Unsound, yes, actually we agree on this - I have always known this. But also, I always liked your scappy spirit. As I said, it was fun too.
Many of our ideas, however - that we get from the societal matrix of assumptions, in our time it happens to be scientific materialism - many times get in our way. We are all here talking because of what Shubertmaniac says so eloquently (and, relative to me, concisely!!). So, do you think it is a karmic coincidence that we all meet at this nexus called Audiogon? What are we sharing? And, see this: I am not pointing towards anything that we all don't already know; we are all seeking this beauty in music - the musical event between our mind and the sound, the event where mind and music merge. This is why my positions are so "strong"; they are not necesssarily strong in content, although that may be true sometimes, depending on the context, but are strong in pointing to something we already know. We all sit down with music to experience its meaning. And, if later, while you start thinking again with societies' assumptions, and these assumptions tell you that there is no meaning beyond what you can divine with objective measuring, then OK. But that mind still has to confront the truth of his/her whole experience when listening to the music; the scientific materialist must eventually admit that he experiences "something" even when he is not thinking through the prism of his assumptions. And, in fact, he must admit that his/her deepest experiences of music, verging on the ineffable, are not within his assumption's grasp of explanation at all (which frightens him/her, hence the emotion you sometimes see as the scientific arguments are deconstructed).
So, I start off these discussions with a big advantage: I know that they know, beyond their attachment to the security of their matrix of ideas, that they already know what I am saying, because they have already performed the experiment of listening to music-beauty themselves, on themselves. This is the irrational part of the arguments from those who then claim that such experiences are irrational, ie anything outside of an objective scientific expanation of reality is some sort of mystical regression (Stone the Witch!!). They conduct an experiemnt on their own mind of listening and then, most un-scientifically, then engage others denying the results of that experiment. They engage others not to change the others minds, but to hold unto their own matrix of ideas, which makes them feel safe (hence, the rigid shouting down you sometimes see). Science does this also, and not coincidentally: denying the mind that created science in the first place! It is also not a coincidence that the same people who themselves experience the beauty in music, and yet still deny that experience later in default to the presumed security of their inconsistent matrix of ideas, are the same minds who are attached to scientific assumptions and feel that the manipulation of matter (tools; technology; THD) is the only way to truth, or the only way to find the truth of/in Music.
Interesting, eh?
