We argue for conceptual pluralism about music. In our view, there is no right answer to the question ‘What is music?’ divorced from some context or interest. Instead, there are several, non-equivalent music concepts suited to different interests – from within some tradition or practice, or by way of some research question or field of inquiry. We argue (1) that unitary definitions of music are problematic, (2) that the role music concepts play in various research questions should motivate conceptual pluralism about music, and (3) that taking music pluralism seriously grounds a fruitful research programme in aesthetics. We suspect that pluralism about music is a good test case for the utility of pluralism in aesthetics more generally, and we present it as such.

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不是音乐，而是音乐：美学概念多元化的案例

我们主张关于音乐的概念多元化。我们认为，“什么是音乐？”这个问题没有正确答案。脱离某些背景或兴趣。取而代之的是，有几种不同的音乐概念适合不同的兴趣，这些概念来自某种传统或实践，或者来自某些研究问题或研究领域。我们认为：（1）音乐的统一定义是有问题的；（2）音乐概念在各种研究问题中所扮演的角色应激发关于音乐的概念多元性；（3）认真对待音乐多元性是一项在美学上富有成果的研究计划的基础。我们怀疑关于音乐的多元性更普遍地证明了多元性在美学中的效用，我们就这样提出。