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but that is your subjective definition of an act
No, there's nothing intellectual about it, it's a simple perception of a simple act. Obviously, all perception has a subjective component, but I'm not defining anything, I'm simply perceiving the motion. And what arises directly from the perception, and NOT from a theory
about the perception, is that it is all of one piece. The idea that it can be taken apart and reconstituted merely stems from a theory or idea we conceive after we move away from the perception. Goethe, the scientist of quality if there ever was one, used to stay, "Stay with the phenomena" for this very reason.
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Stillness and motion are polemics but at some level they are both motion.
Yes, in a universe of motion, the only kind of stillness that can exist is a simulated one.
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Musical scales are harmonic units, and if you removed the EFG from a an octave you've define a new set of notes but definitely do not have a contextual octave.
That's the nut of it, right there. You do define a new set of notes, and those notes in isolation are not the octave. Similarly, the whole motion of your hand from A to B is the context, it
is the "harmonic unit", the "octave". When we divide that whole motion, that context is lost in that it's not to be found in the isolated divisions. This is not the same thing as saying that it disappears from experience altogether.
In a universe of motion, the motion of that universe and its contents are the same thing, much like the octave and
its contents are the same thing. You can't take the contents out of a universe of motion or you have no universe, or whatever it is you have, it not a universe of motion. Similarly, you can't take out the EFG from the octave for the same reasons.
We've covered a lot of ground in a short time, and brought in issues that, though valid and useful, and certainly applicable, have muddied the water somewhat. Let me restate my original concern. Is it legitimate to treat, or transpose motion as length, to "spatialize" it? When we move our attention from the unity of a melody to the notes it contains, we are no longer with the melody. We've stepped away from it. The melody can only be "understood" if we stay in its whole motion from "start to finish".
When we treat motion as length we are saying that it consists in nothing but the positions we identify. This isn't true of a melody or a unit of motion. The positions aren't part of the unit, but only the space, real or imagined, we overlay it onto. Now, it may be that when Larson says half a unit doesn't exist, but that we can identify it for purposes of measurement, we can let it go at that. Close enough for government work. But I think we need to realize at all times that it does not represent reality.
One last comment on this go around. When you say "the seat of this is mostly cultural", the point is not lost on me, but I think it can go too far in the other direction and suffer from the same defect. One culture may indeed see three colors and another a thousand, but the fact that
both perceive color at all is lost. I bring this up to point out that certain considerations do cross cultural "boundaries". Obviously, again, the cultural aspects are important, and it would be silly to try to divorce them completely, but how the fact of lifting my arm, or moving my hand across my desk and seeing it a whole thing is tied to my socialization, escapes me. We are moving away from the phenomenon and what arises from our direct perception of it, and into theories about the origins of
why I see it that way. To turn the phrase in another direction, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.