Colour and sound, æsthetic qualia
The qualia domain, the phenomenological domain, is a true mystery. All perception is based around qualia, yet we don't understand them as such. This piece intends to reflect on the æsthetic side of phenomenology.
To start, we must make a crucial distinction between different kinds of qualia-domains (or qualia dimensions). Some qualia have a semantic teleology baked right from the the evolutionary reality of the need for survival (for example, the feeling of pain). We will call these biologically-indexed or teleonomic[1] qualia phenomena.
But there are also other kinds of qualia that are not like that. The precise nature of colour and sound are so. Both of them translate a wave phenomenon in the physical reality to a continuous, purely abstract qualia-domain that cannot be shown as emergent from the source phenomena in any way. The pure experience of sound and the pure experience of colour are like nothing else: completely arbitrary, completely abstract, and utterly indescribable and inexplicable from the origin phenomena. We will call those autotelic qualia, or authophenomena.
They do have, of course, teleonomic associations —otherwise it would difficult to see how the perception of them could have evolved—, but those come after perception. From an evolutionary sense, colour and sound exist so that our brain can interpret light-wave and mechanic-wave information. So both qualia-domains, colour and light, exist so that our brain can understand what is happening, and use that information to take decisions. Emotional and other kinds of associations —which are always connected, to a greater or lesser extent, to teleonomy— come from different kinds of entrainment, interpretations of the qualia-indexed information and realising correlations between the abstract autotelic qualia and phenomena in the world. For example, the perceptual associations from the sound of someone crying; between seeing blood —and all of what that entails— and the colour red; the time patterns of pulse —from walking and the beating of the heart—; the physical resonance of sound, etc.; these can be called ecologically-indexed qualia.
Autotelic qualia domains are crucial parts of the æsthetic world —that is the reason behind the title of this piece—. And this is the big æsthetic puzzle. Let us think about instrumental (so-called "pure) music and abstract painting: how does the purely abstract, the most unconnected to the world, have such æsthetic significance?; how do abstract semantics work? Because ordinarily, in order to have semantics, we need a syntactic structure. Most pieces of art do have some sort of a syntactic structure, however abstract; but the semantics from art do not come from the interplay between syntax and some received dictionary like in verbal language. In verbal language, we can say "gift", and mean "present" or "poison"; we can say "burro" and mean "butter" or "donkey"; we can say "caro" and mean "expensive" or "dear". In the mere change of syntactic system and cultural associations we change the semantics (that is, in some way, arbitrarily attached to a collection of sounds). No such thing happens in art; moreover, the semantics of a specific work can vary widely from person to person. But there are pieces of art (say, music) that are purely abstract, and are perceived as full of deep meaning (even if the deep meaning perceived is not the same from person to person).
In the visual æsthetic domain, in colour, we have, though not so evidently at first sight, a similar problem. We can very easily see the semantic connotations of a painting. And we can understand how the impression of beauty can come from the closeness or the inventiveness of the reproduction or representation.[2] We can also understand how beauty in the visual domain comes from teleonomic associations (the beauty of a body of the same species, from reproductive fitness; the tenderness of a baby of any species, from the evolutionary need of the young to be taken care of). But that doesn't explain, in any way whatsoever, the beauty of the sunset, the beauty of a river, the beauty of the moon and the stars. It might be argued that these are very heavily culturally-mediated, and this might certainly true; but the fact that something is culturally-mediated doesn't explain away its origin, which is, in this case, the most mysterious and the most load-bearing part of the argument.
But let us now return to music and remark the strangeness of music even further. Because in visual art, the colours appear just as they do in the natural world; the beauty is inexplicable, but the likeness between the art and the world is apparent. This is not at all the case in most music (in Western Music this has been certainly a very fringe preoccupation). Beauty in music tends to emerge from rhythmic, melodic, harmonic and formal elements. We can see some biologically-indexed significance in rhythm, certainly (movement and pulse are ecologically-indexed, let us just think about walking and running); and some ecologically-indexed aspects of significance in melody (let us think about spontaneous abstract expressions of emotion, both apart from and inside language) and, maybe in some ecologically-indexed sense, in form. But the harmonic domain —which is, for example, in Western Music, one of the most semantic-emotionally-significant aspects— is a pure example of an autotelic phenomenon.
So this is certainly a big mystery. How and why can sound and colour be beautiful. The question about where do they come from is certainly very difficult to make (for to ask it one would need to grant that they come from somewhere, which usually enlarges the metaphysical baggage in a way that can be uncomfortable to some). But it has to be admitted that the deep æsthetic significance of autotelic qualia is a mystery.