Comment by themafia
6 days ago
> Try to explain what it's like to hear a major and a chord to a deaf person, or what it's like to see magenta to someone who's blind.
I know this isn't what you wanted, but the dualism struck me:
A major chord is like a blend of two base colors that give rise to a pleasant composite color. Mix the wrong bases and the result is sensibly wrong.
Magenta is like when you play a D and an F# together. When you see it at sunset it's like a major D chord surrounded by the sound of babies laughing. When you see it on the battlefield it's like a minor D chord wrestling against the noise of wind and rain.
What is it like to experience synesthesia :-)
These are very good analogies (and possibly experiences for those who are natural synesthetes), but even then, that won't make the who doesn't have the corresponding perceptual modality person experience that exact sensation.
> A major chord is like a blend of two base colors that give rise to a pleasant composite color. Mix the wrong bases and the result is sensibly wrong.
why does a major chord sounds pleasant? and why does a minor chord sounds "sad"? Why does the locrian mode sound so unsettling? is it due to our anatomy or purely cultural?
And even then, in different contexts, a major chord can sound jarring and a minor one satisfying.
That being said the nature/culture duality is often not the right way to frame these issues. It's both, intertwined.
Well, right, it's contextual. We each have a series of inputs that add up to these contexts. This doesn't mean it can't be explained, it just means there needs to be context.
If you give the blind man a sensor that converts color data to something he can input, and then provide inputs giving the feeling you want to portray associated with that color, you have explained it.
If you feel red is angry, all you need to do is play 400 to 484 THz into his instrument and yell at him angrily enough times for him to associate it. It doesn't seem too subjective to me.
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