Sounds are broad events

The debate over the metaphysics of sounds is about the nature of what we immediately auditorily perceive. There are good reasons to identify a sound with some kind of event. But what kind of event? I articulate and defend the broad event view of sounds, on which a sound is identified with a broad event that produces and shapes an acoustic wave. I show that other views that identify a sound with some kind of event face serious problems. In particular, Casati and Dokic’s (La philosophie du son, Editions Jacqueline Chambon, 1994) monadic event view fails to capture the full range of sounds, while O’Callaghan’s (Sounds: a philosophical theory, Oxford University Press, 2007; in: Nudds, O’Callaghan (eds) Sounds and perception: new philosophical essays, Oxford University Press, 2009; Oxford Stud Metaphys 5:247–270, 2010) relational event view identifies sounds with too narrow of an event, leading to problems capturing important differences between sounds and putting the perceiver at an unnecessary remove from the kind of broad events she typically cares about. The broad event view avoids these pitfalls.