Part the First or I. Prelude to the Effect: Sonic Branding

The Hallelujah Effect studies the ‘effect’ of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah beyond its effect on radio or television as this is simultaneously echoed on YouTube, which last is itself a media version of the eternal return of the same in potentia (i.e., depending [and of course this is meant as a joke...] on the number +1 of relevant hits), an echoing effect related to the resonant frequency that is a pop music ‘hit’ or a viral video and so on. 

Some commentators echoing the scholarly analysis of mimesis speak of “memes” but the term (like the remix recoil of what the electronic remix artist Kode9 aka Steve Goodmancalls “memetic” music) emphasizes not only repetition but also evanescence, poised to suppose such things no more than passing fads, like a mental hula hoop, here today, gone tomorrow. Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus, Game of Thrones, any latest thing.

I have argued that the ‘effect’ of Cohen’s song in and through its many covers works the way advertising works, that is by way of what psychologists (and marketing consultants) call ‘priming’ and marketers name ‘branding,’ whereby the covert is the key. Priming or branding works because we do not notice it.

Hence our thoughts are  ‘entrained’, (more rather than less literally speaking), whereby, as the Yale cognitive scientist, the psychologist John Bargh argues (in a convergent argument with Nietzsche’s critique of causality), we suppose per contra that our will is free.

See John Bargh & Brian D. Earp’s “The Will is Caused, Not Free.” Nietzsche argues a similar point contra free will, but to the extent that Nietzsche’s argument is offered in the epistemological context of his critique of causality, the parallel is obviously limited.

See on Nietzsche and causality as such my discussion of Nietzsche’s critique of causality in "Nietzsche's 'Gay Science'" as well as my discussion of Nietzsche’s critique of causality in "Nietzsche's 'Gay Science'" and a recent essay (here) on Nietzsches critical philosophy of science as well as forthcoming essay "Nietzsche and Hume" based on a talk I gave at the University of Vienna as part of the 2012-2012 series in philosophy of science.  

I recommend as well, for an analytic-friendly discussion, Justin Remhof’s "Naturalism, Causality, and Constructivism in Nietzsche's Conception of Science."

Der Dogmatiker