https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/apr/23/malcolm-budd-obituary?CMP=share_btn_url

I see that the philosopher Malcolm Budd has died recently.

Funnily enough, I have just been reading his 1985 "Music and the Emotions", which attracted my attention because of its chapter on Susanne Langer's theory of music outlined in "Philosophy in a New Key".

I'm less convinced than is the obituarist that Budd "demolished" Langer's claims; although he raises important questions, I think someone sympathetic to Langer's approach can modify and develop her theory so as to meet the objections Budd raises. I need, though, to think and read more about the arguments regarding music and the emotions.

One of the larger problems of "Music and the Emotions" is its inadequate account of the phenomenology or the "what it's likeness" of emotions, moods, and feelings. This inadequacy is related, I suspect, to his limiting the possible content of thought to the propositional:

>> ...there is no thought which has a content which cannot be represented in language, there is no difficulty in principle of characterising precisely the particular nature of a feeling. << (112-113)

This limit seems mistaken to me, and Langer's distinction between discursive and presentational symbols cannot simply be ruled out by fiat.

I wonder whether the analytic tradition of philosophy within which Budd worked constricted his thinking about the phenomenology of the emotions and nonpropositional semiotics.

#Philosophy #MalcolmBudd #MusicAndTheEmotions #Aesthetics #SuzanneLanger #Semiotics