Philosophical Music

Well, where to start? I think Philosophofee by Ima Robot gives a fairly useful introduction to the subject. From there, you can consider the deep philosophical contribution of They Might Be Giants. In particular, the Sun Song is a way of understanding Plato's famous Sun Allegory in Republic. Questions of knowledge and justification are posed by the geniuses of Mustard Plug, whose Mr. Smiley makes one wonder just how much we can ever know about anyone. Then you might wonder about the metaphysics of possible worlds, prompted by Another Girl, Another Planet from The Only Ones. Finally, the deep thoughts of George W Bush come to mind, in the epic my name is r/x

Music makes you smarter!

You've probably heard the stories about how music is supposed to improve one's cognitive abilities. Apparently, the thought is that if you expose infants to the sounds of Mozart or Bach, their chances of becoming sophisticated college kids at NCSU go way, way up. There's even supposed to be some serious empirical evidence from psychology that supports this view. Probably BS, but there you hae it. Perhaps that says more about the quality of psychological research data than it does about the intellectual benefits of music. Anyway, I figured I'd take the opportunity to enlighten the masses and use this page to post some music for you to study by.