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Parallels between hearing and seeing support physicalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2003

Stephen Handel
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 shandel@utk.edu
Molly L. Erickson
Affiliation:
Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 merickso@utk.edu http://web.utk.edu/~aspweb/faculty/Erickson/default.html
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Abstract

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There are 2,000 hair cells in the cochlea, but only three cones in the retina. This disparity can be understood in terms of the differences between the physical characteristics of the auditory signal (discrete excitations and resonances requiring many narrowly tuned receptors) and those of the visual signal (smooth daylight excitations and reflectances requiring only a few broadly tuned receptors). We argue that this match supports the physicalism of color and timbre.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2003