I'm feeling the need to articulate more fully how I think music works. I see it as a key example of a context for being human which we make through our being human. In this way it is no different from any other form of human activity.
It's effect on us is, I believe, fundamentally vicarious - we gain an insight into other lives through recognition of the outward manifestations of those lives. How the recognition works is through the effect of the music on our personal regulation. For me this boils down to coercion, disruption and exhortation... with the aesthetics being placed on the art of the composer in positioning (system 5) their musical gestures with our biological regulation. Get the aesthetics wrong, and the gestures don't ring true... our taste (system 5 again) intervenes and stops the communicating process.
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