The Context-Dependency of the Experience of Auditory Succession and Prospects for Embodying Philosophical Models of Temporal Experience

• Main Author: Maria Kon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Ohio State University Libraries 2015-05-01
• Series: Empirical Musicology Review
• Subjects: modeling; succession; temporal experience; embodied cognition
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.18061/emr.v9i3-4.4478

Recent philosophical work on temporal experience offers generic models that are often assumed to apply to all sensory modalities. I show that the models serve as broad frameworks in which different aspects of cognitive science can be slotted and, thus, are beneficial to furthering research programs in embodied music cognition. Here I discuss a particular feature of temporal experience that plays a key role in such philosophical work: a distinction between the experience of succession and the mere succession of experiences. I question the presupposition that there is such an evident, clear distinction and suggest that, instead, how the distinction is drawn is context-dependent. After suggesting a way to modify the philosophical models of temporal experience to accommodate this context-dependency, I illustrate that these models can fruitfully incorporate features of research projects in embodied musical cognition. To do so I supplement a modified retentionalist model with aspects of recent work that links bodily movement with musical perception (Godøy, 2006; 2010a; Jensenius, Wanderley, Godøy, and Leman, 2010). The resulting model is shown to facilitate novel hypotheses, refine the notion of context-dependency and point towards means of extending the philosophical model and an existent research program.