Framing resemblance and expressiveness in music

Abstract

This paper addresses James O. Young's and Nemesio Puy's critical assessments of Nelson Goodman's account of musical expressiveness. For that, I draw substantially on the work of Maria do Carmo d'Orey (1933-2023), an important although underrecognized Goodman scholar who argued (pace Goodman) that exemplified resemblance-not plain resemblance-is the core of expressiveness, as well as of other forms of representation. I call theories of exemplified resemblance 'frame theories.' Young claims that (1) Goodman's theory is but a muddled version of resemblance theory; (2) if emotion predicates applied to music are literal, then Goodman's theory lacks motivation; (3) Goodman's version bears no theoretical benefits. Puy denies 3 while granting 1 and 2. In this paper, _3, _4, _5, and _6 constitute an argument that: (i) resemblance theory is a defective version of frame theory; (ii) objections based on the metaphoric-literal distinction have no legs; (iii) the theoretical payoffs of Goodman's version outstrip what Puy concedes. Sections 3 and 4 challenge Claim 1; _5 and _6 challenge Claim 2; together they show that framing generates resemblance, which conflicts with granting Claims 1 and 2.