Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

meaning and that this meaning is somehow communicated to both participants
and listeners. (Meyer, 1956, p. 1)
Furthermore, there is a general consensus that the meaning that is communicated
is affective, and not propositional, in nature. However, the means by which
musical meaning is communicated is subject to a tremendous amount of debate
(Meyer, 1956; Robinson, 1997).
One view of musical communication, consistent with classical cognitive science,
is that music is a symbol system. For example, the semiotic view of music is that
it is a system of signs that provides a narrative or a discourse (Agawu, 1991, 2009;
Austerlitz, 1983; Lidov, 2005; Monelle, 2000; Pekkilä, Neumeyer, & Littlefield, 2006;
Tarasti, 1995; Turino, 1999). From this perspective, musical signs are intentional: they
are about the tensions or emotions they produce or release in listeners. This approach
naturally leads to an exploration of the parallels between music and language
(Austerlitz, 1983; Jackendoff, 2009; Lidov, 2005), as well as to the proposal of generative
grammars of musical structure (Lerdahl, 2001; Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983;
Sundberg & Lindblom, 1976). Potential parallels between language and music have
led some researchers to describe brain areas for syntax and semantics that are responsible
for processing both music and language (Koelsch et al., 2004; Patel, 2003).
A related view of musical communication, but one more consistent with connectionist
than classical cognitive science, is that music communicates emotion but
does so in a way that cannot be captured by set of formal rules or laws (Lewis, 1991;
Loy, 1991; Minsky, 1981; Todd, 1989). Instead, musical meanings are presumed to
be entwined in a complex set of interactions between past experiences and current
stimulation, interactions that may be best captured by the types of learning exhibited
by artificial neural networks. “Many musical problems that resist formal solutions
may turn out to be tractable anyway, in future simulations that grow artificial
musical semantic networks” (Minsky, 1981, p. 35).
Both views of musical meaning described above are consistent with the conduit
metaphor, in that they agree that (1) music is intentional and content-bearing
(although they disagree about formalizing this content) and (2) that the purpose
of music is to communicate this content to audiences. A third approach to musical
meaning, most consistent with embodied cognitive science, distinguishes itself
from the other two by rejecting the conduit metaphor.
According to the embodied view (Clarke, 2005; Johnson, 2007; Leman, 2008),
the purpose of music is not to acquire abstract or affective content, but to instead
directly, interactively, and physically experience music. “People try to be involved
with music because this involvement permits an experience of behavioral resonance
with physical energy” (Leman, 2008, p. 4).
The emphasis on direct contact that characterizes the embodied view of music
is a natural progression from the autonomist school of musical aesthetics that arose
302 Chapter 6