Abstract
This chapter analyzes the different ways in which the DSQ performs as a group. I criticize trends in the psychology of music that puts too much emphasis on shared predictions, plans, and musical representations and instead present the phenomenology of the various perceptual and agential modes of awareness that enables a robust sense of “we-agency”. Such we-agency for instance allows the DSQ members to be perfectly coordinated even in the absence of explicit awareness of one another. I emphasize the role of the body schema as necessary for “intercorporeity”, which I argue constitutes a fourth source of passivity. In its totality, this chapter is an explication of the phenomenological underpinnings of the musical mind as extended into the instrument, the music and, one’s co-performers.
This chapter relies on and further develops arguments formed in Schiavio and Høffding (2015) and Salice et al. (2017).
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Notes
- 1.
Before leaving Keller’s domain altogether, I want to recognize that he seems to be softening his position. Whereas his works around 2010 framed the importance of joint goals and shared representations as “musts”, he more recently indicates that they are no longer necessary conditions, but merely important factors that musicians rely on “to some degree” (Keller et al. 2016, 283). This softening could be due to Keller’s acquaintance with an earlier critical piece I’ve co-authored (Schiavio and Høffding 2015). In any case, I think there is much potential for a mutual enlightenment in combining a phenomenological, qualitative interview methodology with a more quantitative, experimental one.
- 2.
On entrainment in musicians, see also Clayton et al. (2005), Clayton (2012), Doffman (2011).
- 3.
Here, one could speculate that the tiny vibration-sensitive bodies in our skin, pancreas, and intestines called Pacini-receptors might play a role as well (Brodal 2016, Chap. 6). Experimental research on the treatment of chronic pain by means of musical stimulation of Pacini receptors is currently being undertaken by Dr. Peter Michael Nielsen at Holbæk Hospital in Denmark, raising the possibility that musicians may have access to some form of musical sensitivity/receptivity through these receptors.
- 4.
This term is taken from Behnke (2008).
- 5.
One might again hypothesize that the pacini-receptor system is involved in this form of perception.
- 6.
It might even be that what Rune describes is an experience of a form of synesthesia between hearing and tactile perception.
- 7.
Note, however, that there is some disagreement on the impact of others on peripersonal space (cf. Holmes et al. 2004, 2007).
- 8.
Note that I use “intercorporeity” and “intercorporeality” interchangeably.
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Høffding, S. (2018). The Hive Mind: Playing Together. In: A Phenomenology of Musical Absorption. New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00659-4_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00659-4_11
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