On the possibility of nonconceptual experience: the case of music experience

Abstract

The present thesis concerns the possibility of nonconceptual concent from a representationalist framework. It briefly reviews the literature on nonconceptual content. It takes conceptuality and nonconceptuality as features of experiences and mental states. The thesis proceeds with thoughts on the nature of music experience. It distinguishes between the structural and expressive ways of attributing nonconceptuality to experiences of music. Intense and exceptional experiences of music are regarded as candidates for nonconceptual experience in seeming to defy verbal definitions. After the presentation of theories of musical expressivity, the mystery of such experience is explained via unconscious associations with representations from one's personal and cultural history. The thesis shows that ordinary music experiences are also taken to be nonconceptual since they require the mobilization of one's discriminatory abilities but cannot figure in one's reasons for belief and action.