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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Musical Recordings, Andrew Kania
Musical Recordings, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Over the course of the twentieth century, there was a major shift in the way that audiences experienced music. The advent of broadcasting and recording technology brought a sea-change in the standard situation in which music was heard. Where, before, music was rarely heard in the absence of musicians producing it live, now one could listen in one’s living room to a performance that was actually going on thousands of miles away, or, stranger still, one that was already finished, and one could listen to the latter kind over and over again. Musicians and theorists had quite a bit to …
The Methodology Of Musical Ontology: Descriptivism And Its Implications, Andrew Kania
The Methodology Of Musical Ontology: Descriptivism And Its Implications, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
I investigate the widely held view that fundamental musical ontology should be descriptivist rather than revisionary, that is, that it should describe how we think about musical works, rather than how they are independently of our thought about them. I argue that if we take descriptivism seriously then, first, we should be sceptical of art-ontological arguments that appeal to independent metaphysical respectability; and, second, we should give ‘fictionalism’ about musical works—the theory that they do not exist—more serious consideration than it is usually accorded.
Piece For The End Of Time: In Defence Of Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
Piece For The End Of Time: In Defence Of Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Aaron Ridley has recently attacked the study of musical ontology—an apparently fertile area in the philosophy of music. I argue here that Ridley’s arguments are unsound. There are genuinely puzzling ontological questions about music, many of which are closely related to questions of musical value. While it is true that musical ontology must be descriptive of pre-existing musical practices and that some debates, such as that over the creatability of musical works, have little consequence for questions of musical value, none of this implies that these debates themselves are without value.
New Waves In Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
New Waves In Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Since analytic aesthetics began, around 50 years ago, music has perhaps been the art most discussed by philosophers. The reasons for philosophers' attraction to music as a subject are obscure, but one element is surely that music, as a non-linguistic, non-pictorial, multiple-instance, performance art, raises at least as many questions about expression, ontology, interpretation and value as any other art—questions that often seem more puzzling than those raised by other arts.
Against Them, Too: A Reply To Alward, Andrew Kania
Against Them, Too: A Reply To Alward, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
In his defense of a version of what I have called “the ubiquity thesis”—the idea that every narrative fiction contains an overarching fictional narrator—Peter Alward gives a helpful reconstruction of some of my arguments against that thesis and clearly lays out a part of the theoretical terrain on which this debate takes place. However, by the end of the piece he is offering solace to both me and those I was arguing against, which is about as close as philosophers come to fightin’ words.
Making Tracks: The Ontology Of Rock Music, Andrew Kania
Making Tracks: The Ontology Of Rock Music, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Philosophers of music have traditionally been concerned with the problems Western classical music raises, but recently there has been growing interest both in non-Western music and in Western musical traditions other than classical. Motivated by questions of the relative merits of classical and rock music, philosophers have addressed the ontology of rock music, asking if the reason it is held in lower esteem by some is that its artworks have been misunderstood to be of the same kind as classical musical works. In classical music, the production of the sound event to which the audience listens is the result of …
Against The Ubiquity Of Fictional Narrators, Andrew Kania
Against The Ubiquity Of Fictional Narrators, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
In this paper I argue against the theory – popular among theorists of narrative artworks – that we must posit a fictional narrative agent in every narrative artwork in order to explain our imaginative engagement with such works. I accept that every narrative must have a narrator, but I argue that in some central literary cases the narrator is not a fictional agent, but rather the actual author of the work. My criticisms focus on the strongest argument for the ubiquity of fictional narrators, Jerrold Levinson’s ontological-gap argument. Finally, I outline an alternative “minimal theory” of narrators, and some consequences …
Paradox And Metaphor: An Integrity Of The Arts, Lawrence Kimmel
Paradox And Metaphor: An Integrity Of The Arts, Lawrence Kimmel
Philosophy Faculty Research
Art is movement, movement is life. Surprisingly, the spareness of paradox in art promotes a fullness of life. We must first speak as simply as possible about art as a fundamental human activity. Only then can we hope to say something of consequence about the so-called “fine arts” — which may be misleading as a description. In substance, the reference “fine art” simply means useless art: “fine” as being free from utility. Art is imaginatively productive, it makes something, whether painting, poem, or partita. But this making has no independent utility, and its character as a work of art …