PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH

in Music Education and Music Therapy

I. Doing Philosophy
II. Philosophy in the Context of MEMT

Two Propositions
I.

II.

ALL research is the doing of philosophy

ResearchseekstofindoutWhy?
Allresearchmethodologieshavetheiroriginsin
philosophy.
Philosophic inquiry is a mode of research in its
own right.

are vehicles we think with.

Like mental lenses they

contribute to how we perceive
phenomena and thus to what we
may see.

Researchers owe much to ideas

and the lenses they provide.

a process of systematic inquiry by which data

are gathered, analyzed, and interpreted in ways
that contribute to the development of knowledge.
.an unusually stubborn, persistent effort to think
straight by intelligently gathering and analyzing
data

often reflects a dialectic between:

provisional ideas (hypotheses)
exegetic ideas (theories)

may also be mediated by

schemata
learned, highly organized, networked
conceptual patterns
that actively create expectations as
they encounter new data

Explanatory Constructs:
larger configurations of
cognition, such as schemata
and theories
theories are more passive mental
data intentionally manipulated by
thought
schemata are more actively a part of
a researchers own cognitive
processing procedures, evaluating
incoming data, both sensory and
mental, for quality of fit

NeurobiologistArthurDamasio(2003)usesastorybyG.K.
Chestertontoillustratethispoint:
Amuchforetoldmurderwascommittedinsideahouse
whilefourpeoplestoodguardandcloselywatchedwhowas
comingandgoingfromthehouse.Thatthisfullyexpected
murdercametopasswasnotapuzzle.Thepuzzlewasthat
thevictimwasaloneandthefourobserverswereadamant:
Noonehadgoneinoroutofthehouse.Butthiswasquite
false:Thepostmanhadgoneintothehouse,donethedeed,
andleftthehouseinplainview.Hehadevenleftunhurried
footprintsinthesnow.Ofcourse,everyonehadlookedat
thepostman,andyetallclaimednottohaveseenhim.He
simplydidnotfitthetheorytheyhadformulatedforthe
identityofthepossiblemurderer.Theywerelookingbut
notseeing(pp.190191).

We are tempted to assume that we see the world

directly and immediately.

But our insight is always mediated by ideas, concepts

and explanatory constructs... many of which we take for
granted and rarely question.

Whats this picture about?

Most of us would likely respond something like

life on a farm or barnyard. We see the picture
and our previously accepted ideas about barns
and farms are automatically activated.

By relying solely on those stored frameworks, however, we

may jump to a conclusion or cognitive commitment that
precludes us from entertaining other thoughts or ideas.

such as Why is this electric mixer in the barnyard?

Researchers owe much to ideas.

But its sometimes difficult to think about ideas

themselves..

...that is, to think about how we think.

Philosophy is thinking about

how we think.


pursuit of wisdom
Doing
Philosophy

loving wisdom
thinking about thinking

Philosophizing today occurs at the intersection of

And:

Doing
Philosophy
Philosophyisdifferentfrom:
opinion
pointofview
preferenc
eideology
belief
advocacy

Doing
Philosophy

The motivation of philosophy derives

from an uneasiness with the status
quo.

The opinion of a thousand jackasses is

just that: the opinion of a thousand
jackasses.

A basic pre-requisite for doing

philosophy:
Doing
Philosophy

An open mind uncluttered in so far as

possible by pre-conceived or predetermined parameters

Basic tools of philosophical research:

Doing
Philosophy

critical reason/logic
language

Three basic procedures in philosophic research:

Doing
Philosophy

Analysisclarification of thoughts,
concepts, and the meaning of language

Criticism...evaluate basic alternative

modes of life and thought and
formulate choices
Speculationconstruct ideal futures
or projections of desirable
experiences

Basic way of doing philosophy:

Doing
Philosophy

argument

An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a

definite proposition.
--Monty Python

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y05EmK66Gsk&mode=related&search=

Arguments and Non-Arguments

Everysceneofthismoviewasfilledwithexcitementforme.I
particularlylikedtheactionscenesontheriver.

Doing
Philosophy

expressionofsupport/enthusiasm,notanargument
Ispentfivehundreddollarstotakethiscourseandtheprofessorappeared
inbluejeansandteeshirt,whichIconsiderbadtaste.Hemayhave
knownwhathewastalkingabout,butIcouldntgetpasttheclothes.

acomplaint/grip,notanargument

Thesincerestsatisfactioninlifecomesindoingonesdutyandinbeinga
dependableperson.
astatementofpointofview,notanargument

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to

fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprise, either
of virtue or mischief. -Francis Bacon

Doing
Philosophy

Women have great strengths, but they are strengths to help

the man. A womans primary purpose in life and marriage is
to help her husband succeed. -James Robinson

Elaborated,butunsupportedstatementsofopinion,
notarguments.

Basic ingredients of an argument:

Proposition (statement or assertion that
is either true or false)

Doing
Philosophy

A proposition can be either:

a premise, or
a conclusion.

A first step toward understanding arguments is

learning to identify premises and conclusions.

Unfortunately, they are not always explicit.

GIGO
Doing
Philosophy

In a basic deductive argument if a

premise is false, so is everything else
Garbage in.
Garbage out.

Validity and Soundness of Arguments

An argument is valid if its conclusions follow necessarily from its premises.

A sound argument has true premises and true conclusions.

Allmenaremortal.
Socratesisaman.
Socratesismortal.

Doing
Philosophy

premisesaretrue,inferenceisvalid;thisargumentisbothvalid
andsound
Allcatsareanimals.
Allpigsareanimals.
Allpigsarecats.
premisesaretrue,butimproperinference;notasoundargument

AllmoviestarsliveinHollywood.RobertRedfordisa
moviestar.ThereforeRobertRedfordlivesinHollywood.
falsepremise,butvalidreasoning
avalidargument,butnotasoundargument

Primary ways to examine/take issue with deductive

arguments:
1. Is there indeed an argument?
2. Does conclusion necessarily follow from
premises? Is this the only logical conclusion
possible from these premises?
3. Are the premises indeed true?

Inductive Arguments
1. Reason from the particular to the general
2. Evaluated in terms of inductive force or
probability rather than soundness per se.
3. p <.05
4. Much quantitative research grounded in
probability, that is: inductive argument.

Philosophy pervades all research.

The purpose of this study is...

Doing
Philosophy

To that end, the following research questions

were designed for this study:

Sometimes said that only numbers (quantitative

research) delivers objectivity.
Yet, such numbers relate to a premise. Statistics
test premises, they do not generate them.

Philosophy is both a body of knowledge

(history of ideas) and an ongoing, systematic
method of inquiry
Doing
Philosophy

Engagement with both relies essentially upon

argument.

By means of analyses based on arguments,

philosophers can do experiments: thought
experiments, where variables are manipulated in
imagination rather than in laboratories or in field work.

Scientific method was born from philosophy

Positivism

Doing
Philosophy

Post-positivism critiques:
feminists
deconstructionists

a process of systematic inquiry by which data

are gathered, analyzed, and interpreted in ways
that contribute to the development of knowledge.
the data for philosophical research are ideas, concepts,
and explanatory constructsphilosophers inspect the
architecture of such cognitive units, asking How do we
know what we know? and Why?
philosophers are all about construct validity.

In MEMT, philosophers may

Philosophy
andMEMT

challenge... the validity of extant ideas and practices. They

systematically ask whether these ideas and practices are well
grounded. They bypass the peripheral and trivial issues, going to
the core of why things are as they seem to be and where they seem
to be going. As such, they address central questions relating to
music education and challenge its very reason for beingby
clarifying terms, exposing and evaluating assumptions, and
developing systematic bodies of thought that connect with other
ideas in respect to a wide range of issues touching on music
education. --Estelle Jorgensen

Philosophy
andMEMT

Please take out your music.

Music

Philosophy
andMEMT

For music, despite the saw about its being

an international language, is many things to
many people, places, and times.

--James R. Oestreich, The New York Times, Sunday,

January 22, 2001, p 30 Arts & Leisure (on why the 1980
edition of Groves decided not to have an entry on music).

Music

Philosophy
andMEMT

We could find no one person who could have

written on music and the changing
significance of the term through the ages.

--Stanley Sadie, Editor of The New Groves Dictionary of

Music and Musicians

Education
Philosophy
andMEMT

the deliberate, systematic, and sustained

effort to transmit or evoke knowledge, attitudes,
values, skills and sensibilities
--Lawrence A. Cremin

Education

Philosophy
andMEMT

Involves configurations of education, e.g.

family, church, school, community
Can involve shifting configurations
figurations over time, and the impact of
one pedagogy upon another
The philosophy of education is not
simply a philosophy of institutional
schooling

Education

Philosophy
andMEMT

Relation to: Training, Enculturation,

Socialization, Schooling, Therapy

Music

Education

Music

Therapy
GENUS

Philosophy
andMEMT

Species

Education through music

Education in music
Music

Education

Therapy through music

Music as therapy
Music
Therapy

MusicEducation

Philosophy
andMEMT

Should music education be part of the School

of Education or the School of Fine Arts?

History of Ideas:

Music as science (quadrivium)

Music as art (trivium)
Music as fine art (aesthetics)

Philosophy
andMEMT

AllresearchinMEMTisgroundedin
philosophy,beitexplicitorimplicit

AnExample:ExplicitGroupTeachingandAssociatedChoralSound
Assumptions

Approaches to choral pedagogy based on characteristics of the individual

voice tend simply to transfer those particular characteristics to the group
as a whole. A conductor works with an ensemble much like a voice
teacher works with a single student in a studio.

The fundamental assumption here is that the whole (in this case
the Choir and its sound) is simply the sum of its constituent parts
(i.e., the individual human voices that comprise the Choir).

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= Choir
Yet, empirical research demonstrates that solo singing and choral singing are
two distinct modes of phonation, i.e., people phonate differently in choirs than
they do as soloists; and that acoustic properties of choral sound are different
than those of individual sound.

Canons of logic call this kind of faulty reasoning the . . .

Fallacy of Composition
Trying to apply what is true of an
individual to the group as a whole
Assuming that characteristics of the
parts transfer to the characteristics
of the whole made up of those
parts
The whole is simply the sum of its
parts. Example: Each part of this machine is light; therefore, this
must be a very light machine.

Suggestions for Reading:

Introduction to Philosophy

Suggestions for Reading:

Introduction to Philosophy of Music

Suggestions for Reading:

Introduction to Philosophy of Music Education

Philosophy
andMEMT