Psychophysical Correspondence: Sense and Nonsense

Abstract

Amadeus, a beginning music student, is given a set of cassette tapes, each of which is coded with a number of colored dots. He is told that the tapes are recordings of various compositions, each of which was written for some accompanied solo instrument. He is to listen to them, examine the colored dots, and draw up a table showing which combinations of colored dots correspond to which solo instruments; for example, it might be the case that if and only if the cassette is marked either with one yellow and one blue dot or with two blue dots will the composition be for accompanied flute. He is assured that there does exist a regular and discoverable correspondence between one or more color codes and the featured instrument. Amadeus, accepting this correspondence hypothesis in good faith, sets about the task. Unfortunately, he has been given by mistake a box of tapes which contains only a number of recordings of various orchestral suites.