Dispositionalism as an Aesthetic Analysis of Music and Causation

Abstract

The objective of this research is to develop a philosophical account of the connection between music and causation, or to evaluate which causal theory best explains why music induces aesthetic emotional responses. According to the research, there are various ways in which music aesthetics explain these problems, including whether musical properties, music as expression, or causation in music, should be used to explain them. According to the researcher's analysis, the most plausible explanation is that of causation in music. In the next part, the dispositionalist theory—which holds that the experience of musical beauty depends on latent disposition to manifest at the time of perception—is defended by the researcher. In the last section, the disposition explanation is found to still have several issues, including a) if the disposition is conditional or categorical, b) whether it manifests in an essential or Humean way, and c) whether it is manipulative. In order to demonstrate that causation in music is categorical and needs to be explained along Humean dispositionalism, the researcher investigates these problems and offers a novel theory known as "non-predictive dispositionalism." The new theory also argues that the manifestation of these processes is non-predictive and weakly manipulative, which is more in line with the reality that listeners' emotional responses to music can differ from one another.