An epistemic dilemma for actual intentionalism

British Journal of Aesthetics

Volumn 41, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 192-206

  Trivedi, Saam ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 63149095563     PISSN: 00070904     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/bjaesthetics/41.2.192     Document Type: Article

References (17)

1. For comments on earlier versions of this paper, I thank John Brown, Alessandro Giovannelli, Gary Iseminger, and especially Jerrold Levinson. A version of this paper was read at the 1998 annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics, and I thank all participants for a lively discussion, particularly Noël Carroll, Gary Iseminger, and Robert Stecker.
2. Such sentiments about the absence of artistic communication in experiencing a lot of avant-garde music are expressed, for example, in Donald Mitchell, The Language of Modem Music (London: Faber, 1976), esp. pp. 128, 159, 172. Similar views have been expressed by many other authors.
3. See Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea, trans. Leonard Stein (London: Faber, 1984), esp. pp. 215, 244, 285.
4. See Noël Carroll, 'Art, Intention and Conversation', in Gary Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation (Philadelphia: Temple U.P., 1992).
5. See, for example, Gary Iseminger, 'Actual Intentionalism vs. Hypothetical Intentionalism', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 54, no. 4 (Fall 1996) pp. 319-326.
6. See also Paisley Livingston, 'Arguing Over Intentions', Revue International de Philosophie, vol. 4 (1996) pp. 615-633.
7. See Robert Stecker, Artworks: Definition, Meaning, Value (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1997).
8. Amongst many other places, this move is made in Stecker, Artworks; and also in Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Art (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1987).
9. The criticism has been raised in Jerrold Levinson, 'Intention and Interpretation in Literature', in The Pleasures of Aesthetics (Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 1996), p. 180, n. 12.
10. For the actual intentionalist response to this criticism see Stecker, Artworks, pp. 181-182.
11. See Alexander Nehamas, 'The Postulated Author: Critical Monism as a Regulative Ideal', Critical Inquiry, vol. 8 (1981) pp. 133-149;
12. 'What an Author Is', Journal of Philosophy, vol. 83 (1986) pp. 685-691.
13. Talk of actual artists here may sound like reversion to actual intentionalism, but is not so in fact. While stressing actual artists, I am not stressing their actual semantic intentions as actual intentionalists do. In stressing the actual artist, pace Nehamas, I stand with the hypothetical intentionalism of both Tolhurst and Levinson. See William Tolhurst, 'On What a Text Is and How It Means', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 19 (1979), pp. 3-14.
14. See Noël Carroll, 'Interpretation and Intention: the Debate between Hypothetical and Actual Intentionalists', Metaphilosophy, vol. 31 (2000), pp. 75-95.
15. The case is cited in Noël Carroll, 'Andy Kaufman and the Philosophy of Interpretation', in Michael Krausz (ed.), Is There a Single Right Interpretation? (University Park, PA: Penn State U.P., forthcoming).
16. One noteworthy recent anti-intentionalism can be found in Daniel O. Nathan, 'Irony and the Artist's Intentions', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 23 (1982), pp. 245-256;
17. and also in Daniel O. Nathan, 'Irony, Metaphor and the Problem of Intention', in Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation, pp. 183-202. My critique of anti-intentionalism resonates the critique of Nathan offered in Levinson, 'Intention and Interpretation in Literature', loc. cit.