Today, music is ubiquitous, highly valued in all known cultures, playing many roles in human daily life. The ethnographic study of the music of extant human foragers makes this quite apparent. Moreover, music is ancient. Sophisticated bird-bone and ivory flutes dated from 40 kya reveal an even earlier musical-technological tradition. So is music likely to be an entrenched feature of human social life during the long passage to behavioral modernity—say, by 150 kya—or earlier? In this article I sketch an evolutionary (...) model that focuses on hominin vocal musicality and communication in the Pleistocene, tracking between series of phenotypes and changes in ecological, social, cognitive, and informational contexts. The model links musicality and protomusic to a bigger picture of hominin socio-cognitive evolution, making some connections clearer, motivating further theorizing and the search for new evidence. (shrink)

According to pluralism about some concept, there are multiple non-equivalent, legitimate concepts pertaining to the ontological category in question. It is an open question whether conceptual pluralism implies anti-realism about that category. In this article, I argue that at least for the case of music, it does not. To undermine the application of an influential move from pluralism to anti-realism, then, I provide an argument in support of indifference realism about music, by appeal to music archaeological research, via an analogy (...) with Adrian Currie’s indifference realism about species licensed by paleobiological research. (shrink)

Cognitive archaeologists infer from material remains to the cognitive features of past societies. We characterize cognitive archaeology in terms of trace-based reasoning, which in the case of cognitive archaeology involves inferences drawing upon background theory linking objects from the archaeological record to cognitive features. We analyse such practices, examining work on cognitive evolution, language, and musicality. We argue that the central epistemic challenge for cognitive archaeology is often not a paucity of material remains, but insufficient constraint from cognitive theories. However, (...) we also argue that the success of cognitive archaeology does not necessarily require well-developed cognitive theories: Success might instead lead to them. (shrink)

In western philosophy and beyond, a tension between pluralism and monism has sparked many developments and debates. Pluralism of norms, of forms of knowledge, of aesthetic and moral values, of interests etc. has often been pitted against monism. Monism usually implies a hierarchical order of such norms etc. After having traced the origin of this tension between pluralism and monism in ancient tragedy and philosophy, I’m asking in this article whether a rejection of monism and embrace of pluralism necessarily raises (...) the specter of inconsistency and contradiction. The threat of inconsistency need not be associated with pluralism as even with regard to logic an argument can be made for a ‘multiplicity of logics’, as van Lambalgen and Stenning argue in several places. They refer to the varieties in reasoning that can be observed in humans and which are partly due to there being ‘dual systems’ of reasoning: System 1 processes information fast, automatized, and emotional, while System 2 is rather slow, more deliberative, and more rational. In contrast to a widely held view, the authors argue that System 1 processing is not without logic, even though it is a different form of logic from System 2. In addition, the multiplicity of logics they discuss is related to the multiple semantics required for distinct domains of reasoning. This perspective raises the subsequent question how this pluralism can be available while maintaining consistency, how should the available options be configured or related to each other? In the remainer of this chapter I’m addressing several such options for configurating pluralism like: non-foundational pluralism and foundational pluralism, moderate or temporary pluralism, antagonistic pluralism, incompatible pluralism, incommensurable pluralism, ‘Anything goes’ pluralism, complementary pluralism, integrative pluralism, and interactive pluralism. The discussion and examples of these options show that irrespective of its domain, the encounter with different configurations of pluralism shows how some forms of pluralism are likely to be productive, whereas others are less so - which is an important lesson given the prominent pluralism of pluralisms in philosophy and beyond. (shrink)

This project aims to examine whether music has an emotional nature. I use the ancient Chinese text Music Has No Grief or Joy to construct three arguments for the illusion view, according to which music has no emotional nature and the emotional appearances of music are illusory. These arguments highlight representational inconstancy, expressive incapability, and evocative underdetermination as three ways to problematize the idea that music has an emotional nature. I draw on the Confucian tradition to formulate three responses to (...) the illusion view from representational reliability, expressive sincerity, and evocative appropriateness. These responses are shown to be inadequate. To examine the illusion view in detail, I adopt a comparative approach to structure a dialogue between ancient Eastern philosophy and contemporary Western philosophy. Nine arguments are constructed from three prominent approaches in contemporary Western musical aesthetics on the evocation, expression, and representation of emotion. I argue that each of these arguments reads emotion into music. Nevertheless, three insights emerge from the comparative discussion. The autonomy of emotional enjoyment, the possibility of emotional communication, and the function of emotional language in musical experiences call for explanations. I argue that the illusion view are amenable to these insights. The illusion view allows us to claim full ownership of emotional responses, have emotional communication by recognizing intended emotional meanings in music, and appreciate the practical value of emotional language in music industry and education. I formulate a possible objection on the basis of Charles Swann’s musical experience in Marcel Proust’s novel, according to which music has emotional agency in the formation of an emotion. This objection can be met and Swann’s musical experience can be integrated into the illusion view. The illusion view turns out to be experientially richer than it might appear at first. This project liberates musical listening and philosophical thinking from beliefs entrenched in the emotional illusion of music. (shrink)