Music, Meaning and the Embodied Mind

Towards an Enactive Approach to Music Cognition

By

Dylan van der Schyff

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the MA in Psychology for Musicians,

Department of Music, University of Sheffield

July 2013

CONTENTS
Table of Contents..................................................................................................2
Abstract................................................................................................................. 3

Introduction........................................................................................................4
Outline and method.....................................................................................7

One
A Dual Orthodoxy: Understanding the Cognitivist-Adapationist Program...........10
Cognition as computation..........................................................................11
Information processing, modularity and the adapted mind.........................14
Some preliminary concerns........................................................................17

Two
Music and Meaning: From Information-Processing and the Music as Language
Metaphor to Embodied Action and Bio-Cognitive Ecology..................................26
Music and the computational mind............................................................28
Modularity and the biological origins of music............................................31
Moving beyond biased, reductive and reified notions of music...................33
Human development and the bio-cultural meaning of music......................36
The musical brain: a dynamic and interactive perspective..........................38
Movement and the corporeal origins of musical meaning...........................42

Three
An Enactive Approach to the Musical Mind.........................................................50
Cognitive ecology and the idea of affordances.........................................51
Outlining the enactive approach................................................................54
Conclusion: music, consciousness and the experience of self..................62

References............................................................................................................68

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Abstract
The study of music cognition has been dominated by a largely disembodied
conception of the mind. This so-called cognitivist perspective treats mental
activity in terms of abstract information-processingwhere the world is
represented in the mind via the computation of sub-personal symbols; and where
the mind-brain relationship is explained in terms of a collection of cognitive
modules shaped by natural selection. Recent decades have seen an ecologicalembodied paradigm emerge in cognitive science, as well as more plastic and
interactive conceptions of the mind-brain and organism-environment relationships.
These new perspectives offer a much broader understanding of meaning-making
and the mind and are becoming increasingly influential in music cognition studies.

The orthodox approach to the mind and its origins is examined; and its influence
on music cognition research is discussed. Alternative embodied, developmental,
ecological and bio-cultural perspectives on cognition and the musical mind are
considered. The enactive approach to embodied cognition is then offered as a
theoretical framework that better accommodates these broader and more nuanced
ways of understanding musical meaning. To conclude, the relevance of the
enactive approach is considered for music education, performance and practice.

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Introduction
The profound influence of the information-processing approach to cognition has
tended to promote a disembodied view of musical experience. This perspective
often treats musical cognition as if it were an abstract reasoning or problem
solving process that proceeds in a hierarchical fashion (Clarke, 2005: 15). It relies
heavily on a computational model of the mind-brain relationship where cognition
is understood in terms of symbol processing at sub-personal or non-conscious
levels: the outputs of lower levels of mental processing feed inputs to higher
levels, with increasingly complex representations of a world out there produced at
each stage. This conception of cognition is supported by an objectivist analytical
philosophical tradition (e.g. Ayer, 1936; Stevenson, 1944) that understands
meaning formation largely in terms of iterative (linguistic-logical) processesi.e.
the formation of representations, propositions and concepts (Johnson, 2007). By
this view, the cognitive function of emotions, feelings, as well as embodied
perceptions and activities are largely ignored.
This so-called orthodox cognitivist conception of mind (see Dennett, 1978;
Hofstadter & Dennett, 1981) is often paired with a modular understanding of the
mind-brain relationship grounded in a strict adaptationist approach to biological
evolution (Fodor, 1983; Pinker, 2009). As a result, the complexity of human
thought and behaviour is often discussed in terms of the evolution of a large array
of cognitive modules, each adapted by natural selection to process a specific type
of information in ways that contribute to the survival of the individual and its genes
(Tooby & Cosmides, 1989, 1992; Pinker, 1997). Because environmental factors
(culture, experience and so on) are thought to exert a negligible influence on the
genome, this approach seeks firm distinctions between the products of nature (i.e.
natural selection) and those of culture in the human phenotype.

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The cognitivist-adaptationist program has underpinned much theory and

interpretation in the study of human cognition, often to the exclusion of other
viable approaches. As I will discuss below, this has resulted in problematic
reductions and reifications, dichotomous conceptions of nature and culture (i.e. the
nature vs. nurture debate), as well as disassociated notions of mind, body and
world. Furthermore, the highly objectivising view this approach demands has
contributed to a problematic epistemological divide between scientific inquiry and
phenomenal experience that has marginalized the study of consciousness in
Western scientific and intellectual circles.
However, while this orthodox approach remains highly influential in AngloAmerican philosophy and psychology, developments in cognitive science and
philosophy of mind have begun to open up alternative possibilities. Increasingly,
cognition is understood to be grounded, first and foremost, in interactive and
embodied experience with the physical and socio-cultural environment (Changizi,
2011; Tomasello, 1999; 2005)where cross-modal perceptions, sensory-motor
activity, emotions and basic metabolic processes play a central role (Damasio,
1994, 1999, 2003; Gallagher, 2005; Johnson, 2007; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999, 2003;
Ramachadran, 2011). Related research has questioned the dominance of the
modular conception of mind, especially as it is understood within the strict
adaptationist context of evolutionary psychology (Besson & Schn, 2012; Uttal,
2001; Panskepp, 2009; Lickliter & Honeycutt, 2003). There is growing
neurobiological evidence that complex human behaviours, such as those involved
with social cognition, depend more on organism environment interactions than on
innate dispositions; the plasticity of the human neocortex and the formation of selforganizing cognitive structures through experience and epigenetic effects are
increasingly emphasized over a large suite of genetically determined modules
(Gregory, 1987; Maturana & Varela, 1987; Lewontin, 1983; Pansepp, 2009; Sur &
Learney, 2001). In brief, the cognitivist and adaptationist orthodoxies are being

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challenged by more nuanced, integrated and interactive understandings of the

nature and origin of human cognition.
Because the functions and meanings of music span such a wide range of
human experience this work clearly holds great promise for the study of musical
cognition, which is increasingly understood as a bio-cognitive and bio-cultural
phenomenon. A number of scholars have begun to consider the enmeshed
biological, cognitive and cultural origins of music in human evolution and
ontogenesis (e.g. Cross, 1999; Tobert, 2001; Trevarthen, 1998, 1999). While
others, such as Leman (2008) have employed embodied theories of music
cognition to discuss possibilities for more effective mediation technologies. Crossmodal approaches to music perception and cognition have been investigated by
Eitan (e.g. Eitan & Granot, 2006; Eitan & Timmers, 2010) and Johnson (2007)
among others. And Gibsons (1966) ecological approach to perceptionan early
alternative to representational cognitivist modelscontinues to be influential; it has
been developed in a musical context by Clarke (2005) and others (e.g. Kreuger,
2011a, 2011b; Windsor, 2000, 2004) in order to discuss musical cognition in terms
of specification and affordance (as opposed to cognitivist principles of
codification and representation). Indeed, recent research has prompted some
scholars to reexamine a number of earlier theories that fell by the wayside during
the period of preoccupation with computational models of mind that arose in the
1950s and 60s. The work of James and Dewey, Merleau-Ponty, as well as the
early pioneers of cybernetics, is beginning to reassert an influence among a new
generation of psychological musicologists (e.g. Reybrouk, 2005) and musically
inclined philosophers (e.g. Johnson, 2007).
With this in mind, this paper aims to better understand the so-called
enactive approach to cognition within the context of human musicality. This
approach is most clearly articulated in The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and
Human Experience (1993), a joint effort by cognitive scientist Franscisco Varela,

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philosopher Evan Thompson and psychologist Eleanor Rosch. It has also found
some more recent advocates, such as philosopher Mark Johnson (2007), among
others. I suggest that the enactive approach may provide a valuable addition to the
study of musical experience. It presents a compelling critique of the dual
orthodoxies of adaptationism and cognitivism, potentially allowing for deeper, biocognitive and bio-cultural approaches to questions of music and meaning. It also
offers a critical addition to Gibsons ecological theory of perceptionand by
extension the work of Clarke (2005) in musicby placing a greater emphasis on
cognition as perceptually guided action that both drives and creates the historical
context of structural coupling between organism and environment (i.e. organismenvironment codetermination). Perhaps most interesting is the potential this
approach holds for dealing with the seemingly irreconcilable gap between
scientific aspirations for objectivity and the reality of direct personal experience.
This last concern seems especially relevant in the context of music
psychology, which seeks to understand the experience of music, in all its diversity,
largely through scientific methods. As I will discuss further, the enactive approach
offers useful tools for the analysis of conscious experiencemost notably the
mindful-awareness techniques associated with the empirical/pragmatic strands of
Buddhist philosophy (Murti, 1955; Varela et al., 1993; Kalupahana, 1987; Lowe,
2011; Biswas, 2011). It is suggested that this may enable a new level of dialogue
between scientific inquiry and subjective experience, as well as a systematic (and
radically empirical) means by which performers, teachers, students, and listeners
may analyze and gain a deeper appreciation of their musical experiences.

Outline and method

I am attempting to draw out a broader and more inclusive conception of musical
meaning than is often entertained in mainstream music cognition studies. As a
result, I will necessarily be bringing together a broad range of ideas and concerns,

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some of which may at first appear to be related only tangentially. I will do my best
to contextualize things as I go. The following overview should give the reader some
idea of where the discussion is headed as well as the key areas to be considered.
Section One offers an overview of the dominant cognitivist-adaptationist
understanding of the human mind and its origins. I discuss the history and
influence of both approaches and consider how they reinforce one another. I
conclude by discussing some concerns that will be developed in later sections in
musical contextsi.e. the problematic dichotomies and reductions mentioned
above, as well as difficult issues concerning consciousness and phenomenal
experience. Because the cognitivist-adaptationist approach underpins much
research in music cognition, but is rarely discussed critically in a musical context, it
will be necessary to articulate its core principles as clearly as possible. Therefore,
for the sake of clarity, musical concerns will not be addressed here, but rather will
be taken up in the following section.
Section Two begins with a brief look at Eric Clarkes (2005) illuminating
critique of the dominant cognitivist view of music cognition. Clarkes work is worth
considering not only because he articulates and critiques the underlying
assumptions of the standard approach so clearly, but also because he is one of the
few established figures in systematic musicology to do so. Following Clarkes lead,
I attempt to demonstrate how the deep influence of the cognitivist-adaptationist
program has contributed to a standard view whereby music cognition is understood
to proceed in accordance with the computational model of mind outlined in
Section Onei.e. abstract symbolic operations carried out by an adapted modular
brain. As I will discuss, because such operations are thought to function
syntactically, research is generally grounded in the assumption that musical
cognition is best understood in terms of rule-based and representational processes.
This, I argue, has led to a preoccupation with musics relationship to languagea
valuable area of study, but one that, in the absence of a discussion of other factors

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involved, provides only an incomplete understanding of musical experience. As I

go, I draw on studies of human ontogenesis; more dynamic and interactive
conceptions of the mind-brain and organism-environment relationships; as well as
bio-cultural, action-based, and cross-modal approaches to human cognition in
order to develop a deeper, embodied understanding of the nature and origin of the
musical mind.
In Section Three I consider this broader conception of musicality in the
context of the enactive approach to cognition. In order to distinguish the enactive
view from similar theories I begin with a look at Gibsons ecological (1966)
approach to cognition. Here I return briefly to the thought of Clarke (2005) and
consider his approach to musical meaning (which is largely based on Gibsons
theory). At this point I take a somewhat more critical view of Clarkes work and
discuss some problematic issues with the Gibsonian perspective in general. I then
introduce the enactive approach as a viable alternative to both the cognitivistadaptationist and the Gibsonian points of viewone that better encompasses the
wide range of concerns and ideas developed in Section Two. I explain key terms
and concepts; and I consider how the enactive approach offers a welcome
theoretical framework through which we may better understand musical cognition
as an evolving, embodied and bio-cultural phenomenon. To conclude, I discuss the
enactive approach to consciousness and consider how the insights it offers may
afford a means by which the individual may systematically examine his or her own
experience, and thereby gain a more nuanced understanding of their direct
relationship to the musical activities they engage in. This, I argue, may have
important implications for music education, practice and performance, as well as
for the scientific study of musical experience.

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 One

A Dual Orthodoxy
Understanding the Cognitivist-Adaptationist Program

Until recently, the understanding of human cognitive capacities and potentials has
been dominated by two mutually reinforcing paradigms of thought. Respectively,
the so-called cognitivist and adaptationist approaches attempt to explain how
mental operations occur, as well as the evolutionary mechanism that produces the
brains capable of carrying out such processes. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the
theoretical framework imposed by this understanding of mind has underpinned
much of the research, interpretation, and theory related to the study of musical
cognition (see Clarke, 2005).
The study of how and why musical experiences are meaningful is of central
importance to systematic musicology; and it draws on an increasingly wide range
of disciplines including sociology (Denora, 2000; 2011), the cognitive and
biological sciences (Rebuschat et al., 2012; Wallin et al., 2000), education and
cultural studies (Small, 1999), archaeology (Mithen, 2005), and the humanities
(Johnson, 2007). Indeed, it is becoming more and more evident that musical
cognition cannot be properly understood apart from the emotional-physiological
responses to music (Juslin & Sloboda, 2010), the role of musical behaviour in
human development (Trevarthern, 1998; Trehub, 2003), and the difficult biocultural question of why humans should have universally evolved into musical
beings in the first place (Cross, 1999, 2001, 2010, 2012; Fitch, 2006; Patel, 2008,
2010; Tolbert, 2001; Pinker, 2009). But opinions and theories vary greatly and the
debate over the hows and whys of musical meaning is far from settled. In fact, the

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growing interest in music cognition has revealed special problems and

opportunities for the study of human cognition in general: because musicality takes
so many forms and spans such a wide range of human experience it forces the
question of how deep and varied the bio-cultural origins of cognition and meaningmaking really are.
Nevertheless, the dominant cognitivist-adaptationist approach continues to
focus our investigations and understandings of musical meaning largely towards
notions of 'internal' mental representations that are assumed to correspond with
pre-given musical structures in the 'external' aesthetic environment. In what
remains of this section, I outline the central tenets of the cognitivist-adaptationist
approach and consider some implications and problems associated with it. In
subsequent sections I will examine the influence of this approach on our
understanding of music cognition and discuss alternatives. I should state from the
outset that it is not my intention to simply refute the cognitivist and adaptationist
programs; they are both based on established research strategies and are as
plausible as any other scientific endeavour (Varela et al., 1993). However, I
suggest that the often-uncritical acceptance of these approaches as the only viable
models reinforces problematic nature/culture and mind/body dualisms, resulting in
reductive, reified, and disembodied understandings of the nature and origins of the
musical mind (see also, Still & Costall, 1991; Potter, 2000).

Cognition as computation
Cognitive science as we know it today can be traced back to the cybernetics
movement that emerged in the early 1940s. It was during this period that
researchers first introduced the idea that mental processes could be understood in
terms of computations carried out by machines (Gardener, 1985; McCulloch,
1965). Such machines (a brain or computer) would consist of many simple
threshold devicesi.e. neurons, silicon chips, or tubes that function in a binary

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on/off or active/inactive capacityconnected so as to be able to perform logical

operations (Heims, 1980; for a thorough account see Pinker, 2009; and Betchel et
al., 1998).
While the theoretical and practical implications of computational cognition
were recognized immediately, in the early days of cybernetics voices coming from
the social and biological sciences still held considerable influence, and there was
much debate whether or not such a strict computational model was sufficient to
fully explain the functioning of the human mind. However, the rapidly growing
achievements and incredible potential of digital computing outshone alternative
theories, and the computational model quickly became the dominant approach by
which all cognition was understood (Boden, 2006).
By the mid 1950s social and biological concerns were shunted to the
margins and the field of cybernetics became focused on a clear computational
hypothesis (Posner, 1989). The central idea is that intelligent behaviour should be
grounded in the capacity to represent the world intentionallythat is, in the
ability to cognize the aboutness of things and situations in ways that allow us to
form representations of (about or directed to) the world out there in certain ways
rather than others; [t]o the extent that her representation of a situation is accurate,
the agents behaviour will be successful (all other things being equal) (Varela et
al., 1993: 40).
While there is something rather commonsensical about this view of things,
the cognitivist account of the causal nature of intentionality is not quite so intuitive.
The central problem, for the cognitivist, is to explain how intentional states are
physically instantiated and how these states result in intelligent behaviouri.e. to
explain what goes on between raw sensory input and intelligent behavioural
output. The cognitivist solution to this question of how internal ideas and
processes are related to external situations and actions in the world is symbolic
computation: because symbols may be instantiated physically and may be

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ascribed semantic value, they are able to be subject to computational operations

that function syntactically according to the language of the system (Haugleland,
1981). Or to put it another way, when semantic distinctions are encoded into the
rules of syntax, abstract symbolic representations become possible; these
representations are then able to be logically manipulated (i.e. computed) by the
system in order to produce further representations and intelligent outputs (Betchel
et al., 1998; Pinker, 2009).

To be a cognizer is to possess a system of syntactically structured symbols-in-thehead (mind/brain), which undergo processing that is sensitive to that structure.
Cognition, in all its forms, from the simplest perception of a stimulus to the most
complex judgment concerning the grammaticality of an utterance consists of
manipulating symbols in the head in accord with that syntax. The system of
primitive, innate symbols-in-the-head and their syntactic, sentence-like structures is
sometimes called mentalese. (Betchel et al., 1998: 63-64; also quoted in Johnson,
2007: 116)

Of course, a computer carries out operations only on the physical form of the
symbols available to it in accordance with the rules of syntax programmed into it
by human beings. It possesses no knowledge of semantic values; the computer
has no access to what a symbol, or group of symbols, is understood to represent,
and therefore has no way of inferring the meanings of the computational processes
themselves beyond the rules of its programmed syntax (see the Chinese room
argument, Searle, 1990; Leman 2008; Dreyfus, 1979). Nevertheless, the computer
has provided the dominant modelor metaphor (Costall, 1991; Lakoff & Johnson,
1999)for the mechanics, grammar, or language of thought.

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Information processing, modularity and the adapted mind

As I have just discussed, for most of its existence cognitive science has focused
almost exclusively on the idea of representations produced by syntactic operations
on physical symbol systems as the best way to understand the mind as an
information-processing machine. By this view, mental operations are understood
to proceed in a hierarchical process where increasingly complex representations of
the world out there are generated at each stage according to the syntactic rules of
mentalese (Fodor, 1983). Outputs (representations) from lower levels of
processing (mental abstractions of raw sensory input) feed inputs to higher levels,
where representations of form, structure and, eventually, reference and meaning
are generated (Pinker, 2009; see also Fodor, 2003).
In order to account for the incredible processing capabilities of the human
mind, many theorists have enhanced the information processing approach with a
modular conception of the mind/brain relationship. Fodors (1983) initial theory
proposed that functionally specified cognitive systems (i.e. modules) exist only in
localized lower levels of processing. Two of the principle features of such modules,
according to Fodor, are domain-specificity and information encapsulation
meaning that each module works on a specific type of information and that the
processing in a given module cannot be affected by information in other areas of
the brain not directly associated with its input/output path. The modular approach
has been greatly expanded by the field of evolutionary psychology, which, contra
Fodor, understands the brain to be massively modular across all levels of
functioning (Tooby & Cosmides, 1989, 1992; Pinker, 2009). This view attempts to
explain the diversity of human thought, behaviour, and culture in terms of the
evolution of a large array of such modules, each adapted by natural selection to
serve a specific function related to survival:

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The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to

solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life, in
particular, understanding and outmaneuvering objects, animals, plants and other
people [...]. (Pinker, 2009)

Indeed, evolutionary psychology understands the vast majority of human

psychological activity in terms of adaptations that occurred early in the
evolutionary development of human beings, when the species as we know it today
was forming through the process of natural selection. Thus, by this view, an
essentially stone-age mind is at the core of our modern day thoughts and activities.
The influence of evolutionary psychology has been substantial. Much of its
appeal, as Pinkers words clearly demonstrate, is due to the fact that it sets up a
clear parallel between the cognitivist and adaptationist programs, where the origin
and structure of human cognition are explained in terms of adaptation by natural
selection. Like cognitivism, the central tenets of the adaptationist (or neoDarwinian) approach can be stated fairly clearly. At the core of Darwins original
theory is the idea that biological evolution occurs through a process of
modification by descenti.e. through mutation and the recombination of
hereditary material through reproduction. The mechanism responsible for this
process is known as natural selection, which chooses the phenotypes that
function most effectively within a given environment; organisms are selected on the
basis of how optimally they fit the environment at handhence the famous phrase,
survival of the fittest (Sober, 1984).
The neo-Darwinian program emerged in the 1930s in order to synthesize
new knowledge from the developing field of genetics with the concerns of classical
Darwinism (Dawkins, 1976; Pinker 2009; see also Hecht & Hoffman, 1986; Ho &
Saunders, 1984). This led to a focus on changes in the fitness of genes as the
quantitative basis for understanding the adaptive traits organisms exhibit in relation
to the environments they inhabitwhere the fitness of a given gene, and its

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associated phenotypic trait, is understood in terms of abundance (optimization of

surplus offspring and the growth of an interbreeding population) and/or
persistence (optimization of reproductive permanence; long term survival)
(Dawkins, 1976).
[] the dominant orthodoxy in evolutionary thinking over the last few decades saw
evolution as a field of forces. Selective pressures [...] act on the genetic variety of
a population producing changes over time according to an optimization of the
fitness potential. The adaptationist or neo-Darwinian stance comes from taking this
process of natural selection as the main factor in organic evolution. In other words,
orthodox evolutionary theory does not deny that there are a number of other factors
operating in evolution; it simply downplays their importance and seeks to account
for observed phenomena mainly on the basis of optimizing fitness. (Varela et al.,
1992: 187)

Thus the cognitive capacities of the human phenotype are understood to have
emerged from adaptive processes associated with fitness optimization that occurred
over an evolutionary timescale. This drives evolutionary psychologys central
claims that the human mind evolved towards fitness optimizationi.e. towards the
capacity to create representations that optimally correspond with a stone-age
hunter-gatherer environmentand that many of the perceptions, thoughts,
behaviours, and desires associated with modern life (a life we are supposedly not
biologically adapted for) are largely parasitic, invasive or otherwise dependent
on mental (computational) processes and structures (modules) that developed deep
in human prehistory (Sperber, 1996; Sperber & Hirschfield, 2004). It is one of the
central projects of evolutionary psychology to discern just what human activities
and thoughts can be understood as properly adaptive from those that are
biologically irrelevant (see Pinker, 2009).

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Some preliminary concerns

I have offered here only a brief outline of the cognitivist and adaptationist
programs. There is, of course, much more to be said about both. Nevertheless, I
believe I have clearly outlined the central tenets of these two approaches and have
demonstrated the clear theoretical connection they share in explaining the origins
and functioning of the human mind. In Section Two I will consider their influence
on music cognition research more closely. Before I go on, however, I should
introduce a few critical concerns associated with the cognitivist-adaptationist point
of view. Most importantly, I would like to draw attention to research that
demonstrates a more dynamic and interactive relationship between genome and
environment; and to discuss problematic issues surrounding perception, knowledge
and consciousness associated with the cognitivist approach. These matters will be
developed in the context of the embodied, bio-cultural, and enactive approaches to
music cognition I discuss further on.

While the neo-Darwinian approach remains influential in psychological circles,

other scientific fields appear to be moving away from such a strict adaptationist
understanding of biological evolution (Gould, 1982; Gould & Lewontin, 1979;
Sober, 1984; Ho and Sunders, 1984). An increasing number of evolutionary
biologists have emphasized that the processes by which evolution proceeds are
multiple and must be subject to levels of explanation (Sober, 1993; Oyama, 1985
Oyama et al., 2003). Indeed, it has been argued that the strict adaptationist
approach does not properly take into account epigenetic factors and the important
role of ontogenetic and environmental processes (Jablonka & Lamb, 2005;
Goodwin et al., 1983). For example, one might consider here the discovery of
polygenic traits, as well as the phenomenon of epistasiswhere the regulation and
expression of a given gene is dependent on, and contributes to, the activity of other
genes

in

the

intra/inter-cellular

environment

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via

epigenetic

processes;

environmental and bio-chemical factors (e.g. hormones) play an important role

(Lambert et al., 1986; Ridley, 2003).
These insights and observations, among others, have led to a more dynamic
understanding of how genes and environment interact (Lewontin, 1983; Oyama et
al., 2003; Bateson & Mameli, 2007). Rather than focusing on the gene (Dawkins,
1976) or the individual as the fundamental unit of selection, researchers are turning
their attention to how phenotypes develop via complex interactions and couplings
across a range of units:

DNA short sequences, genes, whole gene families, the cell itself, the species
genome, the individual, inclusive groups of genes carried by different individuals,
the social group, the actually interbreeding population, the entire species [...], the
ecosystem of actually interacting species, and the global bio-sphere. (Varela et al.
1992: 192; see also (Meaney, 2001; Eldridge & Salthe, 1984)

This substantially expands the orthodox Mendelian understanding of genetic

inheritance, which posits an additive one directional schema (genes cells
environment phenotype). By the classical view, genes trigger protein production,
this guides the functioning of cells, which, with some influence from the
environment, produce identifiable traits (Moore, 2003). This older approach works
well when explaining so called single-gene disorders like Huntingtons disease, or
certain elementary physical features like eye colour, especially as they develop in
relatively static and homogeneous environmental contexts (e.g. Mendels pea
plants). And there are also certain basic biological features that may still be
understood in terms of a neo-Darwinian comparative fitness scale (e.g. oxygen
consumption; see Varela et al., 1993). However, a growing number of biologists
find classical theories of genetics and evolution lacking in the context of more
complex physical, behavioural, and psychological attributes such as personality or

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cognitive, athletic and musical ability, which increasingly appear to be heavily

influenced by environment, motivation, activity and experience (Bateson, 2003;
Bateson & Mameli, 2007; Meaney, 2001; Ericsson, et al. 2006; Sternberg, 2005).
Furthermore, evolutionary psychology's conception of the massively modular mind
has come under fire in recent years, most notably from Fodor himself (2001; see
also Besson & Schn, 2012). This has resulted in more plastic and self-organizing
conceptions of both the genome/phenotype and the mind/brain relationships
(Maturana & Varela, 1987; Lewontin, 1983; Lickliter & Honeycutt, 2003; Pigliucci,
2001, Uttal, 2001).
I should make it clear that it is not the idea of a genealogy of species that is
in question. Rather, it is the mechanism by which this process occurs that is
contentious. Darwin himself did not believe that adaptation through natural
selection should be the sole force driving evolution. And indeed, it has been
argued that natural selection (i.e. the constraints of reproduction and survival) may
not be sufficient to shape genomes and organisms towards optimal fitness; and that
survival of the fittest may not be the goal of evolutionary processes after all
(Fodor & Piattelli-Palmarini, 2010; Gould & Lewontin, 1979; Lewontin, 1983;
Varela, et al., 1993; Sober, 1984, 1993; Ho & Saunders, 1984).
In brief, the dynamic-interactive approach that has developed over the last
few decades (genome!cells!environment!phenotype) is dedicated to better
understanding the complex ways in which genes, proteins, and environmental
factorsincluding behaviour and experienceinteract with each other to guide
the functioning of cells and the formation of phenotypes (Lewontin, 1983; Bateson
& Martin, 2001). This view seeks to dismantle the classic nature/nurture dichotomy,
preferring instead to examine the interaction between genes and environment as a
dialectical phenomenon (Pigliucci, 2001) where no single unit or mechanism is
sufficient to explain all processes.

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In Section Three I will make use of this dynamic understanding in order to give a
biological grounding to the concept of structural coupling between organism and
environment that is so central to the enactive approach to cognition (and that
distinguishes it from other ecologically inclined theories, e.g. Gibsons, 1966). For
the moment, however, it should be noted that despite the developments in
evolutionary biology I have sketched above, evolutionary psychology and the
cognitivist approach in general remains committed to the orthodox adaptationist
conception of biological evolution (see Pinker, 2009).
For the strict cognitivist there must be a means of optimizing
representational correspondence between inner mental processes and a pre-given
environment out there. This capacity is found in the modular computational mind
provided by the selective constraints associated with survival and reproduction.

Evolution is often invoked as an explanation for the kind of cognition that we or

other animals presently have. This idea makes reference to the adaptive value of
knowledge, and is usually framed along neo-Darwinian lines. [] Evolution is
often used as a source of concepts and metaphors in building cognitive theories.
This tendency is clearly visible in the proposal of so-called selective theories of
brain function and learning. (Varela et al. 1992: 193)

Both the cognitivist and adaptationist programs depend on the notion of optimal fit
(or correspondence in cognitive terms) with a pre-given environment. The key issue
here is the notion of optimization between the otherwise autonomous categories of
inner (genes, mental processes) and outer (environment).
This division between mind and environment is, of course, nothing new. It is
one of the central problems of modern philosophy, which often understands the
mind as the mirror of nature (Rorty, 1979). As can be seen most famously in the
mountain of critique surrounding the work of Descartes and Kant, such a dualistic
perspective not only draws the ontological relationship between mind and body

- 20 -

and into question, it also introduces serious epistemological issues regarding how,
and to what degree, true objective knowledge of the world outside of our minds is
possible. The thought of Descartes and Kant are often understood as precursors to
the cognitivist philosophy of mind and I will have more to say about both of them
below.
Initially, cognitivism may seem to bypass many of the traditional
philosophical problems associated with consciousness and knowledge of the world
(Block et al., 1997). As I have discussed above, cognitivism adopts an a posteriori
conception of knowledge as the result of symbolic representations that are
physically instantiated in the brain through causal processes beginning with raw
sensory input. Cognitivisms naturalizing approach is unconcerned with a priori
representations and thus appears to avoid the metaphysical antinomies and
transcendentalism, as well as the solipsism and skepticism that emerge in
traditional debates. This has led strong advocates like Pinker (2009) to triumphantly
claim not only that the cognitivist approach is wholly empirical and objective, but
that it has neatly solved the mind/body problem as well. But while the classic
substance dualism associated with Descartes is essentially a non-starter in current
debates, a modern version of it is indeed at the core of the cognitivist approach to
mind. As Damasio points out, the dominant idea is that mind and brain are related
but only in the sense that the mind is the software run in a piece of computer
hardware called the brain; or that the brain and body are related but only in the
sense that the former cannot survive without the life support of the latter (1994:
247-48).
This ingrained notion of the (rational-cognitive) mind as a disembodied and
autonomous category (Leman, 2008) implies a number of other potentially
troubling concerns. For example, a central aspect of the cognitivist model of mind
is that the operations it describes must be played out at the sub-personal level
(Dennett, 1978; Pinker, 2009). This means that not only are we not aware of such

- 21 -

processes, but that we can never be aware of them. The understanding is that
because these processes must occur rapidly there is no time for them to be parsed
consciously (lest our ancestor fall prey to the lion that is about to spring from the
bushes). This has prompted the obvious question of just how representational
outputs of proposed innate cognitive modules are meaningfully recognized by the
system beyond the mechanics of syntax, leading to homunculus metaphors and
philosophical problems of infinite regress (Searle, 1990; Dreyfus, 1979; Clarke,
2005; Still & Costall, 1991; Potter, 2000). The cognitivist response follows that the
characterization

of

these

sub-personal

systems in

fanciful

homunculus

metaphors is only provisional, for eventually all such metaphors are discharged
they are traded in for the storm of activity among such selfless processes as neural
networks or AI data structures (Varela et al., 1992: 50; see also Dennett, 1978;
and Pinker, 1997: 79).
It has been argued, however, that this response (i.e. retreating into the
complexity of mental activity) does not properly explain consciousnessi.e. how
the computational world of symbols and representations emerges into the daylight
of phenomenal experience (Jackendoff, 1987). As cognition is clearly directed
towards the world as we experience it (Varela et al., 1992: 52; see also Johnson,
2007: 4-6) it would seem that conscious awareness should be accounted for by any
empirically based theory of mind. However, the issue of consciousness is often
sidestepped because, for the strict cognitivist, consciousness and cognition are not
synonymous: all that cognition requires is the ability to produce representations
and intentional states; conscious awareness is not a prerequisite for cognition to
occur. Thus the cognitivist program is generally not concerned with accounting for
phenomenal experience. Rather it discusses notions of access-consciousness and
executive functions, with only vague suggestions of how this might correlate with
consciousness as sentience (see Pinker, 2009: 131-148).

- 22 -

This said, some supporters of computational-representational cognition have

refused to let the problem of consciousness slip away altogether. As Jackendoff
(1987) has argued, explaining cognition must involve more than describing the
relationship between a brain and a computational mind that is inaccessible to
consciousness (the mind-brain problem). One must also account for the
relationship

between

what

he

terms the

computational

mind

and

the

phenomenological mindthe mind-mind problem (1987: 20). Jackendoff

attempts to deal with this issue by developing a theory of intermediate-level
representations that are understood to support or project conscious awareness.
An important implication of this approach is that it puts phenomenological
constraints on computational models:

The empirical force of this hypothesis is to bring phenomenological evidence to

bear on the computational theory. [] Thus, if there is a phenomenological
distinction that is not yet expressed by current computational theory, the theory
must be enriched or revised. (Jackendoff, 1987: 25)

This insight appears to highlight the open-ended approach necessary in including

conscious awareness in the study of human cognitionwhere the structural
analysis of our minds and the development of cognitive theories are continually
enriched by a disciplined examination of phenomenological distinctions.
Another important and challenging insight offered by Jackendoff concerns
the disunity of conscious experience. Indeed, our awareness of the world is modal
we have distinct forms of awareness that correspond to our sensory capacities:
visual, auditory, tactile and so on. His theory attempts to account for this by
claiming, each modality of awareness comes from a different level or set of levels
of representation. By this view, the disunity of experience arises from the fact that
each of the relevant levels involves its own special repertoire of distinctions.
(1987: 52). What is notable here is that instead of beginning with the notion that

- 23 -

consciousness is unified and ultimately traceable to some unique locus, Jackendoff

suggests that consciousness is fundamentally not unified and that one should seek
multiple sources (1987: 52).
This insight into the fundamental disunity of the cognizing subject is cause
for a good deal of tension as it goes against the common assumption that there
should be such a thing as a stable unchanging I at the centre of experience.
Furthermore, the recognition that a proper theory of cognition (in its full blown
consciously aware state) requires an ongoing discourse with direct experience also
poses a challenge to modern sciencesince the demise of the psychological
movement known as 'introspectionism', the study of experience has been
essentially ignored in psychological circles in favour of an objective approach to
theory and research (Varela et al., 1993). This return to experience is also an issue
for the dominant objectivist trends in analytic Anglo-American philosophy, which,
after Frege (1970), understands rule-based logical propositions to be at the
foundation of all meaningful thought and cognition (see Johnson, 1987, 2007;
Lakoff and Johnson, 1999).
Unfortunately, in the end Jackendoff glosses over the kind of disciplined
and open-ended examination of conscious experience his theory appears to
demand. As Varela et al. point out,

Jackendoff assumes that everydaylargely mindlessexperience provides access

to all relevant phenomenological evidence and that the phenomenological quest is
limited to just that largely mindless state. He considers neither the possibility that
conscious awareness can be progressively developed beyond its everyday form (a
strange omission given his interest in musical cognition) nor that such development
can be used to provide direct insight into the structure and constitution of
experience. (1993: 54)

- 24 -

Jackendoff is a committed cognitivist. And while his assertion that the

computational theory of mind must account for experience is a clear advancement,
this does not mean he understands consciousness as having any causal influence
over sub-personal computational processes. This leads him to the rather unpleasant
conclusion that consciousness may not be good for anything (1987: 56).
Neverthless, the observations Jackendoff offers are important and deserve further
investigation, problematic though they may be for prevailing approaches. As I will
discuss in Section Three, the issue of the non-unified subject and the (seemingly
vicious) circularity between scientific objectivity and subjective experience are not
problematic from the enactive point of view. To the contrary, these insights lie at
the very heart of this approach, which also offers useful responses and alternatives
to the bio-cognitive issues I have discussed here. To conclude I will return to the
issues of phenomenal experience introduced above and consider what the enactive
approach and its relationship to the Buddhist mindful-awareness tradition may offer
in terms of understanding music's relationship to human consciousness and the
experience of self. For now, however, I go on to consider the influences and
implications of cogntitivism and adaptationism on the understanding of music
cognition and meaning, and to explore alternative embodied and bio-cultural
approaches.

- 25 -

 Two

Music and Meaning

From Information-Processing and the Music as Language Metaphor
to Embodied Action and Bio-Cognitive Ecology

In the opening pages of Ways of Listening: An Ecological Approach to the

Perception of Musical Meaning (2005), Eric Clarke discusses the influence of
information-processing theory on how we understand musical meaning. He
demonstrates how the notion of cognition-as-representation is often accepted as a
given in music cognition studies; and he offers an alternative ecological approach
drawn from the work of Gibson (1966; see Section Three). Clarke identifies an
ubiquitous view whereby music cognition is understood to proceed in a
hierarchical and rule-based fashion from more basic to more complex levels of
information-processingi.e. from the processing of basic sound attributes such as
timbre, pitch and rhythm; to more explicitly cognitive functions such as the
perception of form, tonality, meter, and melody; to advanced levels that deal with
aesthetic value, and reference. According to Clarke, this perspective suffers from
the same problems associated with the strict cognitivist approach to mind I
discussed in Section Onei.e. the question of the actual existence of sub-personal
representations beyond theory; the homunculus problem; and the fact that the
information-processing account of musical cognition tends to be disembodied
(2005: 11-16).
As Clarke argues, the cognitivist approach reduces musical experience to a
kind of abstract "reasoning or problem-solving process" where "perception is
treated as a kind of disinterested contemplation with no connection to action

- 26 -

which bears little relationship to the essentially exploratory function of perception

in the life of an organism" (2005:15). He further questions the validity of this
approach as it appears to contradict direct experience. Indeed, we tend to
understand music first in terms of its meaning in our lives and how it makes us feel
(Langer, 1953, 1957; Johnson, 2007), only teasing apart its constituent structural
elements post factoan activity that often requires difficult (and conscious)
analysis if not sustained training.
Such concerns notwithstanding, the idea that musical cognition should be,
most fundamentally, a hierarchical and rule-based process remains a central
assumption in music cognition studies. And perhaps not surprisingly, this has
prompted much research into the relationship between music and language as
cognitive systems. As I discussed in the last section, the computational approach to
mind sees cognition proceeding according to the non-conscious language (i.e.
syntax) of thought or mentalese (Fodor, 1983). This process is thought to have a
conscious correlate in spoken and written language, which is generally understood
to function via the organization of symbolic representations into hierarchical
structures according to syntactic rules (Chomsky, 1975, 1980; Pinker, 1994, 2009).
Music is discussed in terms of its relationship to language at structural, perceptual,
and neuro-biological levels (Patel, 2008; Rebuschat et al., 2012); and a music as
language metaphor often pervades common understandings of musical meaning
(Johnson, 2007). Furthermore, because language is understood to be the adaptation
par excellence of the human species, the evolutionary origin of the musical mind is
examined largely in terms of comparisons to language in a neo-Darwinian context
(Pinker, 2009; Patel, 2008). As a result, debates over musics biological meaning
and origin are often carried out within a dichotomous adaptationist nature or
culture frameworkwhere, in comparison to language, musicality is often
understood to be irrelevant from an evolutionary perspective (Pinker, 2009).

- 27 -

As I will discuss below, such views may depend on rather reductive and culturally
biased notions of what the words music and meaning imply (Cross, 2010;
Johnson, 2007). Indeed, when musicality is considered in the context of human
development, socio-cultural ecology and lived experience a much broader view
emerges. Further on I will discuss how related research may move our
understanding of musical meaning well beyond its relationship to language,
syntactic rules and abstract representations so that we may see it, first and foremost,
as a primary means by which we enact meaningful embodied relationships with
the physical and socio-cultural environments we inhabit. First however, in order to
better understand the dominant perspective, I begin with a brief review of music
cognition research that demonstrates the strong influence of the cognitivistadaptationist conception of mind.

Music and the computational mind

Today the understanding that music cognition should be a fundamentally iterative
and representational phenomenon is supported by the dominant computational
approach to the mind, which understands sub-personal syntactic processes (i.e.
rules) to be at the core of all mental activity. As Deutsch writes,

[] we shall examine the ways in which pitch combinations are abstracted by the
perceptual system. First we shall inquire into the types of abstraction
[(representation)] that give rise to the perception of local features, such as intervals,
chords, and pitch classes []. We shall then examine how higher-level
abstractions [(representations)] are themselves combined according to various
rules. (Deutsch, 1999: 349; also quoted in Clarke, 2005: 12-13)

While this cognitivist approach has been greatly advanced by the introduction of
the computational theory of mind, it should be noted that a rule-based conception

- 28 -

of musical cognition has been a central aspect of systematic musicology since its
beginnings (e.g. Seashore, 1938). To a degree, the emergence of this approach
reflects the long lasting influence of Gestalt psychologyi.e. the idea that musical
meaning emerges as a global pattern from the processing of information patterns
contained in sound (see Leman, 2008: 30). And Indeed, the brilliant pioneering
work of Helmholtz in psychoacoustics was central to the early development of the
information-processing approach to music cognition as he demonstrated that the
input/output functions of psychological mechanisms could be represented
mathematicallythus providing the "grounding for gestalt psychology in the first
half of the twentieth century, and for the cognitive sciences approach of the second
half of the twentieth century" (Leman, 2008: 30).
The introduction of behaviourism in psychological circles was also
influential as it introduced a strictly empirical and quantitative approach to
psychological research that aspired towards complete objectivity and the
development of lawful conceptions of human psychological functions. The
behaviourist approach considered the mind to be a black box whose processes
could not be studied directly, only inferred via the relationships between inputs
(stimuli) and outputs (responses and behaviours).
More recently, rule-based approaches have received support from a number
of developments that suggest correlations between linguistic syntax and musical
cognition. Perhaps most well known is the discussion over the apparent similarities
between the Shenkerian approach to musical analysis and Chomskys Universal
Grammar Theory (Pinker, 1994; Sloboda, 1985, 1988). This has led to so-called
generative theories (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1996) whereby a given musical work is
parsed into hierarchies of pitch, intervals, phrases and rhythm, which are then
compared and analyzed in terms of their psychological effects on listeners with the
hope of developing normalized correlations (Large et al., 1995; Patel, 2008; see
also Pinker, 1997).

- 29 -

The interest in musics relationship to language has also been greatly expanded by
recent technological developments in cognitive sciencemost notably in the areas
of computer modelling (Wiggins, 2012) and neural imaging (Grahn, 2012). Among
other things, research in this area has suggested an overlap between brain areas
associated with linguistic syntax and those thought to be involved with the
processing of tonal music (Koelsch, 2005, 2012; Koelsch et al., 2002; Maess et al.,
2001; Patel, 2003, 2008, 2012).
Interestingly, the results of such studies stand in contrast to research in
neuro-psychology with patients suffering from amusia and aphasia (Peretz. 1993,
2006, 2012; Patel, 2012) that suggest disassociations between brain areas thought
to process pitch and those related to language (see also Van Orden et al., 2001).
This has led a number of well-known researchers to posit a cognitive resourcesharing framework for tonal music and language based on the idea that linguistic
and musical cognition employ domain-specific representations that may be shared
when necessary (Patel, 2012; Koelsch, 2012). Put simply, this theory argues that the
cognitive processing of both music and language requires the ability to compute
mental representations of structural hierarchies between sequential elements
(Krumhansl & Kessler, 1982; Koelsch, 2012). Thus, in music cognition, the
representational outputs from the domain of pitch processing may be shared with
those from language (i.e. syntax) at higher levels of processing. In this way, the
perception of musical sounds (e.g. sequences of pitches, simultaneously occurring
pitches) is thought to be transferred into a cognitive representation of the location
of tones and chords within the tonal hierarchy of a key" (Koelsch, 2012: 226). As
Koelsch writes, "establishing a representation of a tonal centre is normally an
iterative process (2012: 225; see also Krumhansl & Toivainen, 2001).
Along similar lines, there has also been a good deal of attention placed on
how structural variations may set-up and break musical rules, creating tensionresolution patterns that allow emotions to be perceived and/or felt by listeners

- 30 -

(Koelsch et al., 2008; Stenbeis, Koelsch, & Sloboda, 2006; Steinbeis & Koelsch
2008). This view generally assumes that musical emotions rely on the
computational processes discussed above, as well as on cognitive mechanisms
adapted to process responses associated with the satisfaction and violation of
expectation (Scherer & Zentner, 2001; see also Huron, 2006; and Meyer, 1956).

Modularity and the biological origins of music

The research discussed above is not to be taken as a comprehensive account of
music cognition studies. Such an undertaking is well beyond the scope of this
paper. Nevertheless, this work is central to the field and, as such, demonstrates the
key interests and general approach rather well. While these studies are all very
interesting and useful in their own right, they maintain a rather disembodied
perspective where the focus remains on structural appraisals and iterative processes
(whether conscious or 'sub-personal') as the basis for musical cognition: whatever
music expresses through its structural relationships is thought to mirror rule-based
(syntactic) processes in the brain thereby producing representations that correspond
intelligibly with an aesthetic environment (i.e. the world out there). This clearly
shows the influence of information-processing theory and the computational model
of mind on our understanding of music cognition.
Not surprisingly, this approach also relies heavily on the modular
conceptions of the mind-brain relationship I considered in Section One. Indeed,
the notion of domain-specific representations refers to the outputs of
computational processes that are thought to occur within the confines of
functionally specified cognitive modules (Barrett & Kurzban, 2006; Peretz, 2012).
As I discussed earlier, such modules are generally understood to be adaptations
selected to perform specific mental computations that contribute to the fitness of
the organism. Thus the notion of modularity is a central factor in the ongoing

- 31 -

debate over the biological origins of music. For example, Peretz's (1993; 2006;
2012) research in acquired amusia has led her to (cautiously) posit the existence of
an innate music specific module for pitch processing, prompting her to suggest that
music may be as natural as language is (2006). This view is far from being
universally accepted, however, and a large number of influential researchers and
theorists have argued that because music appears to have no immediate relevance
for survivaland because it draws on such a wide range of cognitive faculties and
brain regionsclaims for any music-specific adaptations are premature (Huron,
2001; Justus & Hutsler, 2005; McDermott & Hauser, 2005). Rather, music is often
understood as parasitic, on modules whose adaptive (naturally selected) values are
thought to be functionally specified.
For example, Pinker (2009) has famously asserted that although music draws
on cognitive processes that do have clear adaptive valuelanguage, auditory
scene analysis, emotion and motor controlmusic is nevertheless parasitic on
these domains and has no biological value of its own whatsoever. For Pinker,
music is a hedonistic invention of human culture, a pleasure technology, or
auditory cheesecake (2009: 528-38; see also Sperber 1966; Sperber &
Hirschfield, 2004).
Less radical modularists, such as Patel (2008; 2010) acknowledge the biocultural benefits associated with music but also remain skeptical about whether it
can be properly understood as an adaptation in the same way language can. Patel
argues that the rate of learning musical structure is slower than it is for language;
that humans are far more uniform in their linguistic abilities than in their musical
abilities; and that, unlike language, there is no visible biological cost associated
with the failure to develop musical abilities or as a result of musical deficits, such
as tone or rhythmic deafness. Thus, for Patel, while the domains of music and
language may share cognitive resources (see above), their origins are quite
differentmusic is a product of culture that employs cognitive adaptations that

- 32 -

evolved to support language. Pinker (2009) offers a similar argument when he

suggests that musicality can have no biological significance because, unlike
language, it is largely the result of training and is unevenly distributed in the
population.

Moving beyond biased, reductive, and reified notions of music

It may be argued that the positions taken by Pinker, Patel, and music cognition
studies in general, reflect a rather narrow and culturally biased perspective on
music. A range of studies have demonstrated that humans from all walks of life and
regardless of training exhibit a precocious inclination for music (Peretz, 2006: 2;
see also Shepard & Jordan, 1984; Tillmann, Bharucha, & Bigand, 2000; Bigand,
1990) and continually engage in musical activity beginning in infancy. This stands
in contrast to the often rarified and elitist notions of musical development and
competencies associated with the Western classical tradition. More research is
needed in other cultures and milieus where musical activity is a larger part of
everyday life, and where the acquisition of musical skills appears to occur much
more rapidly (see Cross, 2012). Furthermore, in Western society it is thankfully
much easier for people with a wide range of physical and cognitive deficits to
flourishin this environment musical deficits are far less relevant to survival and
may go almost completely unnoticed. Thus, while Pinker's 'cheese cake' model
may match up within the hedonistic 21st century consumer culture, it is important
to recognize that the wide rage of activities associated with the word music may
have much more immediate and far-reaching implications for survival and
socialization for other peoples of the world (as they may have had for our
prehistoric ancestors) (Blacking, 1973; Nettl, 1983, 2000; Mithen, 2005).
I bring up these issues not simply to argue for the relevance of music in the
biological evolution of the human species. More to the point, these concerns
demonstrate how cognitivist-adaptationist conceptions of the human mind demand

- 33 -

a dichotomous nature or culture framework that accommodates only rather shallow

(i.e. Western academic) conceptions of what is implied by the word music. I have
already touched on the fact that the cognitivist preoccupation with iterative
processes tends to ignore the embodied aspects of musical experiencethe main
focus is on explaining the syntactic-representational processes and computational
brain structures associated with appraisal in Western tonal music (i.e. musical
structure and representational correspondence). A problematic consequence of this
rationalizing approach is that it tends to place the locus of musical meaning within
the 'intrinsic' structural properties of the 'work' itselfa perspective associated
with so called absolutist conceptions of musical expressivity and the related
'autonomous' status of Western classical music (see also Meyer, 1956; Denora,
2011; Small, 1999; D. Clarke, 2012; Cross, 2010). Indeed, it may be argued that
this perspective often assumes a reified notion of music and therefore imposes a
reductive and linear conception of musical communication: there is a musical
object that possesses certain objective formal qualities, a performer who interprets
and transmits them, and an anonymous subject who perceives them; a view from
nowhere and nobody (see Cross, 1998; Dibben, 2012). This approach tends to
reduce 'music' to an objective thing; and it creates a boundary between some
notion of what the music is on one hand, and the living environments in which it is
created and the individuals who experience it on the other (Clarke, 2012).
The influence of evolutionary psychology (Section One) on music cognition
studies takes this reductive view of music one step further. This is especially
apparent with Pinkers perspectivebecause of his rather strict adherence to the
cognitivist-adaptationist program he cannot entertain the possibility that musicality
might in fact span the (perhaps not so exclusive) domains of nature and culture and
thereby play a significant role in our bio-cognitive and bio-cultural development,
on both evolutionary and ontogenetic scales. Thus the cognitivist-adaptationist
approach leaves us with a perspective that, in a nutshell, sees music as a product of

- 34 -

culture that is largely dependent on rule-based cognitive processes and brain

structures that evolved to support languagewhere little attention is given to
musics significance as a bio-cultural phenomenon, nor to musics relationship to
fundamental developmental and embodied processes.
Ian Cross writes what we know of music in neruobiological and
neuroscientific terms is constrained by a conception of music that is narrowly
shaped by historical and cultural notions of what constitutes music (Cross, 2010:
2). Such narrow views have received a good deal of criticism in recent decades,
most notably perhaps from educator, Christopher Small (1999), and sociologist, Tia
DeNora (2000, 2011). DeNora sees musical meaning as a process that plays out in
the evolving ecological, socio-cultural and bio-cognitive contexts of lived
experiencemusic

as

action,

as

therapeutic

force

for

bio-cognitive

organization, and as part of an enacted aesthetic environment through which

cultural and individual identities may be constructed and deconstructed; music is a
"resource for meaning-making" (see, for example, the discussions of Hendrixs
famous Woodstock performance of The Star Spangled Banner in Denora, 2011;
and Clarke, 2005; see also Willis, 1978). Small (1999) argues that music is best
understood as a verb rather than a noun; his theory of musicking considers human
musicality as a multi-faceted activity.

The fundamental nature and meaning of music lies not in objects, not in musical
works at all, but in action, in what people say and do. [] To music is to take part,
in any capacity in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by
rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for the performance (what is called
composing), or by dancing. (Small, 1999: 9)

In most musical activity around the world music is functionally enmeshed with the
activities of lifewith work, play, social life, religion, ritual, politics and so on

- 35 -

(Blacking, 1976, 1995; Berliner, 1994; Nettl, 1983, 2000). Music is also often
associated with, and often inextricable from, other modes of expressive behaviour
like dance and storytelling; it is often improvised and changes with the culture
(Small, 1999; Mithen, 2005; Cross, 2010, 2012). In these environments, music
retains its status as an embodied activity-experience and is meaningful in terms of
its enmeshed and evolving relationship to the environments in which it functions.
With this in mind, it is now time to consider approaches to music cognition that go
beyond language and the adapted modular-computational notion of mind in order
to better understand the deeper corporeal and socio-cultural aspects of musical
meaning-making as it arises in human development, embodied action and sociocultural ecology.

Human development and the bio-cultural meaning of music

A growing number of researchers are developing integrated bio-cultural
approaches to the musical mind that go beyond the rather narrow perspective
associated with the orthodox approach (e.g. Cross, 2012). This is driven, in part, by
the growing acceptance of the musilanguage theory, which posits that both music
and language (as we experience them today) emerged from a common protomusical ancestor. This represents a rather drastic turn from the adaptationist
language first approach (Mithen, 2005; Brown, 2000; see Pinker 2009; Sperber,
1996; and Patel, 2008, 2010 above); and it asserts the deep biological roots of
human musicality.
In addition to comparative studies with primates, birds and other animals,
support for this approach is drawn from the archaeological record and studies of
socialization and human ontogenesis (Wallin, Merker & Brown, 2000; Fitch, 2006).
The last two areas are perhaps most often cited in connection with the adaptive
function of music (Balter, 2004; Cross, 2003; Dunbar, 1993, 1996, 2003; Falk,
2000, 2004). What is interesting about such studies is the emphasis they place on

- 36 -

musics deep connection to other modes of expression, such as movement (dance;

see Dissanayake, 2000), as well as the role musicality plays in enacting the shared
socio-cultural bonds and environments that have been so crucial to human
survival. As Tolbert points out, music arises in social situations that are
emotionally motivatedsituations that are the product of both subjective and intersubjective processes of meaning formation (2001: 85; see also Blacking, 1973;
Nettl, 1983, 2000; Small, 1999; and DeNora 2000, 2011).
Such musical-developmental processes are thought to begin very early on in
life (Parncutt, 2006). Researchers have demonstrated the universal and seemingly
intuitive way parents create both stimulating and soothing musical environments
for infants through prosodic speech, lullabies and the like (Trehub & Trainor, 1998;
Trehub, 2000; H. Papousek, 1996; M Papousek, 1996; Dissanayake, 2000; Falk,
2004; Fernald, 1992). Along these lines, Trevarthen (1998; 1999; 2002) has
demonstrated that humans possess an in-born communicative musicality that is
related to the necessity for embodied inter-subjectivity in highly social beings such
as ourselves. This, he argues, is mediated more by imitation and co-ordination of
movement with others than solely through faculties associated with language (see
below; Leman, 2008; Johnson, 2007). Similarly, Cross argues that "Music is a
cognitive capacity arising from an infant's propensities to search for relevance in,
and mastery over, itself and its world [] particularly [in] the interactions with the
primary caregiver" (1999; see also M. Papousek, 1996). He suggests that because of
its multiple potential meanings music affords a means by which social activity
may be explored in a risk free environment; its transposable aboutness (2001),
or floating intentionality (1999), is employed in infancy and childhood to
explore, create meaning, and develop competencies between different domains of
embodied experience; music is a play-space for developing cognitive flexibility
and social understanding. This perspective sees musicality as an integral part of the

- 37 -

ongoing process of how we enact the worlds we inhabitone that begins with
embodied interactions with the socio-cultural environment (Cross, 2010, 2012).
On an evolutionary scale, this perspective may find support in dual
inheritance theories of human cognition (Tomasello, 1999; Tomasello et al., 2005;
Richerson & Boyd, 2005)where the question of whether either biology or culture
should account for deeply social and universal human activities that require
complex cognitive functions (such as music) is replaced by a perspective that
integrates the two. Along these lines, Cross argues that music facilitates the
development of individual minds and structures for their interactions in society
(1999). And he concludes that musicality was crucial in precipitating the
emergence of the cognitive and social flexibility that marks the appearance of
modern Homo sapiens sapiensit is an evolutionary engine he claims, without
which it could be that we would never have become humans (2001). Such
insights move the study of musical meaningand cognition in generalwell
beyond its relationship to abstract syntactic processes and into the more
fundamental areas of lived social, ecological and embodied existence.

The musical brain: a dynamic and interactive perspective

The expanded view of musical meaning I have been considering implies a more
dynamic and interactive approach to the organism-environment and mind-brain
relationships than the orthodox view is capable of providing. And indeed, the
notions of modularity and mind associated with dual-inheritance and bio-cultural
theories of human cognition are considerably less radical (and far more flexible)
than those associated with the strict adaptationist approach of evolutionary
psychology. Important concepts include the idea of representational redescription
and Theory of Mind (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; see also Cross, 1999)which is
sometimes understood as a single cognitive adaptation that permits recognition of
the cognitive-emotional states of conspecifics; it is thought to have allowed for the

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development of complex cultural behaviours including forms of affective

communication that rely on a variety of cross-domain, multimodal channels of
expression (Livingstone & Thompson 2009: 86; see also Tomasello et al. 2005).
While most researchers remain committed to explaining musical cognition
in terms of modular computational components in some way or another, a growing
number of scholars are beginning to question whether the notion of modularity
continues to have much relevance for understanding the complexities of the human
mind-brain relationship, which is increasingly discussed in terms of its plasticity
(Gregory, 1987; Doidge, 2007; Lickliter & Honeycutt, 2003; Sur & Leamey, 2001,
Panskepp, 2009; Van Orden et al. 2001; Uttal, 2001).
Fodor (2000) himself has argued that applications of the modularcomputational theory of mind have been greatly overestimated. It has also been
suggested that brain regions that appear to consistently correlate with specific
processes, such as Brocas area and syntax, represent vast areas of the cortex that
may in fact develop multiple overlapping or interlacing networksthe manifold
functions of which may appear evermore fine-grained, interactive and plastic as
neural imaging technology becomes more refined (Grahn, 2012; Uttal, 2001;
Poldrack, 2006). In relation to this, recent research and theory (see Besson &
Schn, 2012) has suggested the existence of global systems that function in a
flexible and context dependent manner; these systems do not work independently
of any other information available to the mind and are thus non-modular. Besson
and Schn argue that,

The theory of modularity did provide a useful framework []. However evidence
has accumulated at the micro (genetics and molecular biology) and macro-levels
(cognitive psychology, neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience) that, in our view,
point to the limits of modularity [] advancement of knowledge at various levels
of biological organization increasingly shows that biological and cognitive
processes are largely influenced by environmental factors [] the expression of

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genes depends on epigenetic factors [] and cognitive processes unfold as a

function of context []. It becomes consequently more and more difficult to
consider brain and behaviour as linear systems [] that can be decomposed into
independent modules and functions. Rather, these functions seem to be highly
interactive (Besson & Schn, 2012: 289-90; see also Uttal, 2001).

And similarly Panskepp writes,

Most cortical specializations (including seemingly genetically preordained cortical

processes such as vision and hearing) are currently explained better by epigenetic
regulatory influences on cortical specializations arising from lower brain functions
[]. Most neocortical functions seem to emerge during brain development, guided
by many poorly understood environment-sensitive processes. (Panskepp, 2009:
233-35).

Panskepp concludes that the human neocortex may in fact contain no evolutionary
determined modules for either music or language; that the neural origins of
musicality are largely sub-cortical; and that the emergence of emotional protomusical communications may have led to the development of both music and
propositional language. Thus it may be that the ancient emotional core of the
limbic system provides the actual instinctual energetic engines that still motivate
our music-making, and continue to be the tap-roots that allow the rich foliage of
cultural invention that is modern music to assume the impact it does on our minds
(2009: 237). Observations like these have contributed to the view that music
cognition is the result of more general, poorly understood and possibly nonmodular cognitive developmental processes that are supported by an innate
attraction to musical behaviour (see above; Trehub & Hannon, 2006; Drake, Jones,
& Baruch, 2000; Jones, 1990, 2004; Large & Jones, 1999).

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The insights provided by the developmental and bio-cultural approaches, as well as

more plastic conceptions of the mind-brain relationship, resonate with the more
dynamic and interactive conception of evolution and bio-cognitive development I
began to sketch out in Section Oneone that embraces multiple levels of
explanation "across a range of units" (from gene to individual to social group); and
where behaviour, experience and environmental factors (culture, socialization) are
central to the process. This notion of genomic plasticity and dynamism may, as I
have suggested, be paralleled in the brain, where ancient sub-cortical areas may
contain more determined functions that are linked, in massively parallel ways, to a
largely plastic neocortex whose most remarkable function may be its creativity
that is, its capacity to continually transform itself in order to enact the meaningful
but contingent and protean relationships we experience year to year, day to day,
and moment to moment between the diverse modalities of our being-in-the-world
as active embodied creatures.
Clinical and empirical studies (e.g. music therapy) have demonstrated
musics deep effects on the body as well as its capacity to transform or reorganize
biological structures in the brain (Bunt, 1994; Patel, 2010; Standley, 1995; Bunt,
1997; Nayak et al., 2000; Jovanov & Maxfield, 2011; Tomaino, 2011; DeNora,
2000). Strong associations have also been noted between neocortex size and the
sociability of a given organismwhere the ability to navigate more complex and
changing social environments appears to have a great deal to do with the
development of a large plastic cortex (Dunbar, 1993, 1996, 2003). This may open
up promising areas of research with regard to the deep connection between human
musicality, bio-cognitive development, socialization (above) and more plastic
conceptions of the mind-brain and biological-environmental relationships. As
Benson writes, human beings create a uniquely human social space when their
nervous systems are coupled through interactional synchrony [via music and
dance] (2001: 28; see also Becker, 2011; Cross, 2012; Mithen, 2006). Again, more

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neurological research is needed over a range of cultures, types of musical activities

and developmental periods that extend beyond pitch and structural processing in
Western tonal music and in Western adult brains.

Movement and the corporeal origins of musical meaning

While structure, representation and rule-based processes surely play an important
role in music cognition, these are clearly not the only relevant aspectsnor are
they the most fundamental. As I have argued above, the wide range of social/biocultural processes and behaviours we associate with the word music play a
central role in being (and becoming) the kinds of creatures we are (Cross, 1999;
2012). Given this deep interactive relationship between biology, culture and
cognition, our conception of what constitutes mind, music, and 'meaning' will
clearly have to move beyond standard notions in order to include the corporeal
actions, emotions and feelings, as well as the organism-environment interactions
and transformations from which all bio-cognitive processes, aesthetic responses,
and meaning making emerge. Indeed, what is required are action-based and
ecological ways of accounting for cognition that embrace an embodied conception
of mind.
This, however, is easier said than done. The cognitivist focus on rule-based
and propositional-conceptual (i.e. logical-linguistic) meaning is deeply ingrained; it
reflects the long-standing objectivist and rationalizing approach to knowledge and
aesthetics that emerged in the Enlightenment and that has remained with us ever
since (Johnson, 2007). Kant's work in aesthetics is particularly influential here
when he posits a clear distinction between thought and feelinga variation on the
mind/body dualism that has had a profound effect on understanding cognition in
the 20th century.

- 42 -

This view pervades our contemporary understanding of mind. On one side of the
dualistic gap we have concepts, thought, reason and knowledge. On the other side
we have sensations, feelings, emotions, and imagination. What has been so fateful
about this dualism for contemporary philosophy is the way it aligns meaning with
the cognitive and thus dismisses quality, feeling, and emotion from any account of
meaning. (Johnson, 2007: 216; italics original).

Because language allows us to communicate abstract propositions and complex

concepts through the use of representation (Pinker, 1994) it is not difficult to see
why logical-linguistic processes effectively become synonymous not only with
rational thought, but with the very idea of 'mind' itself (Johnson, 2007). Of course,
the use of representation in language is uncontroversial and undeniable; it is a
pragmatic aspect of this form of communication. However, this weak notion of
representation

takes

on

much

heavier

ontological

and

epistemological

commitments when it is generalized in order to construct an all encompassing

theory of cognitioni.e. the strong cognitivist notions of representation as the subpersonal outputs of symbolic-syntactic processes in the modular brain; and more
generally as mental constructs that correspond to a pre-given world out there
(Varela et al., 1993; Johnson, 2007).
Although our ability to form abstract mental representations and linguistic
propositions clearly helps us organize our sensory experience, this rationalizing
and objectivist view understands these as discreet mental entities in accord with
the cognitivist conception of mind. From this perspective, the concepts created by
mental processes are of a different order than the percepts sensed by the body,
reinforcing the mind/body gap. Thus the role of emotion, feeling and general
embodied experience in meaning-making are played down and the focus remains
on abstract linguistic and representational conceptions of meaning (Johnson, 2007).
It has been argued, however, that the strict focus on grammar, structure and
representation often tacitly assumes a reductive correspondence theory approach

- 43 -

to communication (in both language and music) that ignores the interactive,
embodied, emotional and often highly idiographic relationships formed between
the listener and the environment in the construction of meaning (see Denora,
2011). Speech act theory has shown that in most verbal exchanges the correlation
between grammatical structure and meaning may not be so clear as when language
is considered in ideal termsalthough language is able to refer directly to (or
represent) concrete reality, in everyday life meaning is often constructed through an
interactive and negotiated process where creative and contextual interpretation
plays an important role (Searle, 1967; Streek, 1980). It has also been demonstrated
that communication of all kinds very often employs and depends upon physical
movement, including meaningful and emotive bodily and facial gestures; meaning
is not communicated solely through linguistic abstractions (Runeson & Frykholm,
1983; Davidson, 1993, 2005; Smith, 1998; Johnson, 2007). These observations
assert the central role of action, feeling and the body in the construction of
meaning in living communication.
It should be noted here that action-based and embodied approaches to
musical expressivity are not new; they have provided an ongoing, albeit somewhat
marginalized, alternative to gestalt and information-processing models since the
19th century (for a brief overview see Leman, 2008). These early theories focused
less on structural considerations as such and more on the process of empathiccorporeal involvement with music through action and the experience of movement
(both actual and covert). This perspective is beginning to be re-evaluated by a new
generation of systematic musicologists who have become dissatisfied with the
limitations of approaches based on disembodied and de-contextualized appraisal
processes (e.g. Leman, 2008; Reybrouk, 2005).
Among other things, contemporary research draws on studies that strongly
suggest the development of shared cognitive resources for action and perception.
Again, compelling evidence comes from studies of human development where

- 44 -

infants have shown a remarkable proclivity to imitate actions they have never
experienced before (Meltzoff & Prinz, 2002; Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). This, it is
argued, permits the pre-linguistic bodily origins of communication (Trevarthen,
1998, 1999; Bateson, 1975). Further evidence comes from the discovery of socalled mirror neurons, which activate both in the brains of those performing actions
and in those of onlookers (Gallese & Goldman, 1998; Rizzolatti et al., 2002). Such
observations support notions, such as Theory of Mind, associated with the dual
inheritance bio-cultural approach to human cognition I discussed above (see
Tomasello et al., 2005). They also strongly suggest a corporeal intentionality
where the body becomes the primary medium by which cognition occurswhere
knowledge may be based in movement, corporeal articulations, embodied states of
being and organism environment relationships (Leman, 2008; Johnson, 2007).
Indeed, mirror neurons are increasingly thought to play a central role in how we
construct action-based empathic understandings of the world.
Furthermore, while these studies suggest that cognition may be based first in
(visible, physical) 'manifest motor activity', embodied experiences are also
increasingly understood to ground our thoughts in 'covered' ways that permit the
development of of interpretant signs that relate physical corporeal activity with
imagination and emotion (Cano, 2006: 6). Johnson writes,

The core idea is that our experience of meaning is based, first, on sensorimotor
experience, our feelings, and our visceral connections to the world; and, second,
on various imaginative capacities for using sensorimotor processes to understand
abstract concepts. (2007:12)

This follows William James famous claim that even the most abstract concepts
afforded to us by language begin with bodily perceptions and feelings that result
from pragmatic interactions with the world, [] More and less mean certain
sensations [] (1979: 38). Thus, even in our most physically inactive and

- 45 -

reflective states, our embodied existence appears to ground our ability to attribute
valences, goals, and intentionality within the social-aesthetic environments we
inhabit. It is argued that this allows us to engage in the ongoing process of enacting
the meaningful relationships with the people, activities, ideas and things that
constitute the complex fabric of our lives as socio-cultural animals (Johnson, 2007;
see also the discussion of action-based ontology in Leman, 2008: 77-102). This
also goes some way in explaining how musical activity involves corporeal
experiences that are both explicit (dancing, performing) and covert (listening and
the experience of movement, space, texture, contour and so on); and how
meaningful-intentional (albeit perhaps of a floating variety; see Cross, 1999,
above) musical experiences may emerge thanks to the plastic and cross-modal
capacities of the human mind (Eitan & Timmers, 2010; Eitan & Granot, 2006).
Cross-modal conceptions of cognition have received support from recent
observations that mirror neurons are widespread in the brain, suggesting that they
may function inter-modally (Leman, 2008). Along similar lines, Ramachandran
(2011) has argued that brain areas that appear to develop in association with
specific bio-cognitive functions actually engage in cross-activation (extreme
instances of which result in experiences of synaesthesia). This may not involve the
neat sharing of resources via the inputs and outputs of computational modules, but
rather a more plastic process whereby neural webs develop in complex
overlapping ways that allow for deep and sometimes highly ideographic
relationships to form between seemingly disparate areas of experience (e.g. color
and number). It is suggested that such cross activations may develop and change
due to experience and environmental alterations. Ramachandran claims that this
phenomenon is important for understanding the complex diversity of human
cognitive and aesthetic responses and activities. He also suggests that the cross
mapping of neural areas associated with sights and sounds may allow for the
development of languagewhich could have a bio-cultural origin in the

- 46 -

ritualization of bodily gestures involved with the practical aspects of our ancestors
daily lives (see also Changizi, 2011).
This takes on added significance in terms of the musilanguage theory
(Mithen, 2005), as well as in the context of the more plastic conceptions of the
mind-brain relationship I discussed above. It also further supports the idea that all
of our cognitive activities may be traced to bodily interactions with the
environment. Such insights also give Ramachandran a biological grounding to
argue that the mind functions metaphoricallya notion that goes deeper than the
common linguistic-conceptual usage of the term in order to discuss the often prereflective and non-linguistic processes that allow us to enact meaningful aesthetic
experiences through the development of cross-modal relations. A similar
metaphorical approach is taken up in a philosophical context by Johnson (2007)
who offers and account of meaning making that breaks radically from the
instantiated objectivist notions of aesthetics and cognition established by Kant,
analytical philosophy, and cognitivist information-processing theory.
Johnson draws on the more marginalized pragmatic psychologicalphilosophy of James and Dewey as well as the phenomenological tradition
associated with Merleau-Ponty (2002; see also Sheets-Johnstone, 1999). Following
Deweys principle of continuity, Johnson understands cognition beginning with
basic bodily processes, movement, and organism environment couplingswhere
rational operations grow out of organic activities, without being identical with that
from which they emerge (Dewey, 1991: 26; quoted in Johnson: see also
Reybrouk, 2005). In connection with this, he discusses Sterns (1985) notion of
vitality effect contoursa concept that describes how we, as infants, strive to
create a secure, coherent and meaningful world through non or pre-linguistic
embodied means. This process, Johnson argues, is based on the developmental
coupling of the organism and the environment through action; it allows us to
recognize

and

create

metaphorical

- 47 -

relationships

between

cross-modal

perceptions, emotional responses and feeling as we develop through time and

space. Stern (1985) describes these fundamental relationships (i.e. vitality effect
contours) in terms that relate equally well to visual, auditory, tactile, emotive, or
kinetic modes of experience (e.g. surging, fleeting fading away, drawn out).
Johnson (2007) argues that this early embodied and cross-modal aesthetic
capacity is the origin of meaning making and mind, and therefore grounds all
rational thinking and higher cognition. And he claims that these aesthetic, primal,
pre-linguistic, cross-modal and often pre-conscious ways of meaning-making
continue to shape the contours of our experience and form the basis of how we
meaningfully orient ourselves in the world even as we grow-up and engage in more
abstract or propositional ways of thinking. This view is supported by the work of
Damasio (1993, 2003) and LeDoux (2002) in neuroscience who have
demonstrated that all cognitive processes depend on the basic bodily systems that
allow us to maintain a state of well beingi.e. metabolism, basic reflexes, the
immune system, pain and pleasure responses, basic drives, emotions, and feelings
(Damasio, 2003). Such systems constitute the most fundamental ways by which we
become aware and involved with the world. Thus meaning-making is increasingly
understood to be based in such complex soma-sensory processes where body and
brain, world and mind, form an integrated evolving system. (I have discussed this
work elsewhere in the context of therapeutic and emotional-affective responses to
music; see van der Schyff, 2013).
By this view, our bodies are the primary medium for musical experiences
which are not, most fundamentally at least, representational or iterative
phenomena. Rather, they are first patterns of feeling and movement, experienced
directly, whose meanings are enacted in various ways, both shared and personal,
by the people, communities and cultures involved.

- 48 -

Meaning includes patterns of embodied experience and pre-conceptual structures

of our sensibility (i.e., out mode of perception, or orienting ourselves and of
interacting with other objects events, or persons), These embodied patterns do not
remain private or peculiar to the person who experiences them. Our community
helps us interpret and codify many of our felt patterns. They become shared
cultural modes of experience and help to determine the nature of our meaningful,
coherent understanding of our world. (Johnson, 1987: 14; see also Casasanto,
2011)

With this in mind, Johnson (2007) argues that the cognitivist assumptions behind
the music as language metaphor lead to distorted and reduced understandings of
both linguistic and musical communication; and he calls for an approach that
allows us to discuss music first in terms of the actual experiences it affords. These,
he claims, are grounded in the basic logics of space, time and movement that, via
the cross-modal and embodied nature of human cognition, give rise to the
fundamental ways we get involved with music within the physical and sociocultural ecology. Thus, as Johnson suggests, we would do better to describe
musical experience first in terms such as moving music, moving times, musical
landscape, and music as moving force; or image schemas that describe paths of
motion such as source-path-goal (Johnson, 1987, 2007; see also Lakoff & Johnson,
1999, 2003).

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 Three

An Enactive Approach to the Musical Mind

In the last section I moved from an information-processing conception of the

musical mind, to one that is based in the embodied aesthetic relationships to the
world in which we live. I have argued that musicality plays a central role in our
bio-cognitive and bio-cultural development as embodied and highly social beings;
and I have demonstrated how the orthodox cognitivist-adaptationist conception of
the mind is not capable of entertaining this broader conception of music and
meaning. However, I have not yet articulated a clear alternative to the cognitivistadaptationist program. In this final section I will return to the preliminary
concerns I voiced in Section One and attempt to demonstrate how the enactive
approach offers a means by which the nature and origins of the musical mind may
be discussed within a cohesive theoretical framework that moves well beyond the
strictures of cognitivist-adaptationist thinking. As I will discuss, this perspective
presents a more inclusive, dynamic, and interactive conception of evolution and
cognition, and thus permits a more open-ended approach to the study of the
human mind. This, I argue, better accommodates the range of concerns associated
with human musicality I discussed in the last section. To conclude I consider the
rather remarkable way the enactive perspective deals with the problematic issue of
consciousness and the self I introduced in Section One; and I discuss the
relevance of this in the context of human musicality in lived experience.
However, before I go on to consider the enactive approach directly, I would
like to briefly discuss another influential alternative to cognitivism, namely
Gibsons ecological realism. As I mentioned earlier, this approach has been

- 50 -

developed in a musical context by Clarke (2005; see above), among others, and
bears some striking similarities to the enactive perspective. However, it is not
without certain problemsa consideration of which will help us to better
understand what distinguishes the enactive point of view from similar approaches.

Cognitive ecology and the idea of affordances

As I discussed in the last section, action-based and bio-cultural approaches to
musical cognition are not based in classical cognitivist models of mind. They
understand cognitive processes to be grounded in sensory-motor activity and
bodily interactions with the physical and socio-cultural environmentas opposed
to abstract representational processes. In order to better understand and discuss
how such organism-environment interactions occur many scholars are reevaluating
ecological approaches to perception and cognition. While a number of interesting
perspectives have been considered (e.g. Brunswick, 1956; see also Juslin, 2000),
the pioneering work of Gibson (1966, 1979) is perhaps most influential and has
inspired a number of interesting environment-based approaches to music cognition
(Kreuger, 2011a, 2011b, Windsor, 2000, 2004; Clarke, 2005).
Going against the cognitivist trends of his day, Gibson argued that symbolicrepresentational processes are not required to explain perception. His chief interest
was in vision studies and, as such, he argued persuasively that there is sufficient
information in the ambient light to allow organisms to pick up or attend to
invariances in the ecological topology, and that the properties of the environment
are thus specified directly. For Gibson, the most important properties specified by
the environment are what he calls affordances. Put simply, these are understood as
opportunities for interaction, for better or worse, with the things in the
environment (and the attributes they possess) in relation to the sensory-motor
capacities of a given organisme.g. a chair may afford sitting, a tree may afford
climbing.

- 51 -

Following Gibson, Clarke (2005, 2012) argues that musical affordances are not
products of a representational-computational mind but rather pre-given attributes of
the physical and cultural environment with which our perceptual systems
resonate. Clarke offers a very broad notion of what might fall under the rubric of
musical affordances: foot tapping, dancing, marching, catharsis, coordinated
working, worship, drug taking, nationalism and so on. Initially, this seems to be a
very attractive position as it appears to unify conceptual and perceptual, biological
and cultural aspects of musical experience. On closer inspection, however, an
epistemological problem arises with regard to the vagueness inherent in how,
exactly, a musical affordance is supposed to be understood (Cano, 2006; Menin &
Schaivo, 2012). This echoes general criticisms of Gibsons theory, which,
unfortunately, Clarke does not address in any detail.
A simple non-musical analogy close to everyday experience may help to
clarify the problem. By the general Gibsonian view one might say, for example,
that air affords breathing as an apple affords eating. However, a moment of
reflection on our own experience shows that this is a reductionnormal breathing
occurs largely automatically and thus may not necessarily constitute any kind of
intentional relationship; the edibility of the apple, however, requires the
recognition of such an attribute through experience as well as the motor
intentionality required to physically grasp the object of perception. Indeed, the
edibility of the apple appears to require multiple of affordances whereby its
edibleness is nested in its graspablity; there is a distinct goal-directed aspect here
that is not usually present with breathing (see Menin & Schaivo, 2012).
Furthermore, placed in the context of, say, literary hermeneutics, the edibility of the
apple may, for example, afford the cultural interpretation of original sin. But
depending on the sophistication with which the image is embedded in the text,
levels of inference may be required to perceive and understand it (the readers own
lived relationship to such an image is also a factor).

- 52 -

Similarly, as Menin and Schaivo write, from this [(Clarkes)] standpoint, there is no
substantial difference between the way music affords foot-tapping and the way it
affords writing pieces of musical criticism (2012). Some of the behaviours
associated with music may occur almost automatically, while others may involve
inference or goal directed action. Does music afford drug taking, patriotism, or
protest in the same way a chair affords sitting or air affords breathing? Is music is
really the intentional focus of all of these activities? The conflation of such
drastically differing phenomena and complex cognitive and cultural activities
under the umbrella term affordances is clearly a problem and greatly reduces its
explicative utility.
This issue is exacerbated by the Gibsonian insistence that affordances are
intrinsic properties of the environment. In the Gibsonian sense, affordances are not
to be understood as the product of mental acts performed by the organism, rather
they are invitations to action inherent in the morphology of objects (Cano, 2006);
the mutualism between organism and environment is understood to be grounded in
the action possibilities (affordances) already present in the environment. This raises
further questions with regard to the role (i.e. autonomy, Maturana & Varela, 1987)
of the organism in meaning-making and more complex cognitive processes (e.g.
goal directed behaviour, intentionality, imagination, creativity). Indeed, it has been
argued that the Gibsonian approach leads to a research strategy in which one
attempts to build an ecological theory of perception entirely from the side of the
environment. Such a research strategy ignores not only the structural unity of the
animal but also the codetermination of animal and environment [] (Varela et al.,
1993: 204-205).

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Outlining the enactive approach

The ecological realism of Gibson (1966) and Clarke (2005) attempts to do away
with the idea that perception is an abstract and representational mental process.
For the Gibsonian, the most problematic assumption of the cognitivist point of view
is the idea that reality assumed to be constructed solely through the cognitive
apparatus of the organism; that perception is imposed on an unorganized or
highly complex world by perceivers (Clarke, 2005: 12). However, the cognitivist
perspective is actually more problematic than this. As I discussed in Section One
the cognitivist-adaptationist program hinges on the notion of correspondence. In
biological terms this entails an optimal fit between genome and environment,
which is made possible through natural selection. In cognitive terms this requires a
means by which a pre-given world may be known to the mindhence the
cognitivist notion of representation as the foundation of cognition. By this view, the
grounding for knowledge is split between mind and world, resulting in what
Bernstein (1983) terms the Cartesian anxiety (see also, Varela et al., 1993: 140).
The anxiety comes from the Rationalist-Enlightenment concern that without a
fixed and stable foundationan absolute groundtrue knowledge of the world is
unattainable. As Varela et al. point out, by treating mind and world as opposed
subjective and objective poles the Cartesian anxiety oscillates endlessly between
the two in search of a ground (1993: 141).
In brief, the cognitivist-adaptationist (i.e. evolutionary psychology) approach
attempts to find stable epistemological ground in the represenationalist logic of the
adapted modular-computational mind; while the Gibsonian seeks for it in the
environmenteffectively positing an anti-representationalist ecological monism in
opposition to the traditional cognitivist dualism. Neither of these options seems
satisfactory in terms of the embodied and bio-cultural approach to musical
cognition I introduced in the last section. In the analysis I offered, musical
knowledge is distributed between mind and environment, and it is mediated by the

- 54 -

bodymusical meaning is creative and contextual; it grows and moves as we do.

This perspective may be better accommodated by the enactive approach where
cognition is understood to be based in:

[...] knowing how to negotiate our way through a world that is not fixed and pregiven but that is continually shaped by the types of actions in which we engage
[...]. The greatest ability of living cognition [...] consists in being able to pose,
within broad constraints, the relevant issues that need to be addressed at each
moment. These issues and concerns are not pre-given but are enacted from a
background of action, where what counts as relevant is contextually determined by
our common sense. (Varela et al., 1993: 144-45)

This goes well beyond the cognitivist assumption that cognition consists solely in
problem solving involving discrete elements and well-defined tasks (such as one
finds in games such as chess; or in reduced views of music cognition that focus on
pre-given structural elements and putative computational processes such as pitch
perception and the representation of keys). In real experience the world does not
have such clear pre-defined boundaries but rather has the structure of everreceding levels of detail that blend into a non-specific background Varela et al.,
1993: 147; see also Merleau Ponty, 2002; Heidegger, 1962). As I attempted to
demonstrate in the last section our musicality does not begin and end at some neat
point but rather depends on being in a world that is inseparable from our bodies,
our language, and our social history [...]. (Varela et al., 1993: 149). Thus the
individuation of meaningful musical phenomena varies according to context and is
based in the ongoing accumulation of experience.
By this view, meaning is understood to be brought forth or enacted from a
background of understanding that develops through an ongoing history of structural
coupling with the environmenti.e. the lived developmental process of biological
embodiment within a domain of consensual action and cultural history (ibid:

- 55 -

149). Thus, instead of grasping for a stable, pre-given grounding for meaning, the
enactive approach understands perception, cognition and meaning-making to
come about as a process of organism-environment co-origination. This perspective
asserts the inseparability of the organism and environment while also maintaining
the organisms autonomyits ability to move, develop, create and interact in ways
that are not completely driven from the side of the environment. As Lewontin
writes, Just as there is no organism without an environment, so there is no
environment without an organism.

The organism and environment are not actually separately determined. The
environment is not a structure imposed on living beings from outside but is in fact a
creation of those beings. The environment is not an autonomous process but a
reflection of the biology of the species. (Lewontin, 1983: 99)

The enactive conception of cognition as embodied or perceptually guided action

allows us to see this relationship like paths that exist only as they are laid down in
walking (Varela et al., 1993: 205).

[...] there is always a next step for the system in its perceptually guided action [...]
the actions of the system are always directed towards situations that have yet to
become actual. Thus cognition as embodied action both poses the problems and
specifies those paths that must be tread or laid down for their solution. (Ibid, 205)

Here cognition is not understood as problem solving on the basis of

representational recovery of a pre-given world but rather as an ongoing creative
process though which a viable world is enactedintentionality, in its most
general sense, is directed towards the bringing forth of the organisms world
through its coupling with the environment (see also Merleau-Ponty, 2002;
Heidegger, 1969)

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This recognition of viability is also important as it stands in contrast to the

entrenched notions of optimal-fit and correspondence central to the cognitivistadaptationist approach (see Section One). Optimality implies that the bio-cognitive
functions and environmental interactions of a given organism should be highly
prescribedwhat is not permitted by the constraints of optimization is forbidden.
The logic of viability, however, opens up an approach that is proscriptivewhere
what is not impossible may occur (Varela et al., 1993). By this view, natural
selection can be seen to operate but in a modified sense: selection discards what
is not compatible with survival and reproduction (Ibid, 1993: 195); it is no longer
understood as a prescriptive guide towards optimal fitness, but rather reflects more
general constraints associated with maintaining the life-world of the organism and
its lineage (ibid, 205). Thus the concept of sufficing is suggested as an alternative
to optimizationwhere the ongoing process of organism-environment coupling
enacts a non-optimal but nonetheless sufficient life-world from a larger field of
possibilities than are permitted within the more narrow constraints associated with
strict optimization.

Our central nervous systems are not fitted to some absolute laws of nature, but to
laws of nature operating within a framework created by our own sensuous activity.
[] We do not further our understanding of evolution by general appeal to laws of
nature to which all life must bend. Rather we must ask how, within the general
constraints of the laws of nature, organisms have constructed environments that are
the conditions for their further evolution and reconstruction of nature into new
environments. (Lewontin, 1983: 163; see also Gregory, 1987)

This enactive alternative to natural selection is referred to as natural drift; and it is

supported by the more dynamic approaches to evolution and biological
development I discussed in Section Onewhere the nature/nurture dichotomy is

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pushed aside to reveal organisms and environments as mutually unfolded and

enfolded structures (Ibid, 1993: 199).

Because mutual selectivity, reactivity, and constraint take place only in actual
processes, it is these that orchestrate the activity of different portions of DNA, that
make genetic and environmental influences interdependent as genes and gene
products are environments to each other, as extraorganismal environment is made
internal by psychological or biochemical assimilation, as internal state is
externalized through products and behaviour that select and organize the
surrounding world. (Oyama, 1985: 22; also quoted in Varela et al., 1993)

The theory of natural drift reflects the growing interest of contemporary biology
with issues of diversity, plasticity, dynamic interaction and the richness of selforganising capacities in biological networks (ibid, 197). Such capacities are also
central to the enactive conception of mind, which, as I began to discuss above,
does not see cognition developing in the context of optimal correspondence
(representation) but rather in terms of the development of viable, pragmatic,
embodied and contextual know-how (as opposed to propositional-factual knowing
this or that) from a shifting bio-cultural background of experience.
The origins of this self-organizing approach to the mind can be found in the
connectionist models that began to emerge in the early days of cyberneticsbut
which were more or less ignored in favour of the cognitivist approach until the late
1970s, when self-organizing concepts also began to appear in physics, non-linear
mathematics, and biology (Boden, 2006; Gardner, 1985). Put simply, the
connectionist strategy does not rely on abstract symbol processing descriptions, but
rather on the fact that when simple devices (such as individual neurons) are
massively interconnected in a distributed way such connections may change and
grow as a result of experiencewhen neurons tend to become active together,
their connections are reinforced and vice versa. This is thought to result in the

- 58 -

emergence of complex sub-systems of activity as well as global convergences that

produce system wide properties (Rummelhart & McLelland 1986; Hopfeild, 1982)
Connectionist theory is employed in a number of ways in order to account
for essential cognitive functions such as perception and learning. And indeed,
Clarke (2005) employs a notion of connectionism such as I have described above
in order to support a non-representational ecological approach to musical
cognition (above; see also Griffith & Todd, 1999). It should be noted, however, that
connectionist theory does not necessarily rule out the possibility of mental
representation. It has been suggested that once a system learns to organize itself in
various ways, the patterns it falls into can be recognized by the system in
association with various things and relationships and thus may be said to
represent them. Because of this, connectionist processes are sometimes thought to
be sub-symbolic in that they provide a link between biological processes at lower
levels and representational processes at higher levels. For many researchers, this
approach provides a way of dealing with the problem of how mental
representations might acquire meaning beyond the context of controlled
environmentsi.e. where the range of possible representations is limited to
discrete pre-given items whose meanings are externally imposed (such as a
computer program), or controlled experiments with predefined stimuli in relatively
static environments (e.g. pitch and structural processing in tonal music) (see Varela
et al. 1993: 100; see also Costall, 1991).
This is all to say that the shift in perspective associated with connectionism
demands a revised conception of mental representation: where the strict cognitivist
perspective argues that the types of representational processes available to a given
organism are prescribed by the rules or syntax of thought, the connectionist
approach opens the possibility that representations emerge and acquire their
meaning not from pre-determined functions of adapted modules, but rather through
experiencea view that clearly demands a more plastic conception of the mind-

- 59 -

brain relationship. By this view, mental representations may be understood as

emergent properties of the global state of the system: approximate macro-level
descriptions of operations whose governing principles reside at a sub-symbolic
level (ibid, 86-102; Varela, 1979; Oyama, 1985; see also Minsky, 1986).
This concept of emergence is central to the enactive perspective. It goes
deeper than the notion of representation and refers to the still poorly understood
ways that complex systems tend to reach coherent global states through selforganizing processes guided by general constraints (e.g. attractors; see Abraham
& Shaw, 1986). Although the idea is still controversial, emergent phenomena have
been observed in a number of fields of research such lasers, immune systems,
genetic networks, vortices, ecology, geo-physics. It is also interesting to note that
emergent properties are not limited to biological systems (see Hills, 1988; Varela et
al., 1993).
The enactive approach develops these insights more directly in the context
of lived experience. Because organisms exist within an ever-shifting environmental
milieu, the evolving relationship between the two provides the context by which
neural connections and biological systems emerge and change. By this view mental
activities (including the formation of representations) are not arbitrary and entirely
abstract; form and meaning are no longer separate but rather are dependent on,
and become part of, the unique embodied history of relationships that form the lifeworld of a given organismin connectionist terms, the systems connectivity
cannot be separated from its transformational history of structural coupling with the
environment (Varela, 1988). From this perspective, knowledge, meaning,
understanding and affordances emerge from complex substrates of activity and
experience. They are not fixed and static but grow and evolve as the organism
develops couplings with its environment through its ability to fall into recognizable
organism-environment configurationswhich may be synthesized into ever new
configurations through experience thanks to the plasticity inherent in the global

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system. This, as Varela et al. point out, is the very essence of living creative
cognition (Varela et al, 1993: 148).
Of course, the enactive approach does not restrict cognition to
representation even in this revised sense. Indeed, living cognition is understood to
be based, first and foremost, in the perceptually guided action of organic systems
that exhibit operational closure or functional autonomy (Varela, 1987). This
means that the bio-cognitive functions of a given organism are not best understood
in terms of computational metaphors or the representational recovery of pre-given
environmental information according to the internal laws of the system (i.e.
cognitivist notions of mental syntax and correspondence; adaptationist constraints
associated with natural selection). To clarify this idea, one might consider how the
input-output functions of a computer depend on externally imposed designs
(hardware and software), information processing rules (system language), and
interpretations of outputs; it cannot function meaningfully in an autonomous
fashion and therefore its operations are dependent on, and must remain open to,
the external forces that impose meaning, functionality and form. Living systems,
however, are quite different:

Under very restricted circumstances, we can speak as if we could specify the

operation of a cell or an organism through input/output relations. In general,
though, the meaning of this or that interaction for a living system is not prescribed
from outside but is the result of the organization and history of the system itself.
(Varela et al. 1993: 157)

As Maturana and Varela (1987) point out, such autonomous histories of organismenvironment couplings may be observed in even the simplest single celled
organisms. While such creatures clearly do not possess the neural complexity to
support abstract representations, they nonetheless move, communicate, develop
viable and relationships, and thus flourish within the transforming environments

- 61 -

they inhabit. While it may be premature to describe such activity as cognitive, let
alone conscious, it is not impossible to imagine how such simple organisms may
function as environments to each other, resulting in more complex systems
(couplings) such as multi-celled organisms; nervous, respiratory, and immune
systems; brains; social organizations; and the emergence of culture and mind (see
Oyamas quote from above, 1985; see also Johnson, 2007; and Minsky, 1986). In
brief, the enactive approach offers a still deeper perspective into the embodied,
continuous and open-ended nature of meaning-making as it emerges and evolves
via basic biological processes, emotional-affective responses, as well as movement
and bio-cognitive couplings with the physical and socio-cultural environment.

Conclusion: music, consciousness, and the experience of self

The enactive approach resonates clearly with the developmental, action-based and
bio-cultural approaches to musical cognition I discussed in Section Two. This
perspective also emphasizes the creative aspects of cognition in bringing forth
viable worldsincluding the evolving and diverse aesthetic socio-cultural
environments we human beings enact in order to maintain a state of wellbeing.
Good candidates for the general constraints that tend to guide such self-organizing
and sufficing activity (at both individual and cultural levels) may be found in the
necessity for movement and communication in time and space; the basic
morphology and sensory capacities of our bodies; as well as the universal need for
humans to develop social relationships.
In Section Two I demonstrated musics relationship to these fundamental
aspects of existence. In this section I have attempted to show how the enactive
perspective offers a coherent theoretical framework that allows these diverse
elements to be better understood in relation to each other. This allows us to see
musicality as a central aspect of how we communicate and organize our existence
as highly complex bio-cultural creaturesas an important part of the ongoing

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process of human sufficing by which viable worlds are brought forth or enacted
through shared histories of structural coupling with the environment. By this view,
musicality can also be more clearly integrated with our development as a species,
albeit through more proscriptive processes such as those associated with natural
drift. As an aside, it may be interesting to note that the prescriptive adaptationist
way of thinking about evolution and bio-cognitive development is somewhat
analogous to the highly constrained notion of the role of the individual musician in
the rarified culture of Western classical musicthis in contrast to the more
integrated, improvised and proscriptive, contexts of much of the worlds music (see
Bailey, 1992; Nettl, 1998)
The enactive approach also sheds light on another often-vexing problem
that I touched on at the end of section one, namely the nature of conscious
experience and the self. As I discussed above, the enactive perspective does not
see meaning and knowledge as something out there in the world that is to be
recovered through representation, but rather as an enacted, emergent process of
embodied experience and cultural activitylike a path laid down in walking.
The recognition of the inability to find stable, objective, or pre-given
epistemological foundations, either internally or externally, resonates with much
so-called continental philosophy and is often assumed to be a distinctly postmodern issue associated with scientific and cultural developments in the 20th
century (Putnam, 1987; Rorty, 1979). However, as Varela et al. (1993) point out,
this acknowledgement of groundlessness is also central to one of the most ancient
philosophical schools of thoughtnamely the mindful-awareness tradition
associated with the pragmatic strands of Buddhism (Kalupahana, 1987; Gyamtso,
1986; Murti, 1955).
It is interesting to note that the mindful-awareness tradition reveals a basic
insight into the nature of cognition that is, in a sense, shared by the cognitivist
viewboth understand the mind as essentially pluralistic and disunified. The work

- 63 -

of thinkers like Jackendoff (1987; see Section One) and Minsky (1986) are
particularly notable in cognitive science as they are both willing to follow this
insight to the threshold of experience to discover, as Hume (1964) and others had
before them, that the notion of a fixed and unified cognizing subject appears to be
a phantom. As I pointed out in Section One, Jackendoff draws out the multi-modal
nature of cognition; and Minsky suggests that the self should not be understood as a
centralized and all-powerful entity, but as a society of ideas that include both the
images of what the mind is and our ideals of what it ought to be (1986: 39-40).
This comes close to the Buddhist distinction between the coherent pattern of
dependently originated habits that we recognize as a person and the ego-self that a
person may believe she has and constantly grasps after but which does not actually
exist (Varela et al., 1993: 124).
However, while the mindful-awareness tradition makes the distinction
between the representation or concept of a fixed ego-self and the habitual ways of
thinking that lead us to grasp for it (see Gyamtso, 1986), no such distinction is
clearly articulated in cognitive science. Traditional cognitive science discovers the
disunity of the mind-self in the hypothezised sub-personal processes and structures
(e.g. adapted modules) associated with the cognitivist information-processing
approach; but because it possesses no disciplined method for examining lived
experience it can go no further than this. By contrast, the mindful-awareness
tradition begins not with hypotheses, but with a rigorous examination of lived
experienceit

offers

systematic

and

pragmatic

way

of

approaching

consciousness that begins with the body and cross-modal sensory capacities; with
sensation, movement, feeling, as well as the needs, desires and cravings that
motivate action. From this perspective experience is attended to in the context of
an aggregate consciousness (form/body, feeling, discernment, volitional formations,
and consciousness understood in the limited sense of knowledge) that may be

- 64 -

further specified according to how experience is sourced in the senses (which are
themselves understood as minds).
Thus the mindful-awareness practitioner is interested in examining the
movements of the aggregate mind from the first person perspectivenot in order
to grasp some fixed notion of it, but rather to become increasingly aware of
consciousness as an ongoing emergent and transforming process (i.e. moving
awareness beyond its habitual state towards more fundamental aspects of
consciousness and cognition; a possibility not entertained by cognitivist who
relegates all basic cognitive processes to the sub-personal level). As with the
enactive approach to cognition, the mindful-awareness tradition claims that while
phenomenal distinctions can be made between the objects of experience nothing,
including the self or the mind, exists as an independent entity; all experience,
things, thoughts and ideas are emergent, they arise and evolve co-dependently
(Hopkins, 1983; Varela et al., 1993; Murti, 1955).
As Varela et al. (1993) point out, the juxtaposition of mindful-awareness
with the enactive approach to cognition offers a way of examining the mind that
resonates with the concerns of cognitive science, evolutionary theory, and the
broader cultural and developmental issues I discussed above. However, it also
offers a way to include an open-ended examination subjective experience as a
central aspect of this inquiry. In addition to mindful-awareness, the enactive
perspective draws on more recent approaches for examining conscious experience,
such as the phenomenological tradition associated with Husserl and MerelauPonty. Thus it may provide useful point of rapprochement, or entre-deux, between
the traditionally disassociated areas of science and subjective experiencewhere
the relationship between the two may no longer be avoided as a vicious circle but
rather embraced as an ongoing and open ended process of dialogue and
theoretical development (Varela et al., 1993).

- 65 -

There is, of course, much more to be said about this fascinating perspective on the
mind. However, to conclude I will simply point out that the enactive/mindfulawareness approach is increasingly being employed to better understand musical
experience with practical relevance in a number of areas. As I mentioned above, a
handful of psychological musicologists (e.g. Reybrouk, 2005) are developing
approaches to music cognition influenced by the enactive approach. Others have
demonstrated how this perspective leads to increased awareness of the transitory
and transformational movements of the embodied mind in musical experience
(Sudnow. 1978; Biswas, 2011; Lowe, 2011). Such factors have clear relevance to
instrumental teaching, practice and performance. Thus, basic mindful-awareness
techniques, and phenomenological exercises (e.g. see Ihde, 1976 1977)perhaps
in association with other practices such as Alexander techniquemay provide both
a vocabulary and a pragmatic framework for developing a deeper embodied and
cross-modal understanding of ones own musical development, which may now be
understood in terms of a proscriptive creative process of enacting musical worlds.
In the context of education, this approach may offer more coherent ways of
discussing and engaging in improvisation and musical creativity; as well as
alternative

(i.e.

non-linguistic)

ways

of

understanding

meaning-making,

consciousness and communication in an embodied bio-cultural context (Clarke

and Clarke, 2011).
More generally, the enactive approach affords us an opportunity to consider
more deeply how the active, embodied, cross-modal, and bio-cultural nature of
music spans the range of human experience. As the broader approaches to music
and meaning I have been discussing become more integrated into the study of
musical cognition at all levels, we may look forward to gaining more nuanced
understandings of human musicality as it emerges at the intersection of biology,
culture and lived experience; and how music provides an important means by
which the diverse and manifold aspects of our being may relate to each other

- 66 -

harmoniously. The sciences of mind are developing a deeper dialogue with direct
experience; and as more nuanced conceptions of the mind-brain and organismenvironment relationships continue to be developed it will be very interesting to
see what insights into the musical mind emerge in years to come.

- 67 -

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