Music and Meaning

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Among technical scholars the greatest confusion prevails regarding the problem of meaning. Elizabeth Woods has accordingly attempted a simplification through a comparison and synthesis of the divergent discussions of aestheticians, psychologists, and logicians. Through her more direct approach she finds logical and aesthetic meaning to be fundamentally identical in so far as both are instances of that structure which is a condition of all conscious experience. At the same time, she aims not only to define but to suggest what the status of meaning may be in relation to a wider metaphysical pattern. The relation of art, in particular of music, to science, logic, morality, and religion is discussed; as well as the relation of meaning to denotation, to value, and to substance.