Is there any relation between the political/religious ideas/beliefs of a person and his/er musical taste?.
Good Post @Sid. I experience some difficulties to express things because a lack of good English structure but the quote I have made from your post approaches an issue with which I agree. I only want to add something around your idea.[...]Taste in music doesn't equate with some political manifesto or an expression of one's belief system. For me anyway, I am too all over the shop with music and probably more a fence sitter than with the politics and religion things. If I say I don't like something, or I like something, there are bound to be exceptions which kind of lay those kinds of absolute statements totally to waste.
I wonder if anyone has a good objection to these ideas? I'm getting rather settled in these beliefs...I suspect there is a relationship at a very abstract, deep level. Nothing we could match up simply, like X-political view people will like Y-music. But I suspect that something like "conservative" and something like "liberal" or "progressive" are innate features of our personality, and someone who is strongly conservative (personality-wise) will stay loyal to the religious, political, and musical traditions of his/her youth; while someone who is strongly liberal (personality-wise) will have accepted a wider variety in all three areas.
This is an odd idea, so I want to be clear that even if I'm right this won't map in any simple way: we can't say something like "religious conservatives like tonal music." But we could say, "someone with a conservative personality is going to have approximately the same tastes in religion, politics, and music at forty as they did at fourteen." Maybe they grew up in a vegan UFO-religion listening to Xenakis, but the point is that if they have conservative personality their preferences will be about the same thirty years later. On the other hand, maybe a liberal-personality moves from that community to become a fundamentalist Christian who loves to sing along with the Gaithers, but the point is they will have tried a wide variety of things and their preferences will have changed.
But of course marginal communities have few members; that's a tautology but it explains why usually conservative or liberal personalities match up fairly well with the respective religious, political, and musical traditions of their societies.
If almost everyone from some society is religious, then whether you select 5 great composers or 5 people at random you would expect them all to be religious. That says nothing about whether religiousness contributes to compositional ability. As society becomes less religious, you would expect fewer top composers to be religious if religion did not contribute significantly to compositional ability. So the real way to study this question is to identify top composers over time and look to see if the percentage of those who are religious decreases at roughly the same proportion as religiousness does. That study would likely require more time since only fairly recently has religiousness declined by any significant percentage.The first comment, makes no sense.
Human brains vary enormously, but yes it's true that they look mostly the same to people who don't know how to identify the variation. Think of computer instructions. They are all simply strings of zeros and ones and look very similar to those who don't understand the details. But the output of that code can vary enormously. As an example of large differences in humans, look at size. Some people are more the twice as tall as others, and height is governed by considerably fewer genes than intellect is....the physical differences that exist between the brains of humans are very minor, physically they are more or less the same. These differences don't have the power to dictate such vast differences in intellect.
No one today knows how to translate the physical properties of brains into qualities such as intelligence or musical ability. The brain is the most complex thing in the known universe, and we will require much more time to understand it fully. Four hundred years ago everyone including scientists believed that God caused the planets to revolve around the Sun, but today no one believes that in advanced societies. Two hundred years ago scientists would have been astonished to learn about antibiotics and their ability to cure sicknesses. Just because we don't understand a part of reality doesn't mean that it must have a supernatural explanation.Even if one would venture to suggest that the different variations and complexities of the genes that people's brains posses are the causes of their different intellectual capabilities, it would still be a problem because how can you translate something that is abstract, and unworldly such as intelligence, or conscience into physical concepts such as genes?
Both Nereffid and I agree that in the past religious composers were "greater" than secular ones. We are not arguing against that statement. We are simply saying that fact does not give evidence for the conclusion that being religious makes one a better composer. If the vast majority of people are religious, the vast majority of great composers will be religious (unless religion actually diminishes compositional ability which is hard to believe).I'm sorry but again, your comments about his first point also didn't make sense. You're bringing into account the respected societies of these composers doesn't add or diminish in anyway from my conclusion that composers who were religious were the greatest composers by far then those composers who were secular.
No organ or other part of any species is given special evolutionary treatment. Any study of biological species shows enormous variation in phenotypic (observable) traits. For example, humans vary in size (as I mentioned), hair color, blood type, immune response, intellect, and many other traits. Since we have learned that the variation in human genomes leads to variation in many of these traits, we assume that similar genomic variation leads to phenotypic variation in brain response.About differences in Brain. Again, please answer my question, why should one organ be given a special treatment status when it comes to evolution? if according to you apes have evolved into humans and there are no ape/humans today, why should we suggest that only the brain evolved differently?
Actually it makes sense to say that some computer capabilities come from the computer. The best chess playing computers have learning algorithms and hardware in the same sense that humans do. They play chess vastly better than the humans who designed them. They have learned to become the best chess players in the world.But the computer itself is not the source of what it can do. Someone who came before the computer and created, designed, and programmed it, is the source of that intelligence. No one in his rite mind will say that the computer is the source of its own intelligence and capabilities. Every rational person will accept this fact.
I know a lot of religious people, and every single one of them believes that the gravitational attraction of the Sun cause planets to revolve around the Sun. No one believed that 400 years ago. We've actually learned an enormous amount about the physical world in the past 500 years or so, and we will learn enormously more in the future. That is my point.You said that " Four hundred years ago everyone including scientists believed that God caused the planets to revolve around the Sun …but today no one believes that in advanced societies"
No one believes that in advance societies?
It's a thorny philosophical problem, perhaps best handled on Star Trek: TNG.Actually it makes sense to say that some computer capabilities come from the computer. The best chess playing computers have learning algorithms and hardware in the same sense that humans do. They play chess vastly better than the humans who designed them. They have learned to become the best chess players in the world.
Are you suggesting that some of the computer's capabilities are its own? basically that it is the originator of its so called 'Intelligence'?
Do you really believe this?