Virtual Universals and Creativity: A New Approach to Music Cognition
Gavin Steingo, Asif A. Ghazanfar · 2024
If music is so varied, how do we understand it? Is there anything universal about it? And if not, can there be a cognitive science of it? Radically limiting examples so they fit certain frameworks but then calling everything else an exception is not helpful. We propose a redefinition of music that is based not on specific features but rather as creative experimentation with what we term “virtual universals”. These are universals that exert force even when they are not actualized or sounded.