系列：哲学会饮系列讲座

主题：Resemblance Theories of Musical Expressiveness: The Role of Empirical Evidence

主讲人：Matteo Ravasio（北京大学艺术学院助理教授）

时间：2025.5.14（周三）   12：10

地点：李兆基人文学苑2号楼B112

Descriptions of pure (non-representational) music often employ emotion terms (‘happy’, ‘sad’, ‘melancholy’, etc.). Such descriptions are widespread and intersubjectively consistent, but they are also puzzling, as pure music lacks the representational content that seems to ground the use of emotion terms in other art forms. This is the problem of musical expressiveness.

Resemblance theories attempt to explain musical expressiveness by appealing to the resemblance between expressive music and the ordinary behavioral manifestations of emotions (speech prosody, vocalizations, gait, posture, etc.). James O. Young (2014, 2023) has argued that resemblance theories receive overwhelming support by the available empirical evidence. 

In this paper, I argue against this view. The empirical evidence examined by Young fails to ground a preference for the resemblance theory over its main competitors. If there is time, I will also argue that empirical evidence decisively supports resemblance theories only if they are interpreted in a way that deprives them of much of their philosophical interest.