NICK YOUNG
Adjunct Coordinator
I am an Adjunct Coordinator at the centre. So far my research has focussed on auditory perceptual experiences. I argue for a soundless account of audition: there is no reason to think that we auditorily represent sound waves, or vibrations, or any of the other environmental features that philosophers have claimed to be sounds. Instead, we hear the vibrating objects which produce sound waves, their temporally extended activities, and the volumes of empty space which surround them.
I am particularly interested in how dynamic perceptual content in non-visual modalities should be characterised. In my paper ‘Hearing Objects and Events’ I examine how we hear temporally extended events, such as collisions, smashings and scrapings. I argue that current theories of how we see events cannot be used as a model for audition, and develop a model on which hearing an event is to hear a material object as perduring through time.
Since March 2018 I have begun working on a new postdoctoral project at the centre entitled ‘Time and Emotions’.
Publications
2017 ‘Hearing objects and events’. Philosophical Studies 1-20
2017 ‘Hearing Spaces’. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95(2): 242-255
