Framing Resemblance and Expressiveness in Music

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.