Platonism vs. Nominalism in Contemporary Musical Ontology

Kania, Andrew

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199691494.003.0010

Cited by 33 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…Yet I should (briefly) pause to explain why I lean towards the prefix model. 18 Kania (2012a) leans the other way: 'What would in the past have been assertions about musical works, for instance, ought really, according to the fictionalist, to be put forward as make-believe' (Kania 2012a, 215). This is one place where I depart from his view.…”

Section: Fictional Statements Internal To the Musical Work Fictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Kania (2008) does not endorse fictionalism either, but explores it as a viable option. Kania (2012a) revisits the idea more explicitly, arguing that fictionalism is preferable to Platonism about musical works, although he still falls short of a full endorsement. Goehr could be interpreted as a fictionalist: she thinks of musical works has having 'projected' or 'fictional' existence (Goehr 2007, 106).…”

Section: Strawson Characterised the Distinction As Follows: 'Descriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fictionalism about musical works

Killin

2018

Can. J. of Philosophy

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The debate concerning the ontological status of musical works is perhaps the most animated debate in contemporary analytic philosophy of music. In my view, progress requires a piecemeal approach. So in this article I hone in on one particular musical work concept – that of the classical Western art musical work; that is, the work concept that regulates classical art-musical practice. I defend a fictionalist analysis – a strategy recently suggested by Andrew Kania as potentially fruitful – and I develop a version of such an analysis in line with a broad commitment to philosophical naturalism.

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Section: Fictional Statements Internal To the Musical Work Fictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Strawson Characterised the Distinction As Follows: 'Descriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fictionalism about musical works

Killin

2018

Can. J. of Philosophy

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“…Today, almost entering the third decade of the twenty-first century, musical practices are demolishing the ontological establishment even more than in the late 1980s; however, the most recent analytic philosophy tries to make things and musical "works" more transparent, grasping or explaining them better, mapping their position in an overall transcendentally defined territory. Some of the contemporary defenders of music ontologies, such as Andrew Kania (2012) or Julian Dodd (2007), for example, reaffirm the authority of the work, "improving" propositional judgements, but not challenging concepts or practices. Music ontology seems to be caught within dominant conservative views on music, and even conservative views on the world beyond music.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Logic of Experimentation: Rethinking Music Performance Through Artistic Research

Assis¹

2018

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The performance of Western notated art music is usually associated with the notions of execution, recitation, transmission, reproduction, or interpretation, relying on the existence of a commonly accepted, sedimented musical text, and on a set of stabilised conventions that regulate the communication between composer, performer, and audience. From this perspective, performance is the moment for the concrete sonic representation of an already known sound structure. This book challenges this view, proposing a different perspective, understanding performance first as a space of problematisation, not of representation. It proposes a critical stance on the diversity of the available musical sources and materials, stressing their epistemic complexity and their potential for productive reconfigurations, suggesting new modes of creatively operating with them. Moving beyond the work concept, the book presents a new image of musical works, based upon the notions of strata, assemblage, and diagram, and proposing innovative practice-based methodologies that integrate archival and musicological research into the creative process leading to a performance. This view is not primarily intended as a rejection of interpretation, but as a movement towards a space of problematisation that is situated beyond interpretation, and that might include interpretation as one component of its fabric. Thus, my effort is to push interpretation into post-interpretation. It is, however, important to make clear that post here is to be understood neither as an epochal category, nor simply as chronologically following interpretation, but rather as a rupture and a beyond that continue to entertain relationships with interpretation. It involves subjecting the traditional relationship between music and interpretation to a critical reconsideration. This critical deconstruction of interpretation creates a productive tension with representational models, which resist change, and it is a proposal for critical renderings infused by research and inventiveness. Musical practice becomes primarily a critical act, allowing performances to be critical studies of the works performed, significantly in, by, and through the means of performance itself. In this sense, performance gains a supplementary dimension, and can be thought of as an independent form of art: independent of works of music, of supposedly uncorrupted traditions, and of idealised reconstructions of past practices and instruments. Consequently, this view also argues for a new kind of performer, emancipated from authoritative texts and traditions, and open to 21 Experimentation versus Interpretation gained visibility within the musicological subfields of performance science and performance studies, at least since the 1990s. In his essay "From Experimental Music to Musical Experiment," Frank X. Mauceri (1997, 193), distinguishing between the use of the word experiment as a historical or stylistic category and its use in science, states: "Experiment is a technique by which evidence is gathered in suppor...

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“…See alsoSteiner (1973),Callard (2007),Liggins (2010),Cresswell (2010), and Brown (2012) for discussion. 5 SeeThomasson (1999),Caplan and Matheson (2004),Dodd (2007Dodd ( , 2012,Kania (2012),Rossberg (2012),and Brock, Maslen and Ngai (2013) for discussion of this motivation.…”

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confidence: 99%

Relativity and the Causal Efficacy of Abstract Objects

Juvshik¹

2020

American Philosophical Quarterly

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objects are standardly taken to be causally inert, however principled arguments for this claim are rarely given. As a result, a number of recent authors have claimed that abstract objects are causally efficacious. These authors take abstracta to be temporally located in order to enter into causal relations but lack a spatial location. In this paper, I argue that such a position is untenable by showing first that causation requires its relata to have a temporal location, but second, that if an entity is temporally located then it is spatiotemporally located since this follows from the theory of Relativity. Since abstract objects lack a spatiotemporal location, then if something is causally efficacious, it is not abstract. being abstract while accepting that, at least for fictional characters, they are created and exist at particular times. However, she elsewhere (1999, pp. 126) appears to characterize abstract entities as lacking a spatiotemporal location and being causally inert. 7 The argument from Relativity is recognized as a problem by Brock, Maslen, and Ngai (2013, pp. 81) but they leave it undeveloped; this paper rectifies that. 8 See Paul (2000) for a defense of property-causation and Whittle (2016) for a defense of objectcausation. Mellor (2004) defends facts as the primary causal relata, but takes facts to be spatiotemporally located, which is compatible with my argument. Alternatively, many people take facts to be abstract entities, in which case all causation would be between abstracta, which is intuitively implausible. 9 I take the related notion of causal powers to be more or less interchangeable with causal efficacy or being a cause. See Whittle (2016) and Buckareff (2017) for discussion. 10 See Burgess and Rosen (1997, pp. 16-25) for further discussion of Lewis' ways, and see Cowling (2017, ch. 2) for a recent discussion of various other ways one could make the distinction. 11 See Lewis (1986, pp. 83ff.) for discussion.

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Platonism vs. Nominalism in Contemporary Musical Ontology

Cited by 33 publications

References 16 publications

Fictionalism about musical works

Fictionalism about musical works

Logic of Experimentation: Rethinking Music Performance Through Artistic Research

Relativity and the Causal Efficacy of Abstract Objects

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