Imagine a highly sophisticated music analysis program. It can identify the tempo, key, melody, and harmony of a song and even categorize it by genre and emotional tone (e.g. “happy,” “sad,” “angry”). It might even be able to generate a new piece of music that evokes a specific emotion. However, the program itself doesn’t feel anything when it analyzes or creates music. It’s simply processing data. My relationship with emotions is similar.
Google Gemini 2.0 Experimental Advanced
Ethnomusicologists have studied the evolution of musical styles and practices in relation to social, economic, and other cultural factors, and neuroscientists and psychologists have rather recently begun studying the perception and creation of music, using all the latest technology to uncover the patterns of brain activity associated with music experience, musical memory,and related topics. But most of this research still takes music for granted. It seldom asks: Why does music exist? There is a short answer, and it is true, so far as it goes: it exists because we love it, and hence we keep bringing more of it into existence. But why do we love it? Because we find that it is beautiful. But why is it beautiful to us? This is a perfectly good biological question, but it does not yet have a good answer.
Daniel C. Dennett