[Smt-talk] On reconciling intuitions

[Brian Hulse]

Dmitri writes: "What can we say to bridge the gap between people whose intuitions differ from ours?"
 
This is a major problem, not because intutions are different, but because we fret over this difference as if there needs to be one difinitive ("objective") truth to the matter. But there is much more in common between musical intutions than there is difference, otherwise there could be no common practice, no musical bodies of reference, nothing to contest. So the urgent question is not delimiting truth, or reducing the problem element to the sterile requirements of truth, but rather seeking an understanding of musical differences in a way that embraces multiplicity, complexity, and ambiguity.
 
Let me put it another way. The truth-doctrine that Dmitri and others borrow so pedantically from analytic philosphy, that bitch-thought residual of science, would go to every extreme to reify truth, so long as that truth doesn't wind up placing truth at the mercy of intuition (music, the art of intuition at its purest pitch...)
 
Brian Hulse
Associate Professor
College of William & Mary
operascore.com
 
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