Austin Johnston
Aesthetics, Dr. Kania
December 13th, 2006
Modest Actual Intentionalism and the Problem of Failed Intentions
When reading a work of literature, part of our job as a reader is to discover the meaning of the work. There are inevitable differences in how each reader approaches a work of literature, but one question that concerns aestheticians, with respect to literary interpretation, is not how readers interpret meaning in literature, but how they should interpret meaning in literature. There are a number of popular theories of literary interpretation, but I will focus my attention on one: modest actual intentionalism. In this paper, I will present an overview of the theory, and put forward my arguments against it. I will then consider possible rebuttals by the modest actual intentionalists. Finally, I will conclude that modest actual intentionalism fails, at least partially, as an interpretive theory, and should therefore be rejected in favor of a more viable alternative, such as hypothetical intentionalism.
Modest actual intentionalism is the theory that the meaning (that is, the correct interpretation) of a work of literature is derived at least partially from the author’s actual intentions. The actual intentions of the author represent the meaning the author intended to convey in the text. For traditional intentionalists, the author’s intentions were deemed to be the only possible correct meaning. The actual text itself, whether it supported the author’s intentions or not, was irrelevant. Modest actual intentionalists, however, have adopted a less extreme position: in order to accept the author’s intentions, which are vital to discerning meaning, the intentions must be supported in some way or another by the text. While a common criticism of modest actual intentionalism is that it encourages paraphrase, by ignoring the text in favor of the intentions that determine its meaning, the fact that intentions must derive support from the text means that “close interpretive attention to the text is just the pursuit of the actual intentions of the artist.” (Carroll, 77)
Ideally, this close attention to the text will reveal what the modest actual intentionalist believes to be evidence of the author’s successfully realized intentions. If a close reading of the text finds a clear and singular meaning for a given semantic statement, then the modest actual intentionalist will tentatively conclude that this meaning was intended by the author, and is therefore the correct meaning. Most literature, however, even to ideal readers, often supports or seems to support more than one literary meaning.
Where the linguistic unit can support more than one possible meaning, the modest actual intentionalist maintains that the correct interpretation is the one that is compatible with the author’s actual intention, which itself must be supportable by the language of the text. (Carroll, 76)
An example of this situation that Carroll presents is the statement, “The fish is on the bank.” Without textual context (which the author is not required to provide), this sentence could mean either that “The fish is on the shore,” or that “The fish is on the financial institution.” The modest actual intentionalist, if she is unable to discover which interpretation of “The fish is on the bank” is the correct one from any evidence provided by the text, must now go somewhere outside of the text (to interviews with the author, the author’s journals, or some other source) in order to ascertain the author’s actual intentions, and, in so doing, determine what the correct interpretation of “The fish is on the bank” actually is.
This question, what the correct interpretation of a linguistic unit or text that supports more than one possible meaning, is of the utmost importance to the modest actual intentionalist. If the text can support more than one interpretation, and one accepts the premise that the correct interpretation is that which was intended by the author, we need to know what the author’s intentions are, if we are to know which interpretation of the text represents the true meaning. But what if the text supports only one interpretation? As noted, the modest actual intentionalist has to assume that this interpretation represents the intentions of the author, but, for sake of consistency, Carroll stresses that modest actual intentionalists seek the author’s intentions even in these cases. How useful the knowledge of an author’s intentions will be, assuming they agree with the text, is debatable. But a more pressing debate originates if we seek the author’s intentions and find that, in fact, they do not agree with the text. What happens when an author fails to realize his intentions?
Carroll admits that such failure is possible: “when the authors fail to produce texts that support their intentions.” (Carroll, 85) Returning to the earlier example, let us say that an author writes “The fish is on the shore,” but intended to mean, “The fish in on the financial institution.” This would constitute a failure of intentions under Carroll’s own definition, and while such an occurrence may seem unlikely to occur, it is possible. Carroll (and the other modest actual intentionalists), though allowing for such a failure to exist, does not answer the question of how modest actual intentionalism can be used to interpret these cases of failed intentions.
The modest actual intentionalist will read “The fish is on the shore” and interpret it to mean “The fish is on the shore,” since the linguistic unit can only have this meaning. But Carroll insists that modest actual intentionalists inquire after the author’s meaning even if the linguistic unit is explicitly clear; when they do, and discover that the author’s meaning is not the meaning represented by the text, what happens next? If the moderate actual intentionalist takes the author’s meaning (in this case, “The fish is on the financial institution) over the text’s meaning (“The fish is on the shore”), she has reverted to the extreme form of intentionalism mentioned earlier, where the author’s intent is the sole determinant of a work’s meaning. On the other hand, if she throws out the author’s intentions, she has significantly reduced the importance of the author’s intent in determining meaning not only in the case of where the author has failed, but also in cases where the author has succeeded, because if the text takes precedence over the author’s intent in cases where they contradict, it should necessarily take precedence in all cases.
Saam Trivedi considers a similar argument as part of his proposed epistemic dilemma for modest actual intentionalism, concluding that the above dilemma leads to indeterminacy. Trivedi also claims that modest actual intentionalists must know both the text’s meaning and the author’s intentions in order to apply their theory, and that, if a text has meaning without appealing to authorial intentions, modest actual intentionalism becomes redundant.
In response to Trivedi’s epistemic dilemma, Shelia Lintott (with help from Noël Carroll) formulated a defense of modest actual intentionalism entitled “When Artists Fail,” parts of which are relevant to the argument I have presented regarding failed intentions. Lintott accepts the second of my two alternatives; that is, she admits that the author’s intentions are not relevant in determining meaning for a work in which they are not represented. The text, in this case, is accepted over the contradictory intentions of the author. But Lintott does not accept that this spells failure for modest actual intentionalism:
…the degree of failure necessary to make actual intentionalism a waste of time is so great that I am skeptical that it ever unintentionally occurs…Absolute success and absolute failure are not the only alternatives here. Moreover, it is rarely, if ever, the case that an artist has one simple semantic intention. (Lintott, 68-69)
Lintott’s response is interesting. She does not deny that absolute failure of intentions can occur, nor does she deny that modest actual intentionalism cannot, in any way, shape, or form, interpret meaning in these cases of absolute failure. She cannot justify appealing to author’s intentions as a source of meaning in a case where none of the author’s intentions are represented in the text. Instead, she argues that such cases do not occur, and thus the argument does not represent a strong enough flaw in modest actual intentionalism to reject the theory as a whole.
Even if Lintott is correct in saying that such drastic failure occurs, the mere possibility of its occurrence, I think, is important. As Trivedi points out, as part of his epistemic dilemma, it is redundant to say that the author’s intentions determine meaning in works where the author’s intentions have been realized in the text. And in works where the author’s intentions have not been realized in the text, it seems modest actual intentionalism simply cannot be used to interpret meaning. Even if such cases are rare, or do not occur outside of the realm of theory and conjecture, they still represent a barrier towards modest actual intentionalism’s consideration as a viable theory of interpretation. These cases make it impossible for modest actual intentionalism to be considered a universal theory; it cannot be universally applied to all works of literature, and the works it can be applied to are those which already have the author’s intentions represented in the text. Modest actual intentionalism, then, must be less useful as a theory of literary interpretation than a competing theory that, assuming the theory is equally valid, is also universal to all literature.
There is another side to Lintott’s counter-argument, however, that has to be considered. Up to this point, the focus has been on single linguistic units, and the only possibilities have been total success or total failure, to keep things simple. But, as Lintott writes, things are, perhaps, not that simple:
In thinking that none of an artist’s intentions are relevant to the interpretation of her work if she fails to achieve one desired aspect, he (Trivedi) draws too narrow a field for artistic intention…Rather than simply succeed or fail, an artist can succeed, fail, or hit a mark somewhere in between…For all but cases of total failure, it is reasonable to think that we can frequently find evidence in a work of partially to wholly realized artistic intent. (Lintott, 69)
Lintott’s view represents a departure from Carroll’s original claim that artists simply succeed or fail, but it seems initially plausible, despite still failing to explain cases of total failure. Unfortunately, while she argues that we focus primarily on the work, “and in doing so find evidence of artistic success,” she fails to specify what constitutes evidence of artistic success and what does not, which leads us back to part of Trivedi’s argument in the epistemic dilemma. Lintott does not tell us how we are to know artistic success from artistic failure without knowing what the author’s intentions are to begin with. Lintott does say that, in cases where an author fails to realize a particular semantic intention, “we can conclude that this particular intention is not relevant to the interpretation of the artwork.” (Lintott, 71) Her justification for reaching this conclusion is conspicuously absent, though we can probably assume that it follows from Lintott’s belief that total failure of intentions never unintentionally occurs.
In any case, it would seem charitable to at least consider what Lintott might mean by arguing for the existence of partially realized intentions, and what she might regard as evidence of artistic success in a partially successful work. The best way for me to explain what I believe Lintott’s argument to be is to return to our initial example.
First, consider Noël Carroll’s original reasoning. If an author writes “The fish is on the bank,” Carroll believes this provides support to one of two semantic meanings (“The fish is on the shore” OR “The fish is on the financial institution”), and that the correct semantic meaning is determined by appealing to the author’s actual intention. The author, according to Carroll, has succeeded in realizing their intentions in the text even if the linguistic unit can support two distinctly different meanings.
Lintott, I should think, would agree with Carroll, in that the author has been successful in realizing their intentions. But she would not, perhaps, agree that the author is wholly successful; after all, there are still two possible meanings that a reader, without appealing to the author’s intentions, can interpret the work to have.
It seems we must draw a distinction between creative intentions and semantic or interpretive intentions. If an author writes a metaphorical statement, for example, there is a creative intention, which determines what is created and written on the page, and a semantic intention, which determines how this particular linguistic unit is supposed to mean. Making a distinction between creative intentions and semantic intentions is especially crucial in literary interpretation, I think, where even individual words can have multiple meanings. This distinction is clearly shown using our earlier example. An author who writes “The fish is on the bank,” and intends to write “The fish is on the bank,” has succeeded creatively, in that they have succeeding in creating what they intended to create. But if a reader takes “The fish is on the bank” to mean “The fish is on the shore” when in fact the author intended it to mean “The fish is on the financial institution,” the author has failed at achieving her semantic intention.
If we draw a distinction between these two types of intentions, it will allow for Lintott’s argument, that partial success and failure should be considered as possibilities, to be realized, at least to an extent. I agree with Lintott’s assertion that completely failed interpretation is rare in the creative sense, that is, it almost never happens that an author commits the equivalent of “making an artwork pink instead of blue.” (Lintott, 70) And, where I initially disagreed with Carroll (that “The fish is on the bank” represents successfully realized intentions), I can agree with Lintott (assuming her argument runs as I have presented it) that the statement, while not a completely successful intention, is not a complete failure, either.
Even though I can and do accept that there are different types of intentions, and that authors may (and often do) achieve only partial success in realizing intentions, Lintott has still failed to adequately defend modest actual intentionalism. The appeal of the theory admittedly remains strong in some cases, primarily those where the author has mostly (but not entirely) realized his intentions. A statement like “The fish is on the bank,” might represent one such case. An ideal reader can interpret that statement in one of two ways. The creative intentions have been wholly successful (presumably), and we can also assume that the semantic intentions have been at least partially realized. That the author has at least succeeded in reducing the number of possible interpretations to just two, I think, means we can consider the semantic intention of the author to be mostly successful (assuming, of course, that the author intended one of those two possible interpretations to be the correct one).
Of course, as Lintott herself has made explicitly clear, this somewhat idealized situation is far from the only possible way an author’s intentions can appear in a text. Lintott, in presenting her responses to Trivedi, makes a pair of critically flawed assumptions. She assumes, first, that as long as an author or artist is partially successful, and modest actual intentionalism can be applied, that it should be applied. Secondly, she assumes that, regardless of the degree of the author’s success, modest actual intentionalism is the best theory of literary interpretation.
There is no reason to think that all of an artist’s intentions need to be realized in order for some of her intentions to be relevant to the interpretation of her work. (Lintott, 71)
Surely, though, there is reason to think that most of an author’s intentions need to be realized in order for them to be relevant to the interpretation of her work. Lintott seems to be implying that not even most of the author’s intentions need to be realized; even in cases of drastic failure, a few of the author’s intentions may still be relevant to interpretation.
But Lintott’s assumptions simply do not follow. If authorial intentions can fall on any point of a continuum between being wholly realized and wholly failed, how can Lintott assume that the majority of author’s intentions come closer to being successfully realized than not? More importantly, how can Lintott assume that an author’s intentions are relevant to interpretation of meaning, when the author’s intentions have come closer to failure than success? In many ways, Lintott’s interpretation of modest actual intentionalism actually rewards authors who fail to fully or even mostly realize their intentions. An author who successfully realizes all of her creative and semantic intentions creates a work that the ideal reader can only possibly interpret one way, and that single interpretation is the correct interpretation, and represents the meaning of the work. Because the work meaning is a perfect translation of the author’s intentions, the modest actual intentionalist will say the work derives its correct meaning from the author’s fully realized intentions, which may well be the case. Even so, the work meaning is entirely clear without having to appeal to the author’s intentions, and cannot derive any additional meaning from such an appeal. This means that the modest actual intentionalist, realistically, has no reason or incentive to appeal to the author’s intentions, and the author, in turn, has no ability to affect the meaning of the text, outside of the text itself. On the other hand, a less successful author, whose creative or semantic intentions may not be fully realized, has such an ability to affect meaning outside of the text, an ability that becomes increasingly more significant as the degree of creative or semantic failure grows. Since Lintott claims that author’s intentions are important to meaning in every case except that of complete failure, her interpretation of modest actual intentionalism actually allows for authors who fail to realize their intentions in the text to have more control over work meaning than authors who realize their intentions fully.
Lintott has also not considered the possibility of failed intentions across the scope of an entire literary work. Think of a novel like Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, or a similar novel, which is widely regarded by critics and accomplished readers as supporting two distinctly different, and perhaps opposing, meanings. Perhaps the creative and semantic intentions behind each meaning are fully realized, which would be the case if Hemingway intended for his novel to have two opposing meanings. But perhaps one of the meanings only exists because Hemingway did not fully realize his intentions; perhaps Hemingway, in attempting to support one of his semantic intentions, unwittingly supported another opposing meaning. Such cases, which I think can safely be labeled as cases of drastic failure, may well be rare (and I am certain this would be Lintott’s reply), but certainly they seem to be more likely than drastic failures of single linguistic units. Stephen Davies gives two commonly cited examples of such failures (if indeed that is what they are), A.E. Housman’s “1887” and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. In each case, the text supported interpretations of meaning that (apparently) went above and beyond the authors’ originally intended meanings. (Davies, 121-122) Lintott and other modest actual intentionalists give these two authors the ability to eliminate these interpretations as candidates for correct meaning, merely because the author did not intend them.
To give an author such power, to either determine which of several equally valid interpretations of the text is the single, correct interpretation, or to deny certain interpretations that are supported by the text to be valid is, I think, unfair. Carroll and Lintott liken the interpretation of literature to a conversation with the author, with the purpose of the literary work being to communicate a message, but to accept modest actual intentionalism merely because it most closely resembles direct communication with the author is absurd. If literature was only about communicating a message, there would be no use for such literary devices as irony and simile and metaphor, or any figurative language, which communicates meaning indirectly, and is often misunderstood by readers. It is no more practical for me to communicate a message ironically or metaphorically than it is for me to ask a girl out via my roommate; indeed, it seems quite impractical to do so. In fact, there would be no purpose for works of fiction at all, since, presumably, any practical message communicated by Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment can be summed up in a sentence or two. Obviously, literature, and art, is about more than mere communication.
There are several notable flaws with modest actual intentionalism. Modest actual intentionalism has no way to interpret works where the author has completely failed to realize his intentions. This represents reason enough to reject it as a theory of literary interpretation, since a good theory will be applicable to all works of literature, and, furthermore, will be equally applicable in every case. The author’s intentions are not equally applicable to determining meaning in every text, however, because the more an author has realized his intentions in the text, the less important it is to appeal to his intentions outside of the text; if the author completely succeeds, or completely fails, an appeal to the author’s intentions outside of the text will not affect the interpretation of meaning. It is also less important to know the intentions of an author who is mostly successful than it is know the intentions of an author who is mostly unsuccessful, which is curious: the intentions of the least successful authors are the most important ones to appeal to outside of the text.
Even if one believes that the objections presented in this paper are insufficient to reject the theory of modest actual intentionalism as a whole, several alternatives to modest actual intentionalism circumvent these objections, and constitute better methods for literary interpretation. Hypothetical intentionalism is one such theory, which states that a 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 she actually had).” (Davies, 119) Without getting into an overly detailed analysis of the theory, it clearly defeats the most salient objection to modest actual intentionalism, that there is no way to interpret works where authors have completely failed to realize their intentions. Hypothetical intentionalism does not utilize any of the actual intentions of the artist, just those that are best justified: therefore, in these cases, the correct meaning is the best interpretation of the text, regardless of what the author’s intentions were. Of course, in cases where the author is fully successful, or mostly successful, the best justified intentions will be the author’s actual intentions. And in cases where the author is completely or mostly unsuccessful, did it really make much sense to appeal to the author’s actual intentions in the first place?
Therefore, to conclude, the flaws of modest actual intentionalism are, I believe, significant enough to reject it as a viable theory of literary interpretation. At the very least, the problem of drastic or complete failure by authors to realize their intentions (no matter how rarely it occurs in practice) presents a major obstacle to modest actual intentionalism, and provides ample reason to search for an alternative theory of literary interpretation. Hypothetical intentionalism, being both a more viable theory and a close cousin of modest actual intentionalism, seems to be the most worthy option.
Works Cited
Carroll, Noël. “Interpretation and Intention: The Debate Between Hypothetical and Actual Intentionalism.” Metaphilosophy, vol. 31, no. 1/2 (January 2000): 76-95
Davies, Stephen. The Philosophy of Art. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006.
Lintott, Shelia. “When Artists Fail: A Reply to Trivedi.” British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 42, no. 1, (January 2002): 64-72
Trivedi, Saam. “An Epistemic Dilemma for Actual Intentionalism.” British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 41, no. 2 (April 2001): 192-206