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. Show more