I argue for an ontology of jazz according to which it is a tradition of musical performances but no works of art. I proceed by rejecting three alternative proposals: (i) that jazz is a work performance tradition, (ii) that jazz performances are works of art in themselves, and (iii) that jazz recordings are works of art. I also note that the concept of a work of art involved (1) is nonevaluative, so to deny jazz works of art is not to (...) judge it inferior to artistic traditions with works, and (2) is univocal across other musical traditions, so to claim there are works of art in jazz would be to use a different sense of the term than we use when, say, discussing classical music. (shrink)

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.

A review of Stephen Davies's book, Musical Works and Performances.

This is the first, out of two papers, devoted to Andrzej Grzegorczyk’s point-free system of topology from Grzegorczyk :228–235, 1960. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00485101). His system was one of the very first fully fledged axiomatizations of topology based on the notions of region, parthood and separation. Its peculiar and interesting feature is the definition of point, whose intention is to grasp our geometrical intuitions of points as systems of shrinking regions of space. In this part we analyze separation structures and Grzegorczyk structures, and (...) establish their properties which will be useful in the sequel. We prove that in the class of Urysohn spaces with countable chain condition, to every topologically interpreted representative of a point in the sense of Grzegorczyk’s corresponds exactly one point of a space. We also demonstrate that Tychonoff first-countable spaces give rise to complete Grzegorczyk structures. The results established below will be used in the second part devoted to points and topological spaces. (shrink)

I argue that the work of art in rock music is a track constructed in the studio, that tracks usually manifest songs, which can be performed live, and that a cover version is a track (successfully) intended to manifest the same song as some other track. This ontology reflects the way informed audiences talk about rock. It recognizes not only the centrality of recorded tracks to the tradition, as discussed by Theodore Gracyk, but also the value accorded to live performance (...) skills, emphasized by Stephen Davies. (shrink)

Nemesio G. C. Puy argues that the "nested types" ontology of works of Western classical music can solve recent disagreements about such works' authentic performance. I raise several objections to his argument.

In this essay 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 particular, i.e. that nominalism about musical works rests on arguments for thoroughgoing nominalism, and, second, that if Platonism fails, fictionalism about (...) musical works is to be preferred to other nominalist ontologies of musical works. (shrink)

Within a short space of time, the film Memento has already been hailed as a modern classic. Memorably narrated in reverse, from the perspective of Leonard Shelby, the film’s central character, it follows Leonard’s chaotic and visceral quest to discover the identity of his wife’s killer and avenge her murder, despite his inability to form new long-term memories. This is the first book to explore and address the myriad philosophical questions raised by the film, concerning personal identity, free will, memory, (...) knowledge, and action. It also explores problems in aesthetics raised by the film through its narrative structure, ontology, and genre. Beginning with a helpful introduction that places the film in context and maps out its complex structure, specially commissioned chapters examine the following topics: memory, emotion, and self-consciousness agency, free will, and responsibility personal identity narrative and popular cinema the film genre of neo-noir Memento and multimedia Including annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Memento is essential reading for students interested in philosophy and film studies. (shrink)

The goal is to sketch a nominalist approach to mathematics which just like neologicism employs abstraction principles, but unlike neologicism is not committed to the idea that mathematical objects exist and does not insist that abstraction principles establish the reference of abstract terms. It is well-known that neologicism runs into certain philosophical problems and faces the technical difficulty of finding appropriate acceptability criteria for abstraction principles. I will argue that a modal and iterative nominalist approach to abstraction principles circumvents those (...) difficulties while still being able to put abstraction principles to a foundational use. (shrink)

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 thereof. (shrink)

An introduction to the project of defining music, which considers extant definitions and suggests a new definition.

Legal probabilism is the view that juridical fact-finding should be modeled using Bayesian methods. One of the alternatives to it is the narration view, according to which instead we should conceptualize the process in terms of competing narrations of what happened. The goal of this paper is to develop a reconciliatory account, on which the narration view is construed from the Bayesian perspective within the framework of formal Bayesian epistemology.

Gregory Currie, arguing against recent psychoanalytic and semiotic film theory, has defended various realist theses about film. The strongest of these is that ‘weak illusionism’—the view that the motion of film images is an illusion—is false. That is, Currie believes film images really do move. In this paper I defend the common-sense position of weak illusionism, firstly by showing that Currie underestimates the power of some arguments for it, especially one based on the mechanics of projection, and secondly by showing (...) that film images exhibit neither garden-variety motion, nor a special response-dependent kind. (shrink)

We generalize the Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem on ideal convergence. We show examples of ideals with and without the Bolzano-Weierstrass property, and give characterizations of BW property in terms of submeasures and extendability to a maximal P-ideal. We show applications to Rudin-Keisler and Rudin-Blass orderings of ideals and quotient Boolean algebras. In particular we show that an ideal does not have BW property if and only if its quotient Boolean algebra has a countably splitting family.

Subject and purpose: Using annual data for the periods 2009–2019, this paper examines trade flows between China and the Visegrad Group countries. The aim of this article is to assess real changes taking place in international trade in the Visegrad Group countries over the last eleven years. The starting point for the analysis was 2009 – the time after the 2008 economic crisis, and it was compared especially to 2018 – a year marked by a significant improvement in the economy. (...) The purpose is to discuss concerns related to the differences in bilateral trade between China and Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovak Republic. The main aim of this research is to distinguish the characteristics of bilateral trade by products between V4 and China in years 2009–2019. The purpose of this article is also to systematize and discuss points of view, rationalizing further empirical research. Two research hypotheses, resulting from the research purpose, were formulated: H1: in the V4 countries import exceeds export, and this trend seems to be growing, H2: Chinese goods imported to the V4 are much more sophisticated than those exported. Design/methodology/approach: To assess the initial and current situation on international trade between the V4 and China, the author uses variables obtained from WTO and OEC resources, diagnosing the situation in Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovak Republic. The collected empirical data were processed using theoretical methods such as analysis, synthesis, and comparison to formulate conclusions using deductive and inductive inference methods. Practical Implications: The results can be used in scientific and expert work on diagnostic and forecast trends in bilateral trade by products between the V4 and China. Originality/value: It concerns the indication of the importance of the V4 trade with China compared to the share of the V4 countries in world trade. It was also possible to identify the top export and import products of the V4. The findings also confirm the significant change in China’s trading structure. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive book-length introduction to the philosophy of Western music that fully integrates consideration of popular music and hybrid musical forms, especially song. Its author, Andrew Kania, begins by asking whether Bob Dylan should even have been eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature, given that he is a musician. This motivates a discussion of music as an artistic medium, and what philosophy has to contribute to our thinking about music. Chapters 2-5 investigate the most commonly (...) defended sources of musical value: its emotional power, its form, and specifically musical features (such as pitch, rhythm, and harmony). In chapters 6-9, Kania explores issues arising from different musical practices, particularly work-performance (with a focus on classical music), improvisation (with a focus on jazz), and recording (with a focus on rock and pop). Chapter 10 examines the intersection of music and morality. The book ends with a consideration of what, ultimately, music is. (shrink)

This article proposes a mereological approach to the dao-you relation in the Daodejing. It is claimed here that dao and you can be conceived of as two integrated subregions, defined in terms of rules of composition and their persistence through time. It is shown that dao is an atemporal object (a fourdimensional unrestricted composition), whereas you is a temporal object (a three-dimensional restricted composition). This particular approach can provide a new understanding of essential issues in Daoist metaphysics.

ABSTRACTThis study is situated within corpus-assisted discourse analysis. Corpora and discourse studies: Integrating discourse and corpora. London: Palgrave Macmillan.) and provides a critical discussion of key topics and stances in the marriage equality debate in Germany. The ways in which the German print media covered the debate are explored through two corpora which include relevant texts from three German newspapers and two magazines from two key periods ; in 2001, Germany introduced ‘civil unions’ but it was only in 2017 that (...) marriage was opened to same-sex couples. Qualitative and quantitative analyses using AntConc and ProtAnt suggest that while there are parallels to marriage equality debates in other countries, there are also language-/culture-specific features. For example, there is a stronger focus on children’s welfare in the contemporary data, since marriage equality meant joint adoption rights for same-sex couples. Through an exploration of keywords/collocations and close reading of prototypical texts, it is shown how linguistic choices contribute to framing the arguments for/against marriage equality and how these stances are connected to culture-specific and cross-cultural norms. (shrink)

I argue that even if video games are interactive artworks, typical video games are not works for performance and players of video games do not perform these games in the sense in which a musician performs a musical composition (or actors a play, dancers a ballet, and so on). Even expert playings of video games for an audience fail to qualify as performances of those works. Some exemplary playings may qualify as independent “performance-works,” but this tells us nothing about the (...) ontology of video games or playings of them. The argument proceeds by clarifying the concepts of interactivity and work-performance, drawing particularly on recent work by Dominic Lopes, Berys Gaut, and David Davies. (shrink)

An overview of current issues in musical ontology, including debates about "fundamental" vs. "higher-order" musical ontology and skepticism about both kinds.

With material on his early philosophical views, his contributions to set theory and his work on nominalism and higher-order quantification, this book offers a uniquely expansive critical commentary on one of analytical philosophy’s great ...

I respond to Martin Ricksand’s recommendation that my arguments that current, typical video games are not works for performance be replaced with an argument that no video game could possibly be a work for performance. I cast doubt both on Ricksand’s premise that all video games are games, and on his arguments that no game could be a work for performance.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the notion of a Grzegorczyk point introduced in [19] (and thoroughly investigated in [3, 14, 16, 18]) to the standard notions of a filter in Boolean algebras and round filter in Boolean contact algebras. In particular, we compare Grzegorczyk points to filters and ultrafilters of atomic and atomless algebras. We also prove how a certain extra axiom influences topological spaces for Grzegorczyk contact algebras. Last but not least, we do not refrain from (...) a philosophical interpretation of the results from the paper. (shrink)

Musicians of all sorts talk of getting “into a groove,” whether using those words or others; musical listeners also talk about the groove of a passage of music, a performance, or a recording. In his four-chapter essay, Groove, Tiger Roholt offers answers to questions that seem obvious candidates for philosophical inquiry yet that few philosophers have even touched on: what is a groove, exactly, and what is it to perceive or understand—to get— a groove? His answers are intriguing, not just (...) because they are thoughtfully argued positions on an important yet neglected topic, but because, if correct, they challenge some central orthodoxies of philosophy of music, at least in the analytic tradition.Roholt’s main... (shrink)

I discuss Gregory Currie’s taxonomy of explanations of the fictional. On the one hand, there is an important kind of relation between internal and external explanations of some fictional truths that Currie leaves out, where both are salient and yet in a relation of harmony with each other. On the other hand, I do not see that he has established that there is a genuine relation of tension between some pairs of internal and external explanations, and thus I question the (...) usefulness of the category of collapse. I also consider a further kind of explanation: the exterior explanation. (shrink)

An overview of analytic philosophy of music.

Inspiration from Bauman’s analyses of„ liquid modernity” can be drawn to trace the transformations that love and hatred, as methods of solving the fundamental contradictions of human existence – stemming from the opposition between nature and culture, body and soul, death and immortality – undergo in these conditions. Those contradictions are manifested and reproduced in the relations between the subject and the other, relations of dividing and uniting, seeking transcendence. Analyzing these relations allows one to uncover the essence of death, (...) love, and hate between individuals and between communities of all sizes, including nations. Recognizing the essence of love and a subject‐object relationship, in which the truth of its subject and of onself is sought, a mutual surrender that transcendents the difference between egoism and altruism, and building a feeling of unity and dignity in a confrontation with inescapability of death – allows for the protection of those values against the destructive blows of hate. (shrink)

According to contrastivism in epistemology - advocated chiefly by Jonathan Schaffer - the knowledge relation is not binary (s knows that p) but ternary (s knows that p rather than q). Thus knowledge ascriptions are contrast-sensitive. The aim of this paper is to portray, investigate and assess the details of this view. In the first three sections I focus mainly on arguments for contrastivism. Section fourth is devoted to the contrastivist solution to the skeptical puzzle. In the last three sections (...) I present several problems for contrastivism as well as three main binary explanations for contrast-sensitivity. (shrink)

The goal is to sketch a nominalist approach to mathematics which just like neologicism employs abstraction principles, but unlike neologicism is not committed to the idea that mathematical objects exist and does not insist that abstraction principles establish the reference of abstract terms. It is well-known that neologicism runs into certain philosophical problems and faces the technical difficulty of finding appropriate acceptability criteria for abstraction principles. I will argue that a modal and iterative nominalist approach to abstraction principles circumvents those (...) difficulties while still being able to put abstraction principles to a foundational use. (shrink)

This article investigates the structures of an identifiably Buddhist philosophy of religion, understood as the philosophical exposition and exploration of Buddhist religiosity. I thus theorize what forms a philosophy of religion structured according to Buddhist principles and paradigms might take, address various theoretical and methodological considerations, and survey a range of candidate schemas, which latter are arranged under textual, sectarian, and doctrinal rubrics. Overall, this project is undertaken on the understanding that the study of Buddhism, among other global traditions, need (...) not and should not replicate conceptual structures imposed upon it from without, and that philosophy of religion is enriched by attention to the resolutely plural philosophies of religions worldwide. (shrink)

In the second installment to Gruszczyński and Pietruszczak we carry out an analysis of spaces of points of Grzegorczyk structures. At the outset we introduce notions of a concentric and \-concentric topological space and we recollect some facts proven in the first part which are important for the sequel. Theorem 2.9 is a strengthening of Theorem 5.13, as we obtain stronger conclusion weakening Tychonoff separation axiom to mere regularity. This leads to a stronger version of Theorem 6.10. Further, we show (...) that Grzegorczyk points are maximal contracting filters in the sense of De Vries, but the converse inclusion is not necessarily true. We also compare the notions of a Grzegorczyk point and an ultrafilter, and establish several properties of topological spaces based on Grzegorczyk structures. The main results of the paper are representation and completion theorems for G-structures. We prove both set-theoretical and topological representation theorems for various classes of G-structures. We also present topological object duality theorem for the class of complete G-structures and the class of concentric spaces, both restricted to structures which satisfy countable chain condition. We conclude the paper with proving equivalence of the original Grzegorczyk axiom with the one accepted by us as axiom. (shrink)

One of the standard views on plural quantification is that its use commits one to the existence of abstract objects–sets. On this view claims like ‘some logicians admire only each other’ involve ineliminable quantification over subsets of a salient domain. The main motivation for this view is that plural quantification has to be given some sort of semantics, and among the two main candidates—substitutional and set-theoretic—only the latter can provide the language of plurals with the desired expressive power (given that (...) the nominalist seems committed to the assumption that there can be at most countably many names). To counter this approach I develop a modal-substitutional semantics of plural quantification (on which plural variables, roughly speaking, range over ways names could be) and argue for its nominalistic acceptability. (shrink)

An overview of philosophical issues raised by musical performances and recordings.

This article is devoted to the problem of ontological foundations of three-dimensional Euclidean geometry. Starting from Bertrand Russell’s intuitions concerning the sensual world we try to show that it is possible to build a foundation for pure geometry by means of the so called regions of space. It is not our intention to present mathematically developed theory, but rather demonstrate basic assumptions, tools and techniques that are used in construction of systems of point-free geometry and topology by means of mereology (...) and Whitehead-like connection structures. We list and briefly analyze axioms for mereological structures, as well as those for connection structures. We argue that mereology is a good tool to model so called spatial relations. We also try to justify our choice of axioms for connection relation. Finally, we briefly discuss two theories: Grzegorczyk’s point-free topology and Tarski’s geometry of solids. (shrink)

Safety and care for the natural environment are two of the most important values that drive scientific enterprise in twentieth century. Researchers and innovators often develop new technologies aimed at pollution reduction, and therefore satisfy the strive for fulfilment of these values. This work is often incentivized by policy makers. According to EU directive 2006/40/EC on mobile air conditioning since 2013 all newly approved vehicles have to be filled with refrigerant with low global warming potential. Extensive and expensive research financed (...) by leading car manufacturers led to invention of R-1234yf refrigerant with GWP < 1, which was huge improvement. For the proper understanding of this case it will be useful to refer it to the idea of responsible innovation, which is now being developed and quickly attracts attention. I proceed in the following order. Firstly, I present the relevant properties of R-1234yf and discuss the controversy associated with its marketing. Secondly, I examine framework for responsible innovation. In greater detail I discuss the notions of care for future generations and collective responsibility. Thirdly, I apply the offered framework to the case study at hand. Finally, I draw some conclusions which go in two directions: one is to make some suggestions for improving the framework of RI, and the second is to identify missed opportunities for developing truly responsible refrigerant. (shrink)

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. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In this critical study of Julian Dodd’s Being True to Works of Music, 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, 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’ over a ‘historicized’ theory of the understanding of classical scores are not convincing. (shrink)

Legal institutions are created at a certain point in time, intended to be applied to ‘life’ as it is perceived at the specific moment when they are elaborated and cast into legal form. As a result, legal institutions always already refer, in their original design, to a certain normality, but between the moment of creation of a legal institution and its application to future situations there is always a certain time lag. Some legal institutions—referred to in the paper as “legal (...) survivals” –outlive the epoch in which they were created and continue their legal life long after the conditions which lead to their creation had, in the meantime, disappeared. The aim of this paper is to put forward an archaeologico–genealogical perspective on legal survivals not only as a method of studying continuity of law and the resilience of juridical form, but also as a line of enquiry capable of enriching our understanding of the juridical in its relation to the changing circumstances of life. The study of legal survivals allows to combine three aspects of legal continuity: firstly, the continued use of the same legal forms in different circumstances and for different purposes, whereby the same juridical form is filled with different socio-economic substance; secondly, the gradual adaptation of legal forms to new circumstances; thirdly, the emergence of new legal forms in close reference to old ones. The study of legal survivals allows to address the foundations of law’s claims to authority, based on stability and predictability of juridical forms. It also reveals the complex and multilayered nature of legal form which effectively has the structure of a palimpsest. (shrink)