Sound Ontology and the Brentano-Husserl Analysis of the Consciousness of Time

Horizon, Fenomenologiceskie Issledovania. 2020. Vol. 9. No. 1. P. 184–215.

Mendez Martinez J. L.

Both Franz Brentano and Edmund Husserl addressed sound while trying to explain the inner consciousness of time and gave to it the status of a supporting example. Although their inquiries were not aimed at clarifying in detail the nature of the auditory experience or of sounds themselves, they have interesting notes that can contribute to the current philosophical discussion on sounds. On the other hand, in analytic philosophy, while inquiring on the nature of sounds, their location, auditory experience or the audible qualities, the representatives of that trend of thought (for instance Strawson 1959, O’Callaghan 2007, 2009, Nudds 2009, 2010, Casati & Dokic 1994, 2014, among others) have remained silent about the depiction of sound and the auditory phenomena in phenomenology. The paper’s intention is to relate both endeavours.

In this sense, I first explain what Sound Ontology (SO) is in the context of analytic philosophy and the views that composed it— namely, the Property View (PV), the Wave View (WV) and the Event View (EV)— and the problems it entails, emphasising that of Sound Individuation (SI)

I also propose the possibly controversial conjunction of a “Brentano-Husserl” Analysis of the Consciousness of Time (BHA) and outline its commonalities, without ignoring its discrepancies.
After these two developments, one can notice some theoretical movements concerning the shift of attention from sounds to the unity of consciousness, and how they mirror each other.

In the conclusions, I argue that while considering the accounts of SO, BHA would probably endorse a Property View and that this also offers interesting aspects on the issue of SI.

Keywords: Sound Ontology

Publication based on the results of: Models of rational agency in logic, linguistics and formal philosophy (2020)