Guillermo A Cecchi Mariano eSigman Marcos A Trevisan The music of morality and logic Frontiers in Psychology logic morality music psychology musical structure Semantic content |
author_facet |
Bruno eMesz Pablo H Rodriguez Zivic Guillermo A Cecchi Mariano eSigman Marcos A Trevisan |
author_sort |
Bruno eMesz |
title |
The music of morality and logic |
title_short |
The music of morality and logic |
title_full |
The music of morality and logic |
title_fullStr |
The music of morality and logic |
title_full_unstemmed |
The music of morality and logic |
title_sort |
music of morality and logic |
publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
series |
Frontiers in Psychology |
issn |
1664-1078 |
publishDate |
2015-07-01 |
description |
Musical theory has built on the premise that musical structures can refer to something different from themselves (1). The aim of this work is to statistically corroborate the intuitions of musical thinkers and practitioners from Plato to Boethius to the purveyors of the Baroque Doctrine of Affections that music can express complex human concepts beyond merely happy and sad (2). To do so, we ask whether musical improvisations can be used to classify the semantic category of the word that triggers them. We investigated two specific domains of semantics: morality and logic. While morality has been historically associated with music, logic concepts, which involve more abstract forms of thought, are more rarely associated with music. We examined musical improvisations inspired by positive and negative morality (e.g. good and evil) and logic concepts (true and false), analyzing the associations between these words and their musical representations in terms of acoustic and perceptual features. We found that music conveys information about valence (good and true vs. evil and false) with remarkable consistency across individuals. This information is carried by several musical dimensions which act in synergy to achieve very high classification accuracy. Positive concepts are represented by music with more ordered pitch structure and lower harmonic and sensorial dissonance than negative concepts. Music also conveys information indicating whether the word which triggered it belongs to the domains of logic or morality (true vs. good), principally through musical articulation. In summary, improvisations consistently map logic and morality information to specific musical dimensions, testifying the capacity of music to accurately convey semantic information in domains related to abstract forms of thought. |
topic |
logic morality music psychology musical structure Semantic content |
url |
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00908/full |
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