Historical interpretation, intentionalism and philosophy of mind

Journal of the Philosophy of History

Volumn 1, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 25-62

  Brown, Vivienne ^a  

^a OPEN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Historical intentionalism; Intentionalism; Intentions; Interpretation; Meaning; Philosophy of mind

Indexed keywords

EID: 62449276449     PISSN: 1872261X     EISSN: 18722636     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/187226307X176767     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. I thank Mark Bevir for raising the question for me whether interpretation requires us to 'populate this world, at least provisionally, with intentional states?', 'Forum on Intentionalism in Intellectual History', History and Theory (2002) at 212
2. see M. Bevir "How to Be an Intentionalist", History and Theory, 41 (2002), 209-217 (hereafter HI)
3. and V. Brown, "On Some Problems with Weak Intentionalism for Intellectual History", History and Theory, 41 (2002), 198-208
4. W. K. Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy", in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1954), 3-18
5. A locus classicus here is D. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980)
6. Cf. J. R. Searle, "Literary theory and Its Discontents", New Literary History, 25 (1994), 637-667, at 648
7. The distinction between substantive and formal intentionalism therefore does not correspond to the distinction between intentional realism and intentional antirealism; see A. R. Mele and P. Livingston, "Intentions and Interpretations", MLN, 107 (1992), 931-949, esp. 932
8. This characterisation of the two versions of intentionalism is thus to be differentiated from Monroe C. Beardsley's characterisation of the 'identity thesis' of E. D. Hirsch's intentionalism, that the meaning of a literary (or other artistic) work is identical to what its author meant (or meant in composing it); see M. C. Beardsley, "The authority of the text", in G. Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 24-40, at 25-26
9. E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967)
10. and The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976)
11. Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation, 8
12. The interpreter is 'to engage in intentional acts belonging to the same species as those of the author', Validity in Interpretation, 238, n. 29
13. Hirsch, Aims, 8. Here an intentional object cannot be dissevered from a species of intentional act, such that meaning is constituted by both the intentional object and certain intentional acts
14. Hirsch, Aims, 8, 3
15. Hirsch, Validity, 169, 171
16. P. D. Juhl, Interpretation: An Essay in the Philosophy of Literary Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)
17. Juhl, Interpretation, 12
18. Juhl, Interpretation, 13, 186, 221
19. Juhl, Interpretation, 232, 236
20. Juhl, Interpretation, 88, 150-151
21. Cf. P. Livingston "Intentionalism in Aesthetics", New Literary History, 29 (1998), 831-846
22. and "Intention in Art", in J. Levinson (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 275-290, on the distinction between extreme and moderate intentionalism
23. N. Carroll, "Art, Intention, and Conversation", in G. Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 97-131
24. and "Interpretation and Intention: The Debate between Hypothetical and Actual Intentionalism", Metaphilosophy, 31 (2000), 75-95
25. See also G. Iseminger, "An Intentional Demonstration?", in G. Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 76-96
26. and P. Livingston, "Intentionalism in Aesthetics"
27. Carroll, "Art, Intention, and Conversation", 101
28. As interpreters 'hypothesize' as to what the author's actual intentions were, the hypothesis has to be judged by how well it tracks the actual intentions
29. Carroll, "Interpretation and Intention", 77; emphasis added
30. A. Nehamas, "The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal", Critical Inquiry, 8 (1981), 133-149
31. "What an Author Is", Journal of Philosophy, 83 (1986), 685-691
32. "Writer, Text, Work, Author", in A. J. Cascardi (ed.), Literature and the Question of Philosophy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1987), 265-291
33. This is sometimes referred to as 'fictional intentionalism' (cf. Livingston, in Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics
34. but see Nehamas, "Writer, Text, Work, Author", 273-274, on why it is better described as 'transcendental intentionalism'
35. M. Foucault, "What Is an Author?", in P. Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1986), 101-120
36. Nehamas, "What an Author Is", 689
37. and "Writer, Text, Work, Author", 284, 287
38. Nehamas, "The Postulated Author", 148
39. Nehamas, "The Postulated Author", 144, 147
40. W. E. Tolhurst, "On What a Text Is and How It Means", British Journal of Aesthetics, 19 (1979), 3-14
41. J. Levinson, "Intention and Interpretation: A Last Look", in G. Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 221-256
42. "Intention and Interpretation in Literature", in J. Levinson (ed.), The Pleasures of Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 175-213
43. "Hypothetical Intentionalism: Statement, Objections and Replies", in J. Levinson, Contemplating Art: Essays in Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 302-311
44. See also S. Trivedi, "An Epistemic Dilemma for Actual Intentionalism", British Journal of Aesthetics, 41 (2001), 192-206
45. Levinson, "Hypothetical Intentionalism", 303
46. Levinson, "Intention and Interpretation in Literature", 186
47. Levinson, "Intention and Interpretation in Literature", 180, n. 12
48. Levinson, "Intention and Interpretation in Literature", 187, 210-211
49. S. Knapp and W. B. Michaels, "Against Theory", Critical Inquiry, 8 (1982), 723-742
50. reprinted in W. J. T. Mitchell (ed.), Against Theory: Literary Studies and the New Pragmatism (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985), 11-30; hereafter AT. Citations are to the (1985) reprint
51. Knapp and Michaels, AT, 19, 13
52. Cf. 'The point, however, is not that there need be no gulf between intention and the meaning of its expression but that there can be no gulf'; and Knapp and Michaels claim that this holds not only for serious literal speech but for all speech. Knapp and Michaels, AT, 17
53. Here Knapp and Michaels are referring to J. R. Searle, "Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida", Glyph, 1 (1977), 198-208, at 202
54. G. M. Wilson, "Again, Theory: On Speaker's Meaning, Linguistic Meaning, and the Meaning of a Text", Critical Inquiry, 19 (1992), 164-185
55. S. Knapp and W. B. Michaels, "Reply to George Wilson", Critical Inquiry, 19 (1992), 186-193
56. S. Knapp and W. B. Michaels, "Reply to John Searle", New Literary History, 25 (1994), 669-675
57. Iseminger, "An Intentional Demonstration?", 86
58. U. Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation, ed. S. Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Chs. 2 and 3, esp. 64-66
59. Unless otherwise stated, references to Quentin Skinner's work are to the revised statement in Visions of Politics, Vol. I: Regarding Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
60. Skinner, "Interpretation and the Understanding of Speech Acts" (hereafter IUSA), 113
61. in Visions of Politics I, 103-127
62. Skinner, "Motives, Intentions and Interpretation" (hereafter MII), 93
63. Cf. 'no agent can be said to have meant or achieved something which they never could be brought to accept as a correct description of what they had meant or achieved', "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas" (hereafter MUHI), 77
64. Skinner, MII, 100
65. Skinner, IUSA, 118
66. in J. Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 1988), 68-78
67. This passage, as it originally appeared in New Literary History, 3 (1972), 393-408, at 403 f.
68. is commented on favourably by Juhl, Interpretation, 14, n. 29
69. Juhl, Intention, 12. Juhl uses the term 'intention' in the sense of illocutionary intention: 'an author's intention in writing a certain sequence of words - in the sense, that is, of what he meant by the words he used', p. 14
70. In this passage, just before the dash, Juhl inserted a footnote reference to Skinner's MII (1972), 403f., which he summarises as follows: 'He [Skinner] concludes that an author's intention in writing a work is logically equivalent to what he means by the utterances which constitute the text', n. 29
71. cf. M. Hollis, "Say It with Flowers" in J. Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 1988), 135-146
72. and K. Graham, "How Do Illocutionary Descriptions Explain?", in J. Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 1988), 147-155
73. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events
74. Wittgenstein's writings see the entry, 'Behaviour and Behaviourism' in H.-J. Glock, A Wittgenstein Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 55-58
75. Mark Bevir, The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), hereafter LHI
76. Bevir, LHI, 53, 76, 75
77. Bevir, LHI, 70
78. Henceforth, for simplicity, the author, although nothing hangs on this
79. Bevir, LHI, 117, 120, 129, 182-183, 289
80. Bevir, LHI, 293, 119. Cf. 'after a web of beliefs has been brought into being by human creativity, it is just as real as anything else. Once beliefs have been brought into being, the connections between them are a given feature of the world . . . a rational explanation of past beliefs must rest on conditional connections that really were immanent in the consciousness of the relevant historical figures' (259-260). Also 185, 261
81. Thus bypassing Juhl's problem
82. Mark Bevir, "Meaning and Intention: A Defence of Procedural Individualism", New Literary History, 31 (2000), 385-403, at 391
83. Bevir, HI, 215; also 212-213
84. Cf. C. Hempel, "The Logical Analysis of Psychology", reprinted in J. Heil (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 85-95
85. For a critique see H. Putnam, "Brains and Behaviour", reprinted in J. Heil (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 96-104
86. As, for example, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the particle physics centre near Geneva, illustrates
87. Arguably for Derrida the core issues about meaning were metaphysical rather than epistemological
88. Esp. LHI, Ch. 3