ABSTRACT
What happens when we listen to music? It is clearly not just a matter of experiencing sequences of sound, for we count some sequences as music and other sequences as noise. This, then, leads us to an apparently prior question: What happens when we distinguish music from noise? In fact, the two questions are inseparable, and they are largely cognitive questions. In the past, a number of theorists have proposed answers to both questions, and to related questions in other arts. Though no response has proven definitive, perhaps the most suggestive and promising responses have come from theorists who were precursors of cognitivism. The best example of this sort is that paragon of modern epistemology, Immanuel Kant. Kant, arguably the greatest philosopher of the modern period, set out an account of the human mind that anticipates cognitivism in many particulars. As Cynthia Freeland put it, he is one of the major “antecedents of the current enterprise of cognitive science” (65; see also Holland The Brain 10). His influential treatment of aesthetics clearly includes many important insights and many points of direct relevance for cognitive research in the field. Yet his development of those insights is often obscure. That obscurity may, to some extent, be dissipated by recent cognitive developments.
