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>Music, on the other hand, seems to be limited to the human species I'm not sure how you're defining music, but I would consider a bird's song to count. On on
by skolskoly 7y ago
>Music, on the other hand, seems to be limited to the human species
I'm not sure how you're defining music, but I would consider a bird's song to count.
On one hand I don't believe music can be reduced to a mating display, but I'm skeptical that music has a biological root in processing memories/emotional response. Sure, it can stimulate memory/emotional processing, but so do most other social activities. Moreover, I think conversation, games, music, dance, etc. are much more similar to each other in that regard than dreaming is to any of them.
In my experience, dreams are wild extrapolations/interpolations of various waking experiences. When I'm awake, I would call this imagination, but the unconscious mind appears to put the imagination into overdrive in a way that is not possible while awake. It's almost as if the brain is trying to generalize memories, possibly to optimize them for storage space. (or some biological equivalent)
Interestingly, /u/undershirt mentions that it might be that you don't actually experience the dream until you wake up. This would make sense, as this process would be interrupted, leaving you with some bizarre false memories. The unconscious then quickly cleans up it's mess and hands control over to the conscious mind.
On the other hand, I think music is explained fairly satisfactorily as a positive social activity, related to dancing, both of which were ubiquitous and inseparable in ancient cultures. In a world where you have to make friends and be wary of enemies, it's not hard to see how bonding activities that signal friendliness are valuable for natural selection. Even birds sing, humans just have a much more complex songs.
- vhvjkyhkogvv 7y agoLucid dreamers were able to respond to stimuli while dreaming iirc
- atoav 7y agoIf I remember correctly whales have been observed to “sing” as well. Given that sound is essentially vibration of a medium and given that noticing vibration in said medium will play a crucial role in the survival of most organisms moving in it, we can establish that some sort of “mediun-vibration-sensing” should develope anywhere in the universe given the organisms move in a medium that transmits sound waves. This “hearing” will be connected with meaning by these organisms (e.g. loud and low frequency = big, strong and dangerous, scratchy noise + potential food). That means there is already (without music) a perceptual link between sound and emotion. On top of that the natural harmonic series should be universal, which means that other intelligent life forms could derive joy from how sounds fit together harmonically. A certain level of intelligence will inevitably lead organisms to think a lot about the (potentially dangerous) sounds in their environment and given a certain level of organization they might decide to droen these unpleasant thoughts out with other louder sounds they make on purpose. And if these louder sounds serve a societal role they will inevitably use it to tell stories, emotions or make sense of their beeing in the world or just try to forget the things that happened in their lifes. Music.
- Gravityloss 7y agoAnd wolves howl. My childhood friend played the trumpet and their dog always started howling with him.
- jonnypotty 7y agoIs bird song music or just a guy sat on a fence shouting at all the other guys to fuck off out of his yard?