The role of long-term familiarity and attentional maintenance in short-term memory for timbre

We study short-term recognition of timbre using familiar recorded tones from acoustic instruments and unfamiliar transformed tones that do not readily evoke sound-source categories. Participants indicated whether the timbre of a probe sound matched with one of three previously presented sounds (item recognition). In Exp. 1, musicians better recognised familiar acoustic compared to unfamiliar synthetic sounds, and this advantage was particularly large in the medial serial position. There was a strong correlation between correct rejection rate and the mean perceptual dissimilarity of the probe to the tones from the sequence. Exp. 2 compared musicians' and non-musicians' performance with concurrent articulatory suppression, visual interference, and with a silent control condition. Both suppression tasks disrupted performance by a similar margin, regardless of musical training of participants or type of sounds. Our results suggest that familiarity with sound source categories and attention play important roles in short-term memory for timbre, which rules out accounts solely based on sensory persistence.     

Environmental sound recognition by timbre in children with Williams syndrome

Anecdotal reports have described children with Williams syndrome (WS) as presenting outstanding skills for recognizing environmental sounds by their timbre. This has led to suggest that the skills for environmental sound recognition by timbre are highly developed in WS. Furthermore, the term hypertimbria has been proposed to refer to this feature. However, no academic research has assessed these skills in WS. This study therefore aimed to contrast the reports on the highly developed skills for environmental sound recognition by timbre in children with WS. An environmental sound recognition task was administered to children with WS, children with Down syndrome of the same chronological age and cognitive level, and chronological age-matched typically developing children. Participants with WS performed significantly lower than their typically developing peers and no significant differences were found between the WS and Down syndrome groups. Unlike previous reports, this study points out that in WS environmental sound recognition by timbre does not constitute a phenotypic strength either in absolute or relative terms. Results suggest that children with WS do not present hypertimbria or preserved skills for timbre recognition. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of cognitive modularity.     

Ups and Downs in Auditory Development: Preschoolers’ Sensitivity to Pitch Contour and Timbre

Much research has explored developing sound representations in language, but less work addresses developing representations of other sound patterns. This study examined preschool children's musical representations using two different tasks: discrimination and sound–picture association. Melodic contour—a musically relevant property—and instrumental timbre, which is (arguably) less musically relevant, were tested. In Experiment 1, children failed to associate cartoon characters to melodies with maximally different pitch contours, with no advantage for melody preexposure. Experiment 2 also used different‐contour melodies and found good discrimination, whereas association was at chance. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2, but with a large timbre change instead of a contour change. Here, discrimination and association were both excellent. Preschool‐aged children may have stronger or more durable representations of timbre than contour, particularly in more difficult tasks. Reasons for weaker association of contour than timbre information are discussed, along with implications for auditory development.     

Davidson's Argument for Monism

Two criticisms of Davidson's argument for monism are presented. The first is that there is no obvious way for the anomalism of the mental to do any work in his argument. Certain implicit premises, on the other hand, entail monism independently of the anomalism of the mental, but they are question-begging. The second criticism is that even if Davidson's argument is sound, the variety of monism that emerges is extremely weak at best. I show that by constructing ontologically ``hybrid' events that are consistent with the premises and assumptions of Davidson's argument, but entail ontological dualism.My guess is thatif you want to get a lot of physicalism out [ofDavidson's argument], you're going to have to put a lot of physicalism in.Jerry Fodor 1989, 159     

Binding “what” and “where” in auditory working memory: An asymmetrical association between sound identity and sound location

Contrasting results in visual and auditory working memory studies suggest that the mechanisms of association between location and identity of stimuli depend on the sensory modality of the input. In this auditory study, we tested whether the association of two features both encoded in the “what” stream is different from the association between a “what” and a “where” feature. In an old–new recognition task, blindfolded participants were presented with sequences of sounds varying in timbre, pitch and location. They were required to judge if either the timbre, pitch or location of a single-probe stimulus was identical or different to the timbre, pitch or location of one of the sounds of the previous sequence. Only variations in one of the three features were relevant for the task, whereas the other two features could vary, with task-irrelevant changes. Results showed that task-irrelevant variations in the “what” features (either timbre or pitch) caused an impaired recognition of sound location and in the other task-relevant “what” feature, whereas changes in sound location did not affect the recognition of either one of the “what” features. We conclude that the identity of sounds is incidentally processed even when not required by the task, whereas sound location is not maintained when task irrelevant.     

Spinoza's Thinking Substance and the Necessity of Modes

How should ‘the physical’ be defined for the purpose of formulating physicalism? In this paper I defend a version of the via negativa according to which a property is physical just in case it is neither fundamentally mental nor possibly realized by a fundamentally mental property. The guiding idea is that physicalism requires functionalism, and thus that being a type identity theorist requires being a realizer‐functionalist. In §1 I motivate my approach partly by arguing against Jessica Wilson's no fundamental mentality constraint. In §2 I set out my preferred definition of ‘the physical’ and make my case that physicalism requires functionalism. In §3 I defend my proposal by attacking the leading alternative account of ‘the physical,’ the theory‐based conception. Finally, in §4 I draw on my definition, together with Jaegwon Kim's account of intertheoretic reduction, to defend the controversial view that physicalism requires a priori physicalism.     

Emerging from the causal drain

For over 20 years, Jaegwon Kim’s Causal Exclusion Argument has stood as the major hurdle for non-reductive physicalism. If successful, Kim’s argument would show that the high-level properties posited by non-reductive physicalists must either be identical with lower-level physical properties, or else must be causally inert. The most prominent objection to the Causal Exclusion Argument—the so-called Overdetermination Objection—points out that there are some notions of causation that are left untouched by the argument. If causation is simply counterfactual dependence, for example, then the Causal Exclusion Argument fails. Thus, much of the existing debate turns on the issue of which account of causation is appropriate. In this paper, however, I take a bolder approach and argue that Kim’s preferred version of the Causal Exclusion Argument fails no matter what account one gives of causation. Any notion of causation that is strong enough to support the premises of the argument is too strong to play the role required in the logic of the argument. I also consider a second version of the Causal Exclusion Argument, and suggest that although it may avoid the problems of the first version, it begs the question against a particular form of non-reductive physicalism, namely emergentism.     

Physicalism and sparse ontology

A major stumbling block for non-reductive physicalism is Kim’s disjunctive property objection. In this paper I bring certain issues in sparse ontology to bear on the objection, in particular the theses of priority monism and priority pluralism. Priority pluralism (or something close to it, anyway) is a common ontological background assumption, so in the first part of the paper I consider whether the disjunctive property objection applies with equal force to non-reductive physicalism on the assumption that priority monism is instead true. I ultimately conclude that non-reductive physicalism still faces a comparable problem. In the second part, I argue, surprisingly enough, that what I call ‘fine-grained reductionism’, a particular version of which Kim proposes as an alternative to non-reductive physicalism, may work better in the monist framework than the pluralist one. I conclude that issues in sparse ontology, therefore, are more relevant to the debate about physicalism than one may have thought.

Problems with the ‘physical’ in physicalism

Hempel's Dilemma is a challenge that has to be met by any formulation of physicalism that specifies the physical by reference to a particular physical theory. It poses the problem that if one's specification of the physical is ‘current’ physical theory, then the physicalism which depends on it is false because current physics is false; and if the specification of the physical is a future or an ideal physics, the physicalism based on it would be trivial as it would be tautologously true, or because very little (if anything at all) can be inferred from or about a physics that does not yet exist. I review the reasons for thinking that the dilemma is a perpetual problem for currentist specifications of the physical, then introduce the argument that the standard positions on the specification question are wanting because they lack a generality which physicalism is generally accepted to have. I end with a suggestion for a way forward for physicalism.     

The Relativity Of Color

C. L. Hardin led a recent development in the philosophical literature on color in which research from visual science is used to argue that colors are not properties of physical objects, but rather are mental processes. I defend J. J. C. Smart's physicalism, which claims that colors are physical properties of objects, against this attack. Assuming that every object has a single veridical (that is, nonillusory) color, it seems that physicalism must give a specification of veridical color in terms natural to physics, independently of our interests. Hardin argues that since physicalism doesn't give us any such specification of veridical color, this view is false. However, this argument assumes a mistaken account of veridical color. I show physicalism can appeal to an alternative account, according to which veridical color is characterized in terms of favored conditions of perceptual access, independently of any specification of the physical nature of color.     

Congenital amusia: A short-term memory deficit for non-verbal,but not verbal sounds

Congenital amusia refers to a lifelong disorder of music processing and is linked to pitch-processing deficits. The present study investigated congenital amusics’ short-term memory for tones, musical timbres and words. Sequences of five events (tones, timbres or words) were presented in pairs and participants had to indicate whether the sequences were the same or different. The performance of congenital amusics confirmed a memory deficit for tone sequences, but showed normal performance for word sequences. For timbre sequences, amusics’ memory performance was impaired in comparison to matched controls. Overall timbre performance was found to be correlated with melodic contour processing (as assessed by the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia). The present findings show that amusics’ deficits extend to non-verbal sound material other than pitch, in this case timbre, while not affecting memory for verbal material. This is in line with previous suggestions about the domain-specificity of congenital amusia.     

Formulating physicalism: Two suggestions

Two ways are considered of formulating a version of retentive physicalism, the view that in some important sense everything is physical, even though there do exist properties, e.g. higher-level scientific ones, which cannot be type-identified with physical properties. The first way makes use of disjunction, but is rejected on the grounds that the results yield claims that are either false or insufficiently materialist. The second way, realisation physicalism, appeals to the correlative notions of a functional property and its realisation, and states, roughly, that any actual property whatsoever is either itself a physical property or else is, ultimately, realised by instances of physical properties. Realisation physicalism is distinctive since it makes no claims of identity whatsoever, and involves no appeal to the dubious concept of supervenience. After an attempt to formulate realisation physicalism more precisely, I explore a way in which, in principle, we could obtain evidence of its truth.     

Dichotic backward masking of complex sounds

In the first experiment subjects identified a consonant-vowel syllable presented dichotically with a known contralateral masking sound at a stimulus onset asynchrony of ± 60 msec. When the mask followed the target syllable, perception of place of articulation of the consonant was impaired more when the mask was a different consonant-vowel syllable than when it was either a steady-state vowel or a non-speech timbre. Perception was disturbed less when the mask preceded the target, and the amount of disruption was independent of which mask was used. Greater backward than forward masking was also found in the second experiment for the identification of complex sounds which differed in an initial change in pitch. These experiments suggest that the extraction of complex auditory features from a target can be disrupted by the subsequent contralateral presentation of a sound sharing certain features with the target.     

Response to Darragh Byrne’s “Do phenomenal concepts misrepresent?”

I begin by summarizing my view of the progression that occurred from the 1950s to the 1990s on the topic of physicalism and, in terms of this, present an overview of the reconciliation I was attempting in “Conceptualizing Physical Consciousness.” I then address Byrne’s two main arguments. In the case of the first, I show that his argument turns on a third-person conception of appearance which is not the one addressed in the debates in question, and argue that functionalism is not relevant to physicalism about consciousness in the manner Byrne thinks. In the case of the second, I argue that Byrne’s attempt to prize metaphysics apart from science shows a misunderstanding of the physicalist agenda. In conclusion I indicate how my views have moved on. My misrepresentation thesis, like any form of conventional physicalism, ultimately entails eliminativism; and I reject eliminativism.     

Physicalism as an attitude

It is widely noted that physicalism, taken as the doctrine that the world contains just what physics says it contains, faces a dilemma which, some like Tim Crane and D.H. Mellor have argued, shows that “physicalism is the wrong answer to an essentially trivial question”. I argue that both problematic horns of this dilemma drop out if one takes physicalism not to be a doctrine of the kind that might be true, false, or trivial, but instead an attitude or oath one takes to formulate one’s ontology solely according to the current posits of physics.     

Infants' perception of timbre: classification of complex tones by spectral structure

Infants 7 to 8.5 months of age were tested for their discrimination of timbre or sound quality differences in the context of variable exemplars. They were familiarized with a set of complex tones with specified spectral structure; members of the set varied in fundamental frequency, intensity, or duration. Infants were then tested for their detection of tones that contrasted in spectral structure but were similar in other respects. They successfully differentiated the two spectral structures in the context of these variations, indicating that they can classify tonal stimuli on the basis of timbre. When the stimuli were organized into arbitrary categories, infants were unable to differentiate these categories, indicating that their performance with nonarbitrary categories was not attributable to memorization of the familiarized set.     

PHYSICALISM, SUPERVENIENCE AND THE FUNDAMENTAL LEVEL

We provide a formulation of physicalism, and show that this is to be favoured over alternative formulations. Much of the literature on physicalism assumes without argument that there is a fundamental level to reality, and we show that a consideration of the levels problem and its implications for physicalism tells in favour of the form of physicalism proposed here. Its key elements are, first, that the empirical and substantive part of physicalism amounts to a prediction that physics will not posit new entities solely for the purpose of accounting for mental phenomena, nor new entities with essentially mental characteristics such as propositional attitudes or intentions; secondly, that physicalism can safely make do with no more than a weak global formulation of supervenience.     

Binaural loudness gain measured by simple reaction time

In order to yield equal loudness, different studies using scaling or matching methods have found binaural level differences between monaural and diotic presentations ranging from less than 2 dB to as much as 10 dB. In the present study, a reaction time methodology was employed to measure the binaural level difference producing equal reaction time (BLDERT). Participants had to respond to the onset of 1-kHz pure tones with sound pressure levels ranging from 45 to 85 dB, and being presented to the right, the left, or both ears. Equal RTs for monaural and diotic presentation (BLDERTs) were obtained with a level difference of approximately 5 dB. A second experiment showed that different results obtained for the left and right ear are largely due to the responding hand, with ipsilateral responses being faster than contralateral ones. A third experiment investigated the BLDERT for dichotic stimuli, tracing the transition between binaural and monaural stimulation. The results of all three RT experiments are consistent with current models of binaural loudness and contradict earlier claims of perfect binaural summation.     

Once More Unto the Breach: Type B Physicalism,Phenomenal Concepts,and the Epistemic Gap

Type B, or a posteriori, physicalism is the view that phenomenal-physical identity statements can be necessarily true, even though they cannot be known a priori—and that the key to understanding their status is to understand the special features of our phenomenal concepts, those concepts of our experiential states acquired through introspection. This view was once regarded as a promising response to anti-physicalist arguments that maintain that an epistemic gap between phenomenal and physical concepts entails that phenomenal and physical properties are distinct. More recently, however, many physicalists have lost confidence in the view, and have proposed less promising defences of physicalism—or have become outright sceptical about its prospects. I argue here that these physicalists have underestimated the resources of Type B physicalism and are thereby retreating too quickly—or fighting battles that have already been won.     

Explanation and Two Conceptions of the Physical

Any position that promises genuine progress on the mind-body problem deserves attention. Recently, Daniel Stoljar has identified a physicalist version of Russells notion of neutral monism; he elegantly argues that with this type of physicalism it is possible to disambiguate on the notion of physicalism in such a way that the problem is resolved. The further issue then arises of whether we have reason to believe that this type of physicalism is in fact true. Ultimately, one needs to argue for this position by inference to the best explanation, and I show that this new type of physicalism does not hold promise of more explanatory prowess than its relevant rivals, and that, whether it is better than its rivals or not, it is doubtful whether it would furnish us with genuine explanations of the phenomenal at all.