That Doggone Sound

In the book This Is Your Brain On Music, author Daniel J. Levitin brought up an intriguing philosophical line of thought. He said the flavor vanilla doesn't exist in a bowl of pudding until your tongue touches it.

Then he went on to elaborate about light. Darkness doesn't exist. It's simply the absence of light, which only exists when we perceive it with our eyes.

Finally he got around to sound. It only exists when we hear it. Dogs and whales hear things we don't hear. We hear things other animals don't hear. Sound waves can't be seen or touched. They're invisible. Sound simply wouldn't exist for us at all if we had no mechanism to perceive it.

You see where I'm going with this. Sound is defined only by what we hear. Definitions are agreed upon by most humans. Normal hearing is defined by what the majority of humans hear, not what dogs or whales hear. Humans are deaf to sounds dogs and whales hear. However, those sounds still exist for a dog or whale. If deafness were defined by dogs, humans would be considered deaf. Does this not mean all humans are "deaf" to some degree?

What is a disability? It's all relative.

Later, Levitin explained it is not only what we hear but how we process what we hear that impacts our hearing perception, as well. Not all of us process what we hear the same way. What I hear is different from what other humans hear, and how I process it is different depending on the experiences I associate with certain sounds, and my genetic make-up and a lot of other technical biological considerations. This is why different people prefer different kinds of music, different voices, different rhythms, and so on.

The book is a fascinating, but highly technical look at how the brain processes sound and gave me lots to think about.