Of Mind and Music (review)

Book Review Laird Addis. OfMind and Music. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999. As Laird Addis states in his preface, the idea that music symbolizes or in some way represents the emotions is a time-honored one. Indeed, as the author ofthis important new book claims, some such idea of the relationship between music and the emotions may go back to the Greeks (perhaps especially to Aristotle), but the position is certainly well exemplified in modern times by the work of Susanne Langer, whose influence is constantly acknowledged and celebrated throughout this work. Hence, Addis from the outset endorses an account of music as symbolic or significatory ofemotionand whichis essentially predicated upon three key Langerian claims: namely (i) that there is an isomorphism between music and the emotions; (ii) there is a relationship of representation by music of the emotions; (iii) there is an ineffability in what music represents (p.24). The author attempts to account for all thesekey Langerian features oftiie emotional significance of music in the course of this work. The author's general preference for a representational account of the relationship of music to emotion is also clearly driven by his rejection in Chapter 1 ofwhat he takes to be the main alternatives to some such view. First, in the light of his claim that any account of the emotional impact orsignificanceofmusicmustbe either a causal theory or an inherence theory, Addis is (for fairly well-rehearsed reasons) fairly dismissive ofcausal accounts which he classifies as either (i) composer-causal theories or (ii) listener-causal theories. Addis identifies three types ofinherence theories which he calls (i) the pure-inherence theory (ii) the resemblanceinherence theory and (iii) the intentionalinherence theory. Ofthese, he is also fairly quick to reject the pure inherence theory on the grounds that insofar as it ,identifies the emotional expression of the music with the inherent acoustical properties ofthe sounds, it neglects to explain how these sounds relate to emotion as conscious experience; intentional-inherence and resemblance-inherencetheories aretherefore to be preferred in virtue of their attempts to explicate the relationship between inherent expressive properties of the music and the ordinary experience of human emotion. However, while recognizing that no distinction between resemblance-inherence and intentional-inherence theories can be a hard and fast one, Addis expresses misgivings about the conceptions of representationapparentlypresupposedbytheories of the former kind, not least with regard to the tendency of such accounts to seek resemblances between music and the physical symptoms of emotion (rather than the actual experience of emotion) and he ultimately comes out in favor of anintentional-inherencetheorywhichtakes music to symbolize emotion along lines suggested by Langer. In this light, Addis undertakes to clarify a sense ofrepresentation upon which the very idea that music is symbolic of emotion might be founded and it is largely upon the author's quite ingenious attempt to forge such an account that the philosophical novelty of this work rests. To this end, drawing upon and elaborating important insights at the interface of philosophy of mind, aesthetics, and semantic theory, Addis employs a threefold distinction between (i) natural representation (ii) quasi-natural representation and (iii) conventionalrepresentation as a basis for his claim that music is a quasi-natural form of representation of emotion. After considering the different contexts ofhuman activity in which talk of representation seems to make genuine sense-namely consciousness, language, art,©Philosophy ofMusic Education Review 10, no. 1 (Spring 2002):64-67. Book Review 65 dreams, and religion-Addis identifies the five principal vehicles of representation as awarenesses, words and sentences, art objects, dreams, and behaviors. Following discussion of each and all ofthese, the author concludes that (i) language is the most important form of conventional representation; (ii) awareness is the only form ofnatural representation; (iii) music is (dreams aside) the most interesting form ofquasinatural representation (p.36). All the same, whilst appreciating the considerations which drive this approach to the central issue of how emotion might feature as a key constituent ofthe meaning ofmusic, neither the notion ofquasi-natural representation nor the distinction between natural and conventional representation in terms of which this notion is largely defined is very clear or easy to grasp. To be sure, Addis seems...