Tomasz Szubart

Traditional views concerning musical meaning, in the field of philosophy, quite often oscillate around the discussion of whether music can transfer meaning (and if so if it happens by a means similar to language). Philosophers have provided a wide range of views – according to some, music has no meaning whatsoever, or if there is any meaning involved, it is only of a formal/structural significance. According to the opposing views, music can contain meaning similarly to language and what is more, sometimes it can be even richer than language, as in music we are – arguably – able to encode “emotional meanings”. In recent years, several approaches – also speculative – to the old philosophical question have been proposed by evolutionary psychologists, one of the most controversial views being that of Stephen Pinker’s famous metaphor for music as “auditory cheesecake”. This anti-adaptationist view has been challenged f. ex. by Geoffrey Miller or Ian Cross. In this chapter, I enlist some main philosophical views on the titular problem and investigate some evolutionary-paradigm-based propositions for its solution, to examine whether – both from explanatory and methodological standpoints – the philosophy of music could gain something from recent developments in evolutionary psychology.

Representation is one of the key concepts in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. The philosophical problem of musical meaning, or rather its naturalistic reformulation, has only recently become the topic of empirical investigation. It might seem obvious that an explication of the concept of meaning would appeal to the concept of representation. It is not a popular approach in the philosophy of the cognitive science of music, however. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of possible frames of analysis of musical representation within selected contemporary paradigms in the broadly understood philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

The aim of this paper is to refer basic philosophical approaches to the problem of musical meaning and, on the other hand, to describe some examples of the research on musical meaning found in the field of cognitive neuroscience. By looking at those two approaches together it can be seen that there is still no agreement on how musical meaning should be understood, often due to several methodological problems of which the most important seem to be the possibility of inter-theoretical reduction and application of an accurate theory of explanation. I am suggesting that the application of some form of the mechanistic model of explanation might be found useful for clarifying reductionism-antireductionism dispute concerning musical meaning, and more importantly, for providing some answers for the debate in music-as-language controversy.

Semantic contextualism is often used in order to offer solutions for problems in other branches of philosophy, including epistemology. One of such attempts is epistemic contextualism, according to which the semantic value of the word “knows” changes with the context of its utterance. The aim of this paper is to critically investigate Keith DeRose’s contextualism to see up to what extent does it provide a valid anti-sceptical strategy. I argue that while it can be seen as a good rival for global and Ungerian scepticism, it does not lead to the refutation of other variants of classical scepticism.

W epistemologii aż do XX wieku, najbardziej rozpowszechniony pogląd dotyczący wiedzy głosił, że musi ona posiadać niepodważalne podstawy, w przeciwnym wypadku w jej uzasadnianiu popadlibyśmy w regres w nieskończoność. Takie stanowisko zostało nazwane fundamentalizmem i spotkało się z szeroką krytyką. W latach siedemdziesiątych w teorii poznania powstał nowy kierunek – eksternalizm. Jego twórcy odeszli od tradycyjnego rozumienia wiedzy i odrzucili podstawowe założenia przyjmowane przez fundamentalistów jak i niektórych z ich krytyków. Ciekawą krytykę fundamentalizmu zaprezentował John Langshaw Austin, który dominował na filozoficznej scenie Oxfordu w latach pięćdziesiatych ubiegłego wieku. Z uwagi na to, że większość swojego krótkiego życia poświęcił nauczaniu, opublikował tylko kilka artykułów. Tekst Zmysły i przedmioty zmysłowe, na którym, w sporej mierze, opieram interpretację poglądów Austina, został opublikowany po jego śmierci i jest rekonstrukcją notatek filozofa do prowadzonych przez niego wykładów. Austin znany jest w Polsce przede wszystkim jako filozof języka, twórca teorii aktów mowy. Poruszał on jednak także niektóre z kluczowych zagadnień teorii poznania, o czym często się zapomina. W niniejszej pracy rekonstruuję poglądy Austina, przedstawiając je jako pewną wersję antyfundamentalizmu oraz wskazuję na niektóre wspólne cechy jego koncepcji i teorii eksternalizmu epistemologicznego.