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Articles 1 - 30 of 106
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Home To Roost: Some Problems For The Nested-Types Theory Of Musical Works, Versions, And Authentic Performance, Andrew Kania
Home To Roost: Some Problems For The Nested-Types Theory Of Musical Works, Versions, And Authentic Performance, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
No abstract provided.
The Heart Of Classical Work-Performance, Andrew Kania
The Heart Of Classical Work-Performance, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
In this critical study of Julian Dodd’s Being True to Works of Music (2020), I argue that the three-tier normative profile of the work-performance tradition in classical music that Dodd defends should be rejected in favour of a two-tier version. I also argue that the theory of work-performance defended in the book fits much more naturally with a contextualist ontology of musical works than with the Platonist ontology Dodd defends in Works of Music (2007), despite his arguments to the contrary in the afterword of the new book. Finally, I argue that the reasons he gives for preferring a ‘tradition-based’ …
Space, Andrew Kania
Space, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
This chapter investigates a variety of ways in which music might be thought to be essentially spatial in relatively literal ways. It begins by considering whether certain spaces or spatial features are essential to musical works or performances. These include the space of a work’s composition, performance spaces for which a work is composed or within which it is performed, and the spatial disposition of performers (e.g., off-stage instruments). It then considers spaces “within” music, paying special attention to the notion of “pitch space”—the space in which we experience musical tones as higher or lower than one another and melodic …
Faith: A Critical Review--What Is Left At The End Of The Day, Lawrence Kimmel
Faith: A Critical Review--What Is Left At The End Of The Day, Lawrence Kimmel
Philosophy Faculty Research
In what follows I will try to set out some of my own rethinking -- fundamental things I believe and believe in – – enduring terms of engagement about the universe, life, death, faith -- in a concern to sort out what we have left at the end of the day.
The Moral Standing Of The Dead, Steven Luper
The Moral Standing Of The Dead, Steven Luper
Philosophy Faculty Research
In choosing to do certain things, we appear to presuppose that we can act in the interests the dead, and that we have a duty to do so. For example, some of us go to great lengths to carry out their final wishes. Given that the dead no longer exist, however, it seems that nothing can be good or bad for them: they lack prudential interests. In that case, it is hard to see how we could owe them anything. They seem to lack moral standing altogether. In this essay, I will rebut this line of thought. I will claim …
Music And Time, Andrew Kania
Music And Time, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
This chapter reviews some temporal features of music and the debates about the nature and value of musical experience that they have engendered. In the course of constructing a definition of music, Jerrold Levinson claims that "music as people conceive it seems as essentially an art of time as it is an art of sound". A more likely strategy for anyone convinced of the necessity of temporal organization for music would surely be to reject these candidates for musical status on the grounds that they fail to meet the condition. Philosophers of music have disagreed about what is minimally required …
The Ama On Euthanasia And Assisted Suicide, Steven Luper
The Ama On Euthanasia And Assisted Suicide, Steven Luper
Philosophy Faculty Research
The American Medical Association (AMA) opposes physician-assisted suicide (PAS) on the grounds that it “would ultimately cause more harm than good,” because it is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer,” and because it “would be difficult or impossible to control and would pose serious societal risks” (AMA 2016, Opinion 5.7). It condemns the practice of euthanasia as conducted by physicians (PE) for these reasons as well, and adds, by way of clarifying the serious risks at hand, that “euthanasia could readily be extended to incompetent patients and other vulnerable populations” (Opinion 5.8). In this essay I will attempt …
Nietzsche On Language And Our Pursuit Of Truth, Le Quyen Pham
Nietzsche On Language And Our Pursuit Of Truth, Le Quyen Pham
The Expositor: A Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities
No abstract provided.
Divine Practical Thought In Plotinus, Damian Caluori
Divine Practical Thought In Plotinus, Damian Caluori
Philosophy Faculty Research
Plotinus follows the Timaeus and the Platonist tradition before him in postulating the existence of a World Soul whose function it is to care for the sensible world as a whole. It is argued that, since the sensible world is providentially arranged, the World Soul’s care presupposes a sort of practical thinking that is as timeless as intellectual contemplation. To explain why this thinking is practical, the paper discusses Plotinus’ view on Aristotle’s distinction between praxis and poiêsis. To explain why it is timeless, it studies Plotinus’ view on Aristotle’s distinction between complete and incomplete actuality. The …
Persimals, Steven Luper
Persimals, Steven Luper
Philosophy Faculty Research
What sort of thing, fundamentally, are you and I? For convenience, I use the term persimal to refer to the kind of thing we are, whatever that kind turns out to be. Accordingly, the question is, what are persimals? One possible answer is that persimalhood consists in being a human animal, but many theorists, including Derek Parfit and Jeff McMahan, not to mention John Locke, reject this idea in favor of a radically different view, according to which persimalhood consists in having certain sorts of mental or psychological features. In this essay, I try to show that the animalist approach …
Rhetoric And Platonism In Fifth-Century Athens, Damian Caluori
Rhetoric And Platonism In Fifth-Century Athens, Damian Caluori
Philosophy Faculty Research
There are reasons to believe that relations between Platonism and rhetoric in Athens during the fifth century CE were rather close. Both were major pillars of pagan culture, or paideia, and thus essential elements in the defense of paganism against increasingly powerful and repressive Christian opponents. It is easy to imagine that, under these circumstances, paganism was closing ranks and that philosophers and orators united in their efforts to save traditional ways and values. Although there is no doubt some truth to this view, a closer look reveals that the relations between philosophy and rhetoric were rather more complicated. …
Exhausting Life, Steven Luper
Exhausting Life, Steven Luper
Philosophy Faculty Research
Can we render death harmless to us by perfecting life, as the ancient Epicureans and Stoics seemed to think? It might seem so, for after we perfect life—assuming we can—persisting would not make life any better. Dying earlier rather than later would shorten life, but a longer perfect life is no better than a shorter perfect life, so dying would take nothing of value from us. However, after sketching what perfecting life might entail, I will argue that it is not a desirable approach to invulnerability after all.
Adaptation, Steven Luper
Adaptation, Steven Luper
Philosophy Faculty Research
Some ways of dealing with a threatened evil will be self-defeating, in the sense that the response is no better for us, or even worse, than the evil it prevents. A way of adapting to death might be self-defeating in precisely the same way. Perhaps, however, we can adapt to death by suitably modifying our interests, and do so in a way that is not self-defeating. I will call this claim the adaptation thesis. Elsewhere, I have argued against it. In this chapter, I reinforce that conclusion.
Music, Andrew Kania
Music, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
It is unsurprising that there are chapters on literature, painting and music in this volume - if they're not arts, nothing is. It is almost as predictable that there are chapters devoted to topics such as depiction and metaphor. The issues raised by depiction and metaphor are central to the artistic use of pictures and language, yet these topics do not pertain exclusively to art (there are lots of pictures that are not artworks, such as maps, diagrams and holiday snaps; people use metaphors in all sorts of contexts). Should it be surprising that there is no such counterpart chapter …
Platonism Vs. Nominalism In Contemporary Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
Platonism Vs. Nominalism In Contemporary Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Ontological theories of musical works fall into two broad classes, according to whether or not they take musical works to be abstract objects of some sort. I shall use the terms 'Platonism' and 'nominalism' to refer to these two kinds of theory. In this chapter I first outline contemporary Platonism about musical works—the theory that musical works are abstract objects. I then consider reasons to be suspicious of such a view, motivating a consideration of nominalist theories of musical works. I argue for two conclusions: first, that there are no compelling reasons to be a nominalist about musical works in …
Retroactive Harms And Wrongs, Steven Luper
Retroactive Harms And Wrongs, Steven Luper
Philosophy Faculty Research
According to the immunity thesis, nothing that happens after we are dead harms or benefits us . It seems defensible on the following basis: 1. If harmed (benefitted) by something, we incur the harm (benefit) at some time. 2. So if harmed (benefitted) by a postmortem event, we incur the harm (benefit) while alive or at some other time. 3. But if we incur the harm (benefit) while alive, backwards causation occurs. 4. And if we incur the harm (benefit) at any other time, we incur it at a time when we do not exist. 5. Yet nothing incurs harm …
False Negatives, Steven Luper
False Negatives, Steven Luper
Philosophy Faculty Research
In Philosophical Explanations, Robert Nozick suggested that knowing that some proposition, p, is true is a matter of being “sensitive” to p’s truth-value. It requires that one’s belief state concerning p vary appropriately with the truth-value of p as the latter shifts in relevant possible worlds. Nozick fleshed out this sketchy view with a specific analysis of what sensitivity entails. Famously, he drew upon this analysis in order to explain how common-sense knowledge claims, such as my claim to know I have hands, are true, even though we do not know that skeptical hypotheses are false. His …
Combinatorial-State Automata And Models Of Computation, Curtis Brown
Combinatorial-State Automata And Models Of Computation, Curtis Brown
Philosophy Faculty Research
David Chalmers has defended an account of what it is for a physical system to implement a computation. The account appeals to the idea of a “combinatorial-state automaton” or CSA. It is not entirely clear whether Chalmers intends the CSA to be a full-blown computational model, or merely a convenient formalism into which instances of other models can be translated. I argue that the CSA is not a computational model in the usual sense because CSAs do not perspicuously represent algorithms, and because they are too powerful both in that they can perform any computation in a single step and …
In Defence Of Higher-Order Musical Ontology: A Reply To Lee B. Brown, Andrew Kania
In Defence Of Higher-Order Musical Ontology: A Reply To Lee B. Brown, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
In a recent article in this journal, Lee B. Brown criticizes one central kind of project in higher-order musical ontology—the project of offering an ontological theory of a particular musical tradition. I defend this kind of project by replying to Brown’s critique, arguing that musical practices are not untheorizably messy, and that a suitably subtle descriptivist ontology of a given practice can be valuable both theoretically and practically.
A Musical Photograph?, Richard Beaudoin, Andrew Kania
A Musical Photograph?, Richard Beaudoin, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
This article compares two objects: a photographic negative made by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1835 and the score of a solo piano work composed by Richard Beaudoin in 2009. Talbot’s negative has come to be known as Latticed Window (with the Camera Obscura), August 1835, and Beaudoin’s musical composition is called Étude d’un prélude VII—Latticed Window. As suggested by their titles, the composition owes a debt to the negative and thereby joins a long list of musical compositions indebted to particular visual images. However, the relationship is deeper, and by explicating their respective ontologies, we hope …
Concepts Of Pornography: Aesthetics, Feminism, And Methodology, Andrew Kania
Concepts Of Pornography: Aesthetics, Feminism, And Methodology, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
There are two broadly philosophical literatures on pornography. By far the largest is concerned with moral issues raised by pornography. This literature falls into two phases. The first phase comprises the debate between moral conservatives, who objected to pornography on the grounds of its explicit sexual nature, and liberals, who defended pornography on grounds of something like freedom of speech or expression. Though this debate is not stone cold, the liberals seem to have won it. However, it has been largely replaced by a different one between feminists who object to pornography on the basis that it contributes to the …
The Recovery Of Archaic Truth In Literature: Light And Darkness In The Perception Of Space In The Human Imagination, Lawrence Kimmel
The Recovery Of Archaic Truth In Literature: Light And Darkness In The Perception Of Space In The Human Imagination, Lawrence Kimmel
Philosophy Faculty Research
While the appeal of both inner and outer space of world and consciousness presents an inexhaustible source for the artist and writer, primitive memories remain in the archaic makeup of human beings that continue to haunt as well as enchant the human mind. The archaic mind is evident not only in the once-upon-a-time of fairy tales, but in the acute awareness of existence itself—the closest we can get to the first order experience of the human creature to the wonder and terror of its birthing reality. This essay considers both ancient myth and reflective imagination in the work of modern …
All Play And No Work: An Ontology Of Jazz, Andrew Kania
All Play And No Work: An Ontology Of Jazz, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
If we consider different Western musical traditions, such as classical, rock, and jazz, we can find the same kinds of entities employed in all three traditions. For instance, there are recognizable, reinstantiable songs in all three traditions. There are also events we would happily call live performances of those songs, as well as recordings of them. Yet it is also true that these kinds of entities are treated differently in each of these traditions. For instance, those who produce and listen to rock recordings take, for the most part, a very different attitude toward what counts as acceptable use of …
A Sense Of Life In Language Love And Literature, Lawrence Kimmel
A Sense Of Life In Language Love And Literature, Lawrence Kimmel
Philosophy Faculty Research
The fundamental human activity of telling stories, extended into the cultural tradition of literature, leads to the creation of alternative worlds in which we find resonance with the whole range of human thought and emotion from different and often conflicting perspectives. Fiction has no obligation to the ordinary strictures that bind our public lives, so the mind is free, engaging in literature, to become for the moment whatever imagination can conceive. So we become, in fictive reality, madman and poet, sinner and saint, embrace and embody sorrow and joy, hope and despair and all the rag tag feelings that flesh …
Reason And Necessity: The Descent Of The Philosopher Kings, Damian Caluori
Reason And Necessity: The Descent Of The Philosopher Kings, Damian Caluori
Philosophy Faculty Research
One of the reasons why one might find it worthwhile to study philosophers of late antiquity is the fact that they often have illuminating things to say about Plato and Aristotle. Plotinus, in particular, was a diligent and insightful reader of those great masters. Michael Frede was certainly of that view, and when he wrote that '[o]ne can learn much more from Plotinus about Aristotle than from most modern accounts of the Stagirite', he would not have objected, I presume, to the claim that Plotinus is also extremely helpful for the study of Plato. In this spirit I wish to …
Definition, Andrew Kania
Definition, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Much of the time most of us can tell whether, and which of, the sounds we are currently hearing are music. This is so whether or not what we are listening to is a familiar piece, a piece we have not heard before, or even music from a culture or tradition with which we are unfamiliar. In cases where we are unsure, or initially mistaken in our judgment, we will often change our opinion based on further information. This near-universal agreement suggests that the concept of music is one shared by different people, and has boundaries which we are implicitly …
Silent Music, Andrew Kania
Silent Music, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
In this essay, I investigate musical silence. I first discuss how to integrate the concept of silence into a general theory or definition of music. I then consider the possibility of an entirely silent musical piece. I begin with John Cage’s 4′33″, since it is the most notorious candidate for a silent piece of music, even though it is not, in fact, silent. I conclude that it is not music either, but I argue that it is a piece of non-musical sound art, rather than simply a piece of theatre, as Stephen Davies has argued. I end with consideration …
Naturalized Epistemology, Curtis Brown, Steven Luper
Naturalized Epistemology, Curtis Brown, Steven Luper
Philosophy Faculty Research
An explanation of the theory of naturalized epistemology, the theory of knowledge, what it is, how we can or should achieve it, and how much, if anything, we can know.
Une Vie De Platon Du ViE Siècle (Olympiodore): Traduction Et Notes, N. D'Andres, Damian Caluori, D. Del Forno, L. Pitteloud, D. O'Meara, J. Schamp, E. Song, C. Tresson, M. Vonlanthen, S. Weiner
Une Vie De Platon Du ViE Siècle (Olympiodore): Traduction Et Notes, N. D'Andres, Damian Caluori, D. Del Forno, L. Pitteloud, D. O'Meara, J. Schamp, E. Song, C. Tresson, M. Vonlanthen, S. Weiner
Philosophy Faculty Research
Le lecteur trouvera ci‐dessous la première traduction française complète d’une biographie de Platon rédigée à partir d’un cours donné par Olympiodore, professeur de philosophie à l’école platonicienne d’Alexandrie vers le milieu du VIe siècle après J.‐C., ainsi que la première traduction française d’une biographie de Platon inclue dans un lexique (la Souda) de l’époque byzantine.1 Nous espérons contribuer ainsi à la mise à disposition en traduction française de l’ensemble des biographies antiques de Platon. En effet, outre les biographies d’Olympiodore et de la Souda, nous pouvons encore lire des Vies de Platon, toutes accessibles en …
A Horny Dilemma: Sex And Friendship Between Students And Professors, Andrew Kania
A Horny Dilemma: Sex And Friendship Between Students And Professors, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Few people would think it odd if they saw Pat, a philosophy professor at a small liberal arts college, having lunch in the dining hall with Sam, an undergraduate student in one of Pat's classes. Many might pause for thought, however, if they saw Pat and Sam having dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown. And if they found out the next day that the couple had gone back to Pat's place and made love all night long, most would be scandalized. To be told that it was not a one night stand, that Pat and Sam were in a long-term …