Pink Floyd and Philosophy by George Reisch

Author:George Reisch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Court
Published: 2011-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

A Smile from a Veil? Hypothetical and Actual Intentions

Even if we select the first alternative and say that individuals are the only sort of thing to which we can attribute intentions, we do not have to evaluate the albums in terms of the actual intentions of individuals. There are two reasons in favor of this proposal (and many philosophers find them convincing). First, intentions are often obscure or unavailable to us. Yet we evaluate them anyway. Second, songs and performances can have properties that their creators did not intend. Some of these unintended features contribute in positive ways. If we restrict our positive evaluations to actual intentions, then we cannot praise the work for having these properties. Therefore we should evaluate works as if all of their positive and negative features were intended, by responding to a hypothetical artist who had complete control over all of its properties. Aesthetic evaluations should be based on hypothetical intentions.

For example, the musical “hook” of “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” is a four-note theme on Gilmour’s guitar. In the context of the song, the theme represents the fractured state of Barrett’s mind. Gilmour composed it more or less accidentally, while improvising. It was Waters’s idea to couple Gilmour’s “mournful kind of sound” with lyrics about Barrett’s absence.107 To regard “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” as a highly successful, unified long-form composition, we might prefer to approach it as if Gilmour had the same purpose in mind as did Waters.

Nonetheless, I reject the strategy of hypothetical intentionalism. I think that actual intentions provide the proper constraint on interpretation and evaluation.108 First, there are many cases where hypothetical intentions will give us a more satisfying interpretation, and thus a more positive evaluation, yet we know perfectly well that we shouldn’t interpret and evaluate it in that way. Obvious cases are slips of the tongue and mispronounced words. For example, it’s very hard to enunciate some words clearly when singing. Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” includes the line “Excuse me while I kiss the sky.” As Hendrix actually sings it, many listeners have heard it as “kiss this guy.” In some contexts, the mistaken interpretation is more desirable than the one that conforms to his actual intentions—taken as political statement raging against mindless conformity, “kiss this guy” is politically more potent than “kiss the sky.” However, the actually intended words are the words, and they should be the basis for interpretation and evaluation. Likewise, someone who hears the phrase “ordinary men” in Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them” as “old and hairy men” has just got it wrong, no matter how much they think it improves the song. The actual trumps the hypothetical.

Second, hypothetical intentionalism tells us that we gain nothing by consulting interviews with Waters and Gilmour in order to get a better understanding of the music and songs. If actual intentions don’t matter, then knowing what the musicians actually said cannot guide our interpretation and evaluation. However, I certainly think that I have a better understanding of

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