The Idea of Exo-brain

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of the exo-brain, an extended cognitive system that processes non-language sounds and their cultural context, shaping our emotional and interpretive responses to music.

Contribution

It proposes the idea of the exo-brain as an external cognitive apparatus that mediates understanding and affective reactions to non-language sounds in music.

Findings

Non-language sounds influence emotional reactions through cultural context.

The cognitive process involves external, extended sense-making mechanisms.

A new model of cognition includes an external 'exo-brain' for interpreting sounds.

Abstract

In this paper I examine the process of getting affected by and the process of making sense of non-language sounds and propose the idea of the contextual cognitive apparatus or exo-brain. We are affected by a singing voice even when we do not fully understand the sounds produced by it. When the listener starts hearing words in the sung song and/or starts interpreting the heard words he recreates the sense and meaning of the song based on a context which either preexists in a culture or gets formed due to his extended engagement with a nebulous auditory stimulus that is perceived as meaningful. This is what I call the work of the creative ear. The affective power of the song comes from an affective reaction between the singing voice, especially the sung non-language sounds, and the linguistic and cultural contexts of the singer and the listener and out this affective reaction something emerges which constitutes the meaning, sensible or affective, of the non-language sound. I show how the cognitive contexts of the production and the reception of the non-language sounds, and the song, play a central role in our apprehension of the sounds and propose the existence of an extra-bodily sense making organ of our cognitive system, the extension of our brain and sense organs, which I call contextual cognitive apparatus or exo-brain.