This paper discusses methodological issues of two recent experiments conducted by Christopher Bartel, and Elzė S. Mikalonytė and Vilius Dranseika, respectively, about the repeatability and individuation of musical works. I argue, first, that the reliability of their results about people’s intuitions in our everyday musical practices can be questioned due to the use of descriptions instead of musical stimuli of the works and performances involved in the cases tested. This procedure is prone to place participants in an epistemic situation in (...) which their mental capacities for their everyday judgments are not deployed and makes their judgments more vulnerable to the problem of “filling in”. I provide empirical data of an experiment that implements musical stimuli, obtaining large effect sizes regarding the results obtained by Bartel, Mikalonytė and Dranseika. In addition, I argue that the results of three scenarios of the experiment conducted by Mikalonytė and Dranseika are suspicious of being influenced by presentation effects that favor the contextualist intuition that the composer is a relevant parameter in work-individuation. Formal and superficial aspects of the description of their cases would cause these effects. I supply empirical data of an experiment that neutralizes those effects, obtaining moderate and large effect sizes regarding the results of Mikalonytė and Dranseika. (shrink)

Guy Rohrbaugh and Allan Hazlett have provided two arguments against the thesis that musical works are types. In short, they assume that, according to our modal talk and intuitions, musical works are modally flexible entities; since types are modally inflexible entities, musical works are not types. I argue that Rohrbaugh’s and Hazlett’s arguments fail and that the type/token theorist can preserve the truth of our modal claims and intuitions even if types are modally inflexible entities. First, I consider two alternatives (...) for the type/token theorist proposed in recent literature about the topic: the created types’ solution and the created abstract objects’ solution. I argue that none of them is attractive for the type/token theorist because they do not preserve the theoretical advantages of type/token theories to explain musical works’ repeatable nature. Then, I focus on the arguments’ common premise that musical works are modally flexible entities. A deeper analysis of musical practice will show that this premise is not true: our modal claims do not imply that musical works could have had different intrinsic but, instead, extrinsic properties. Finally, I show how the nested types theory may offer a satisfactory explanation of this fact and how it captures the truth of our modal talk about musical works. (shrink)

I have recently defended two ideas (Puy 2022a). The first is that our modal claims about musical works do not imply that they are modally flexible entities, i.e.

This paper aims to shed light on the question of whether musical appropriation is ethically unobjectionable. James Young (2021) has recently advanced a position on this topic, according to which, whereas the appropriation of a whole work is uncontroversially non-permissible, the appropriation of parts of a work is usually permissible. He grounds this view in ontological matters and in a criterion of fair use in terms of economic harm to the source work’s composer. I argue that, pace Young, we cannot (...) make general ethical claims about musical appropriation because their truth is sensitive to the musical genres that the involved works belong to. First, I clarify the scope of musical appropriation by means of considerations on musical practices and ontology. This will reveal that versions and covers are not genuine cases of musical appropriation. In a second step, I consider a specific kind of musical appropriation: using the first measures of a source work as the first measures of a secondary work. I show that, even if we assume Young’s ontological framework and his criterion on fair use, the instances of this kind of musical appropriation count as fair or unfair depending on the musical genres of the involved works due to their normative implications for the composition and appreciation of those works. (shrink)

La belleza en Charles S. Peirce: Origen y alcance de sus ideas estéticas is a clearly written and well-structured book on Peirce’s aesthetics. Barrena’s thesis is that aesthetics, conceived as a normative science, is central to Peirce’s philosophical system, and especially to his pragmaticism. The goal of the book is twofold: it aims to offer an analysis of the biographical and theoretical aspects of Peirce’s interest in aesthetics and the arts and purports to elaborate a pragmaticist aesthetics. Both objectives can (...) be said to be well achieved. The book is divided into four chapters. The first is devoted to... (shrink)

This paper is devoted to face recent views in the ontology of music that reject that musical works are repeatable in musical performances. It will be observed that musical works’ repeatability implies that they are audible and variable in their performances. To this extent, the aim here is to show that repeatability, audibility and variability are ontologically substantive features of musical works’ nature. The thesis that will be defended is that repeatability, audibility and variability are dispositional non-aesthetic properties of musical (...) works. The plausibility of the dispositional account of musical works’ repeatability, audibility and variability will lead us to the conclusion that they are ontologically substantive features of musical works’ nature, and consequently, any suitable explanation of the ontology of musical works must not ignore them. (shrink)