Abstract

The founder of formalism, Eduard Hanslick compared listening to music to looking through a kaleidoscope. Unlike listening to a story, one can understand music without understanding what it is about. This contrast with language suggests a thought experiment that echoes John Searle′s Chinese Room. Instead of featuring a man who reliably manipulates Chinese symbols without knowing what they represent, consider a man who reliably manipulates sounds . Given formalism, the Turing Test should be an appropriate criterion of musical understanding