Music scholars talk about music. We describe historical events, decipher manuscripts, identify possible compositional influences, characterize styles, note musical similarities, and make claims about how music is organized. We also talk about how music is performed, how it is disseminated and received, how people experience musical passages and works, and how cultures interpret and reinterpret musical meanings. Sometimes music scholars make aesthetic claims -- suggesting what is authentic or derivative, recommend how to perform works, draw attention to an underestimated composer, identify whether hall acoustics are superior or inferior, characterize something as beautiful or ugly, or criticize someone else's criticism.
In all of these activities we make explicit or implict claims about music, or about statements about music. For example, when deciphering a manuscript, the musicologist makes an explicit interpretation as to whether a particular scrawl represents a treble clef or an alto clef.
Are all statements about music equally valid? If not, how do we adjudicate claims about music? How do we know whether an idea has merit, is accurate, or is plausible? How do we understand what is a good argument pertaining to music?
In answering such questions there is merit in looking at writings in the philosophy of knowledge. In particular, the question -- how does one evaluate knowledge claims -- has been a subject of special interest to philosophers of science. These philosophers have addressed indepth how we come to know, how to recognize an invalid argument, and whether it is possible to establish "truth". These philosophical discussions are pertinent to how we talk about music, and how we might criticize or support various claims about music.
In this course we examine the writings of five philosophers of science:
In addition, we examine the postmodernist critique of science:
We also examine critiques of postmodernism:
Finally, we consider a more specific application of philosophy of knowledge to the study of music: