AUTHORIAL

INTENTION AND
THE VARIETIES
OF
INTENTIONALISM
 INTRODUCTION
In “Questions of Intent”, from his recent book Where the
Southern Cross the Yellow Dog, Louis Ruben Asserts:

It is all very well, when disputes about an author’s intention

arise, to insist that it is the written-down story that should command our
intention as readers, and that questions about what the author may have
intended to do, what his literary models may have been, or what have
been going on in his personal life or that of his community at the time
ought not make the least difference to us. (Ruben, ND)

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INTENTION
Let’s start with the Nature of
Intention
 INTENTION
Rather diverse theoretical positions have been taken
on the question of the nature of intentions. (Anscombe1957; Audi
1997; Bratman 1990)
a. Intentions and Consciousness
- It is sometimes held that intentions must at least be “accessible” to
conscious introspection, if they are not actually the object of some
form of occurrent or “focal” awareness.
- A stronger claim is that all intentions must actually be conscious to
some degree. Many theorist have acknowledge the existence of
wholly unconscious intentions as well as conscious ones.

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 INTENTION
b. Intentions and other mental Items that figure within the
preferred psychological model
- Reductionist accounts include proposal in which intention is
equated with volition or trying, as well as proposals in which intention
is reduced to belief and desire or some more complex constellation of
states or attitudes.
- Some theorist eschew such reductions and identify intention as
a type of mental state characterized by its function.
- Intention plays a special motivational and cognitive role because
it is an executive attitude towards some plan or means-end scheme.

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AUTHORIAL
INTENTION
 AUTHORIAL INTENTION
1. H. Paul Grice’s (1989) proposals have dominated philosophical discussions
of the question of the nature of an utterer's intention.
- Grice’s basic aim in this regard was to reduce the semantic intention of a
speaker or writer to a complex communicative intention.
Gricean analysis run as follows: Someone authors an utterance just in case
that person, S, utters (writes, speaks etc.) something with an intention
comprised of the following three sub intentions:
a. S’s utterance, (U), is to produce a certain response, (R) should there be an
audience,(A), having some characteristics, (C).
b. The audience, (A), is to recognize (S’s) intention.
c. The audience’s recognition of S’s intention is to function as at least a part of
A’s reason for having response R.

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 AUTHORIAL INTENTION
2. Wayne A. Davis (2003-2005) explored a different way of thinking about
semantic intentions. In particular, the intended recognition of the speaker’s
intention to communicate is not a necessary means to the communication
of a thought.
- Davis argues that not all speaker’s meaning is communicative in the
sense of primarily targeting uptake by some audience. Some speaker’s
meaning is expressive without being communicative.
3. Jerrold Levinson (1992) – Categorical Intention
- This pertains to the category or genre of work the author means to
create. Authors intend to write a work of fiction; they may settle on trying
to create a work belonging to some well-established genre or literary form
or they may have a more or less innovative hybrid in view.

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 VARIETIES
OF
INTENTIONALISM

9
 “
Intentionalism in the
philosophy of art
interpretation is, in
general, a thesis about
intention’s determination
of the meaning or the
value of art.

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 VARIETIES OF
INTENTIONALISM
Intentionalism can be characterized as a family of principles
that are supposed to describe apt interpretation or appreciation,
namely, those in which authorial intention is the target of some if not all
attributions.
1. Fictionalist Intentionalism – Instructs interpreters to attribute the
meanings of a text to an imagined or make-believe author.
2. Textualist Intentionalism – Would have the interpreter write as if the text
were the locus of the relevant semantic intentions.
3. Conditionalist Intentionalism – Invites the interpreter to describe the
meanings that the author of the text could have intended, as opposed to
only those that this person actually intended.

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4. Actualist Intentionalism – Codifies the idea that it is the author’s
actual intentions that are ideally to be identified in the interpretation of the
meaning of a work, at least in cases where those intentions have been
successfully acted upon.
5. Absolute Intentionalism – For all works of art , a work’s meanings are
all and only those intended by the authors. These extreme or absolute
intentionalist thesis is challenge by adverting to counterexamples where
the linguistic expression someone has uttered or written turns out to have
meanings not intended by that person.
6. Hypothetical Intentionalism – The utterance meaning is determined
by an intention that a member of the intended audience would be justified
in attributing to the author on the basis of evidence that defines
membership in the intended audience.

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 THE
UTTERANCE
MODEL

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 THE UTTERANCE MODEL
 Literary and other artistic works are not utterances in any case and so
just aren’t the sort of thing to have such a meaning. In response, it may
be agreed that it is hard to spell out the meaning of imposing and
complex artistic achievements.
 The Utterance Model of meaning equates the meaning of an utterance
with the speaker’s meaning. Assuming that the meanings of literary
works are not reducible to the author’s semantic intentions, it follows
that the utterance meaning is inappropriate.
 Utterance meaning is not equivalent to speaker meaning, but emerges
in a relation between utterer’s meaning, conventional or linguistic
meaning, and contextual factors.

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 THE UTTERANCE MODEL

⬗ Another reason given in support of the thesis that works are not
utterances is that works, unlike utterances, should be understood
as having an interest and relevance independent of the situation
in which they were initially produced.
⬗ To read a text as literature, then, is to detach it from the context of
origin.

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 “
“…the meaning of art is
inseparable from all the
details of its material
body.”
Bakhtin and Medvedev,
Theory of the Formal Method

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