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Musical pluralism and the science of music

  • Original paper in Philosophy of Science
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Abstract

The scientific investigation of music requires contributions from a diverse array of disciplines (e.g. anthropology, musicology, neuroscience, psychology, music theory, music therapy, sociology, computer science, evolutionary biology, archaeology, acoustics and philosophy). Given the diverse methodologies, interests and research targets of the disciplines involved, we argue that there is a plurality of legitimate research questions about music, necessitating a focus on integration. In light of this we recommend a pluralistic conception of music—that there is no unitary definition divorced from some discipline, research question or context. This has important implications for how the scientific study of music ought to proceed: we show that some definitions are complementary, that is, they reflect different research interests and ought to be retained and, where possible, integrated, while others are antagonistic, they represent real empirical disagreement about music’s nature and how to account for it. We illustrate this in discussion of two related issues: questions about the evolutionary function (if any) of music, and questions of the innateness (or otherwise) of music. These debates have been, in light of pluralism, misconceived. We suggest that, in both cases, scientists ought to proceed by constructing integrated models which take into account the dynamic interaction between different aspects of music.

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Notes

  1. An anonymous referee points out that such operational, instrumental definitions often require a stipulated, general account of ‘music’ to get off the ground, otherwise the relationship between some of the concepts we discuss, for instance the distinction between ‘music’ and ‘musicality’, is decidedly ambiguous. This might be right, the relationship between the various concepts required to make music scientifically tractable can be very complex. We take this to be grist for our mill: on our view, different research agendas require a number of different, but importantly related concepts. Considering how these concepts interact is an important part of integrating such perspectives.

  2. Note that our use of the term ‘scale’ is not meant to imply literal measurement.

  3. Musical features associated with Western music-theoretic concepts, however, are arranged temporally—meter, tonality and so on have specific meanings relative to different eras in music history. A chronology of Western music-theoretic concepts might fall under the broad study of History of music on Fig. 1. Of course, Western music theory is not the only music theory! One of the great weaknesses of much musical research is that it assumes that a Western musical experience is universal (or very nearly) and thus fails to take into account the nature of music/musicality and its social correlates in a variety of non-Western contexts. Some music researchers are acutely aware of this, and keen to point out the problem, and we are deeply sympathetic. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing us on this issue.

  4. See Craver (2005, 2007) for discussions of both different conceptions of ‘levels’ and integration in cognitive neuroscience.

  5. Grahn (2012) also discusses the benefits and limitations of employing neuroscientific methods in the study of musical rhythm in general (see also Grahn 2009).

  6. Another example of integration across levels of organization: Temperley (2014) asks which probability model best predicts available data about musical intervals? He distinguishes the Markov model (Rohrmeier et al. 2015; Conklin and Whitten 1995; Pearce and Wiggins 2004, 2006) from the Gaussian model (Von Hippel 2000; Marr 1982; Shi et al. 2010); the Markov model defines a musical interval’s probability ‘by its count in a corpus, conditioned on previous intervals’, while the Gaussian model defines it as ‘a simple function of the size of the interval to the previous note and the distance to the mean pitch of the melody’ (Temperley 2014, p. 96). These models are tested against three data sets: sequential data from large samples of folksong, chorale, classical, and rock melodies, experimental data from the empirical study of melodic expectation, and distribution data capturing the melodic intervals comprising the Essen Folksong Collection (cf. Schaffrath 1995). Again, we here see the explanatory force carried by the modelling, and the data from actual musical form playing a supporting role; Temperley argues that the Markov model is to be preferred for its lower cross-entropy than that of the Gaussian model (see Temperley 2014, pp. 90–92).

  7. See Davies (2012a) and McKeown-Green (2014) for counterexamples to Kania’s analysis.

  8. For some schematic examples of this tension, note that music that does not meet Kania’s ‘intentional’ requirement might still realize the role of music in some socio-cultural context and thus should be categorised as music by the ethnomusicologist, given their research agenda, but perhaps not by the psychologist, given theirs. Similarly, music that does not meet a (Western) ‘basic musical features’ requirement might still count as music for the ethnomusicologist and psychologist, but perhaps not for the (Western) music theorist or aesthetician. In short, there are multiple, non-equivalent concepts of music that are legitimized by their role in some research agenda.

  9. Consider the interdisciplinary dissonance which comes to the fore in debates over musical versus linguistic syntax (see e.g. Patel 2012a, b versus London 2012; also Slevc et al. 2009 on ‘making psycholinguistics musical’), notions of musical ‘meaning’ (e.g. Koelsch 2011; Cross 2008; Davies 1994), and so on. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing us on this.

  10. Note that Cross does call for a (mere) terminological revision; he argues that cognitive science should be more sympathetic to accommodating music in non-Western cultures to reach a more comprehensive understanding of human musical faculties. We concur (also, see Stevens 2012); theorists should be wary of reducing ‘music’ to ‘Western music’.

  11. For example, studies have reported interesting findings regarding the cultural evolution of non-human animal song (Noad et al. 2000; Payne and Payne 1993; Payne et al. 1988; Hoeschele et al. 2015; Merchant et al. 2015).

  12. To be sure, ‘theory of mind’ approaches are compatible with other models and hypotheses too, including the co-evolutionary approach that we endorse in the discussion that follows. The uses and implications of theory of mind research is another example of the pluralistic research strategy that we endorse in our paper.

  13. The idea that the biological and cultural aspects of music are correlated and interact is reasonably uncontroversial (cf. Hambrick and Tucker-Drob 2014), however this has not been adequately reflected in most theories of music evolution (though see Tomlinson 2015).

  14. Similarly, the mutation of gene MYH16, thought to be responsible for the weakening of our ancestors’ more robust jaw muscles (Wrangham 2009), might also be reasonably thought to be an adaptation to novel cooking environments (that is, if Wrangham’s hypothesis about the deep history of cooking is right).

  15. We are not necessarily committing to scientific or theory-holism. Rather, we mean a model which incorporates both evidence-streams and complementary definitions from different disciplines. Worries about testing holistic models are not pressing in such cases. In fact, extra streams of evidence can improve our capacity to test such models.

  16. We do not deny that such music/musicality distinctions may have important roles in, for instance, anthropological investigation of cross-cultural universals, and so on.

  17. One example of this debate targets beat perception. Some (e.g. Winkler et al. 2009) favour an innate model based on the early development of this perception in infants. However, others (e.g. Grahn 2012) point out that this is too quick: much learning occurs in pre-natal stages. For instance, empirical studies demonstrate that ‘infants exposed to particular pieces of music before birth show distinct preferences for those same pieces after birth’ (Sloboda 2005, p. 267; see also Hepper 1991 and Parncutt 2009 for more on prenatal and infant musical conditioning).

  18. An anonymous referee highlights a disanalogy between the acquisition of chess skills and culturally-appropriate music appreciation: the former is effortful while the latter is a much simpler task.

  19. More precisely, entrainment is the ‘coming together’ or synchronicity of multiple interacting, though independent, rhythmic oscillators or processes.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Adrian Currie

  2. Department of Philosophy, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand

    Anton Killin

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Currie, A., Killin, A. Musical pluralism and the science of music. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 6, 9–30 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-015-0123-z

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