The ontological status of musical works—specifically, what kind of entity a musical composition is—has long vexed philosophers of art. The traditional approach, often termed musical Platonism, posits that musical works are abstract objects, specifically eternal sound-types. According to this view, just as mathematical entities exist independently of human thought, musical works exist outside of space and time. A performance, then, is merely a spatio-temporal token, an acoustic instantiation of the eternal type. This framework elegantly accounts for the repeatability of musical works, as the same eternal type can be tokened in infinitely many distinct performances without being exhausted or altered.
However, musical Platonism clashes with a fundamental intuition regarding artistic production: the intuition of creatability. If musical works are eternal abstract objects, they cannot be brought into existence; they can only be discovered. This contradicts our entrenched cultural understanding of composers as genuine creators. In defense, some proponents of Platonism argue for a modified theory wherein composers do not create sound-structures but rather "indicate" or "select" them from a pre-existing realm of possibilities, effectively making the act of discovery culturally significant. Yet, to many critics, this semantic shift fails to capture the metaphysical novelty inherent in artistic creation.
In response to the creatability problem, some philosophers advocate for an action-type ontology. Rather than defining a musical work as an abstract sound-structure, this approach defines it as the action-type of composing a particular sound-structure within a specific musico-historical context. On this view, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is not an eternal pattern of notes, but rather the socially embedded act of Beethoven organizing those notes in early nineteenth-century Vienna. Because actions are intimately tied to their agents and temporal contexts, this ontological framework seamlessly accommodates the intuition that composers genuinely create their works; the work did not, and could not, exist before the composer acted.
Despite its advantage regarding creatability, the action-type ontology introduces its own distinct theoretical burdens. The most pressing is its counterintuitive implication for repeatability. If a musical work is fundamentally defined by the historical act of its original composition, it becomes difficult to explain how a modern performance, situated in a radically different context and performed by different agents, can be said to instantiate the exact same work. Consequently, while the action-type theory successfully resolves the tension between ontology and artistic creation, it ultimately forces philosophers to sacrifice the intuitive clarity regarding performance that Platonism originally provided.
Which one of the following most accurately describes the organization of the passage?
- A theoretical framework is introduced and its primary advantage is identified; an objection to the framework is presented alongside a defense by its proponents; an alternative framework intended to avoid the objection is outlined; and a theoretical cost of adopting this alternative is evaluated.Answer
- BA theoretical framework is introduced; an objection to the framework is raised and a modification is proposed by its critics; an alternative framework is outlined; and the alternative is critiqued for failing to explain the phenomenon that motivated the original framework.
- CA theoretical framework is explained; a counterargument concerning the origin of musical works is discussed; an alternative framework is proposed to address the counterargument; and the practical process of musical performance is detailed.
- DA dominant paradigm is described; a tension between the paradigm and an entrenched intuition is explored; an alternative paradigm that resolves this tension is advanced; and the alternative is rejected because it introduces an equally problematic tension.
- EA theory is outlined and its explanatory power is noted; a competing theory is introduced to address a flaw in the original theory; a compromise position that blends elements of both theories is proposed; and a lingering difficulty with the compromise is discussed.