Philosophy of the Performing Arts

42 performance and the classical paradigm
needs to be explained how something that is a “fusion” of temporal parts
could have had different temporal parts in the way that a performable work
might have had different performances.^30 Rohrbaugh espouses an alternative
understanding of continuants, according to which they are enduring , rather
than perduring, entities that depend upon, but are not constituted by, their
embodiments. So construed, continuants are higher order entities that are
always present in their entirety in their embodiments, thereby evading the
first objection to perdurantism, and that could have been dependent on dif-
ferent embodiments, thereby evading the second objection. But it needs to
be explained just what kinds of things continuants, so conceived, are, what
the relation of “dependence” involves, and what it is for this relation to obtain
in those cases where continuants are claimed to exist.
Even if these challenges can be met, there is a further problem with the
claim that artworks are continuants of the sort proposed by Rohrbaugh. For this
claim rests upon the assumption that artworks are modally and temporally
flexible, something that is open to dispute both generally and in the case of
performable works. Dodd, for example, argues that there are no good rea-
sons to think of musical works as either modally or temporally flexible. Any
locutions that might tempt us to think otherwise are, he claims, most plausi-
bly understood in terms of suitable paraphrases. Where a work W * differs in
its intrinsic properties, either modally or through time, from a work W , or
from a work W at a time t , then we should view W * and W as distinct works,
albeit distinct works that closely resemble one another, he maintains (Dodd
2007, ch. 2). While Dodd’s arguments don’t by themselves show that at least
some multiple artworks are modally and temporally inflexible, they raise
questions as to the force of Rohrbaugh’s claims to the contrary.
Performable works as indicatings of types
Let us take stock. We have found reason to question the idea that perform-
able works are eternally existing entities that are discovered rather than cre-
ated by those to whom we attribute them. If types, including norm-types,
are eternal existents, then we have reason to resist the idea that performable
works are types. To counter that initiated types are indeed creatable seems
to fall foul of at least one plausible account of the existence conditions of
types. An alternative account of the repeatability of multiple artworks takes
them to be continuants some of whose embodiments are occurrences. But
we found the notion of a continuant to which Rohrbaugh appeals somewhat
murky, and his argument for viewing multiple artworks as continuants rests
on the contested assumption that they are modally and temporally flexible.
The challenge then is to find an account of performable works that allows
them to be (1) repeatable and (2) creatable. We should also prefer an account