Is music language? In a philosophical, Wittgenstein, Chomsky sense?

>>534199

it can be used as language

but in itself, it is only language as much as sounds that come from the human mouth or etchings on paper are.

>>534199
Only when it has good lyrics (^:

>>534229
>sounds that come from the human mouth or etchings on paper are

Why not sounds from an instrument?

Or to put it another way, is Bach a philosopher?

music transcends language

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>>534269
Good.
What does that entail philosophically? Can we express thoughts without language?
If we can it has big implications for a lot of schools of thought. Unless music is just another form of language

>>534269

no it doesn't

>>534314

>Can we express thoughts without language?

thought precedes language

>>534199
Music can be used to convey information in an artful manner. Take movie scores for example; the general intention is essentially to express the tone of a situation behind what's actually happening. It can sometimes change the way one watches a scene.

No, it's music.

>>534314
>>534321

Music conveys feeling more directly than language. It can't express a systematic philosophy of life but it can express life itself, which is more important. The best philosophies of life revere that ineffability, anyways

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Music is a branch of mathematics

>>534333
I doubt this. Not everyone feels the same feelings listening to only a score, and most shitty people associate more with lyrics than any emotion derived from the beat, melody, tone or score. Those just aid the lyrics.

If you removed the lyrics from crawling in my skin, you would not get the feeling of crawling in your skin.

>>534377
>and most shitty people associate more with lyrics than any emotion derived from the beat, melody, tone or score.

I disagree. if you're talking about pop, club, rap, shit like that, it's the beat that makes it. the lyrics are just dressing.

the production creates the mood (or rather, a mood spectrum), and the lyrics just hone in on a certain slice of that spectrum. that's why mash-ups, remixes, etc. work. even if it's the lyrics from a totally different song, if they "fit" with the beat, it still works.

>>534377
>Not everyone feels the same feelings listening to only a score

A lot of people could read some difficult bit of Shakespeare or Hegel and not understand what it was saying.

>crawling in my skin

Come on, this is obviously about serious music, Bach, Mahler etc

>>534392
>>534398

Beat etc. is stimulus, not emotion certain sounds don't convey emotions, as much as they evoke a certain response. A gunshot, thunder, the clashing of steel, etc can evoke emotions, but the specific emotional response is up to the individual, because they are all simply stimuli.

>>534417
And the Mona Lisa isn't art at the bottom of the ocean, so what? All it takes is an iconic melody to turn up a club to 11 because humans feel certain emotions when they hear certain sounds. But rocks don't. Okay. So.

I don't even know what you're trying to say.

>>534333
>it can express life itself

Hold up. This is a philosophy board, not a "bullshit I just thought up in my head that's okay because it sounds cool" board

>>534417
You could say that about words. They are just sounds, that can be written down, just like notes can

>>534429
>All it takes is an iconic melody to turn up a club to 11 because humans feel certain emotions when they hear certain sounds.
Just as often as not, for most music, it's a sense of nostalgia, and association with a certain emotion, not conveyed by the music, but attached to the music by the listener, turning the music into a simple stimulus.

>>534436
Epic meme bro, but you're gonna have a tough time shilling "music can't express deep emotion" anywhere outside of a tibetan fingerpainting board lmao

>>534436
>>534333
Why can't music express systematic philosophy? I never really understood Wittgenstein until I started playing Bach. His music is 'about' things it's not just sound.

>>534446
Everything is a stimulus, no shit. And the sun isn't objectively bright because rocks don't have eyes to see its light. Wow, such insight.

Do you want to actually discuss music as an art form or do you just want to keep regurgitating this reddit shit?

>>534448
>>534449

I'm not debating that, but

>deep emotion is life
Please be clearer and don't change around the meaning of words because it makes you sound good.

>>534449
it can inspire you, it can evoke a certain feeling for life, definitely, but it can't be thorough and systematic unless someone's literally singing stoic adages or whatever. I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

>>534458
only an autist like you would get so confused about what I'm saying that "music expresses life" and "music expresses deep emotion" require a fucking transitional paragraph or something lmao

>>534454
So air vibrations are inherently happy or sad, even if rocks can't hear them? Is this seriously what you are saying?

>>534472
I'm saying humans feel emotion when they hear music you fucking autist

>>534466
Like I said, people like you change the words they use through vague connections so that their argument appears more correct than if they just used what they really meant.

>>534488
>And the sun isn't objectively bright because rocks don't have eyes to see its light.
>All it takes is an iconic melody to turn up a club to 11 because humans feel certain emotions when they hear certain sounds.
Your examples are stupid. If someone hears the Star Wars theme song, it evokes the Star Wars abstract token, because Star Wars is associated with the music for the listener, and the emotions evoked are those related to the concept of Star Wars. If the same score was never associated with Star Wars, it would not have those emotions associated with it. That's not conveying feeling directly.

>>534199
No.

/thread

>>534519
>your examples are stupid
>Star Wars lmfao
>thinks being familiar with the theme of a blockbuster franchise means music can't convey emotion

you must be 18+ to post on this board

>>534532

kill yourself

thread\

Music can't be a language without a context.
Does the word "fuck" mean something if you don't know english?
No, it's just a sound you emitted.
See? Words are just short music clips which carry a meaning within a shared context, remove the context and you'll just have a sound.

>but some songs make me feel fear/joy/despair
Feelings are subjective and dependent on the environment in which you grew in: if during your life you heard metal music during weddings, listening "Hammer Smashed Face" on the altar wouldn't feel so out of place and you would have associated it to the act of wedding. That's an extreme example, but that would convey better my thought.

>>534565
All languages require context. Everyone knows that. You haven't proven anything.

>>534199
there are chomskyan linguists who have investigated that idea. MIT's david pesetsky is one example of someone who thinks music is a byproduct of language. ray jackendoff is a linguist from tufts who has a different model. it's a very open topic.

>>534565
>>534576
language isn't feelings, it's not communication of feelings, it's not even communication generally, it's a formal system.

>>534199
Music can express emotion and impact the listener. So in a sense >>534269 but not entirely. They're hardly a 1 to 1 comparison, music can set a mood really well, something words can't always do

>>534519
Star Wars is based off Wagner and several other "epic" composers, go listen to Holst's OP. 32, some Berlioz, then Wagner's Overtures, you get a lot of the same feelings

>>535218
Your formal system doesn't explain noise music, music has changed dramatically since we've been able to record and synthesise sounds.

I would say that music is a communication of emotions but not logic, this is why birds make music to fuck other birds

>>535218
>>535208
and you actually need to have at least a basic understanding of linguistic theory to see why people consider this a promising line of inquiry.

>>535275
western music theory isn't what people are talking about when they're asking how language and music are related.

>>534328
Music can encode language in the same way speech and writing can. But most of the time it doesn't, it's just music instead

>>535275
this is a question for scientists, not for musicians.

>>535311
language isn't about encoding information and neither is music.

>>535306
language is the communication of ideas

So is music but very basic ideas, like fun or sadness or power

>>535320
I'm not arguing about the nature of language and music, I'm stating that you can use music as a code to represent language, such as with talking drums or whistling language.

>>535360
that's not what people are talking about when they're talking about the relationship between music and language. they're not asking "is music A language," they're asking if the phenomenon of music and the phenomenon of language are fundamentally products of the same cognitive capacity.

>>535352
and no it isn't

>>535411
How so?
What is language then?

>>535411
If i call you a "dumb cunt" you are going to get angry
in a way i've just communicated an emotion to you

music does the same thing

im not sure why though

>>535445
In person not on 4chan

>>535418
language is a formal system like the visual system or any other cognitive capacity. communication happens to be one way it's used, but that's not fundamental to it.
don't take my word for it though, there's a ton of peer-reviewed literature on this you can find for free.

>>534199
Music expresses that which cannot be said, and expression is part of communication. Ergo, music is language.

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>>534269
>music transcends language
music is pleb tier and serves only to entertain you. only hedonists praise music.

>>534199

in the sense that Chomsky describes language, categorically no.

not sure about the rest though.

>>535458
Sweet, can you give me an example of another way apart from communication that it is used for?

>>535473
most of your use of language is internal

>>535482
Like when you think?
Or does internal have a different meaning in this context?

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>>535465

>>535490
yes, when you think

>>535458

the function of language is the sharing of information. Humans that are not exposed to language during the critical period are later unable to learn it - that is, to encode information from it - properly.

language = information code

there's plenty of peer reviewed articles on it for you to find for free.

>language is a formal system like the visual system or any other cognitive capacity.

demonstrably false.

Humans acquire language socially, they acquire the sense of sight through physical maturation.

Of course, a human must have a brain mature enough to acquire language - the but point is that language is acquired through human interaction, not through solitary physical maturation.

>>535503
But you don't think in just language, you think in shapes and patterns as well,
also you can think in melodies, is that the connection?

>>535539
could be. chomskyan linguistics holds that language is essentially at least binary set formation, and people who believe there's a connection between music and language in that framework think that the difference could be what you're building sets out of. in language it's thought to be lexical items.

>>535473
Coomunicating ideas is not the main aim of poetry, its for it's own sake as a beautiful thing:
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

What did he mean by this?

>>535505
Why is that incompatible with language being a formal system?

Arithmetic is formal system but we can acquire it socially

This is a really good question. I have no idea what to answer.

As far as I know, categories of chords such as major, minor, diminished, and dom 7th all invoke unilateral feelings and tendencies in humans.

I can't get a feel to Indian music though due to quarter step progressions being completely foreign to my Western ear. Maybe this is like the concept of application of foreign systems like that of cases to an English speaker. This maybe means that there are different "languages of music" or musicks or whatever.

>>534199
If you made a mapping from English to notes I'm sure you could work something out with a newborn.

Although, the areas of the mind that deal with language and the ones that deal with speech aren't exactly the same.

>>536009

explain the jargon meaning of 'formal' for you. What field of research are you coming from?

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Music isn't a language because language is a system of signs that confer meaning.

Music skips the system of signs and goes straight to immediate meaning, so it can't be a language.

Playing a C-sharp is not a sign that confers meaning other than the essence of the sound that the human mind captures.

You can have an exchanging relationship when you sing in melodies but the exchange is different,

When you have a conversation you are almost always adding something new.

when you sing melodies you don't have to add something new, you can either repeat that melody or build on top of it (harmonies)

The relationship between the interval of the notes are what determines if it sounds happy or sad or evil or whatever. And different cultures have different scales that evoke different feelings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk

>>537782
The video is probably the result of globalisation,

I'm not sure if you went to an un-contacted amazonian tribe if they would still be able to sing the pentatonic scale, but there is no real way of finding out

>>534199
>In a philosophical, Wittgenstein

The Tractarian Vicky would tell you that music occupies the realm whereof we cannot speak.

Vicky 2.0 would probably start talking about the occupants of a desert island and how they might in theory develop a system of pre-understood significance to various notes and sequences of notes, before stating that the empirical investigation of the actual origin of language (ie, its acquisition by our ape-like ancestors) belongs properly to the sciences.

It has a communicative component to it, sure, but it remains mostly distinct from language in the sense of words and writing.

This goes for mathematics as well. I don't know why these stupid "x is a language" memes are so prevalent.

>>537859

I think the idea behind mathematics being a language is the notion that there is no concrete state of affairs which can't be described mathematically. Define 'language' however you will, but it's clear there are potential definitions whereby mathematics would qualify.

People talk about similarities between mathematics and music, but I think that's largely down to music being describable mathematically.

>>534265
If Music is language, then Bach is a poet.

He manipulates structure and vocabulary, but there is no "truth" to be gleaned other than inspiration that relies heavily on the listener's own interpretation.

>>537993
There is context to a lot of classical music, see Vivaldi's four seasons and read his explanation for each of the phrases, I like to think of it as an emotional soundscape

>>537264
he means formal in the mathematical sense. the goal of someone trying to answer OP's question is to look at precise definitions of language and music using concepts developed in math and philosophy, and to try to show that they are either fundamentally different or the same.