Forms with Birthdays: Musical Works as Temporal Abstracta

In a declared opposition to traditional ontological perspectives regarding the nature of abstract objects, this paper aims to defend abstract creationism. This position directly challenges the Platonic view that abstract objects are eternal and beyond space, instead proposing that they can be temporally situated and come into being through human agency. Using musical works as a case study, I intend to show that although they have spatio-temporal location, the repeatability of musical works is evidence of a metaphysical status which individuates them from other forms of artworks - placing them in the realm of the abstract. This goes to show that musical works are examples of non-eternal abstracta, suggesting that Platonists should revise their criterion of eternality and relax the boundaries to what constitutes something being abstract. I will address a series of potential objections, including Platonist appeals to the causal inertness of abstract objects through an exploration of alternative notions of causation that allow abstracta to have some, albeit limited, causal interactions. As such, I will conclude that Abstract Creationism offers a model better aligned with our understanding of the artistic process, offering reconciliation between notions of human creativity and the ontology of abstract objects.