Audibilia

ABSTRACT The contemporary debate about the ontology of sounds appears stuck. Two main contestants—the medial view and the located event view—each have a number of arguments on their side, while each needs to either accommodate or downplay the arguments speaking for the competing approach. In this paper, I want to argue that the two views are in fact not at odds with each other, but may, with some amendments, be combined in a two‐step model of sound perception inspired by Thomas Reid's theory of vision: Reid argues that we perceive bodies in virtue of perceiving visibles, two‐dimensional occupants of the visual field, best understood as relational properties. My suggestion is that we perceive sounds, understood as located events in virtue of perceiving audibles which have much in common with sounds as understood by medial theorists.