Organon F
Volume 28, May 2021, Issue 2, Pages 303–325
ISSN 2585-7150 (online) ISSN 1335-0668 (print)
Research Article | Special issue on The Origins of Meaning and the Nature of Speech Acts
The Epistemic Value of Music
Marina Bakalova
https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28203
Assuming that music can be expressive, I try to answer the question whether musical expressiveness has epistemic value. The article has six parts. In the first part, I provide examples of what music can express. I suggest that it can express inner states with phenomenal character. In the second part, I build up an argument in favor of the claim that, granted its expressiveness, music can convey conceptual content which is not verbal, and which cannot be expressed verbally. This conclusion is limited to concepts like lyrical, nostalgic, melancholy, joyful, distressful etc. In the third part, I explain what musical expressive content is, in contrast and by analogy to, propositional content. In the fourth part, I apply Mitchell Green’s multi- space model of artistic expression to music. I argue that Green’s theory of expression provides a powerful explanation of how a musical sequence can express states with phenomenal character. In the fifth part, I use that model to define adequacy conditions for musical expressive ascriptions. In the last part, I attempt to explain musical knowledge by combining Green’s multi-space model with Sosa-style virtue epistemology.
Cross-modal congruence; knowledge as success from ability; musical expressiveness; phenomenal concepts.
Author
Marina Bakalova 
Affiliation
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Address
Institute for Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 13A Moskovska Str., Sofia 1000, Bulgaria
Received
16 April 2019
Revised
9 September 2019
Accepted
15 December 2019
Published online
25 April 2021
Publishers
Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
APA
Bakalova, M. (2021). The Epistemic Value of Music. Organon F, 28(2), 303–325. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28203
Chicago
Bakalova, Marina. 2021. "The Epistemic Value of Music." Organon F 28 (2): 303–325. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28203
Harvard
Bakalova, M. (2021). The Epistemic Value of Music. Organon F, 28(2), pp. 303–325. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28203
© Marina Bakalova
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