Music !?!?!? (3 of 3)

Music makes the World Go Round!!!

“Music is what feelings sound like.”

~author unknown

Love is all you need, worry vs. laughter, and why Plato’s got nothing on Jay-Z.

Music is the quintessential vehicle for modern philosophy, a poetic gateway into our most deepest existential truths and sincerest beliefs. Add to it the visual treat of superb art direction, and you’ve got a powerhouse of cerebral-creative indulgence. 

Two notable philosophers of art have recently expressed some scepticism about the study of musical ontology. Aaron Ridley (2003a; 2004, 105-31) argues that such study is a waste of time. He argues (i) that there aren't any genuine ontological puzzles about music, (ii) that musical ontology depends on musical value judgments, and thus (iii) that musical ontology has no implications for musical aesthetics. The first claim is itself puzzling, since it is hard to understand why there would be such disagreement among philosophers about the ontology of music if there were easy answers available. Moreover, Ridley does not set out the supposedly obvious ontology of music, but rather makes substantive and contentious ontological assumptions throughout his argument. His second claim is questionable, since it seems that, like many other things, one can only correctly judge the value of something in terms of the kind of thing it really is (Walton 1970, 1988), and the kinds of things musical works, performances, and so on, are is precisely the central question of musical ontology. If Ridley is wrong about his second claim, then he is wrong about his third. However, it might be argued that some debates in musical ontology are more distantly connected to questions of musical value than others. For instance, while the debate over authentic performance is closely related to the question of the relative value of different performances, the debate over the fundamental ontological category of musical works seems more neutral with respect to that same question. (For a fuller discussion of Ridley's scepticism, see Kania, forthcoming b.)

Amie Thomasson has expressed a more measured scepticism about certain art-ontological debates (2004a, 2005, 2006). She points out that in grounding (and re-grounding) an artistic kind-term, such as ‘symphony’, there is a problem of identifying the kind of thing one intends to pick out with the term. (This is an instance of a more general ‘qua-problem’. For instance, when naming your car, there is a question about how you can successfully name the whole thing, rather than just the windshield, or a temporal part of the car, and so on.) Thus, one must have some basic ontological sortal in mind which determines the identity and persistence conditions of the thing being picked out. Since art-kinds are determined through widespread social practices, the way to discover the basic sortal is to investigate artistic practice. Thomasson's scepticism arises from her view that our artistic practices may be vague or incomplete with respect to some questions, such as how many notes one can get wrong before simply failing to perform a certain work. On the other hand, the answers to some questions are unequivocally revealed by our practice, according to Thomasson, such as that musical works are created. Thus, while her theory is sceptical about some issues, it is quite the opposite about others, ruling certain theories, such as Platonism, out of court.

One worry for Thomasson's view is that artistic practice might be even messier than she supposes. If artistic practice offers not just vague or incomplete, but contradictory answers to some questions, then it is presumably the ontologist's job to offer a theory that is the best overall reflective reconstruction of the practice (Dodd 2005). The view might also be criticized from a different direction. Even if artistic practice implies unequivocally that musical works are created abstracta, if it can convincingly be shown that there are no such things as created abstracta, then practice must be wrong. This strategy raises once more the question of the nature of musical works, and whether traditional forms of metaphysical argument are appropriate in the cultural realm.

“Music speaks what cannot be expressed, soothes the mind and gives it rest, heals the heart and makes it whole, flows from heaven to the soul.”