Title: The Auditory Object
Advisory Editors: Elvira Di Bona (The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute),
Vincenzo Santarcangelo (University of Turin)
Mail to: elviradibona@gmail.com, vincenzosantarcangelo@yahoo.it and
rivista.estetica@gmail.com
Deadline for submission: December 30th, 2016
Description
The concept of 鈥渁uditory object鈥� has recently attracted much attention among neuroscientists, neuropsychologists, and philosophers. Although an auditory object is a sense-specific concept, it 鈥渞aises fundamental questions about the nature of object perception in all sensory systems鈥� (Griffiths and Warren 2004). The auditory object has been investigated in comparison with
the visual object. Such analyses revealed not only how ontologically different the two objects are鈥攕ince, while the visual object is often identified with material objects, the auditory object is equated with streams or events鈥攂ut also how similar for certain aspects they appear鈥攆or the fact that both objects have perceptible qualities (i.e. colour, dimension and size for the visual object, and pitch, loudness and timbre for the auditory object).
Within Gestalt Psychology, the auditory object (in gestaltic terms the 鈥減erceptive whole鈥�) has been often examined with reference to the musical object鈥攆or example, a psychologist like Von Erhenfels (1890) studied auditory objects such as a melody. Nevertheless, it seems that there should be differences between the auditory object and the musical object, since the musical object is characterized by an aesthetic dimension. For instance, a trivial environmental sound like the slamming of a door might become a musical object when inserted in a music composition, as in the piece 鈥淰ariations pour une porte et un soupir鈥� by Pierre Henry and, in general, as in the music genre of the musique concr猫te. The objective of this special issue of Rivista di Estetica is to investigate the ontological nature of the auditory object, its specificity as an object of perception and its relation to the visual and the musical object.
Rivista di Estetica publishes thematic issues about philosophical topics. It is one of the oldest philosophical journals in Italy, established in 1960 as a quarterly journal about aesthetics and more general philosophical themes. Rivista di Estetica practices double blind refereeing and publishes both in Italian and English. The journal is indexed by: SCOPUS, ISI, The Philosopher鈥檚 Index, R茅pertoire bibliographique de la philosophie, ERIH, Articoli italiani di periodici accademici (AIDA), Catalogo italiano dei periodici (ACNP), Google Scholar.