Question about Psychoacoustics : purpose of Psychoacoustics

[TuneInSoul]

Since English is not my first language, I hope you can understand.

I saw a bird walking on the ground, and it inspired me.
If the gravity increases and the bird can not fly with its wings, then we may get a conclusion that wings are something that protect themselves from being damaged by other creatures.

So I want to ask : is it possible that we got a wrong conclusion like the example above about Psychoacoustics? And why do we have Psychoacousitcs?

 

[Blumlein 88]

Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of how humans perceive and react to various sounds. Including both physical and psychological responses to sounds.

So we have it because we wanted to know how hearing and sound and humans interact.

In your example if something changes then we might be unable to see its function basically because it does not function. Wings let the bird fly, but with gravity changes it can't fly. So if we were unaware of that change we might try to determine the function of wings, and have some wrong ideas.
So can we make mistakes in psychoacoustics? It is possible, but there are many aspects of cross-checking to try and prevent such mistaken conclusions.

You may have a situation like the Place theory, and the Temporal theory of how we hear pitch. Place theory describes how we hear pitch based upon the place on the basilar membrane that responds to a frequency. Temporal theory says we hear pitch based upon the timing and rate of firings along the auditory nerve. There some similarities in the predictions made and some differences. It isn't clear which is right or if something else is involved. There isn't much disagreement in what pitch is or that we hear it. The difference is these theories explaining how it is heard. And a synthesis of them seems most useful.

Does this make any sense or am I not helping things or did I misunderstand?

 

[Kal Rubinson]

And a synthesis of them seems most useful.

It seems that both are operational but each has greater significance in a different portion of the audible spectrum (with some overlap).

 

[Blumlein 88]

It seems that both are operational but each has greater significance in a different portion of the audible spectrum (with some overlap).

Yes, that would be more accurate than what I wrote about them.

 

[amirm]

If the gravity increases and the bird can not fly with its wings, then we may get a conclusion that wings are something that protect themselves from being damaged by other creatures.

What if you took a bird that can fly and kept trimming its wings until it can't. Then you learn something about the physics of birds and flying. Such is the case with psychoacoustics.

 

[JJB70]

Something to keep in mind is that science is not just about empiricism and what we can observe. However I am not sure where the thread will go if we start debating empiricism vs. rationalism etc.

 

[TuneInSoul]

thank you

 

[TuneInSoul]

Chicken can not fly...I forgot

 

[reza]

Something to keep in mind is that science is not just about empiricism and what we can observe. However I am not sure where the thread will go if we start debating empiricism vs. rationalism etc.

This is incorrect. Science is solely about empiricism. You can take issue with that an argue in favor of other schools of epistemology, and that's fine. But that's no longer science.

 

[andreasmaaan]

I would say it's very possible that science gives us wrong conclusions. After all, every scientific theory ever proposed - other than those that are currently accepted - has turned out to be "wrong". The question is not whether science gives us the "right" answers, but whether it gives us the best answers

 

[reza]

I would say it's very possible that science gives us wrong conclusions.

You're not wrong, the core property of a scientific hypothesis is falsifiability. In principle every scientific theory could one day be proven wrong; if it couldn't, it wouldn't be science. But the probability of that happening is extremely low. Remember the whole ordeal with the five sigma in the discovery of the Higgs boson?

After all, every scientific theory ever proposed - other than those that are currently accepted - has turned out to be "wrong"

Newer theories do not necessarily prove the older ones wrong. Most often they just improve upon them. Darwin's natural selection improved upon other evolutionary theories before him, e.g. Lamarck, keeping most of it but adding a few bits here and there. Einstein's relativistic mechanics did the same thing with Newton's classical mechanics. In fact, I'm failing to think of an example where an entire theory was proven wrong. Vitalism and aether don't count since they never made it from a hypothesis to a theory in the first place.

 

[svart-hvitt]

Everything matters! Said the hifi salesman.

No it doesn’t! Said the psychoacoustician.

Psychoacoustics is - among other things - a means to help us to focus on the essentials instead of the trifle.

The most obvious example: A cable will in theory and practice influence audio signals, but psychoacoustics will tell us not to worry about cables.

(NB! This is not an attempt to start a cable debate...).

 

[andreasmaaan]

Newer theories do not necessarily prove the older ones wrong. Most often they just improve upon them. Darwin's natural selection improved upon other evolutionary theories before him, e.g. Lamarck, keeping most of it but adding a few bits here and there. Einstein's relativistic mechanics did the same thing with Newton's classical mechanics. In fact, I'm failing to think of an example where an entire theory was proven wrong. Vitalism and aether don't count since they never made it from a hypothesis to a theory in the first place.

Yes I agree - I didn't mean to imply that all the old theories have been shown to be completely wrong in every respect.

My point was, firstly, that it would be unreasonable to imagine that the current theories are not wrong (in at least some respects) and, secondly, that science can never tell us that a theory is "right", but only that it is the best current explanation of the observed data (which themselves are "theory-laden").

But despite all that, I strongly believe that science does give us the best answers to empirical questions.

 

[Cosmik]

I view it like this:

Real world engineering uses hardware, and over the years it has increasingly begun to use software. Software combined with hardware is greater than the sum of its parts.

Psychoacoustics is the software element of hearing; the stuff that happens in the brain and isn't directly observable if you just examine the hardware. We can speculate and make logical deductions about its purpose and how it does it, and we can make crude observations of what it does. But we can never examine 'the code' directly. And as some of it is tied up in consciousness - the thing that science still has no clue about - some of it must remain mysterious.