Perceiving groupings, experiencing meanings

Giulia Martina

Alberto Voltolini

pp. 22-46

in: The auditory object, Rivista di estetica 66, 2017.

Abstrakt

In this paper we claim, first, that there are high-level visual experiences of grouping properties, i.e., properties that an array of elements we see can have to be organised in a certain way. Second, we argue that there are auditory experiences of groupings that share certain important properties with visual experiences of groupings, thereby being perceptual and high-level as well. Third, these results enable us to understand the nature and structure of our meaning experiences. We claim that, although meaning experiences depend on the auditory experiences we discuss, they are not perceptual, for they lack one of the features that make those auditory experiences perceptual; namely, being holistically attended to.