ONTOLOGY OF ART – THIRD ASSIGNMENT

 

DUE: MONDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2012, but feel free to hand in your paper earlier so that I can get a head-start on the grading.

LENGTH: Feel free to make this paper a bit longer than six pages, especially if you haven’t written a longer paper yet. However, never ramble and never lose track of where you are, where you’ve been and where you want to go. Also please remember that my eyes glaze over when I encounter spaghetti structure and/or a parade of cryptic sentences. Chris’s eyes never glaze over, so save the horrible papers for him. 

TOPICS: Those of you who are comfortable to do so may write  on any topic that we’ve discussed this term, especially if it’s one of the topics we’ve discussed in the last few weeks. For those who would like a bit more guidance, here are some suggestions.

1) Tillman’s endurantism. Find a problem and see if it can be solved.

2) Kania’s Ontology of rock music as presented in “Making Tracks”. Find a problem and see if it can be solved. When I think about Kania’s theory I keep coming back to 1)  the nature and centrality for his position of the concept of manifestation and to 2) his account of covers. In addition, I worry about the analogy he draws between film remakes and  cover versions.

3) We really haven’t talked much of the ontology of songs. Kania discusses songs and their relations to tracks. According to Kania, the central works of rock music are tracks, not songs. You could explore a specific or a general question. An example of a specific question would be this: do Kania’s arguments against songs as works succeed? An example of a general question would be this: what are songs? How are they individuated? What is their role and centrality to an ontology of music? Of course, the general question  is huge. It constitutes an extended program of research. A paper on it would have to be pretty long and even then you’d only be making the first few moves in a treatment of the topic. Nevertheless, I find the topic to be fascinating.

4) Take a look at Kania’s refutation of Young and Matheson in “All work and No Play.” SAVE JIM AND CARL!!!