Intention, supervenience, and aesthetic realism

British Journal of Aesthetics

Volumn 38, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 279-291

  Eaton, Marcia Muelder ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 63149195005     PISSN: 00070904     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/bjaesthetics/38.3.279     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. William K. Wimsatt, Jr and Monroe Beardsley, 'The Intentional Fallacy', in The Verbal Icon (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1954). People disagree about the extent to which these authors intended their remarks to refer exclusively to evaluation or to refer as well to interpretation. But typically anti-intentionalism is taken to be the view that intentions are irrelevant in both activities.
2. Frank Cioffi, 'Intention and Interpretation in Criticism', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, n.s. LXIV (1963-65), pp. 85-106.
3. Noël Carroll, 'Art, Intentions, and Conversations', in Gary Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation (Philadelphia: Temple U.P., 1992). Carroll distinguishes between two sorts of arguments that have been offered against the use of artistic intentions in interpreting and evaluating literature: ontological and aesthetic arguments. The first maintains that literary discourse differs essentially from ordinary discourse. The second maintains that in order to account for the special aesthetic value of literary discourse, intentions must not be used. Ontologists stress the autonomy of texts, aestheticists the autonomy of the reader. The latter may disagree with Cioffi and Carroll about the extent to which 'our' interests include concern for speaker intentions.
4. Jerrold Levinson, 'Intention and Interpretation: A Last Look,' in Iseminger (ed.), Intention and Interpretation, pp. 221-256. The 'last look' refers to the fact that Levinson's was the last paper in the volume, not to any arrogance or optimism on his part that his would be the final word in this debate!
5. E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale U.P., 1967).
6. Gary Iseminger, 'Actual Intentionalism vs. Hypothetical Intentionalism', in Intention and Interpretation, p. 323.
7. Brian Rosebury, 'Irrecoverable Intentions and Literary Interpretation', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 37, no. 1 (January, 1997), p. 22.
8. For more on this see my paper, "Where's the Spear? The Nature of Aesthetic Relevance', British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 32, no. 1 (January, 1992), pp. 1-12.
9. For a wonderful analysis of this, see Jon Wenstrom, Modernist Irony, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1991.
10. John Bender, 'Realism, Supervenience, and Irresolvable Aesthetic Disputes', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 54, no. 4 (Fall, 1996), p. 379.
11. In 'Where the Spear', for example.
12. See, for example, David Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1989.)
13. My arguments for these points appear in 'The Intrinsic, Non-Supervenient Nature of Aesthetic Properties', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 52, no. 4 (Fall, 1994), pp. 383-406.