Julian Dodd – författare

This volume presents new essays on art, mind, and narrative inspired by the work of the late Peter Goldie, who was Samuel Hall Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manchester until 2011. Its three sections cover Narrative Thinking; Emotion, Mind, and Art; and Art, Value, and Ontology. Within these sections, leading authorities in the philosophy of mind, aesthetics and the emotions offer the reader entry points into many of the most exciting contemporary debates in these areas of philosophy. Topics covered include the role that narrative thinking plays in our lives, our imaginative engagement with fiction, the emotions and their role in the motivation of action, the connection between artistic activity and human well-being, and the appreciation and ontological status of conceptual artworks.

Being True to Works of Music explores the varieties of authenticity involved in our practice of performing works of Western classical music. Its key argument is that the familiar 'authenticity debate' about the performance of such works has tended to focus on a side issue. While much has been written about the desirability (or otherwise) of historical authenticity -- roughly, performing works as they would have been performed, under ideal conditions, in the era in which they were composed -- the most fundamental norm governing our practice of work performance is, in fact, another kind of kind of truthfulness to the work altogether. This is interpretive authenticity: being faithful to the performed work by virtue of evincing a profound, far-reaching, or sophisticated understanding of it. As such, performers are justified, on occasion, in sacrificing some score compliance for the sake of making their performance more interpretively authentic. Written in a clear, engaging style with discussion of musical examples throughout, this book will be of great interest to both philosophers of music and musicologists.

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In this original and iconoclastic book, Julian Dodd argues for what he terms the simple view of the ontological nature of works of pure, instrumental music. This account is the conjunction of two theses: the type/token theory and sonicism. The type/token theory addresses the question of which ontological category musical works fall under, and its answer is that such works are types whose tokens are sound-sequence-events. Sonicism, meanwhile, addresses the question of how works of music are individuated, and it tells us that works of music are identical just in case they sound exactly alike.Both conjuncts of the simple view are highly controversial, and Dodd defends them vigorously and with ingenuity. Even though the simple view is favoured by very few writers in the philosophy of music, Dodd maintains that it is the default position given our ordinary intuitions about musical works, that it can answer the sorts of objections that have led other philosophers to dismiss it, and that it is, on reflection, the most promising ontology of music on offer.Specifically, Dodd argues that the type/token theory offers the best explanation of the repeatability of works of music: the fact that such works admit of multiple occurrence. Furthermore, he goes on to claim that the theory's most striking consequence - namely, that musical works are eternal existents and, hence, that composers discover rather than create their works - is minimally disruptive of our intuitions concerning the nature of composition and our appreciation of works of music. When it comes to sonicism, Dodd argues both that this way of individuating works of music is prima facie correct, and that the putative counter-examples it faces - most notably, those propounded by Jerrold Levinson - can be harmlessly explained away. In the ontology of music, simplicity rules.

Dodd explains that correspondence theories of truth fail because the relation between true thought and fact is identity, not correspondence. Facts are not complexes of worldly entities which make thoughts true; they are merely true thoughts. The resulting modest identity theory allows for a defensible deflation of the concept of truth.

This work argues that correspondence theories of truth fail because the relation which holds between a true thought and a fact is that of identity, not correspondence. Facts are not complexes of worldly entities which make thoughts true they are merely true thoughts. According to Julian Dodd, the resulting "modest identity theory", while not defining truth, correctly diagnoses the failure of correspondence theories, and thereby prepares the ground for a defensible deflation of the concept of truth.

This collection brings together key contemporary texts in metaphysics and features an interactive commentary which helps readers engage the texts critically and to use them to develop their own views. Each text is followed by a detailed commentary, setting it in contextIncludes questions designed to help readers think hard about what the author is saying and why, to think of objections, and to formulate his or her own viewsAims to improve the reader's ability to engage critically with philosophical texts, and to use them as a springboard for philosophical thought and writingIntroduces readers to the perennial problems of metaphysics and the ways that different analytic philosophers have approached them