Philosophical discussions of musical skill predate Ibn Sina.
Sextus Empiricus, AM 7.145
"But Speusippus [nephew of Plato] declared that since some things are perceptible and some things are intelligible, the criterion of the intelligible is knowledgeable rationality (epistêmonikos logos), but of perceptible things the criterion is knowledgeable perception (epistêmonikê aisthêsis). He posited that perception is knowledgeable when it partakes in truth according to reason. For, just as the fingers of the player of the oboe or the lyre have acquired an artistic activity which, however, is not primarily brought to perfection by the fingers themselves but is fully developed as a result of joint practice under the guidance of reasoning; and just as the perception of the musician has acquired an activity that directly cognizes what is harmonious and inharmonious, not by mere natural endowment but developed in company with rational activity, so too the knowledgeable perception comes to participate in the knowledgeable experience which it naturally acquires from reason, and uses it for the unerring discrimination of its subjects.” (Translation modified from Bury’s Loeb).
Lovely reflection. (Not directly relevant, but one of my favorite connections is that JG Hamann (the romantic philosopher, who, among other things, may have translated into German the works of Hume that awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber) was a lutenist who learned from a student of my favorite composer, Sylvius Leopold Weiss.)
Philosophical discussions of musical skill predate Ibn Sina.
Sextus Empiricus, AM 7.145
"But Speusippus [nephew of Plato] declared that since some things are perceptible and some things are intelligible, the criterion of the intelligible is knowledgeable rationality (epistêmonikos logos), but of perceptible things the criterion is knowledgeable perception (epistêmonikê aisthêsis). He posited that perception is knowledgeable when it partakes in truth according to reason. For, just as the fingers of the player of the oboe or the lyre have acquired an artistic activity which, however, is not primarily brought to perfection by the fingers themselves but is fully developed as a result of joint practice under the guidance of reasoning; and just as the perception of the musician has acquired an activity that directly cognizes what is harmonious and inharmonious, not by mere natural endowment but developed in company with rational activity, so too the knowledgeable perception comes to participate in the knowledgeable experience which it naturally acquires from reason, and uses it for the unerring discrimination of its subjects.” (Translation modified from Bury’s Loeb).
Lovely reflection. (Not directly relevant, but one of my favorite connections is that JG Hamann (the romantic philosopher, who, among other things, may have translated into German the works of Hume that awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber) was a lutenist who learned from a student of my favorite composer, Sylvius Leopold Weiss.)