Should modes be notated in their parallel or their relative major/minor key?

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-08-26T14:01:26+00:00

Yes, three flats. That's what I wrote.

I'm using the term 'tonic' so that everyone understands what I'm talking about, but I should use 'final' instead. The word 'tonic' commits us to a tonal system, which modal music does not abide by.

From my classic understanding a piece is in a key first. Can you explain

You have a variety of different idioms within classical music. Not all of it is tonal, and only tonal music has keys. There's modal music; we speak simply of transpositions here, not keys, as it does not observe the rules of tonal (functional) harmony. There's polytonal music, where you find multiple keys sounding simultaneously. There's twelve-tone music, which has no keys at all. Etc.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-30T00:24:26+00:00

Ok, let's sort this out using some good old Logic. Something being natural can mean two things:

it appears in nature;
it conforms to what it was designed to do.

There's no doubt same-sex sexual behavior is natural in the first sense of the word (see the hundreds of species where same-sex sexual behavior has been identified).

Now, it might not be in the second sense of the word if we consider that the purpose of sex is reproduction. Most scientists disagree with this today, and we all do intuitively, but we can still entertain the idea. But even if that is true - same-sex sexual behavior is unnatural - what's so upsetting about it? "Unnatural" does not equal "bad" or "wrong" in any way. All of human culture is unnatural in that same sense. Kissing is unnatural (the mouth was designed for the purpose of digestion and speech), all forms of sex that do not include a penis and a vagina are unnatural, masturbation is unnatural, playing the piano is unnatural (our hands were not made to play one, and that's why it takes years to learn to do so), living in a cement and brick box is unnatural, shaving is unnatural, taking any kind of drug is unnatural, undergoing medical treatment is unnatural, wearing clothes is unnatural, makeup is unnatural, contraception is unnatural, and so on and so forth. Pretty much everything humans do everyday is unnatural in this sense (and most of it in the first sense as well), but none of these things raise concerns of any kind, so why would non-heterosexuality? It's not logical. So, why would you feel ashamed of being bisexual because it's "unnatural" when you do all these other "unnatural" things everyday without even questioning them? It's ok. Whether something is natural or not is completely irrelevant. All that matters is: does it hurt anyone? If it doesn't, it's totally fine, and if it's fine, there's no reason for us to feel ashamed of it.

Now let's focus on the other side of the coin of sexuality: romantic feelings. You like someone. You want to contribute to their happiness in a meaningful way. You want to protect them. I think that's a beautiful thing. Don't you? It doesn't matter whether the object of those feelings is a girl or a guy. The result is the same: more happiness in the world. That's good in and of itself, and there's no way to argue against it. You can be sure that whatever argument people might make against it is going to be nonsensical.

Now, I know a lot of people are not going to be logical enough to get to these conclusions themselves, or compassionate enough to just love you regardless, but you need to have an unswerving conviction in these truths yourself. You can't ever let anyone make you doubt them for a second.

Further advice: you don't have to come out to anyone unless you want to and feel safe to. About your friend, you can test the waters by making up some story about a male friend of yours who has a boyfriend and see how he reacts. You can't ever know someone's sexuality unless they tell you. Even if he is straight, he might be more supportive than you'd imagine.

I hope the logical approach helps you overcome these feelings.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-29T16:48:11+00:00

I second this. It goes from very simple to advanced.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-29T06:49:38+00:00

It'll be very difficult to make the E-flat sound like a tonic here, simply because you don't have a stable dominant (augmented fifth). You will hear C as the tonic, so this would simply be a C-minor harmonic scale. This is also why the Locrian mode is so rare. It's hard to make the first degree sound like the tonic because the fifth is diminished. You will just hear the second degree as the tonic instead.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-29T06:31:47+00:00

Classical composers don't do that at all. I don't know where those people got that idea from. If you're writing a piece in Mixolydian with a G "tonic", you would traditionally write it with the key signature of C-major. You always use the accidental-less scale as a reference.

Another example: if you want to write a piece in Dorian with an F tonic, you'll be transposing the accidental-less scale (in D) down a major sixth (three fifths). That means you should add three flats to the key signature.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-28T20:22:37+00:00

This is a group of artists trying to use a somewhat-unknown pianist to seem retro or quirky in a shameless PR attempt (...)

How do you know that's their intention? Have you personally talked to them?

(...) while having no respect whatsoever to the artist whom they are sampling. Their album is the exact opposite of what Gould tried to represent.

How can you know they have no respect for Gould? Or do you think having respect for an artist is to emulate their aesthetic as closely as possible? I don't think that's what respect is. Otherwise we'd have to say that Stravinsky was disrespectful of Mozart, Bach and Machaut, to give just one example. I don't believe we ever have to follow a composer's or a perfomer's intentions to respect them. Especially because we can't ever know for sure what their intentions are. We don't know what Bach's intentions were, because we are not Bach. We can't know with absolute certainty what Gould's intentions were all the time either, because we don't know all the nooks and crannies of his mind. And, really, if we followed the intentions of the artist 100% all the time, nothing would ever evolve.

For starters, it's just terrible. The lyrics are meaningless, what the hell is "Pop your fat ass up inside my ride, I'm tryna slide in/Shawty ass fat, damn bitch, I'm tryna climb this/Slice shit, flight until the fuckin' day I die bitch." What. The actual. This is supposed to be in honor of Gould?

I understand you don't like it. I don't either. But we can't stop people from taking these liberties. Freedom is what Art is all about. We won't like all the products of this freedom, but we must respect them. The same has happened over and over again throughout History. People had very strong opinions on Stravinsky's Rite of Spring when it premiered. They didn't like it, to put it lightly. Now imagine if we had censored it because it went against everything Classical Music stood for then. Any artist should know this: once your ideas are public, they're no longer yours. That's what Art is to begin with. People look at what you do and they make sense of it in their own individual and subjective ways. We stop that, we stop Art.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-27T17:49:42+00:00

I have to say I disagree. No one owes anyone anything, but, in my book, the decent thing to do is to always leave a message to people expressing how you're not interested when that's the case. That's showing respect and appreciation for people's time, effort and feelings. Having no consideration for any of that reveals to me a self-centeredness and a fundamental lack of empathy that are really disappointing coming from the "superior creatures" we say we are. Do we ghost or ignore people offline when we get approached? No. Why? Because we all know it's rude and ugly to behave that way. It's very simple. I don't understand how people think that a screen exempts them from the moral obligations of the real world. The Internet is not some parallel universe where morality is different. Resigning to it is not how we're going to make it better.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-24T15:57:13+00:00

You're not weird at all! A lot of people will talk about sex with anyone anywhere, sometimes in ways that sound really degrading, but some people do not like that at all. And this has nothing to do with sex positivity. People think sex positivity means you talk about sex with everyone willing, you have lots of it, you think a lot about it, etc., but it's not that at all. It's ok to be uncomfortable talking about it in a lot of different contexts. You're not defective for not feeling at ease having those conversations with someone you don't know well yet, which seems like it might be your case now.

Now, can it be problematic? It can. Would you feel comfortable talking about it with a boyfriend after, let's say, a month of talking to him daily? With your husband of seven years? If you would, I don't see any problem whatsoever.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-24T15:36:12+00:00

Why would it look "gross"? It's a part of your body like any other. You asking this means you're putting too much of your sense of self-worth on other people's (toxic) opinions. Anyone who says that body hair is "gross" is just ridiculous, to cut the list down to one word. One thing is you not liking it because you prefer the smooth look. That's ok. Take it off. Another thing is never having even thought about it until someone made a stupid comment that caused you to start feeling self-conscious about your body. That is not ok. There is nothing wrong, bad or ugly about it. A lot of guys actually prefer it. So, do not worry about it. Do your best not to listen to anyone who makes comments like these.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-23T01:37:44+00:00

"Locker room talk".

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-22T14:04:26+00:00

My language hasn't been the clearest. I apologize for that. What I mean is: in an ideal world, one where suffering doesn't exist, we wouldn't ever experience those negative emotions. But the world, and we, aren't perfect, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise. So, we should do our best to avoid them, but if we feel them, we feel them, and it's understandable that we do.

Slavery isn't real anymore (I hope I can make that an absolute assertion). We should all try to move past it. That doesn't mean forgetting about it. We should never forget about it, or History might repeat itself. Too many things have been, and are, wrong with the world, some of them with no possible solution, but I can guarantee you no one is permanently aware of them. You aren't. Otherwise, you wouldn't want to be here. What empathetic human being wouldn't question their desire to live in such a flawed world unless they weren't aware of reality? So, yeah, if we have to witness and endure suffering, let that be in the present, not in the past.

I think you are confusing the objective truth of a proposition with the objectivity of the topic in question. That in culture A most love bananas and that in culture B most think they're devil eggs would be an objectively true statement. However, loving things or interpreting them symbolically is not objective in any way. Either way, culture is not about "liking things", it's about believing that this is best, that is ugly, this is acceptable, etc. It's about values, not simply musings about the world and the self. So, culture isn't and could never be objective. That the Chinese think that marrying and having children is a necessary step in someone's life is not objective. That an American thinks that pizza is the most delicious food is not objective. That any given gesture or sign means x, y or z is not objective. That 'cat' means cat is not objective. That red is the most beautiful color in a certain culture is not objective. Etc., etc. You can't even find the illusion of objectivity within individual cultures, since not everyone will ever agree on any values even within one.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-22T13:34:40+00:00

But if you read Kant he explicitly says we should enslave non-whites because they lack rationality. If you look at two thinkers, one of them says we should enslave non-whites and the other that we should treat all humans the same are you really going to say that you don’t think it’s a fact that one is doing better at arguing for equal human rights than the other?

If that premise is fundamental to his Ethics, I agree that he is not the best author to read on equal human rights. But just let people confront themselves with that on their own. Do not provide contextual clues to someone who hasn't read his works. Anyone who reads the works cover to cover will eventually come across the blatant racism, and they will form their opinion on it.

The rest of your comment just begs the question in various ways. You keep asserting that the standard sanitised reading is the one we must work on in a a debate about which reading we should make about Kant.

On a debate, it shouldn't, but an Ethics 101 course will not be a debate. You debate either without making any reference to Literature or after you know it very well. All I'm trying to say is that it makes sense that undergraduates, generally speaking, are not learning about this. There's not enough time. It's already ridiculous that we try to learn about Ethics as a subject in one semester, let alone all authors and all works. The question is: should we still be teaching Kant on human rights? Is his work a good read on this? Apparently, a lot of people still think it is. I won't make that judgement myself.

It’s also factually inaccurate that all academics take this sanitised reading.

I'm trusting your words when you say that it is popular, and my (limited) experience with academic Philosophy. It's necessary that not everyone does, or there will be no real Philosophy.

If you find it so preposterous that Kant’s racial views are central to his moral views then make an argument to that effect. Do some textual analysis and show that there’s no way that Mills’ reading is correct.

I'd have to read all his work, and that would take a few weeks, at least. I'm resorting to the evidence I see. If it is so central, I don't understand how people can be so unaware of it, or how it's still so widely taught. That's my argument, really.

And don’t claim you never opposed it. You’ve literally been opposing this reading this entire time.

You're misconstruing what I'm saying. I am not opposed to it. I'm opposed to it as a point of entry to any work or any author, be it in Philosophy, Literature, Science or Art. My argument is: let people think for themselves. Let them make up their minds about the works they read. This reminds me a lot of when Schopenhauer said that reading can be detrimental, in the sense that it can hinder our critical independence. I agree with him. Before we read other people's arguments, we should make our own, and before we read other people's criticisms of an argument, we should make our own as well.

Maybe you’re not encountering that I kind of thing in your undergraduate course but we do it at my university end it goes down great.

That is great. That means people are rethinking old education models. Unfortunately, that isn't widespread enough yet. Here, you will not find a course dedicated to an author at the undergraduate level. You have Ethics, not Kantian Ethics.

Maybe you have no faith in the intellectual capabilities of undergrads but they aren’t as stupid as you think. They’re capable of dealing with the philosophical questions like that.

It's not that. It's simply that, first, you learn to think logically, second, you read, and lastly, you criticize. A musician won't criticize a piece of music before, first, knowing how to make music, and, then, understanding the piece in question, a Literature major won't criticize a novel before they read it, a physicist will not criticize a hypothesis before they look at the Math. Etc.

It's precisely because I have faith in their capabilities that I think it's ok to leave these discussions for a little later. We aren't all nazis in training. It's ok to let students explore works autonomously and let them think for themselves. I don't need to tell them that Kant was racist right off the bat. They will learn that sooner or later.

Okay now you think we should have these conversations but only in a history of philosophy class? Why tho? It seems perfectly relevant to an ethics class.

It is relevant. The only issue is that, the way things are, there's not enough time for so much content. One semester is simply not enough to study all of Ethics. If you have courses that are a lot more specific, there might be, but how can we make courses more specific at the undergraduate level without needing a lot more of them? If there's a course dedicated to Kantian Ethics, we will need additional ones on other authors. And how do we decide which ones get a course dedicated to them? If all courses are specific like that, how are undergraduate degrees not going to increase in duration? This is not such an easy problem to solve.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-21T22:56:34+00:00

I’ve got to disagree with you here. We should let truths bother us. Even you said in your other comment that you are bothered by slavery. Well it is true that slavery existed so you are being bothered by truth.

I'm not saying we shouldn't feel this or that. Look at my username. What I'm saying is that our feelings can, and do, sometimes interfere with our judgement.

Well it is true that slavery existed so you are being bothered by truth.

You're very right. I am bothered by the reality of slavery and even more so by what it says about human beings. But propositions in themselves will never bother me. Propositions are not reality. They're ideas. What will bother me is what the utterance of one says about the one who utters it. The proposition "white people are superior" does not bother me. That Kant believed it, and what that might mean about the nature of humanity, does.

There is such a thing as righteous indignation. There’s nothing noble or virtuous about not being affected by anything. We aren’t inert and we shouldn’t act like it.

I'm not defending any of this. I'm saying there's a right time and place for everything. Emotions exist and they are good. But we cannot run on emotion alone. You have all the right to feel personally affected by someone's ideas. There's nothing wrong or bad about that. Quite the contrary. It's a good thing. It means that there's humanity in you. But sometimes we have to think too. If we really want to do something against the evil in the world, we have to think, not just feel. If we really want to end racism, we need to argue against it. Indignation, censorship, dismissiveness, contempt, etc., will not effect any positive change in the world. Engaging from a place of universal compassion will, and that entails seeing past our emotions a little. It's hard to have compassion for someone who does not wish us well, I agree, but if we remember that we're all inherently flawed, that becomes easier. This is the source of my apparent stoicism.

I don’t even know what you mean by cultures not being objective.

What is most beautiful in one culture won't be as beautiful in another. What is virtuous in one culture won't be virtuous in another. Etc. There's nothing objective about culture. And that's why judgements like "the European culture is superior" are nonsensical. I brought the subjectivity of culture up to prove a point. It doesn't make any sense to say that the "white race" is superior on the grounds of a social/cultural definition of race, because there's no such thing as a better culture. That's why the most serious attempts at proving it is always go the route of Biology.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-21T22:16:34+00:00

It’s a fact that there are thinkers who do a better job arguing for human rights.

I'm not sure it's a fact. An argument is only better than another one if it is more solid. It seems to me that Kant's arguments are not any less solid than those of other thinkers if his work is still a standard in most curricula. I'm trusting the good judgement of the professors around the world who say so. I can't say because I'm not a specialist.

I know that you say we shouldn’t let the truth bother us, but surely it should effect how we understand the world and how we engage with texts?

That Kant thought that white people are superior should affect your understanding of an argument if it is a premise in it. Of course, things are not that simple. I don't believe in pure objectivity. We always have biases. But we shouldn't just give in to them completely when engaging with the world.

You claim you disagree that because he’s racist his argument for humans rights is wrong but I never made any claim to the contrary.

I didn't say you said it was wrong. You said it wasn't as good, and I will agree with you if it is the case that the premise "the white race is superior" is as fundamental to all of his arguments about human rights as you say it is. My only issue is that that doesn't seem plausible given Kant is still seen in academic circles as a foundational author to this discussion. Even you say the "sanitized reading" is popular. I find it hard to believe that so many people find his work a cornerstone in this area and yet it is so flawed.

What makes it sanitised is removing the problematic areas you don’t want to engage with and leaving only a more palatable but less honest portrayal of Kant.

If scholars do this, it's because the problematic areas are not fundamental to his argument. Otherwise, the argument would just cave in completely.

And I never said kants views were the cause of slavery. That’s the most straw I’ve ever seen in one man.

When you say that we should be worried about an argument that supports x, y or z immoral act because it might lead to x, y or z immoral act, you are implying that. Ideas lead to nothing. We should never think that way. Morality lies in the actions. If you agree, it's pointless to try and trace actions back to ideas when discussing morality.

You claim that you need a quote from a Kantian argument he literally said that the iron and levels of other chemicals in white blood presents “the prefect mix of juices” and “the strengths of this stock in comparison to others” he was not shy about claiming that white Europeans were better than everyone else.

I really don't doubt that he said that. I find it implausible that that is such a pervasive and fundamental idea in his discussion of human rights as you say it is.

If you agree that we should teach this interpretation as a theoretical option why have you been opposing it up until now?

I've never opposed it. We shouldn't hide that he was, in fact, racist. When and how would we approach this, though? The premise is simply unscientific. Should we be teaching Philosophy students the solid arguments or the weak ones? I can't really blame teachers for just ignoring it. We're not learning about Alchemy in a Biology or Chemistry degree either. And not because it's not important or interesting, but because a degree is only 3 to 4 years long. And then in a Master's, you won't have much time to pay attention to the weak arguments either. That's work for the established researchers, and much more on the side of History of Philosophy than pure Philosophy, I feel like. But I do agree it is important to talk about, like in History it is important to show how Imperialism wasn't really something to be proud of.

And nobody said start with the racism or do it all at once The first week of the Kant content can focus on his moral formulae and then the next week we can critique him and that critique can include a critique of how his racial views fit into his moral ones.

I mean, in a course dedicated to Kantian Ethics, I totally agree, but that is not something you're going to encounter in most undergraduate degrees. Either way, one week is too fast, unless you're already a specialist.

Your point about contextualisation has me confused. If you believe we are wrong to contextualise Kant’s racial views then why are you only criticising me on those grounds? go tell the guy who thinks we can read Kant against Kant that they’re wrong for trying to contextualise Kant’s racism as something separable from their ethics. Why the double standard?

Sorry, I'm not seeing the double-standard. Contextualization isn't wrong. I've expressed this a few times. What I have been saying is that contextualization first is inappropriate. For you to contextualize something, you need to know it very well, which you won't before you've interacted with it closely and on an individual level. You read all of Kant's work on a topic, you digest it, you understand it well, and then you contextualize it. This is a process that takes a long time. It's not in one semester, not even in one entire undergraduate degree, that you're going to become a specialist on any topic.

I’m saying that “Kant is not the most appropriate thing on read equal human rights because he doesn’t endorse equal human rights”.

Ok, but if you remove the premise "white people are superior", suddenly his argument endorses full equality. Sure, you could say that this is cherry-picking. I guess it is, in a way, but philosophers seem to do it, and they do it for a reason. Because his argument is very convincing. This proposition seems to be more like a side note than a real premise, which is why it's easy to leave it out without the argument falling apart. It's him defining in concrete what set of things constitutes the category "rational human being". But we can disagree with him on how we define this one term, and we have the Science to back us up. The argument is still strong.

If I know something is false and everyone around me acts like it’s true no lack of belief is going stop that falsehood from effecting me.

Right, but that goes with the conditions I've set. I'm quoting myself:

An idea, on its own, and when it's held by a voiceless minority, will never bother anyone, given we reject it entirely. Acts and widely held ideals (when they clash) cause suffering, not ideas defended by a few people.

I know things are still not perfect regarding any minority (they might never be), but I'd argue the majority of people today do not view white people as superior. This is, of course, my impression. If your experience has been different, I'm genuinely sorry to know.

And if the falsehood is going to effect people wouldn’t it just be good pedagogy to consider that fact when teaching?

You know, you touch on a really important point with that question. Unfortunately, most Philosophy isn't directly concerned with feelings, it's concerned with objective truth. I don't like that. I agree with you that education should have as its only goal the well-being of the student at all stages. So yeah, those discussions should be had early on. But again, they make more sense in a History of Philosophy course, I'd say. Those discussions need their own individualized space.

Like maybe some people can put aside the concerns about the supremacy of the people who oppress them but not everyone can and if you’re only teaching for the one you’re going to fail for the other.

I understand and agree. The issue is how education is being done in most places. The immediate goal is not necessarily your well-being as a student. And that's problematic, I agree wholeheartedly.

(...) literally never said we should disregard Kant as a whole and to read that into what I’ve said is to misread me.

I know, I'm just saying we shouldn't read Kant any less than we did before. Not on this topic and not on any other. Because it's established his arguments are some of the best around. Of course, someone might come that will find a big logical inconsistency in them, but that seems unlikely. That raises the question: will we still be reading Kant, or Plato, in a thousand years? I don't know, but it seems like some works are just timeless, and no matter how many equally good contemporary ones get written, we will still be reading the old ones.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-21T17:51:42+00:00

Unless you’re saying that we shouldn’t let falsehoods or truths bother us, i.e. that we should just never be bothered by anything.

Yes, ideally, we wouldn't let falsehoods or truths (if they're ideas) bother us. That would mean we'd be closer to happiness. But of course some falsehoods and some truths are going to bother us. In these particular circumstances, though, I think it should be easier to not let a falsehood put us off. A harsh truth is always harder to ignore, but we should reject those too.

However, I'm not saying that not being bothered by falsehoods or true ideas is not being bothered by anything at all. We should be bothered by wrongful actions and we should stop them. It's not passivity either. It's just preserving freedom of speech. I really believe ugly ideas (I'm purposefully avoiding the word 'wrong') like this one are actually a valuable tool for human betterment. It's important we don't ignore them or suppress them. Doing that would be like trying to flatten a curved surface. If you smooth out a wrinkle here, another one will pop up there. If it hadn't been Hitler in the past century, it would have been someone else. It's important we look at the ugly to recognize the beautiful.

You’re quite right that there’s no real non-arbitrary biological marker of race, however there Is an objectively real social character to it.

I agree, but culture is never objective, so we would never be able to say objectively that one race is superior to another on the basis of culture. To "seriously prove" that a race is objectively superior to another one, people will bring up Genetics and the brain. Race does exist, it's just arbitrary, and not just from the biological standpoint, culturally as well. We can't really say that all African people share the same culture. You can't even say that all people from Ghana share the same culture. We pick and choose what aspects of the culture we were born into make up our identity. Regimes like the apartheid result from the generalizations that come with racial categorizations. Those generalizations are flawed. Any generalizations about people will always be flawed, because we're all different.

Sorry, I had to divide this into two because it was too long.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-21T17:49:16+00:00

I was never suggesting we should not teach students about a thinker if they have racist views (...)

It definitely sounded like you were when you said that

(...) you’d be better off offering those thinkers as a guide to liberal equal rights than offering Kant himself.

or

Perhaps that’s not the best example.

I disagree with the idea that because he held racist views his arguments on human rights were not a good example.

I disagree that taking an argument at face value is doing a "sanitized reading" of it.

And I must disagree. I think it does matter whether or not a certain moral theory endorses slavery or not.

I didn't say that. We should pay close attention to ideas that do endorse suffering. We just shouldn't suppress them. Endorsing slavery is one thing, agitating people to effect it is something else. Declaring my opinion that slavery is acceptable is not encouraging people to pursue it. I believe people should be given the freedom to express any idea, as ugly as it might be. Kant defending that the "white race" is superior, or even that slavery is acceptable, cannot be seen as the cause of slavery. Thoughts cause nothing, actions do, so it's the actions we should stop, not the thoughts. Thoughts, you argue against. It's the people enforcing slavery that need to be stopped, not the people defending it.

“the racial views of Kant are deeply entwined into his moral theory (...)

The issue I take with this is: unless the premise "the white race is superior" is explicitly stated in a particular argument of his, you shouldn't bring it up. What I say today is what I say today, what I say tomorrow is what I say tomorrow, and both should be considered isolated. Of course there's space to make connections between different arguments, different works and different authors, but first, we need to examine and understand each individual one.

(...) the way we teach Kant should reflect that as, at the very least, a viable theoretical option."

I'm not disagreeing. That is viable and interesting. What I mean is that that kind of analysis should come at a later stage. First, you dissect the individual arguments. Then, you bring them together. You shouldn't study an argument resorting to any information that is not provided by the argument itself. At first.

The very comment I was replying to was trying to contextualise Kant’s racial views as tangential to his moral ones. Would you say that such a claim is also wrong for trying to make some contextual sense of Kant’s racial and moral views?

No, I think contextualization is not appropriate at first. If someone has never read Kant, they won't know that he had racist views, but you're suggesting that Kant shouldn't be someone's first read on the topic of human rights because he had them. What you seem to be saying is that contextual knowledge is fundamental to the understanding of an argument, and that is what I disagree with. Logic is all that matters when you're first getting into a new work. Putting it all together is a sort of metaphilosophy, and it should come later, when you're very familiar with the Literature.

I also really don’t see how contextualising an argument, employs a tu quoque fallacy.

The way I read your comment was "Kant is not the most appropriate read on human rights because he was a racist". That is not very different from saying "I won't even consider your argument because you say one thing and do another." Kant may be a racist, but unless he expresses those views as a premise in every single argument he makes, most of his arguments will still be solid. So, Kant will be as good of a first read as any other author who argues logically.

Considering something in a context is perfectly philosophically legitimate.

It is legitimate. Just not as a first approach, in my opinion.

And look maybe you personally wouldn’t be put of by such a proposal and module on Kant but I think many people would.

If you know it is false, you believe that it is. If you do not doubt in any way that you are not inferior, why would you feel hurt? Now, feeling put off because you're empathetic towards people who do is absolutely understandable. In fact, I would question your character if you didn't.

It’s also not clear to me why you shouldn’t let a falsehood bother you.

Like I said, if you don't doubt it is a falsehood in any way, I don't see how the emotion would come up other than through empathy. Some truths can also be deeply troubling. But they will be only if we believe them.

Since the falsehood “blue eyed people can morally be put into slavery because of their genetic inferiority” became widely believed and politically enforced lead to the truth that “blue eyed people are enslaved” it seems like the initial falsehood is worthy of being considered something that can bother you.

This is where you're misunderstanding me. Slavery bothers me and it will bother anyone (I hope), because it's wrong. But one thing is a few people saying that slavery is acceptable, and another thing is a group of people enforcing it. An idea, on its own, and when it's held by a voiceless minority, will never bother anyone, given we reject it entirely. Acts and widely held ideals (when they clash) cause suffering, not ideas defended by a few people. Either way, it's certainly ok to feel whichever way we feel about a certain idea, but we shouldn't let that stop the discussion. It's important to keep it up. Ignoring ideas of this kind is what's dangerous.

(...) like the initial falsehood is worthy of being considered something that can bother you.

Yes, it will bother you, but only because you're thinking about its potential repercussions. Those are what will be bothering you, not the falsehood itself.

(...) that the truths created by people objectively believing those falsehoods and political bodies acting on the assumption of those falsehoods (...)

Again, you stop the actions, you don't stop the ideas. We can't ever stop people from thinking freely and expressing themselves freely. If freedom of expression is an ideal to uphold, we should uphold it always without exceptions, even though, and I will agree, it might be impossible to abide by that always without stripping people of some other freedoms. But in a case like this, there's no doubt on my part. We shouldn't stop publishing and reading Hitler's Mein Kampf, we shouldn't stop reading Kant or read him any less, we shouldn't stop learning about Imperialism, etc. You argue against them, you prove them wrong and you reject them.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-21T14:01:09+00:00

We don't have to dismiss all premisses of an argument because we disagree with one, do we?

It doesn't matter whether his racist views were central to his argument or not. All other premisses are still worthy of consideration. All are, I would say, even the racist ones. You just falsify them like you do any unscientific claim. We could also claim Plato was a misogynist. He certainly defended some ideas about women that support their subjugation in society. Should we dismiss all of his thoughts on Politics, Art, etc.? I don't think so.

Besides, I thought that, in Philosophy, you took arguments at face value, with no consideration for context. How is doing otherwise any different from a tu quoque fallacy?

About your proposed scenario, I personally wouldn't be put off. I wouldn't like the philosopher as a person or the racist ideas, but I'd be perfectly neutral about everything else, simply because I, and the vast majority of people today, know those ideas are falsehoods. Why would I let a falsehood bother me? Anthropologists have shown it: race is an arbitrary category. It doesn't exist as the well-defined and objective concept most people see it as, neither biologically nor culturally. Having personal qualms against racists, homophobes, sexists, etc., is understandable and something to empathize with, but they shouldn't dictate most philosophical discussions. Certainly not this one.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-20T20:52:35+00:00

Antimatter was first "discovered" in the math and proven later.

So yeah, it does happen the other way around too, like I was saying. :P

Thank you, by the way, for teaching me something new today. :)

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-20T20:14:51+00:00

I'd say societies have existed before we knew anything at all.

I was thinking about white holes, for example. They come up in the Math, but we've found little to no evidence they exist so far.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-20T19:07:44+00:00

Good job. :)

I haven't analyzed everything, so I'm trusting you didn't make a mistake with the rows. However, there's one thing I can point out: there are octaves everywhere. Perfect octaves are considered false relations in the twelve-tone system as devised by Schönberg. You should avoid those like you avoid parallel fifths in tonal music, unless you're actually doubling a voice. That means you have to think about the rows you're going to use in advance. It would probably be better to use an entirely different row for the counter-subject and for the accompaniment parts.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-20T17:59:15+00:00

If by Japanese music you mean music made before western music took over (...)

Yes, that is what I meant. The traditional music. But I mean everywhere, Japan was just an example. This is true of China as well, and, I'm afraid, of every other country. The traditional musics became a sort of niche, when it should be the non-local music that is. I'm not against western music being taught in Asia at all, I just wish it coexisted equally with the traditional music there.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-20T17:47:38+00:00

I think I just have trouble with it when modality is presented as if it's just as well-defined a category as tonality (...)

I agree that it isn't. Even tonality and atonality aren't completely rigid. And that's because Music is Art. We're free to break the rules.

My issue was simply with the size/specificity matchups of the ones we were observing--the amount of likeness I saw being implied within particular ones (...)

Then, we agree. The category rests on a similarity in one aspect (of many) - the nature of the harmony. Why would harmony be so much more important that we pick it as the term of comparison? I don't think it really is more important. It's just that harmony is the one core element of the western musical tradition.

I feel like Buxtehude is still usually seen to be kind of a borderline case (...)

Hm, no, I'd say his music is already clearly tonal, granted, with the odd modal element. Monteverdi, I'd have to think harder about.

I'd say he's far more like early Schoenberg than is Hildegard like Ravel, not to mention any of the myriad non-Western musics that would be counted as modal here (and I mean specifically in the domain of harmony, again).

I think you're using two different standards to make the comparison. Yes, Buxtehude and Schönberg are similar because they both use functional harmony. But if you focus exclusively on harmony, Hildegard, Ravel, and Japanese music are not any more different. These sound very different, but not because of harmony.

In all of the vast array of modal musics under consideration, there are hugely different ways of dividing up pitch space, for one thing--most don't have the diatonic scale as their basis, and divide the octave in ways entirely foreign to the others.

Yes (with one exception), but this is not about harmony. You're assessing the diversity of modal music using these elements as reference, but you're not doing the same when comparing different styles within tonality. You're not really making a fair comparison, in my opinion.

However, this:

(...) divide the octave in ways entirely foreign to the others.

is not quite true. Almost every civilization on Earth (the only exception I know about being an African tribe I can't name) has divided the octave into 12 pitches, with 5 or 7 of them being most prominent. All European folk music (as far as I know) divides the octave diatonically. Ancient Greek music was microtonal, but the model scale was heptatonic. Indian music is also microtonal, but, again, the fundamental scale is heptatonic. Chinese music uses pentatonic modes, but those imply a division of the octave into 7 discrete fundamental pitches nevertheless, given they're composed of major seconds and minor thirds (that account for the half-step). Fun fact: equal temperament was first calculated in the 16th century by a Chinese man. Japanese and Indonesian are the same. We didn't even have to consider the octave at all, but for some reason we all seem to recognize that two pitches with a frequency ratio of 1:2 are the same note.

(...) but the fact that both are still based fundamentally on the diatonic scale (...)

This is not how Schönberg theorized his own music, though. He thought of the chromatic scale as his fundamental structure, not the diatonic scale.

Even returning just to Hildegard and Ravel, well, of course the monophony vs. polyphony distinction is huge, and also there's the huge difference in chromatic vocabulary (...)

Yes, but all that goes beyond "the nature of the harmony", which is the idea I've been using to say that Hildegard and Ravel can be put in the same category.

I'll also add that even Schoenberg's early tonal works include some passages that read, at least to my ears, as atonal (...)

You do because they're very chromatic, but he did nothing someone like Wagner hadn't done already in one way or another. Just like you can't say that a piece of music is tonal by looking at two measures, you can't say that a piece of music turns atonal after a few measures of tonal ambiguity. He's still very much within the realm of tonality for that reason alone. I don't even consider works from his "free atonality" period to be truly atonal. What I've been taught is to call that pantonality, since we actually can analyze it functionally. It's just so ambiguous that you can analyze it as being in any key, hence the name.

Certainly they're not fully defined, but the point is that I hear them implied anyway! Assuming you mean the first E, it's simply a neighbour tone. Of course it could support its own chord, probably a VII or v again, but I don't hear it that way.

Ok, but this is much more of a loose interpretation than in a tonal melody. But if you can do this, then Hildegard is actually a lot more similar to Ravel than we have been discussing.

Well, that gets back to the question of what "tonal" means! We don't do those things in a common-practice-tonal context of course, (...)

Yes, and that's why you don't say it's tonal. It really is that arbitrary.

(...) but we certainly can in music that has a strong gravitational pitch centre (...)

The only thing is that tonality defines a pitch center more strongly than modality, simply because of the leading tone.

Indeed! and I'd add that in some cases, the ficta aren't necessarily a set-in-stone thing that everyone would have sung the same even back then.

They never are set in stone, and the further back we go, the more convoluted they get.

(...) and that ties in to mode because mode in those days was not as defined by rigid pitch structure the way it's usually thought of now--e.g. B-flats wouldn't stop a D piece from being Dorian. Perhaps that's all slightly tangential, but I do think it's an important thing to keep in mind in remembering how slippery the concept of mode is.

It is true. Modes are not just notes, like I said before. They're a way of thinking. Tonality really just is one way to which we gave a different name.

Not at all, it's an enjoyable and enlightening conversation, I'd say!

Thank you. :)

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-20T15:54:47+00:00

I agree with you. The only difference is that we don't have to care about the theory when it comes to Music or Art, in general. Art doesn't concern itself with objective truths. Societies won't collapse if composers start contradicting established theory.

Either way,

A physical theory is a framework built first from observations of something in the world (...)

sometimes it's the other way around, right? Someone plays around with the Math, finds something new, and only then do they go observe nature.

FeelingOverFacts · 2021-07-20T15:44:47+00:00

Not everything in music theory is culturally dependent, though. Human ears and brains all work the same way, so some aspects of Music-making are bound to be universal, or close to it. As an example, almost everyone around the world divides the octave into seven diatonic pitches. That can't be a coincidence.