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nick zangwill

University College London, Philosophy, Honorary Research Fellow

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Philosopher, mostly interested in normative concerns of different kinds, metaphysical issues of different kinds, and where these two meet.

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Papers by nick zangwill

Categories Naturalism And Materialism

Naturalism and its Challenges, Edited by Gary N. Kemp, Ali Hossein Khani, Hossein Sheykh Rezaee, and Hassan Amiriara, New York: Routledge,, 2024

Categorial approaches to metaphysical issues about the mind are explained and defended, and natur... more Categorial approaches to metaphysical issues about the mind are explained and defended, and naturalistic approaches are criticized for begging categorial questions. Categorial properties are a certain kind of essential properties and are not understood terms of concepts, although categorial knowledge is necessary for thinking. The debate over materialism and dualism is reconsidered in these terms. Issues about so-called ‘category mistakes’ and Leibniz’s Law are clarified. It is shown how the approach dovetails with Saul Kripke’s approach to natural kinds, but not that of Nathan Salmon. Tyler Burge’s anxieties about the over-sophistication of such approaches are addressed and dismissed. Lastly, Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap’s, categorial non-cognitivism is rejected. The conclusion is not anti-naturalist or pro-dualist, only that categorial issues are fundamental and metaphysical issues about the mind cannot be addressed without considering them.

The philosophical interpretation of language game theory

Journal of Language Evolution, 2021

I give an informal presentation of the evolutionary game theoretic approach to the conventions th... more I give an informal presentation of the evolutionary game theoretic approach to the conventions that constitute linguistic meaning. The aim is to give a philosophical interpretation of the project, which accounts for the role of game theoretic mathematics in explaining linguistic phenomena. I articulate the main virtue of this sort of account, which is its psychological economy, and I point to the casual mechanisms that are the ground of the application of evolutionary game theory to linguistic phenomena. Lastly, I consider the objection that the account cannot explain predication, logic, and compositionality.

Expressivism, Inferentialism and the Simulation Game

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2022

I construe the expressivist task with respect to the Frege-Geach problem as a simulation game, wh... more I construe the expressivist task with respect to the Frege-Geach problem as a simulation game, whereby the inferential roles characteristic of logical constant thought is explained in expressivist terms. I suggest that basis on which the relevant roles may be explained are rational consistencies and inconsistences among sentiments, and I show how this may also deliver moral propositions.

Logic as Metaphysics

Journal of Philosophy, 2015

Epistemic/Non-epistemic Dependence

Nous, 2018

I foreground the principle of epistemic dependence. I isolate that relation and distinguish it fr... more I foreground the principle of epistemic dependence. I isolate that relation and distinguish it from other relations and note what it does and does not entail. In particular, I distinguish between dependence and necessitation. This has many interesting consequences. On the negative side, many standard arguments in episte-mology are subverted. More positively, once we are liberated from the necessary and sufficient conditions project, many fruitful paths for future epistemological investigation open up. I argue that that not being defeated does not make for knowledge. And I argue for the multiple realization of epistemic properties in non-epistemic properties. If we know something then there is something in virtue of which we know it; and if we are justified in believing something then there is something in virtue of which we are justified in believing it. That much is relatively uncontroversial. Only slightly more controversial is the claim that our having an epistemic achievement, such as knowing something or being justified in believing something, depends on how we are in non-epistemic respects. That is, instantiating epistemic properties depends on our instantiating non-epistemic properties. In this paper, I argue that epistemic/non-epistemic dependence should be given a central place in epistemology, and that doing so has significant consequences. In the first part of this paper, the dependence approach is contrasted with what I shall call " the necessary and sufficient conditions project " the project of attempting to give necessary and sufficient conditions for someone knowing something or being justified in believing something. Although statements of the goal of uncovering necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge or justification are common in the first few pages of epistemology textbooks and articles, I have yet to find an articulation or defense of the project to take as an explicit target. It is usually briefly stated, in passing, as if it were obvious, before moving on. So I will proceed by

Negative Properties

Nous, 2011

Our Moral Duty to Eat Meat

Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2021

I argue that eating meat is morally good and our duty when it is part of a practice that has bene... more I argue that eating meat is morally good and our duty when it is part of a practice that has benefited animals. The existence of domesticated animals depends on the practice of eating them, and the meat-eating practice benefits animals of that kind if they have good lives. The argument is not consequentialist but historical, and it does not apply to nondomesticated animals. I refine the argument and consider objections.

Music, Feeling, and Listening: Themes from Chapters 4 and 5 of On the Musically Beautiful

by nick zangwill and Alexander Wilfing

The Aesthetic Legacy of Eduard Hanslick Close Readings and Critical Perspectives, edited by Lee Rothfarb, Alexander Wilfing, and Christoph Landerer, 2024

This paper addresses the role of feeling and emotion in Eduard Hanslick’s On the Musically Beauti... more This paper addresses the role of feeling and emotion in Eduard Hanslick’s On the Musically Beautiful. His views on musical listening are probed while drawing attention to his normative agenda. Hanslick thinks that there are better and worse ways to listen to music: proper aesthetic attention as against wallowing in feeling. This normative view assumes that musical listening is often connected with feeling and emotion in a way it should not be. Analytic aestheticians who discuss whether music can provoke emotions are criticized. A ninefold framework is then proposed as a way to understand Hanslick’s views on the relationship between composing, music, and listening in terms of sound, tone and beauty. This allows that different aspects of composing, music and musical listening can be operating at the same time. Feeling and emotion are connected with sound and tone, but not musical beauty. Proper musical listening is directed to structures of tones, and the beauty they support can coexist with feelings pathologically generated by the sound of music. Proper musical listening is further described, as directed to the particularity of music (by contrast with feeling responses), so-called ‘embodied’ approaches are rejected, and three- or fourfold accounts of dynamic musical listening are suggested.

Hanslick On Nonabsolute Music

Hanslick in Context, (eds) Alexander Wilfing, Christoph Landerer and Meike Wilfing-Albrecht, Hollitzer Press: Vienna., 2020

Hanslick has a subtle and compelling account of non-absolute music. I articulate and defend that ... more Hanslick has a subtle and compelling account of non-absolute music. I articulate and defend that account so that it throws light on his conception of absolute music. Hanslick thinks that aiming at musical-beauty is the essence of (most) music. Nevertheless, Hanslick recognizes the variety of things that music does apart from aiming at musical-beauty, even though he does think that musical-beauty is in some sense the central function or purpose of (most) music. Music with only the musical-beauty function can be called ‘absolute music’; but much music does more than that. I describe the way that Hanslick puts musical-beauty at the centre of his understanding of music, whether absolute or non-absolute. Making musical-beauty central and essential to all music, as Hanslick does, allows that things with musical-beauty functions can also have other functions--in particular, they can be the setting for words to express feelings. But Hanslick denies the equality of music and text when the two are combined: music, he thinks, has priority. Spelling out this priority means probing what I call the ‘back door’ to Hanslick’s general view of music, which is his claim that the nature of instrumental music gives the nature of all music; so non-absolute music is music in virtue of its musical-beauty function. Why believe that? Hanslick has arguments. What I call the ‘key to the back door’ of Hanslick’s view of music is: first, his argument that small variations in the music can spoil the beauty of the whole, while small variations in the text do not; and second, his argument that the musical-beauty of a music-text combination does not consist in expressing the text well. These arguments are persuasive, and they show that musical-beauty, where music is combined with text, does not consist primarily in the poetic theme, but it does consist primarily in the instrumental aspects of the music. If so, there is no equality between music and text. This is why good music (like good architecture) is adaptable to a variety of different texts and purposes.

Hanslick's Deleted Ending

British Journal of Aesthetics, 2017

We question Mark Evan Bonds' interpretation of the deleted ending of Eduard Hanslick's On the Mus... more We question Mark Evan Bonds' interpretation of the deleted ending of Eduard Hanslick's On the Musically Beautiful. We argue that there is no evidence that it reveals a commitment to Pythagoreanism or Idealism. We supply an alternative explanation of the deletion. Mark Evan Bonds' impressive book on absolute music, or rather on the idea of it, is much to be welcomed. It is officially an excursion in the history of ideas, though some degree of vindication of the idea is probably part of its tacit agenda. 1 There are many aspects of this book that invite comment and discussion. Here we restrict ourselves to commenting on a core argument of the core chapter, which is on Eduard Hanslick's 1854 work On the Musically Beautiful. 2 In that chapter, Bonds analyses and diagnoses the removal by Hanslick of the original flowery ending of the first edition. Bonds thinks that he finds a Pythagorean residue in this passage—an aspect of the theoretical framework of 'Naturphilosophie' (natural philosophy in the German tradition), which Hanslick embraced at one time. Bonds claims that, because of this, the passage is strategically 'amputated', and brushed under the carpet, even though Pythagorean/natural-philosophical thinking in fact informs the idea of absolute music as it is manifest in Hanslick's book (Bonds, 185). This is important in the overall plan of Bonds' book since it is this idea that underpins Bonds' long-scope history of the idea of absolute music, which reaches from ancient Greece, through Hanslick's On the Musically Beautiful, to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, rather than a short-scope history restricted to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is also important because it implies that the idea of absolute music is not what it seems (187). The following is the passage from the very end of the first edition of On the Musically Beautiful that was partly deleted in the second edition (up to the words 'great and beautiful ideas') and then wholly deleted in the third edition. Hanslick wrote: In the psyche [Gemüth] of the listener, furthermore, this intellectual-spiritual substance 3 unites the beautiful in music with all other great and beautiful ideas. It is not merely and absolutely through its own intrinsic beauty that music affects the listener, but rather at the same time as a sounding image of the great motions of the cosmos. Through profound and secret connections to nature, the meaning of tones elevates itself high above the tones themselves, allowing us to feel at the same time the infinite in the work of human talent. Just as the elements of music—sound, tone, rhythm, loudness,

Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy, 2020

Understanding Religious Music: A Smorgasbord

Religions, 2024

Understanding religious music is challenging. Indeed, the whole idea can seem perplexing and prob... more Understanding religious music is challenging. Indeed, the whole idea can seem perplexing and problematic. In this paper, a number of ways of understanding religious music are sketched. Seven main models are distinguished: the side-effect model, the ringtone model, the honey model, the addition model, the fitting beauty model, the organic unity model, and the similarity model. Some issues concerning Bach’s Sacred Cantatas are then considered in order to see how these approaches apply in one particularly controversial and puzzling example.

Disinterestedness: Analysis and Partial Defense

Disinterested Pleasure and Beauty. Perspectives from Kantian and Contemporary Aesthetics. Berger, Larissa (Ed.). Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, pp. 59–85., 2023

Kant makes modest and ambitious claims with his idea of disinterested pleasure. The modest claim ... more Kant makes modest and ambitious claims with his idea of disinterested
pleasure. The modest claim is that all aesthetic pleasure is disinterested. The ambitious claim is that all and only aesthetic pleasure is disinterested. I defend only the modest claim. I initially give a basic explication of what Kant had in mind by the doctrine. I then argue that if aesthetic pleasure were not basically disinterested, judgements of taste could not make the normative (or “universal”) claims they do. Normativity is essential to judgements of taste; they would not be what they are without it. And basic disinterest is essential for normativity. Therefore, we cannot reject basic disinterestedness without rejecting judgements of taste altogether. I then distinguish various other notions of disinterest and argue that none of them allow Kant to make his ambitions claim.

Music, Autism and Emotion

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

Music, Essence and Context

Of Essence and Context: Between Music and Philosophy, edited by Rūta Stanevičiūtė, Nick Zangwill and Rima Povilionienė, 2019

I defend the application of the notion of essence to music. In the first part, I explain how the ... more I defend the application of the notion of essence to music. In the first part, I explain how the notion of essence might apply to events rather than objects, which would be the relevant category for thinking about music. Furthermore, I point out that the idea of essence does not exclude context, instead essence would be part of the explanation of context. In the second part, I introduce the functionality of biological things and events, and human artifacts, whether objects or events. I show how artifactual events, such as handshakes, have historical essences. On this basis, I then respond to some of Richard Taruskin’s objections to thinking about music in terms of essence. I then move on to Eduard Hanslick’s idea that musical-beauty should be taken to be a central function of much music. I make some points about the interpretation of Hanslick. He is often taken (by critics) to make claims that are foreign to him. Pleasure in musical beauty is his central basis for explaining what music does for us. I then defend the appeal to pleasure in beauty against Taruskin’s skepticism, which invokes the sublime, as something that involves pain. I argue that this does not make sense of most musical listening, which is not an irrational activity. In part four I turn to the notion of absolute music and characterize it in a certain way. I show how Hanslick can and does allow much non-absolute music. Nevertheless, absolute music retains a certain explanatory priority with respect to the other things that music does for us. Part five address political criticisms of formalism about music. These are easily dispatched. It is not culturally parochial and the criticisms usually make problematic assertions about those of non-Western cultures. Lastly, in section six, I diagnose Taruskin’s worry about nature and culture, that talking about essence gets something wrong about the cultural dimensions of human life. In reply I show how essence is essential for understanding human action, and thus also for understanding cultural human action.

Beauty and the Agreeable: A Critique of Experimental Aesthetics

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Aesthetics, edited by Florian Cova and Sebastien Rehault, 2019

Epistemic Pluralism: The Missing Link and the Ambitions of Epistemology

Metaphilosophy, 2020

In this paper epistemic pluralism concerning knowledge is taken to be the claim that very differe... more In this paper epistemic pluralism concerning knowledge is taken to be the claim that very different facts may constitute knowledge. The paper argues for pluralism by arguing that very different facts can constitute the knowledge-making links between beliefs and facts. If pluralism is right, we need not anxiously seek a unified account of the links between beliefs and facts that partly constitute knowledge in different cases of knowledge. The paper argues that no good reasons have been put forward in favour of believing in a unified maker of knowledge. It then appeals to the role of knowledge in order to argue that we have positive reason to embrace pluralism.

Against Logical Inferentialism: Stipulation, Rules and the Mushroom Omelette Objection

Logique et Analyse, 2021

I argue against inferentialism about logic. First, I argue against an analogy between logic and c... more I argue against inferentialism about logic. First, I argue against an analogy between logic and chess, before considering a more basic objection to stipulating inference rules as a way of establishing the meaning of logical constants. The objection-the Mushroom Omelette Objection-is that stipulative acts are partly constituted by logical notions, and therefore cannot be used to explain logical thought. I then argue that the same problem also attaches to following existing conventional rules, since either those rules have logical contents, or following those conventional rules is done for logical reasons. Lastly, I compare this argument with other arguments found in Quine's early work, and consider two attempts to reply to Quine.

Yuval Harari on Human Rights and Biology

Think, 2024

Yuval Harari believes that humans make myths, and that these can be powerful engines for social c... more

Brutalist Non-Naturalism and Hume's Principle

Dialectica, 2019

I argue that non‐naturalist moral realism does not have a problem with supervenience. The necessi... more I argue that non‐naturalist moral realism does not have a problem with supervenience. The necessities may be explained as flowing from the essence of moral properties. It is still true that non‐naturalism embraces necessary connections between distinct things, thus offending against ‘Hume's Principle’ according to which there are no such connections. Therefore, the apparent appeal of Hume's principle needs addressing. Hume's Principle faces a tsunami of counterexamples, of both abstract and non‐abstract kinds of things. Furthermore, Hume's Principle lacks any motivation and is highly revisionary of ordinary modal thought. Not only are supervenience objections to non‐naturalism that draw on Hume's principle ineffective, but also the modal presuppositions of the supervenience argument are far stranger than anything in non‐naturalism.

Categories Naturalism And Materialism

Naturalism and its Challenges, Edited by Gary N. Kemp, Ali Hossein Khani, Hossein Sheykh Rezaee, and Hassan Amiriara, New York: Routledge,, 2024

Categorial approaches to metaphysical issues about the mind are explained and defended, and natur... more Categorial approaches to metaphysical issues about the mind are explained and defended, and naturalistic approaches are criticized for begging categorial questions. Categorial properties are a certain kind of essential properties and are not understood terms of concepts, although categorial knowledge is necessary for thinking. The debate over materialism and dualism is reconsidered in these terms. Issues about so-called ‘category mistakes’ and Leibniz’s Law are clarified. It is shown how the approach dovetails with Saul Kripke’s approach to natural kinds, but not that of Nathan Salmon. Tyler Burge’s anxieties about the over-sophistication of such approaches are addressed and dismissed. Lastly, Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap’s, categorial non-cognitivism is rejected. The conclusion is not anti-naturalist or pro-dualist, only that categorial issues are fundamental and metaphysical issues about the mind cannot be addressed without considering them.

The philosophical interpretation of language game theory

Journal of Language Evolution, 2021

I give an informal presentation of the evolutionary game theoretic approach to the conventions th... more I give an informal presentation of the evolutionary game theoretic approach to the conventions that constitute linguistic meaning. The aim is to give a philosophical interpretation of the project, which accounts for the role of game theoretic mathematics in explaining linguistic phenomena. I articulate the main virtue of this sort of account, which is its psychological economy, and I point to the casual mechanisms that are the ground of the application of evolutionary game theory to linguistic phenomena. Lastly, I consider the objection that the account cannot explain predication, logic, and compositionality.

Expressivism, Inferentialism and the Simulation Game

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2022

I construe the expressivist task with respect to the Frege-Geach problem as a simulation game, wh... more I construe the expressivist task with respect to the Frege-Geach problem as a simulation game, whereby the inferential roles characteristic of logical constant thought is explained in expressivist terms. I suggest that basis on which the relevant roles may be explained are rational consistencies and inconsistences among sentiments, and I show how this may also deliver moral propositions.

Logic as Metaphysics

Journal of Philosophy, 2015

Epistemic/Non-epistemic Dependence

Nous, 2018

I foreground the principle of epistemic dependence. I isolate that relation and distinguish it fr... more I foreground the principle of epistemic dependence. I isolate that relation and distinguish it from other relations and note what it does and does not entail. In particular, I distinguish between dependence and necessitation. This has many interesting consequences. On the negative side, many standard arguments in episte-mology are subverted. More positively, once we are liberated from the necessary and sufficient conditions project, many fruitful paths for future epistemological investigation open up. I argue that that not being defeated does not make for knowledge. And I argue for the multiple realization of epistemic properties in non-epistemic properties. If we know something then there is something in virtue of which we know it; and if we are justified in believing something then there is something in virtue of which we are justified in believing it. That much is relatively uncontroversial. Only slightly more controversial is the claim that our having an epistemic achievement, such as knowing something or being justified in believing something, depends on how we are in non-epistemic respects. That is, instantiating epistemic properties depends on our instantiating non-epistemic properties. In this paper, I argue that epistemic/non-epistemic dependence should be given a central place in epistemology, and that doing so has significant consequences. In the first part of this paper, the dependence approach is contrasted with what I shall call " the necessary and sufficient conditions project " the project of attempting to give necessary and sufficient conditions for someone knowing something or being justified in believing something. Although statements of the goal of uncovering necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge or justification are common in the first few pages of epistemology textbooks and articles, I have yet to find an articulation or defense of the project to take as an explicit target. It is usually briefly stated, in passing, as if it were obvious, before moving on. So I will proceed by

Negative Properties

Nous, 2011

Our Moral Duty to Eat Meat

Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2021

I argue that eating meat is morally good and our duty when it is part of a practice that has bene... more I argue that eating meat is morally good and our duty when it is part of a practice that has benefited animals. The existence of domesticated animals depends on the practice of eating them, and the meat-eating practice benefits animals of that kind if they have good lives. The argument is not consequentialist but historical, and it does not apply to nondomesticated animals. I refine the argument and consider objections.

Music, Feeling, and Listening: Themes from Chapters 4 and 5 of On the Musically Beautiful

by nick zangwill and Alexander Wilfing

The Aesthetic Legacy of Eduard Hanslick Close Readings and Critical Perspectives, edited by Lee Rothfarb, Alexander Wilfing, and Christoph Landerer, 2024

This paper addresses the role of feeling and emotion in Eduard Hanslick’s On the Musically Beauti... more This paper addresses the role of feeling and emotion in Eduard Hanslick’s On the Musically Beautiful. His views on musical listening are probed while drawing attention to his normative agenda. Hanslick thinks that there are better and worse ways to listen to music: proper aesthetic attention as against wallowing in feeling. This normative view assumes that musical listening is often connected with feeling and emotion in a way it should not be. Analytic aestheticians who discuss whether music can provoke emotions are criticized. A ninefold framework is then proposed as a way to understand Hanslick’s views on the relationship between composing, music, and listening in terms of sound, tone and beauty. This allows that different aspects of composing, music and musical listening can be operating at the same time. Feeling and emotion are connected with sound and tone, but not musical beauty. Proper musical listening is directed to structures of tones, and the beauty they support can coexist with feelings pathologically generated by the sound of music. Proper musical listening is further described, as directed to the particularity of music (by contrast with feeling responses), so-called ‘embodied’ approaches are rejected, and three- or fourfold accounts of dynamic musical listening are suggested.

Hanslick On Nonabsolute Music

Hanslick in Context, (eds) Alexander Wilfing, Christoph Landerer and Meike Wilfing-Albrecht, Hollitzer Press: Vienna., 2020

Hanslick has a subtle and compelling account of non-absolute music. I articulate and defend that ... more Hanslick has a subtle and compelling account of non-absolute music. I articulate and defend that account so that it throws light on his conception of absolute music. Hanslick thinks that aiming at musical-beauty is the essence of (most) music. Nevertheless, Hanslick recognizes the variety of things that music does apart from aiming at musical-beauty, even though he does think that musical-beauty is in some sense the central function or purpose of (most) music. Music with only the musical-beauty function can be called ‘absolute music’; but much music does more than that. I describe the way that Hanslick puts musical-beauty at the centre of his understanding of music, whether absolute or non-absolute. Making musical-beauty central and essential to all music, as Hanslick does, allows that things with musical-beauty functions can also have other functions--in particular, they can be the setting for words to express feelings. But Hanslick denies the equality of music and text when the two are combined: music, he thinks, has priority. Spelling out this priority means probing what I call the ‘back door’ to Hanslick’s general view of music, which is his claim that the nature of instrumental music gives the nature of all music; so non-absolute music is music in virtue of its musical-beauty function. Why believe that? Hanslick has arguments. What I call the ‘key to the back door’ of Hanslick’s view of music is: first, his argument that small variations in the music can spoil the beauty of the whole, while small variations in the text do not; and second, his argument that the musical-beauty of a music-text combination does not consist in expressing the text well. These arguments are persuasive, and they show that musical-beauty, where music is combined with text, does not consist primarily in the poetic theme, but it does consist primarily in the instrumental aspects of the music. If so, there is no equality between music and text. This is why good music (like good architecture) is adaptable to a variety of different texts and purposes.

Hanslick's Deleted Ending

British Journal of Aesthetics, 2017

We question Mark Evan Bonds' interpretation of the deleted ending of Eduard Hanslick's On the Mus... more We question Mark Evan Bonds' interpretation of the deleted ending of Eduard Hanslick's On the Musically Beautiful. We argue that there is no evidence that it reveals a commitment to Pythagoreanism or Idealism. We supply an alternative explanation of the deletion. Mark Evan Bonds' impressive book on absolute music, or rather on the idea of it, is much to be welcomed. It is officially an excursion in the history of ideas, though some degree of vindication of the idea is probably part of its tacit agenda. 1 There are many aspects of this book that invite comment and discussion. Here we restrict ourselves to commenting on a core argument of the core chapter, which is on Eduard Hanslick's 1854 work On the Musically Beautiful. 2 In that chapter, Bonds analyses and diagnoses the removal by Hanslick of the original flowery ending of the first edition. Bonds thinks that he finds a Pythagorean residue in this passage—an aspect of the theoretical framework of 'Naturphilosophie' (natural philosophy in the German tradition), which Hanslick embraced at one time. Bonds claims that, because of this, the passage is strategically 'amputated', and brushed under the carpet, even though Pythagorean/natural-philosophical thinking in fact informs the idea of absolute music as it is manifest in Hanslick's book (Bonds, 185). This is important in the overall plan of Bonds' book since it is this idea that underpins Bonds' long-scope history of the idea of absolute music, which reaches from ancient Greece, through Hanslick's On the Musically Beautiful, to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, rather than a short-scope history restricted to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is also important because it implies that the idea of absolute music is not what it seems (187). The following is the passage from the very end of the first edition of On the Musically Beautiful that was partly deleted in the second edition (up to the words 'great and beautiful ideas') and then wholly deleted in the third edition. Hanslick wrote: In the psyche [Gemüth] of the listener, furthermore, this intellectual-spiritual substance 3 unites the beautiful in music with all other great and beautiful ideas. It is not merely and absolutely through its own intrinsic beauty that music affects the listener, but rather at the same time as a sounding image of the great motions of the cosmos. Through profound and secret connections to nature, the meaning of tones elevates itself high above the tones themselves, allowing us to feel at the same time the infinite in the work of human talent. Just as the elements of music—sound, tone, rhythm, loudness,

Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy, 2020

Understanding Religious Music: A Smorgasbord

Religions, 2024

Understanding religious music is challenging. Indeed, the whole idea can seem perplexing and prob... more Understanding religious music is challenging. Indeed, the whole idea can seem perplexing and problematic. In this paper, a number of ways of understanding religious music are sketched. Seven main models are distinguished: the side-effect model, the ringtone model, the honey model, the addition model, the fitting beauty model, the organic unity model, and the similarity model. Some issues concerning Bach’s Sacred Cantatas are then considered in order to see how these approaches apply in one particularly controversial and puzzling example.

Disinterestedness: Analysis and Partial Defense

Disinterested Pleasure and Beauty. Perspectives from Kantian and Contemporary Aesthetics. Berger, Larissa (Ed.). Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, pp. 59–85., 2023

Kant makes modest and ambitious claims with his idea of disinterested pleasure. The modest claim ... more Kant makes modest and ambitious claims with his idea of disinterested
pleasure. The modest claim is that all aesthetic pleasure is disinterested. The ambitious claim is that all and only aesthetic pleasure is disinterested. I defend only the modest claim. I initially give a basic explication of what Kant had in mind by the doctrine. I then argue that if aesthetic pleasure were not basically disinterested, judgements of taste could not make the normative (or “universal”) claims they do. Normativity is essential to judgements of taste; they would not be what they are without it. And basic disinterest is essential for normativity. Therefore, we cannot reject basic disinterestedness without rejecting judgements of taste altogether. I then distinguish various other notions of disinterest and argue that none of them allow Kant to make his ambitions claim.

Music, Autism and Emotion

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

Music, Essence and Context

Of Essence and Context: Between Music and Philosophy, edited by Rūta Stanevičiūtė, Nick Zangwill and Rima Povilionienė, 2019

I defend the application of the notion of essence to music. In the first part, I explain how the ... more I defend the application of the notion of essence to music. In the first part, I explain how the notion of essence might apply to events rather than objects, which would be the relevant category for thinking about music. Furthermore, I point out that the idea of essence does not exclude context, instead essence would be part of the explanation of context. In the second part, I introduce the functionality of biological things and events, and human artifacts, whether objects or events. I show how artifactual events, such as handshakes, have historical essences. On this basis, I then respond to some of Richard Taruskin’s objections to thinking about music in terms of essence. I then move on to Eduard Hanslick’s idea that musical-beauty should be taken to be a central function of much music. I make some points about the interpretation of Hanslick. He is often taken (by critics) to make claims that are foreign to him. Pleasure in musical beauty is his central basis for explaining what music does for us. I then defend the appeal to pleasure in beauty against Taruskin’s skepticism, which invokes the sublime, as something that involves pain. I argue that this does not make sense of most musical listening, which is not an irrational activity. In part four I turn to the notion of absolute music and characterize it in a certain way. I show how Hanslick can and does allow much non-absolute music. Nevertheless, absolute music retains a certain explanatory priority with respect to the other things that music does for us. Part five address political criticisms of formalism about music. These are easily dispatched. It is not culturally parochial and the criticisms usually make problematic assertions about those of non-Western cultures. Lastly, in section six, I diagnose Taruskin’s worry about nature and culture, that talking about essence gets something wrong about the cultural dimensions of human life. In reply I show how essence is essential for understanding human action, and thus also for understanding cultural human action.

Beauty and the Agreeable: A Critique of Experimental Aesthetics

Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Aesthetics, edited by Florian Cova and Sebastien Rehault, 2019

Epistemic Pluralism: The Missing Link and the Ambitions of Epistemology

Metaphilosophy, 2020

In this paper epistemic pluralism concerning knowledge is taken to be the claim that very differe... more In this paper epistemic pluralism concerning knowledge is taken to be the claim that very different facts may constitute knowledge. The paper argues for pluralism by arguing that very different facts can constitute the knowledge-making links between beliefs and facts. If pluralism is right, we need not anxiously seek a unified account of the links between beliefs and facts that partly constitute knowledge in different cases of knowledge. The paper argues that no good reasons have been put forward in favour of believing in a unified maker of knowledge. It then appeals to the role of knowledge in order to argue that we have positive reason to embrace pluralism.

Against Logical Inferentialism: Stipulation, Rules and the Mushroom Omelette Objection

Logique et Analyse, 2021

I argue against inferentialism about logic. First, I argue against an analogy between logic and c... more I argue against inferentialism about logic. First, I argue against an analogy between logic and chess, before considering a more basic objection to stipulating inference rules as a way of establishing the meaning of logical constants. The objection-the Mushroom Omelette Objection-is that stipulative acts are partly constituted by logical notions, and therefore cannot be used to explain logical thought. I then argue that the same problem also attaches to following existing conventional rules, since either those rules have logical contents, or following those conventional rules is done for logical reasons. Lastly, I compare this argument with other arguments found in Quine's early work, and consider two attempts to reply to Quine.

Yuval Harari on Human Rights and Biology

Think, 2024

Yuval Harari believes that humans make myths, and that these can be powerful engines for social c... more

Brutalist Non-Naturalism and Hume's Principle

Dialectica, 2019

I argue that non‐naturalist moral realism does not have a problem with supervenience. The necessi... more I argue that non‐naturalist moral realism does not have a problem with supervenience. The necessities may be explained as flowing from the essence of moral properties. It is still true that non‐naturalism embraces necessary connections between distinct things, thus offending against ‘Hume's Principle’ according to which there are no such connections. Therefore, the apparent appeal of Hume's principle needs addressing. Hume's Principle faces a tsunami of counterexamples, of both abstract and non‐abstract kinds of things. Furthermore, Hume's Principle lacks any motivation and is highly revisionary of ordinary modal thought. Not only are supervenience objections to non‐naturalism that draw on Hume's principle ineffective, but also the modal presuppositions of the supervenience argument are far stranger than anything in non‐naturalism.