The Conversation Argument for Actual Intentionalism (original) (raw)
Related papers
Intentions and Interpretations: Philosophical Fiction as Conversation
Appeals to the actual author's intention in order to legitimate an interpretation of a work of literary narrative fiction have generally been considered extraneous in Anglo-American philosophy of literature since Wimsatt and Beardsley's well-known manifesto from the 1940s. For over sixty years now so-called anti-intentionalists have argued that the author's intentions – plans, aims, and purposes considering her work – are highly irrelevant to interpretation. In this paper, I shall argue that the relevance of the actual author's intentions varies in different approaches to fiction, and suggest that fictions are legitimately interpreted intentionally as conversations in a certain kind of reading. My aim is to show that the so-called conversational approach is valid when emphasizing the cognitive content of a fiction and truths it seem to convey, for example, in a philosophical approach to fictions which contain philosophical purport using Sartre's fictional works as paradigmatic, and that anti-intentionalists' arguments against intentionalism do not threaten such an approach.
Extreme Intentionalism Modestly Modified
British Journal of Aesthetics, 2019
This short essay is a part of a symposium on Kathleen Stock's book, Only Imagine: Fiction, Interpretation and Imagination, that will appear in the British Journal of Aesthetics. (Other contributors will be Amy Kind, Manuel Garcia-Carpintero, and Ruth Lorand.) In it I argue that Stock's "extreme intentionalism" can be made more defensible by refining her account of the authorial intentions that, on her view, constitute a written work's being fictional, and that constitute the range of fictional truths that hold in it. That refinement mirrors one that I've elsewhere advocated for the notion of speaker meaning.
The Metaphysical Problem of the Concept of Intentionality
This book addresses the question of intentionality through the intellectual context of enlighs literary theory in the twentieth century. The epistemological methodology, which is presented in the second chapter, is mainly developed from the works of Martin Heidegger, Ferdinand de saussure and Jacques Derrida on Language. The third chapter initially analyses the concept of intentionality in the New Criticism clearing that New Criticism was epistemologically founded on the metaphysical assumptions. Here the ontological discussions of Intentionality by Paul de Man, E. D. Hirsch and Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Micheals are further analysed. The fourth chapter explains the status of the concept of intentionality in theoretical writings of textual criticism and offers an ontological discussion of the concept of 'textual intentionality'. Finally the fifth chapter examines the concept of intentionality mainly at a functional level of language, in the context of Julia Kristeva's account of intertextuality and Harold Bloom's 'the anxiety of influence'. The originality of this work lies in its attempt to analyse the concept of intentionality ontologically and epistemologically.
Challenging Partial Intentionalism
Journal of Visual Arts Practice, 2009
Paisley Livingston claims that an artist's intentions are successfully realized and hence determinant of the meaning of a work if and only if they are compatible and "mesh" with the linguistic and conventional meanings of the text or artefact taken in its target or intended context. I argue that this specific standard of success is not without its difficulties. First, I show how an artist's intention can sometimes be constitutive of a work's meaning even if there is no significant meshing between the artist's intention and his work. Secondly, I argue against the claim that the artist's intentions need to be compatible with the linguistic and conventional meanings of a text. Thirdly, I discuss a case that creates a particular puzzle for Livingston since the intentions of the artist concerned are not successfully realized, though they are compatible and mesh with all the relevant data. I conclude my paper by suggesting a solution to this puzzle.
Hypothetical Intentionalism (2007) [Abstract]
Hypothetischer Intentionalismus. Rekonstruktion und Kritik. In: Journal of Literary Theory 1 (2007), S. 80–109, S. 227–228 (English Abstract).
The intentional fallacy debate marked the beginning of an extensive discussion about the role of intentions in the scholarly interpretation of literature. For a long time, treatments of intentionalism in the study of literature were centred on the question of whether the actual intentions of a text's author should or should not be taken into account when interpreting that text. This meant that the argument became reduced to a question of whether one adopted a positive or negative attitude to the relevance of actual intentions. More recently, however, the situation has increased in complexity. Alongside actual intentionalism, rival positions such as hypothetical intentionalism and fictionalist intentionalism are attracting increasing attention in present-day discussions of intentionalism.
Authors, Intentions and Literary Meaning
Philosophy Compass, 2006
This article discusses the relationship (or lack thereof) between authors' intentions and the meaning of literary works. It considers the advantages and disadvantages of Extreme and Modest Actual Intentionalism, Conventionalism, and two versions of Hypothetical Intentionalism, and discusses the role that one's theoretical commitments about the robustness of linguistic conventions and the publicity of literary works should play in determining which view one accepts.
This thesis addresses the question of intentionality through the intellectual context of English literary theory in the twentieth century. The epistemological methodology, which is presented in the second chapter, is mainly developed from the works of Martin Heidegger, Ferdinand de Saussure and Jacques Derrida on language. The third chapter initially analyses the concept of intentionality in New Criticism; I make clear that New Criticism was epistemologically founded on metaphysical assumptions. I then argue that the context of the concept developed a different episteme derived from Continental phenomenology. Here the ontological discussions of intentionality by
Interpretation and Intention: The Debate between Hypothetical and Actual Intentionalism
Metaphilosophy
Regarded for decades as a fallacy, intentionalist interpretation is beginning to attract a following among philosophers of art. Intentionalism is the doctrine that the actual intentions of artists are relevant to the interpretation of the artworks they create-just as actual intentions are relevant to the interpretation of the everyday words and deeds of other people. Although there are several forms of actual intentionalism, I defend the form known as modest actual intentionalism, which holds that the correct interpretation of an artwork is compatible with the author's actual intention, which itself must be supported by the artwork. Looking at literary works specifically, I consider criticisms of actual intentionalism-for example, the contention that such a stance substitutes paraphrase for a reading of the text. In particular, I argue against hypothetical intentionalism, which maintains that the correct interpretation of an artwork is constrained by the best hypotheses of the artist's intentions. As I show, the methodology of this position is in fact designed to track the author's actual intentions, and furthermore, hypothetical intentionalism does not accurately depict existing interpretive practices.
The Text as Process and the Problem of Intentionality (1987)
Ecdotica, 2009
At a time in the history of scholarly editing in the twentieth century when «authorial intention» was still, under Anglo-American principles of editorial scholarship, a load-star for the realizing of critical editions, this essay set out to critique the implications of the intentional stance. It endeavoured to show that invoking intention, if valid at all for reaching editorial decisions and arriving at critically edited texts, could claim a theoretical foot-hold only in a conception of the closed and determinate text. A stance in theory recognizing and defining texts as open and indeterminate, by contrast, would needs also foreground texts as by nature processual. In the processes of realizing and modifying texts, «intentions » as expressed in variation and revision will form strings of authors’ readings of successive validity. If and when scholarly editing takes its guidance from the processual variability of texts, «authorial intention is [seen to be no longer] a metaphysical notion to be fulfilled but a textual force to be studied». How such an approach to the forming of scholarly editions might prove to support their critical function is indicated by sketches of examples from texts by Bertolt Brecht and Ezra Pound. Edd.