"Hawley appeared spectrally on video from a foggy early morning in the Pacific Northwest of America to share his research into philosophical perspectives on the spatial origin and location of sound, and how this can be applied to spectral and ghostly sounds in horror."

In Identifying Future-proof Science (2022), Peter Vickers sets himself an ambitious goal. He wants to give us criteria, and parts of a method, for “identifying [scientific] claims we can be confident will last forever” (p. 1). In other words, to separate what we really know about the world, as opposed to what we merely suspect, or have good enough reason to believe for the time being. If Vickers were to succeed, this would be a major achievement in the epistemology of science. And, no doubt, we would all benefit greatly.

For audio technology professionals, this may make you think in a new way about sound and the language used in the marketing of audio technology. For philosophy geeks, this is just an introduction and a taster; there’s a lot more to be discussed off camera. The title of Jeff’s PhD thesis, Philosophy of Sound: Dissolving Pseudo-Problems via Logical Positivist Methods, gives a clear answer as to what kind of philosophy he thinks he is doing.

Can philosophy of religion enter the globalised, twenty-first-century world? If so, how? These questions arose from the Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion project and served as a springboard for Loewen and Rostalska as they present potential answers in this engaging and wide-reaching volume. Organised into two sections, ‘Critiques and Methods’ and ‘Case Studies’, contributing authors from across the globe (experts both within and outside philosophy of religion) present their views on how to diversify the field. One of the recurring themes across much of the first section is that of postcolonialism, namely how it is possible to ‘comprehend religion in a global way, if by “global” we mean “total”’, since it seems clear ‘[a]ny such “total” philosophy will have been produced from a particular intellectual and lived perspective’ (40). Irvine and Bilimoria lead off the collection with their take on postcolonialism and the question of global-critical philosophy of religion, which serves not only as an introduction to this core theme but as a model of the approach taken throughout the volume. To get a sense of the sorts of issues at hand and the general methodological approaches applied in developing a way forward, this is a great starting point.

Part 2: Continuing to look at how reader survey participants answered numerous questions and attempt to unpack what the answers might tell us about how we should think about sound.

Part 1: Throughout this four-part research series, we’ll look at how reader survey participants answered numerous questions and attempt to unpack what the answers might tell us about how we should think about sound.

Exploring the relation between acoustic design, audio mixing, various playback systems, etc., and human emotion in an interesting dive into the ways our mixing, sound system and venue design choices impact listeners on multiple levels.

Exploring the relation between acoustic design, audio mixing, various playback systems, etc., and human emotion in an interesting dive into the ways our mixing, sound system and venue design choices impact listeners on multiple levels.

As noted by philosopher Robert Pasnau, “Our standard view of sound is incoherent” at best (Pasnau, 1999, p 309). A quick perusal of how we discuss and represent sound in our day-to-day language readily highlights several inconsistencies. Sound might be described roughly as emanating from the location of its material source (the ‘crack of the snare drum over there’ distal theory), as a disruption somewhere in the space in-between the sounding object and the listener (the ‘longitudinal compression waves in the air’ medial theory), located with the hearer (the ‘inner sensations’ proximal theory), or perhaps entirely devoid of spatial characteristics (aspatial theory). Beyond these topographic ruminations on the location of sounds, more profound disagreements arise around what sorts of things sounds are. A broad array of theories treat sounds as events, as object-like particulars that travel through space, as properties of their sounding objects, etc., with many subtle ontological variations springing up along the way.

This month’s What's Happening in Philosophy (WHiP): The Philosophers focuses on a chapter from The Compact Compendium of Experimental Philosophy edited by A. Bauer and S. Kornmesser (forthcoming). All in the Family: The History and Philosophy of Experimental Philosophy by Justin Sytsma, Joseph Ulatowski, and Chad Gonnerman digs into the history of various philosophers who have argued for the need to go beyond the tradition methods of the ‘armchair’ philosopher and include empirical research into the mix.

In this inaugural post, we begin with a harrowing tale from David Edmonds involving the murder of the German philosopher Moritz Schlick. Schlick was a Vienna Circle guiding spirit and logical positivist thinker. Next up is Steven Nadler’s take on several biographies of the ‘father of modern philosophy’ in his new paper, The Many Lives of René Descartes. Lastly, questions around AI in academia come up in an article from Scientific American.

As the lyrics to the traditional nineteenth century gospel hymn state, one of the goals of many magical and religious practices is to experience ‘a closer walk with Thee,’ coming into the presence of the holy in both figurative and arguably literal terms. One of the many ways to improve this likelihood of achieving the deep and immersive presence of the holy—described by the scholar of comparative religion Rudolf Otto as the “gentle tide, [the] pervading [of] the mind with a tranquil mood” numinous experience—is through the careful use of various sonic elements. To this point, an exploration of physical worship spaces themselves, a review of the means of creating sounds within worship, and a study of the related uses of sonic technology during worship rituals can help to elucidate just how these sonic elements compare in their utilisation between ancient magic and more contemporary magical and religious applications. It is my contention that the overall goal of creating an immersive environment for worship and ritual practice has remained a constant from Ancient Greek and Roman times through to the present, while the technology available to achieve this goal (both in the creation of an immersive physical space and in the use of engaging and relatable musical instruments and instrumental styles) has continually progressed. Put another way, the methods in which we might best utilise various sonic elements to achieve the most numinous experience—the ‘how’— have certainly changed over time, but the underlying ‘why’ and the core goal of using sound to increase this sense of a presence with the holy has remained largely unchanged.

Jeff Hawley of Allen & Heath USA joins the show in Episode 110 to discuss the “Philosophy of Sound.” Minds are melted as he and the hosts contemplate questions such as: Where does sound actually occur? How do you define what sound actually is? And much more…