The Philosophy of Art by Davies Stephen; Alperson Philip;

Author:Davies, Stephen; Alperson, Philip;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2015-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

4 Hypothetical Intentionalism

A rival to actual intentionalism is hypothetical intentionalism, contemporary advocates of which include Alexander Nehamas, Jerrold Levinson, and Jenefer Robinson. According to the hypothetical intentionalist, the work’s meaning is determined by the intentions the audience is best justified in attributing to the author, whether or not these are the ones the author actually had. In effect, the audience works out what intentions a postulated author would have had and interprets the work on this basis.

Proponents of the view differ over how the appropriate audience is to be described. Possibilities include the intended audience, an ideal one, and an experienced one from the time of the work’s creation. They also differ over the extent to which public facts about the actual author – for instance, about her personality, values, and attitudes, or about her other works – should be used to fill out details of the postulated author.

Hypothetical intentionalists, even if they require that the author who is postulated must be much like the actual one, tend to reject appeals to information about the actual author that is private or restricted. Presumably they do this on the grounds that such details could not be expected to be known by the appropriate audience. If a work contains a coded message intended only for one other, who was given the key by the author, that message might contribute to an interpretation offered by an actual intentionalist but be ruled inadmissible by a hypothetical intentionalist.

For the case in which it’s allowed that the postulated author matches what is known about the actual author and there is no reason to think idiosyncratic or very private codes lurk in the background, actual and hypothetical intentionalism can appear to be very similar. Interpreters of both stripes use hypothetical reasoning, relying not only on what is apparent in the work but on facts about its actual creator, to arrive at what was most likely intended. And in the majority of instances, the process of hypothetical reasoning leads to the same answer as regards the work’s proper interpretations. (Where different intentions are equally attributable, as will often be the case, more than one interpretation will be possible.)

There is one kind of case, however, in which the difference between these forms of intentionalism becomes clear. It can be described abstractly as follows: the given work allows for contrasting interpretations, one of which is clearly superior to the other. Nevertheless, the actual author asserts unequivocally that only the inferior one was intended. Here the actual intentionalist is obliged to abandon the superior reading for the intended, inferior one. By contrast, the hypothetical intentionalist sticks with the superior reading on the grounds that it is the more plausible and thereby the one we are most justified in hypothesizing to have been intended. Both theorists chalk up a demerit point against the actual author, but whereas the actual intentionalist now judges the work to be poor, the hypothetical intentionalists continues to hold that it should be interpreted in the fashion that makes it superior.

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