What Is Music? Is There a Definitive Answer?

Abstract

Philosophers frequently defend definitions by appealing to intuitions and contemporary folk classificatory norms. I raise methodological concerns that undermine some of these defenses. Focusing on Andrew Kania's recent definition of music, I argue that the way in which it has been developed leads to problems, and I show that a number of other definitions of interest to philosophers of art (and others) run into similar problems.

Music and philosophical naturalism

“…Improvised blues jamming, in which spontaneous response of all players is the point of the music, is organised in real-time by intentional agents, but the music may not have been organised or planned as an overall whole, so its 30 Music has been used extensively by various groups of people, and sometimes in conjunction with drugs, 'in order to communicate with the spirits, and then return to their senses in order to heal the sick, control animals or change the weather… in one form or another wherever there have been hunter-gatherer societies, from the Native Americans of California, to the Inuit of Alaska, the San of South Africa and the peoples of Inner Mongolia' (Hendy 2013, p. 37). 31 See McKeown-Green (2014) for an extended critique of Kania's definition of music.…”

Music and philosophical naturalism

“…Improvised blues jamming, in which spontaneous response of all players is the point of the music, is organised in real-time by intentional agents, but the music may not have been organised or planned as an overall whole, so its 30 Music has been used extensively by various groups of people, and sometimes in conjunction with drugs, 'in order to communicate with the spirits, and then return to their senses in order to heal the sick, control animals or change the weather… in one form or another wherever there have been hunter-gatherer societies, from the Native Americans of California, to the Inuit of Alaska, the San of South Africa and the peoples of Inner Mongolia' (Hendy 2013, p. 37). 31 See McKeown-Green (2014) for an extended critique of Kania's definition of music.…”