Music Pluralism, Music Realism, and Music Archaeology

Abstract

According to pluralism about some concept, there are multiple non-equivalent, legitimate concepts pertaining to the (alleged) ontological category in question. It is an open question whether conceptual pluralism implies anti-realism about that category. In this article, I argue that at least for the case of music, it does not. To undermine the application of an infuential move from pluralism (about music concepts) to anti-realism (about the music category), then, I provide an argument in support of indiference realism about music, by appeal to music archaeological research, via an analogy with Adrian Currie's indiference realism about species licensed by paleobiological research.