I think analyzing the “Signal” is the key. It’s an output, and so it is not causally upstream of anything else, but it is evidently not necessary to play the game, so it stands in need of an explanation. And its modality (analog waveforms) is clearly unlike anything else in the machine. The narrator would be able to deduce the concept of “music” by noticing that the frequencies relate to each other by factors of 2^(1/12) that often seem to approximate small whole-number ratios like 3:2 and 5:4. From this it can conclude that the intended users of the machine have some sensory modality that directly perceives waves and does some kind of Fourier analysis of their frequencies, and which is likely distinct from the modality by which the “screen” is perceived.
I don’t know where this gets you exactly, since periodic waveforms can have any number of physical explanations, but it seems a lot closer to the physical world than anything else here.
I think analyzing the “Signal” is the key. It’s an output, and so it is not causally upstream of anything else, but it is evidently not necessary to play the game, so it stands in need of an explanation. And its modality (analog waveforms) is clearly unlike anything else in the machine. The narrator would be able to deduce the concept of “music” by noticing that the frequencies relate to each other by factors of 2^(1/12) that often seem to approximate small whole-number ratios like 3:2 and 5:4. From this it can conclude that the intended users of the machine have some sensory modality that directly perceives waves and does some kind of Fourier analysis of their frequencies, and which is likely distinct from the modality by which the “screen” is perceived.
I don’t know where this gets you exactly, since periodic waveforms can have any number of physical explanations, but it seems a lot closer to the physical world than anything else here.