It is difficult to place jazz within a philosophy of music dominated by the concepts and practices of classical music. One key puzzle concerns the nature and role, if any, of musical works in jazz. I briefly describe the debate between those who deny that there are musical works in jazz (Kania) and those who affirm that there are such (Dodd and others). I argue that musical works are performed in jazz but that jazz performance of works is very different (...) from performance of classical music works. The first step toward resolving the puzzle is to embrace the descriptive concept of a musical work and reject inappropriate normative concepts of a musical work. In particular, I argue against the accounts of musical works by Kania and Goehr, each of which implies a no-works thesis for jazz performance. I contrast the norms governing work performance in classical music with the practices governing performances of works in jazz, which I call realization or staging. Finally, I propose a model of jazz appreciation that incorporates a role for jazz works and that differs from the appreciation of classical music. (shrink)

The author believes that plato's view of the nature of philosophical activity can be seen in plato's paradoxical attitude toward the relationship between the written and spoken word. The "phaedrus" is examined from this perspective, And the author concludes that the varied wing symbols used by plato here indicate that although written words "have no wings," the words of philosophy do. Written words have some effectiveness for persuasion, But a philosopher needs more spirited interaction than this; only the spoken word (...) can supply this. (staff). (shrink)

The question ‘Is it worth it?’, as originally applied to artworks by Tolstoy and here reintroduced by Sheila Lintott, opens a fruitful avenue for understanding land art. It is, however, a question...

This chapter contains sections titled: Aesthetic preservationism Aesthetic value The biophilia hypothesis What is an aesthetic response to nature? Perceiving nature as nature Positive aesthetics Mixed and influenced environments Conclusion.

I argue that the denial of speakers' knowledge of language rules is based on conceptual confusion and in particular on a misanalysis of what it is to know a rule. I shall turn to the task of establishing this point after first providing the background for this issue: the difficulty of conceptualizing verbal behavior both under the hypothesis that speakers do, and under the hypothesis that speakers do not know the rules of grammar. I shall argue that this difficulty and (...) the dispute it has engendered are based on overly simple and inadequate views of rule knowledge. Our ordinary concept of knowing a rule has been radically ignored by theorists who have written on this issue. In consequence, they have operated with conceptual schemes too impoverished to allow for the knowledge that speakers do have. A more adequate analysis or account of rule knowledge will thus be the main concern of this paper with the problem of speakers’ knowledge of grammar being the motivation to attempt such an analysis. (shrink)

The last twenty years or so have seen a surge of interest in the philosophy of music. However there is comparatively little philosophical literature devoted specifically to songs, singing and vocal music in general. This new collection of essays on the philosophical aspects of song and singing includes articles on the relationship between words and music in songs, the ontology of songs and recordings, meaning in songs, the metaphysics of vocal music in opera and the movies, and the ethical challenges (...) raised in song performance. The essays discuss a large range of examples, including rock, lieder, jazz songs, blues, doo wop, and rap. New essays by leading philosophers of art, including Peter Kivy (on "realistic song" in film), Jerrold Levinson (on jazz singing), Lee B. Brown (on the "minstrel hypothesis" in popular music), and Ted Gracyk (on linguistic pragmatics and song meaning). Papers that offer ground-breaking theories of the appreciation of rock recordings, the ethical implications of popular songs, the ontology of ephemeral artworks, the ontological status of cover versions, and of how a genre of popular music can both express and be a function of its social context papers that challenge existing accounts of much-debated topics, including operatic metaphysics and of the ontology of recorded music. Interdisciplinary essays that cut across aesthetics, philosophy of music, cultural music studies and musicology. Essays that are clearly written and engaging. (shrink)

The address of the President to his colleagues at the Medieval Academy is an invitation to speak about a subject close to the heart. I was told by the aunt who met me at the boat when I returned from Persia at the age of fourteen — a typical Kipling child, leaving my family on the other side of the world and returning home to school — that when she asked me what I was going to do when I grew (...) up, I said firmly, “I am going to teach Chaucer.” Well, it has been my privilege to study and teach and edit and write about Chaucer for nearly half a century. So there is no subject that I could speak about closer to my heart. (shrink)

In January 1729 a paper written by James Bradley was read at two meetings of the Royal Society. On a newly discovered motion of the fixed stars, later described as the theory of the aberration of light, it was to transform the science of astrometry. The paper appeared as a narrative of a programme of observation first begun at Kew and finalized at Wanstead, but it was, in reality, a careful reconstruction devised to enhance his reputation in response to a (...) recognition that the programme was initially conducted in terms that were inimical to what he conceived to be his interest. The planned attempt to repeat Robert Hooke's celebrated experiment by James Pound, Samuel Molyneux and George Graham was set up at Molyneux's residence in Kew with James Bradley replacing Pound after his untimely and sudden demise. The unexpected and counterintuitive behaviour of the object star γ Draconis and the eradication of any suspicion of instrumental or systemic error led to the abandonment of the attempt to measure annual parallax and the initiation of new conjectures. An annual nutation was proposed but after the observation of a control star, 35 Camelopardalis, this conjecture was abandoned. Unknown to Bradley and Graham a premature approach was made by Molyneux to Newton claiming that the ‘nutation’ negated the whole of Newton's system. In the abandonment of the nutation yet another conjecture opposed to Newtonian theory was proposed and abandoned. Bradley determined to use his own instrument designed on different principles by Graham to observe the phenomenon in Wanstead. At Wanstead Bradley observed many stars to determine the parameters of the phenomenon. With the law of the motion described, Bradley proposed a hypothesis to explain it. Drawn from his earlier work on the ephemerides of Jupiter's satellites his hypothesis of the ‘new-discovered motion’ was quickly presented to the Royal Society as Bradley was working on a later and more definitive version of his paper. It is this later, third, unpublished version that is commonly referred to throughout this essay. It issued a challenge to ‘anti-Copernicans’ to offer an explanation of the observed phenomenon in geostatic terms. One such astronomer, Eustachio Manfredi, had examined the phenomenon of ‘aberrations’ in detail, the term being his. It was Bradley who first applied the term to the ‘new-discovered motion’ and within a short time ‘aberration’ was being applied by astronomers in the reduction of their observations. Annual aberration was widely accepted as evidence of the motion of the Earth. The paper enhanced Bradley's reputation and projected him into the forefront of European astronomers. (shrink)

For the moment, I assume that we have some rough idea of what “title” is supposed to mean: the large letters on the spine of a book, the words on the center of the first page of a musical score, or the little plate on the museum wall to the right of the painting . Thus examples of titles would be The Taming of the Shrew, “Mapleleaf Rag,” or The Birth of Venus, but that generates a rather complex set of (...) answers.Let us start with what is undoubtedly the simplest situation: where an inscription of the title is physically part of the work. The most familiar of the aquatints of Francisco Goya which collectively are called Los Caprichos—the forty-third—is titled The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, or, more precisely, the Spanish equivalent of those words, for the Spanish words appear as a large and significant element on the plate, indeed occupying more than 10 percent of its surface. In such cases titles are not given: they are elements of works, not by inference or subtle metaphor but in a most literal way. No other title fits in that way. That print could not be called Bats and Cats and Sleeping Man with the expectation that those words should serve as its title. Some works—most works—on the other hand, allow for a range of acceptable titles. Guernica could have been titled The Bombing of a Basque Village or Luftwaffe Hell. Neither of these would, I suspect, have been as good a title as Guernica, but they remain possibilities, even though the familiar title is not physically part of the work. Some works, incidentally, contain words, even sentences, and are not titled accordingly. Several familiar works of René Magritte include a most realistic representation of a tobacco pipe and the large words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Examples of the titles given by Magritte to paintings in this series are L’Air et la chanson and Le Trahison des images. Obviously, not all works of visual art which contain linguistic inscriptions have titles which correspond to those inscriptions. The simplest situation is hardly much help. John Fisher is professor of philosophy at Temple University and editor of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. He is also the editor of Perceiving Artworks and Essays on Aesthetics. (shrink)