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Music, art, and metaphysics: essays in philosophical aesthetics

Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press (1990)

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  1. Musical works are mind-independent artifacts.Elzė Sigutė Mikalonytė - 2023 - Synthese 203 (1):1-28.
    Realism about musical works is often tied to some type of Platonism. Nominalism, which posits that musical works exist and that they are concrete objects, goes with ontological realism much less often than Platonism: there is a long tradition which holds human-created objects (artifacts) to be mind-dependent. Musical Platonism leads to the well-known paradox of the impossibility of creating abstract objects, and so it has been suggested that only some form of nominalism becoming dominant in the ontology of art could (...)
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  • Analysis and Classification of Music-Induced States of Sadness.Oliver Herdson, Tuomas Eerola & Amir-Homayoun Javadi - 2023 - Emotion Review 15 (2):99-117.
    The enjoyment and pleasure derived from sad music has sparked fascination among researchers due to its seemingly paradoxical nature in producing positive affect. Research is yet to develop a comprehensive understanding of this “paradox.” Contradictory findings have resulted in a great variability within the literature, meaning results and interpretations can be difficult to derive. Consequently, this review collated the current literature, seeking to utilize the variability in the findings to propose a model of differential sad states, providing a means for (...)
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  • Intuitions in the Ontology of Musical Works.Elzė Sigutė Mikalonytė - 2022 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (2):455-474.
    An impressive variety of theories of ontology of musical works has been offered in the last fifty years. Recently, the ontologists have been paying more attention to methodological issues, in particular, the problem of determining criteria of a good theory. Although different methodological approaches involve different views on the importance and exact role of intuitiveness of a theory, most philosophers writing on the ontology of music agree that intuitiveness and compliance with musical practice play an important part when judging theories. (...)
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  • Stand‐Up Comedy, Authenticity, and Assertion.Jesse Rappaport & Jake Quilty-Dunn - 2020 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 78 (4):477-490.
    Stand‐up comedy is often viewed in two contrary ways. In one view, comedians are hailed as providing genuine social insight and telling truths. In the other, comedians are seen as merely trying to entertain and not to be taken seriously. This tension raises a foundational question for the aesthetics of stand‐up: Do stand‐up comedians perform genuine assertions in their performances? This article considers this question in the light of several theories of assertion. We conclude that comedians on stage do not (...)
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  • Musical Works as Assemblages.Paulo de Assis - 2019 - la Deleuziana 10.
    This article sketches a new image of musical works, situated beyond the «work concept», critically rethinking existing music ontologies, and grounded on Gilles Deleuze’s central ontological commitments. After situating the problem, the paper discusses current issues in music ontology, explores specific Deleuzian and Deleuzo-Guattarian ontological concepts, and argues for a new image of musical works, which are more aptly described as assemblages, as highly complex, historically constructed multiplicities defined by virtual structures, intensive processes, and actual things.
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  • Emotions in the Listener: A Criterion of Artistic Relevance.Matteo Ravasio - 2017 - American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal 9 (1).
    Philosophers of music and psychologists have examined the various ways in which music is capable of arousing emotions in a listener. Among philosophers, opinions diverge as to the different types of music-induced emotions and as to their relevance to music listening. A somewhat neglected question concerns the possibility of developing a general criterion for the artistic relevance of music-induced emotions. In this paper, I will try to formulate such a criterion. In whatever way music may induce emotions and regardless of (...)
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  • Der musikalische Platonismus und das Problem des Sampling.Nicola Lüthi - 2012 - Swiss Philosophical Preprints.
    Kann Peter Kivys Theorie eines musikalischen Platonismus auch auf den Song "Rockstar" des deutschen Rappers Cro befriedigend, das heisst ohne Änderungen an der Theorie vornehmen zu müssen, angewendet werden, oder muss der musikal- historische Kontext mitberücksichtigt werden?
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  • Abstract Objects, Causal Efficacy, and Causal Exclusion.Tim Juvshik - 2018 - Erkenntnis 83 (4):805-827.
    objects are standardly taken to be causally inert, but this claim is rarely explicitly argued for. In the context of his platonism about musical works, in order for musical works to be audible, Julian Dodd argues that abstracta are causally efficacious in virtue of their concrete tokens participating in events. I attempt to provide a principled argument for the causal inertness of abstracta by first rejecting Dodd’s arguments from events, and then extending and generalizing the causal exclusion argument to the (...)
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  • Ink, Art and Expression: Philosophical Questions about Tattoos.E. M. Dadlez - 2015 - Philosophy Compass 10 (11):739-753.
    This essay offers an overview of the reasons why tattoos are philosophically interesting. Considered here will be a partial survey of potential areas of philosophical interest with respect to tattoos, fortified by a little historical context. Claims about the ethical significance of tattoos and about the significance of tattoos for self-expression and as expressions of identity will be canvassed in the first two sections, as will questions about what they express or signify, how they might do so, and whose expression (...)
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  • Musical pluralism and the science of music.Adrian Currie & Anton Killin - 2016 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (1):9-30.
    The scientific investigation of music requires contributions from a diverse array of disciplines. Given the diverse methodologies, interests and research targets of the disciplines involved, we argue that there is a plurality of legitimate research questions about music, necessitating a focus on integration. In light of this we recommend a pluralistic conception of music—that there is no unitary definition divorced from some discipline, research question or context. This has important implications for how the scientific study of music ought to proceed: (...)
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  • Minimal authorship (of sorts).Christy Mag Uidhir - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 154 (3):373 - 387.
    I propose a minimal account of authorship that specifies the fundamental nature of the author-relation and its minimal domain composition in terms of a three-place causal-intentional relation holding between agents and sort-relative works. I contrast my account with the minimal account tacitly held by most authorship theories, which is a two-place relation holding between agents and works simpliciter. I claim that only my view can ground productive and informative principled distincitons between collective production and collective authorship.
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  • The ontology of musical works: A philosophical pseudo-problem.James O. Young - 2011 - Frontiers of Philosophy in China 6 (2):284-297.
    A bewildering array of accounts of the ontology of musical works is available. Philosophers have held that works of music are sets of performances, abstract, eternal sound-event types, initiated types, compositional action types, compositional action tokens, ideas in a composer’s mind and continuants that perdure. This paper maintains that questions in the ontology of music are, in Rudolf Carnap’s sense of the term, pseudo-problems. That is, there is no alethic basis for choosing between rival musical ontologies. While we have no (...)
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  • Failed-Art and Failed Art-Theory.Christy Mag Uidhir - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (3):381-400.
    An object being non-art appears only trivially informative. Some non-art objects, however, could be saliently 'almost' art, and therefore objects for which being non-art is non-trivially informative. I call these kinds of non-art objects 'failed-art' objects—non-art objects aetiologically similar to art-objects, diverging only in virtue of some relevant failure. I take failed-art to be the right sort of thing, to result from the right sort of action, and to have the right sort of history required to be art, but to (...)
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  • Aesthetics and the Problem of Evil.Charles Nussbaum - 2003 - Metaphilosophy 34 (3):250-283.
    Abstract:Much of Western speculative metaphysics has subscribed to what has been called “explanatory rationalism,” which holds that there is a reason for everything that is and for the way everything is. Theodicies, or metaphysical attempts to solve the problem of evil, have relied on a special application of this principle of explanatory rationalism, namely, the principle of plenitude, which holds that the evil in the world is a necessary ingredient in the world's overall perfection or degree of reality. This essay (...)
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  • Works and performances in the performing arts.David Davies - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (5):744-755.
    The primary purpose of the performing arts is to prepare and present 'artistic performances', performances that either are themselves the appreciative focuses of works of art or are instances of other things that are works of art. In the latter case, we have performances of what may be termed 'performed works', as is generally taken to be so with performances of classical music and traditional theatrical performances. In the former case, we have what may be termed 'performance-works', as, for example, (...)
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  • Musical recordings.Andrew Kania - 2009 - Philosophy Compass 4 (1):22-38.
    In this article, I first consider the metaphysics of musical recordings: their variety, repeatability, and transparency. I then turn to evaluative or aesthetic issues, such as the relative virtues of recordings and live performances, in light of the metaphysical discussion.
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  • The modality principle and work-relativity of modality.Danilo Šuster - 2005 - Acta Analytica 20 (4):41-52.
    Davies argues that the ontology of artworks as performances offers a principled way of explaining work-relativity of modality. Object oriented contextualist ontologies of art (Levinson) cannot adequately address the problem of work-relativity of modal properties because they understand looseness in what counts as the same context as a view that slight differences in the work-constitutive features of provenance are work-relative. I argue that it is more in the spirit of contextualism to understand looseness as context-dependent. This points to the general (...)
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  • Contextualism, art, and rigidity: Levinson, Currie and Davies. [REVIEW]Božidar Kante - 2005 - Acta Analytica 20 (4):53-63.
    The topic of this paper is the role played by context in art. In this regard I examine three theories linked to the names of J. Levinson, G. Currie and D. Davies. Levinson’s arguments undermine the structural theory. He finds it objectionable because it makes the individuation of artworks independent of their histories. Secondly, such a consequence is unacceptable because it fails to recognise that works are created rather than discovered. But, if certain general features of provenance are always work-constitutive, (...)
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  • Musical works: Ontology and meta-ontology.Julian Dodd - 2008 - Philosophy Compass 3 (6):1113-1134.
    The ontological nature of works of music has been a particularly lively area of philosophical debate during the past few years. This paper serves to introduce the reader to some of the most fertile and interesting issues. Starting by distinguishing three questions – the categorial question, the individuation question, and the persistence question – the article goes on to focus on the first: the question of which ontological category musical works fall under. The paper ends by introducing, and briefly considering, (...)
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  • Methodology in aesthetics: the case of musical expressivity.Erkki Huovinen & Tobias Pontara - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 155 (1):45 - 64.
    A central method within analytic philosophy has been to construct thought experiments in order to subject philosophical theories to intuitive evaluation. According to a widely held view, philosophical intuitions provide an evidential basis for arguments against such theories, thus rendering the discussion rational. This method has been the predominant way to approach theories formulated as conditional or biconditional statements. In this paper, we examine selected theories of musical expressivity presented in such logical forms, analyzing the possibilities for constructing thought experiments (...)
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  • The philosophy of music.Andrew Kania - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    This is an overview of analytic philosophy of music. It is in five sections, as follows: 1. What Is Music? 2. Musical Ontology 3. Music and the Emotions 4. Understanding Music 5. Music and Value.
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  • The definition of art.Thomas Adajian - 2018 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The definition of art is controversial in contemporary philosophy. Whether art can be defined has also been a matter of controversy. The philosophical usefulness of a definition of art has also been debated. -/- Contemporary definitions can be classified with respect to the dimensions of art they emphasize. One distinctively modern, conventionalist, sort of definition focuses on art’s institutional features, emphasizing the way art changes over time, modern works that appear to break radically with all traditional art, the relational properties (...)
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  • Artworks as historical individuals.Guy Rohrbaugh - 2003 - European Journal of Philosophy 11 (2):177–205.
    In 1907, Alfred Stieglitz took what was to become one of his signature photographs, The Steerage. Stieglitz stood at the rear of the ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm II and photographed the decks, first-class passengers above and steerage passengers below, carefully exposing the film to their reflected light. Later, in the darkroom, Stieglitz developed this film and made a number of prints from the resulting negative. The photograph is a familiar one, an enduring piece of social commentary, but what exactly is (...)
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  • Music as narrative and music as drama.Jerrold Levinson - 2004 - Mind and Language 19 (4):428–441.
    In this paper I address the issue of narrativity in music. The central question is the extent to which pure instrumental music in the classical tradition can or should be understood as narrative, that is, as narrating a story of some kind. I am interested in the varying potential and aptness for narrative construal of different sorts of instrumental music, and in what the content of such narratives might plausibly be thought to be. But ultimately I explore, at greater length, (...)
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  • Derek Matravers.Derek Matravers & Jerrold Levinson - 2005 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 79 (1):191–210.
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  • A note on the aesthetics of mirror reversal.Rafael Clercq - 2007 - Philosophical Studies 132 (3):553 - 563.
    According to Roy Sorensen [Philosophical Studies 100 (2000) 175–191] an object cannot differ aesthetically from its mirror image. On his view, mirror-reversing an object – changing its left/right orientation – cannot bring about any aesthetic change. However, in arguing for this thesis Sorensen assumes that aesthetic properties supervene on intrinsic properties alone. This is a highly controversial assumption and nothing is offered in its support. Moreover, a plausible weakening of the assumption does not improve the argument. Finally, Sorensen’s second argument (...)
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  • Creativity.Michael Wreen - 2015 - Philosophia 43 (3):891-913.
    This paper is an analysis of the concept of creativity. Tradition is followed in distinguishing three related but increasing complex concepts. The first concerns mere making or bringing into existence. It is not examined at length. The second builds on the first but includes the notion of novelty. The third incorporates the second but adds the notion of value. The latter two concepts of creativity are explored in great detail.
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  • Art Concept Pluralism.Christy Mag Uidhir & P. D. Magnus - 2011 - Metaphilosophy 42 (1-2):83-97.
    Abstract: There is a long tradition of trying to analyze art either by providing a definition (essentialism) or by tracing its contours as an indefinable, open concept (anti-essentialism). Both art essentialists and art anti-essentialists share an implicit assumption of art concept monism. This article argues that this assumption is a mistake. Species concept pluralism—a well-explored position in philosophy of biology—provides a model for art concept pluralism. The article explores the conditions under which concept pluralism is appropriate, and argues that they (...)
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  • Vague Music.Roy Sorensen - 2011 - Philosophy 86 (2):231-248.
    Is listening to music like looking through a kaleidoscope? Formalists contend that music is meaningless. Most music theorists concede that this austere thesis is surprisingly close to the truth. Nevertheless, they refute formalism with a little band of diffusely referential phenomena, such as musical quotation, onomatopoeia, exemplification, and leitmotifs. These curiosities ought to be pressed into a new campaign against assumptions that vagueness can only arise in the semantically lush setting of language. Just as the discovery of extremophilic bacteria led (...)
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  • “Blurred Boundaries”? Rethinking the Concept of Craft and its Relation to Art and Design.Larry Shiner - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (4):230-244.
    Art world talk of “blurred boundaries” and “hybrids” between art and craft, suggests that the philosophy of art needs to rethink the concept of craft. This can best be done by adopting four strategies: first, distinguish between craft as a set of disciplines, and craft as a process and practice; second, keep in mind the differences among craft practices such as studio, trade, ethnic, amateur, and DIY; third, recognize that craft’s relationship with design is as important as its relationship to (...)
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  • Music and metaphysics.Saam Trivedi - 2008 - Metaphilosophy 39 (1):124–143.
    In this article, I assume that musical works are abstract types, and I raise and address a new question concerning musical ontology that may take the types view at least a step further: When do musical works cease to exist? I then propound my view about musical works as types, which is somewhat like the Aristotelian Realist position concerning universals. Next, I address some objections to that view. Finally, I provide some grounds for rejecting alternative views that see Western classical (...)
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  • Debates about the Ontology of Art: What are We Doing Here?Amie L. Thomasson - 2006 - Philosophy Compass 1 (3):245-255.
    Philosophy Compass, Volume 1. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
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  • Choreography Invisible: The Disappearing Work of Dance.Renee M. Conroy - forthcoming - British Journal of Aesthetics.
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  • (1 other version)Failed-Art and Failed Art-Theory.Christopher Mag Uidhir - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (3):381-400.
    An object being non-art appears only trivially informative. Some non-art objects, however, could be saliently ‘almost’ art, and therefore objects for which being non-art is non-trivially informative. I call these kinds of non-art objects ‘failed-art’ objects—non-art objects aetiologically similar to art-objects, diverging only in virtue of some relevant failure. I take failed-art to be the right sort of thing, to result from the right sort of action, and to have the right sort of history required to be art, but to (...)
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  • Aesthetics in Practice: Valuing the Natural World.Emily Brady - 2006 - Environmental Values 15 (3):277 - 291.
    Aesthetic value, often viewed as subjective and even trivial compared to other environmental values, is commonly given low priority in policy debates. In this paper I argue that the seriousness and importance of aesthetic value cannot be denied when we recognise the ways that aesthetic experience is already embedded in a range of human practices. The first area of human practice considered involves the complex relationship between aesthetic experience and the development of an ethical attitude towards the environment. I then (...)
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  • Emotions in Music: Hanslick and His False Follower.Krzysztof Guczalski - 2022 - British Journal of Aesthetics 62 (3):325-338.
    Nick Zangwill (2004, 2007) appears to be acquiring the status of repudiator-in-chief of emotion in music. He is invoked in this role by such authors as Kraut (2007, p. 67), Bonds (2014, p. 5), Robinson (2014), Young (2014, pp. vii, 1, 3–4, 151), Davies (2017) and Kania (2017). His ‘manifesto’ paper (2004) was recently reprinted in Lamarque and Olsen (2018, pp. 574–582). This development is unfortunate, because Zangwill, for all his radical-sounding theses, actually argues against views that hardly anyone holds. (...)
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  • The pleasures of sad music: a systematic review.Matthew E. Sachs, Antonio Damasio & Assal Habibi - 2015 - Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9:146300.
    Sadness is generally seen as a negative emotion, a response to distressing and adverse situations. In an aesthetic context, however, sadness is often associated with some degree of pleasure, as suggested by the ubiquity and popularity, throughout history, of music, plays, films and paintings with a sad content. Here, we focus on the fact that music regarded as sad is often experienced as pleasurable. Compared to other art forms, music has an exceptional ability to evoke a wide-range of feelings and (...)
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  • Would this paper exist if I hadn’t written it?Samuel Lebens - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (11):3059-3080.
    This paper wants to know whether it would exist, or could exist, in worlds in which I didn't write it. Before we can answer this question, we first of all have to inquire as to what, exactly, this paper is. After exploring two forms of Platonism, and a theory that defines literary works in terms of events, I shall argue that the term ‘this paper’ is actually infected with ambiguity. Does this paper need me? It depends upon what you mean (...)
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  • The role of expectation in the constitution of subjective musical experience.Elisa Negretto - unknown
    The present study is a theoretical discussion concerning some of the important processes that characterize human perception, which is understood as a fundamental structure of consciousness. The aim is to acquire new insights for a better comprehension of the human experience in the world and the way individual subjects become familiar with their environment. To accomplish this task, the experience of listening to music is analysed due to the widespread acceptance of music as an important aspect of human life. With (...)
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  • Nothing New Under the Sun: Holism and the Pursuit of Excellence.Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza - 2014 - Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 8 (3):230-257.
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  • Naomi Cummings sonic self.Danuta Mirka - 2002 - Semiotica 2002 (142).
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