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)

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)

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)

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 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)

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. nema. (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.

_Winner of the Fabian Dorsch ESA Essay Prize._ Julian Dodd defends the view that, in musical work-performance practice, interpretive authenticity is a more fundamental value than score compliance authenticity. According to him, compliance with a work’s score can be sacrificed in cases where it conflicts with interpretative authenticity. Stephen Davies and Andrew Kania reject this view, arguing that, if a performer intentionally departs from a work’s score, she is not properly instantiating that work and hence not producing an authentic performance (...) of it. I argue that this objection fails. A detailed analysis of work-performance practice reveals, first, that the normative scope of interpretive authenticity encompasses the practice of composing musical versions and that, second, when performers sacrifice score compliance to maximize interpretive authenticity, they are performing the target work by means of performing a version of it. By means of the nested types theory, I then show how performances produced in this way can be properly formed instances, and hence authentic performances, of their target work. (shrink)

The determination thesis is the idea that art-ontological facts are determined by the folk ontological conception of artworks embedded in our artistic practices. From this thesis, descriptivism in the metaontology of art has been often characterized as the view that the task of art-ontology is to describe that folk conception. Amie Thomasson and Andrew Kania provide two paradigmatic accounts within this path. In this paper, I argue that this descriptivist approach is ungrounded because the determination thesis suffers from presupposition failure. (...) It presupposes that, whenever there is a practice of producing and appreciating artworks, there is also a folk ontological conception about those artworks. This presupposition, an implicit premise in Thomasson's and Kania's accounts, will be revealed as false, paying attention to the way artistic practices have evolved. I will conclude that descriptivism should abandon this approach and embrace metaontological realism if it aims to be a plausible view. (shrink)

Impure Eliminativism about Categories is the idea that ontological categories are not wholly eliminable insofar as they have epistemic value to understand the nature of ordinary and scientific objects. From the perspective of Impure Eliminativism, different criticisms have been addressed to substantialist approaches in metaphysics and, in particular, to John Heil’s substance-mode two-category ontology. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this critical project by extending its scope to C. B. Martin’s substantialism. The thesis I defend is that (...) Martin’s substratum-trope two-category ontology satisfies the elimination criterion of Impure Eliminativism for ontological categories because either it is inconsistent or else it supplies a non-exhaustive and non-exclusive categorization of ordinary and scientific objects and their properties. First, I introduce Impure Eliminativism and its novel elimination criterion for ontological categories, and I survey recent criticisms of substantialism from that perspective. Second, I show that nothing satisfies Martin’s definition of substratum in a way that is consistent with Martin’s view on tropes. Third, I note that the attempts to avoid the inconsistency make the categorization supplied by Martin’s ontology either non-exhaustive or non-exclusive. I then conclude that Martin’s substratum-trope categorial system should be eliminated in accordance with the criterion of categorial elimination of Impure Eliminativism. (shrink)

I defend in this paper the thesis that there is a complex relation between minimalist musical works and the metaphysics of time, involving ontological, epistemological and axiological issues. This relation is explained by means of three sub-theses. The first one is that minimalist musical works literally exemplify –in Goodman’s sense–the properties ascribed to time by the metaphysical static view: 1) minimalist works intrinsically possess those properties by being composed according to the technique of minimal repetition; 2) they extrinsically refer to (...) those properties in virtue of pragmatic processes of accommodation of disagreements on what is taken to be common ground in a particular musical context. The second sub-thesis is that, in exemplifying those properties, minimalist musical works are valuable from two perspectives: a formalist one, according to which minimalist works purify the concept of what a musical work is; and a cognitive one, insofar they allow us to obtain phenomenal knowledge of what it is like to experience time as the static view conceives it. The third sub-thesis is that each particular minimalist musical work is valuable insofar it achieves either the formalist or the cognitive goals in an original way. (shrink)

This article is devoted to examining the ontological foundations of computer-generated music scores. Specifically, we focus on the categorial question, i.e., the inquiry that aims to determine the kind of ontological category that musical works belong to. This task involves considerations concerning the existence and persistence conditions for musical works, and it has consequences for the determination of what it is to compose a musical work. Our contention is that not all the possible answers to the categorial question in the (...) ontology of music are equally compatible with the hypothesis that creative music systems compose musical works. The thesis defended here is that musical Platonism is the proposal that best accommodates this hypothesis. We claim that musical Platonism is the answer to the categorial question that offers the most straightforward explanation for the possibility of considering creative music systems as genuinely composing musical works. Moreover, we uphold that the notion of creative-evaluative discovery as the characterization of what it is to compose a musical work entailed by Platonism is the simplest explanation of the process developed by a computer in producing musical works. For this purpose, we will take as empirical data the features of the Iamus computer, a system that produces musical works autonomously using evolutionary algorithms and following an evo-devo strategy. The works generated by this computer have been recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and other renowned international soloists, and its impact has been notable in the literature (Ball, 2012; Coghlan, 2012; Berger, 2013). (shrink)

Reichenbachian approaches to indexicality contend that indexicals are "token-reflexives": semantic rules associated with any given indexical-type determine the truth-conditional import of properly produced tokens of that type relative to certain relational properties of those tokens. Such a view may be understood as sharing the main tenets of Kaplan's well-known theory regarding content, or truth-conditions, but differs from it regarding the nature of the linguistic meaning of indexicals and also regarding the bearers of truth-conditional import and truth-conditions. Kaplan has criticized these (...) approaches on different counts, the most damaging of which is that they make impossible a "logic of demonstratives". The reason for this is that the token-reflexive approach entails that not two tokens of the same sentential type including indexicals are guaranteed to have the same truth-conditions. In this paper I rebut this and other criticisms of the Reichenbachian approach. Additionally, I point out that Kaplan's original theory of "true demonstratives" is empirically inadequate, and claim that any modification capable of accurately handling the linguistic data would have similar problems to those attributed to the Reichenbachian approach. This is intended to show that the difficulties, no matter how real, are not caused by idiosincracies of the "token-reflexive" view, but by deep facts about indexicality. (shrink)

En opinión de Francisco Puy, el jurista debe ser una persona que agarre decidido una experiencia jurídica siempre conflictiva, la describa, la valores y ofrezca una solución para limpiarla, pacificando los problemas que presenta de apropiación, transmisión, reparto, violación y reposición de derechos. Una experiencia jurídica se inicia cuando un individuo le dice a otro que una cosa es suya y el otro o los otros asienten o consienten en que es suya. Una experiencia jurídica crece, tornándose problemática, cuando un (...) individuo o dos o todo el grupo rechazan la declaración de uno o varios que dijeron que algo es suyo, que tiene un derecho de uso, de disfrute o de propiedad; un interés legítimo o cualquier otra opción jurídica. El Derecho es la misma cosa justa, lo justo materializado en el caso concreto real y práctico; y no lo justo legal ni lo justo diseñado en grandes teorías. Este enfoque teñido de realismo abre un amplio horizonte filosófico-jurídico que Puy ha recorrido en muchas direcciones, ensayando nuevas soluciones para cuestiones viejas. Catedrático ce Filosofía del Derecho de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela durante 45 años, Francisco Puy ha dedicado una buena parte de su pensamiento a desarrollar una forma de estudio y comprensión de la experiencia jurídica, la prudencial, diferente de la usualmente utilizada en las universidades públicas. Su camino lo ha conducido por las sendas de la Tópica, la Retórica y la Dialéctica clásicas, que ha actualizado en diálogo con la moderna teoría de la argumentación jurídica. En este libro, los colegas, amigos y discípulos del maestro dialogan con él y entre ellos, transitando un panorama temático tan complejo como sugestivo. (shrink)

Descriptive semantic theories purport to characterize the meanings of the expressions of languages in whatever complexity they might have. Foundational semantics purports to identify the kind of considerations relevant to establish that a given descriptive semantics accurately characterizes the language used by a given individual or community. Foundational Semantics I presents three contrasting approaches to the foundational matters, and the main considerations relevant to appraise their merits. These approaches contend that we should look at the contents of speakers’ intuitions; at (...) the deep psychology of users and its evolutionary history, as revealed by our best empirical theories; or at the personal-level rational psychology of those subjects. Foundational Semantics II examines a fourth view, according to which we should look instead at norms enforced among speakers. The two papers aim to determine in addition the extent to which the approaches are really rival, or rather complementary. (shrink)

Espino, Santamaria, and Garcia-Madruga (2000) report three results on the time taken to respond to a probe word occurring as end term in the premises of a syllogistic argument. They argue that these results can only be predicted by the theory of mental models. It is argued that two of these results, on differential reaction times to end-terms occurring in different premises and in different figures, are consistent with Chater and Oaksford's (1999) probability heuristics model (PHM). It is argued that (...) the third finding, on different reaction times between figures, does not address the issue of processing difficulty where PHM predicts no differences between figures. It is concluded that Espino et al.'s results do not discriminate between theories of syllogistic reasoning as effectively as they propose. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn recent years, with Europe witnessing its worst refugee crisis since the Second World War, the process of applying for asylum in a foreign country has become the focus of numerous studies and research programs. The aim of the present article is to explore the subject through a case study of the issues and complexities surrounding the interpreting and translation services offered by the Spanish Asylum and Refugee Office. The data is based on two surveys: the first focused on the (...) professionals’ views of the role of translators and interpreters, and the second on translators and interpreters working in the field of international protection. The findings obtained from these studies may prove useful for improving the various interpreting and translation training programs and services that are crucial for managing the refugee crisis and the multiple problems associated with it. (shrink)

We examine the role of working memory's central executive in the mental model explanation of propositional reasoning by using two working memory measures: the classical “reading span” test by Daneman and Carpenter (1980) and a new measure. This new “reasoning span” measure requires individuals to solve very simple anaphora problems, and store and remember the word solution in a growing series of inferential problems. We present one experiment in which we check the involvement of the central executive in conditional and (...) disjunctive inference tasks and compare predictions of the new reasoning span test with those of the classical reading span test. The results of the experiment confirm that reasoning responses, which according to mental model theory require high cognitive work, are predicted by working memory measures. Results also show that some reasoning responses are probably obtained by means of superficial biases or strategies that do not load working memory. The reasoning span test, which involves the central executive to a greater degree, predicts reasoning performance better than the reading span test. The significance and possibilities of the new measure in studying reasoning are discussed. (shrink)