Art and Interpretation

Interpretation in art refers to the attribution of meaning to a work.

A point on which people often disagree is whether the artist’s or
author’s intention is relevant to the interpretation of the work. In
the Anglo-American analytic philosophy of art, views about inter‐
pretation branch into two major camps: intentionalism and anti-
intentionalism, with an initial focus on one art, namely literature.

The anti-intentionalist maintains that a work’s meaning is entirely

determined by linguistic and literary conventions, thereby rejecting the relevance of the author’s inten‐
tion. The underlying assumption of this position is that a work enjoys autonomy with respect to meaning
and other aesthetically relevant properties. Extra-textual factors, such as the author’s intention, are neither
necessary nor sufficient for meaning determination. This early position in the analytic tradition is often
called conventionalism because of its strong emphasis on convention. Anti-intentionalism gradually went
out of favor at the end of the 20th century, but it has seen a revival in the so-called value-maximizing the‐
ory, which recommends that the interpreter seek value-maximizing interpretations constrained by conven‐
tion and, according to a different version of the theory, by the relevant contextual factors at the time of the
work’s production.

By contrast, the initial brand of intentionalism—actual intentionalism—holds that interpreters should

concern themselves with the author’s intention, for a work’s meaning is affected by such intention. There
are at least three versions of actual intentionalism. The absolute version identifies a work’s meaning fully
with the author’s intention, therefore allowing that an author can intend her work to mean whatever she
wants it to mean. The extreme version acknowledges that the possible meanings a work can sustain have
to be constrained by convention. According to this version, the author’s intention picks the correct mean‐
ing of the work as long as it fits one of the possible meanings; otherwise, the work ends up being mean‐
ingless. The moderate version claims that when the author’s intention does not match any of the possible
meanings, meaning is fixed instead by convention and perhaps also context.

A second brand of intentionalism, which finds a middle course between actual intentionalism and anti-
intentionalism, is hypothetical intentionalism. According to this position, a work’s meaning is the appro‐
priate audience’s best hypothesis about the author’s intention based on publicly available information
about the author and her work at the time of the piece’s production. A variation on this position attributes
the intention to a hypothetical author who is postulated by the interpreter and who is constituted by work
features. Such authors are sometimes said to be fictional because they, being purely conceptual, differ de‐
cisively from flesh-and-blood authors.

This article elaborates on these theories of interpretation and considers their notable objections. The de‐
bate about interpretation covers other art forms in addition to literature. The theories of interpretation are
also extended across many of the arts. This broad outlook is assumed throughout the article, although
nothing said is affected even if a narrow focus on literature is adopted.

Table of Contents
1. Key Concepts: Intention, Meaning, and Interpretation
2. Anti-Intentionalism
a. The Intentional Fallacy
b. Beardsley’s Speech Act Theory of Literature
c. Notable Objections and Replies
3. Value-Maximizing Theory
a. Overview
b. Notable Objections and Replies
4. Actual Intentionalism
a. Absolute Version
b. Extreme Version
c. Moderate Version
d. Objections to Actual Intentionalism
5. Hypothetical Intentionalism
a. Overview
b. Notable Objections and Replies
6. Hypothetical Intentionalism and the Hypothetical Artist
a. Overview
b. Notable Objections and Replies
7. Conclusion
8. References and Further Reading

1. Key Concepts: Intention, Meaning, and Interpretation

It is common for us to ask questions about works of art due to puzzlement or curiosity. Sometimes we do
not understand the point of the work. What is the point of, for example, Metamorphosis by Kafka or
Duchamp’s Fountain? Sometimes there is ambiguity in a work and we want it resolved. For example, is
the final sequence of Christopher Nolan’s film Inception reality or another dream? Or do ghosts really ex‐
ist in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw? Sometimes we make hypotheses about details in a work. For
instance, does the woman in white in Raphael’s The School of Athens represent Hypatia? Is the conch in
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies a symbol for civilization and democracy?

What these questions have in common is that all of them seek after things that go beyond what the work
literally presents or says. They are all concerned with the implicit contents of the work or, for simplicity,
with the meanings of a work. A distinction can be drawn between two kinds of meaning in terms of
scope. Meaning can be global in the sense that it concerns the work’s theme, thesis, or point. For exam‐
ple, an audience first encountering Duchamp’s Fountain would want to know Duchamp’s point in produc‐
ing this readymade or, put otherwise, what the work as a whole is made to convey. The same goes for
Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which contains so bizarre a plot as to make the reader wonder what the story is
all about. Meaning can also be local insofar as it is about what a part of a work conveys. Inquiries into the
meaning of a particular sequence in Christopher Nolan’s film, the woman in Raphael’s fresco, or the
conch in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies are directed at only part of the work.

We are said to be interpreting when trying to find out answers to questions about the meaning of a work.
In other words, interpretation is the attempt to attribute work-meaning. Here “attribute” can mean “re‐
cover,” which is retrieving something already existing in a work; or it can more weakly mean “impose,”
which entails ascribing a meaning to a work without ontologically creating anything. Many of the major
positions in the debate endorse either the impositional view or the retrieval view.

When an interpretative question arises, a frequent way to deal with it is to resort to the creator’s intention.
We may ask the artist to reveal her intention if such an opportunity is available; we may also check what
she says about her work in an interview or autobiography. If we have access to her personal documents
such as diaries or letters, they too will become our interpretative resources. These are all evidence of the
artist’s intention. When the evidence is compelling, we have good reason to believe it reveals the artist’s
intention.

Certainly, there are cases in which external evidence of the artist’s intention is absent, including when the
work is anonymous. This poses no difficulty for philosophers who view appeal to artistic intention as cru‐
cial, for they accept that internal evidence—the work itself—is the best evidence of the artist’s intention.
Most of the time, close attention to details of the work will lead us to what the artist intended the work to
mean.

But what is intention exactly? Intention is a kind of mental state usually characterized as a design or plan
in the artist’s mind to be realized in her artistic creation. This crude view of intention is sometimes refined
into the reductive analysis one will find in a contemporaneous textbook of philosophy of mind: intention
is constituted by belief and desire. Some actual intentionalists explain the nature of intention from a
Wittgensteinian perspective: authorial intention is viewed as the purposive structure of the work that can
be discerned by close inspection. This view challenges the supposition that intentions are always private
and logically independent of the work they cause, which is often interpreted as a position held by anti-
intentionalists.

A 2005 proposal holds that intentions are executive attitudes toward plans (Livingston). These attitudes
are firm but defeasible commitments to acting on them. Contra the reductive analysis of intention, this
view holds that intentions are distinct and real mental states that serve a range of functions irreducible to
other mental states.

Clarifying each of these basic terms (meaning, interpretation, and intention) requires an essay-length
treatment that cannot be done here. For current purposes, it suffices to introduce the aforesaid views and
proposals commonly assumed. Bear in mind that for the most part the debate over art interpretation pro‐
ceeds without consensus on how to define these terms, and clarifications appear only when necessary.

2. Anti-Intentionalism
Anti-intentionalism is considered the first theory of interpretation to emerge in the analytic tradition. It is
normally seen as affiliated with the New Criticism movement that was prevalent in the middle of the
twentieth century. The position was initially a reaction against biographical criticism, the main idea of
which is that the interpreter, to grasp the meaning of a work, needs to study the life of the author because
the work is seen as reflecting the author’s mental world. This approach led to people considering the au‐
thor’s biographical data rather than her work. Literary criticism became criticism of biography, not criti‐
cism of literary works. Against this trend, literary critic William K. Wimsatt and philosopher Monroe C.
Beardsley coauthored a seminal paper “The Intentional Fallacy” in 1946, marking the starting point of the
intention debate. Beardsley subsequently extended his anti-intentionalist stance across the arts in his mon‐
umental book Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism ([1958] 1981a).

a. The Intentional Fallacy

The main idea of the intentional fallacy is that appeal to the artist’s intention outside the work is falla‐
cious, because the work itself is the verdict of what meaning it bears. This contention is based on the anti-
intentionalist’s ontological assumption about works of art.

This underlying assumption is that a work of art enjoys autonomy with respect to meaning and other aes‐
thetically relevant properties. As Beardsley’s Principle of Autonomy shows, critical statements will in the
end need to be tested against the work itself, not against factors outside it. To give Beardsley’s example,
whether a statue symbolizes human destiny depends not on what its maker says but on our being able to
make out that theme from the statue on the basis of our knowledge of artistic conventions: if the statue
shows a man confined to a cage, we may well conclude that the statue indeed symbolizes human destiny,
for by convention the image of confinement fits that alleged theme. The anti-intentionalist principle hence
follows: the interpreter should focus on what she can find in the work itself—the internal evidence
—rather than on external evidence, such as the artist’s biography, to reveal her intentions.

Anti-intentionalism is sometimes called conventionalism because it sees convention as necessary and suf‐
ficient in determining work-meaning. On this view, the artist’s intention at best underdetermines meaning
even when operating successfully. This can be seen from the famous argument offered by Wimsatt and
Beardsley: either the artist’s intention is successfully realized in the work, or it fails; if the intention is
successfully realized in the work, appeal to external evidence of the artist’s intention is not necessary (we
can detect the intention from the work); if it fails, such appeal becomes insufficient (the intention turns
out to be extraneous to the work). The conclusion is that an appeal to external evidence of the artist’s in‐
tention is either unnecessary or insufficient. As the second premise of the argument shows, the artist’s in‐
tention is insufficient in determining meaning for the reason that convention alone can do the trick. As a
result, the overall argument entails the irrelevance of external evidence of the artist’s intention. To think
of such evidence as relevant commits the intentional fallacy.

There is a second way to formulate the intentional fallacy. Since the artist does not always successfully
realize her intention, the inference is invalid from the premise that the artist intended her work to mean p
to the conclusion that the work in question does mean p. Therefore, the term “intentional fallacy” has two
layers of meaning: normatively, it refers to the questionable principle of interpretation that external evi‐
dence of intent should be appealed to; ontologically, it refers to the fallacious inference from probable in‐
tention to work-meaning.

b. Beardsley’s Speech Act Theory of Literature

Beardsley at a later point develops an ontology of literature in favor of anti-intentionalism (1981b, 1982).
Reviving Plato’s imitation theory of art, Beardsley claims that fictional works are essentially imitations of
illocutionary acts. Briefly put, illocutionary acts are performed by utterances in particular contexts. For
example, when a detective, convinced that someone is the killer, points his finger at that person and utters
the sentence “you did it,” the detective is performing the illocutionary act of accusing someone. What il‐
locutionary act is being performed is traditionally construed as jointly determined by the speaker’s inten‐
tion to perform that act, the words uttered, and the relevant conditions in that particular context. Other ex‐
amples of illocutionary acts include asserting, warning, castigating, asking, and the like.

Literary works can be seen as utterances; that is, texts used in a particular context to perform different il‐
locutionary acts by authors. However, Beardsley claims that in the case of fictional works in particular,
the purported illocutionary force will always be removed so as to make the utterance an imitation of that
illocutionary act. When an attempted act is insufficiently performed, it ends up being represented or imi‐
tated. For example, if I say “please pass me the salt” in my dining room when no one except me is there, I
end up representing (imitating) the illocutionary act of requesting because there is no uptake from the in‐
tended audience. Since the illocutionary act in this case is only imitated, it qualifies as a fictional act. This
is why Beardsley sees fiction as representation.
Consider the uptake condition in the case of fictional works. Such works are not addressed to the audi‐
ence as a talk is: there is no concrete context in which the audience can be readily identified. The uttered
text hence loses its illocutionary force and ends up being a representation. Aside from this “address with‐
out access,” another obtaining condition for a fictional illocutionary act is the existence of non-referring
names and descriptions in a fictional work. If an author writes a poem in which she greets the great detec‐
tive Sherlock Holmes, this greeting will never obtain, because the name Sherlock Holmes does not refer
to any existing person in the world. The greeting will only end up being a representation or a fictional il‐
locution. By parity of reasoning, fictional works end up being representations of illocutionary acts in that
they always contain names or descriptions involving events that never take place.

Now we must ask: by what criterion do we determine what illocutionary act is represented? It cannot be
the speaker or author’s intention, because even if a speaker intends to represent a particular illocutionary
act, she might end up representing another. Since the possibility of failed intention always exists, inten‐
tion would not be an appropriate criterion. Convention is again invoked to determine the correct illocu‐
tionary act being represented. It is true that any practice of representing is intentional at the start in the
sense that what is represented is determined by the representer’s intention. Nevertheless, once the connec‐
tion between a symbol and what it is used to represent is established, intention is said to be detached from
that connection, and deciding the content of a representation becomes a sheer matter of convention.

Since a fictional work is essentially a representation of an insufficiently performed illocutionary act, de‐
termining what it represents does not require us to go beyond that incomplete performance, just as deter‐
mining what a mime is imitating does not require the audience to consider anything outside her perfor‐
mance, such as her intention. What the mime is imitating is completely determined by how we conven‐
tionally construe the act being performed. In a similar fashion, when considering what illocutionary act is
represented by a fictional work, the interpreter should rely on internal evidence rather than on external ev‐
idence of authorial intent to construct the illocutionary act being represented. If, based on internal data, a
story reads like a castigation of war, it is suitably seen as a representation of that illocutionary act. The
conclusion is that the author’s intention plays no role in fixing the content of a fictional work.

Lastly, it is worth mentioning that Beardsley’s attitude toward nonfictional works is ambivalent.
Obviously, his speech act argument applies to fictional works only, and he accepts that nonfictional works
can be genuine illocutions. This category of works tends to have a more identifiable audience, who is
hence not addressed without access. With illocutions, Beardsley continues to argue for an anti-
intentionalist view of meaning according to which the utterer’s intention does not determine meaning. But
his accepting nonfictional works as illocutions opens the door to considerations of external or contextual
factors that go against his earlier stance, which is globally anti-intentionalist.

c. Notable Objections and Replies

One immediate concern with anti-intentionalism is whether convention alone can point to a single mean‐
ing (Hirsch, 1967). The common reason why people debate about interpretation is precisely that the work
itself does not offer sufficient evidence to disambiguate meaning. Very often a work can sustain multiple
meanings and the problem of choice prompts some people to appeal to the artist’s intention. It does not
seem plausible to say that one can assign only a single meaning to works like Ulysses or Picasso’s ab‐
stract paintings if one concentrates solely on internal evidence. To this objection, Beardsley (1970) insists
that, in most cases, appeal to the coherence of the work can eventually leave us with a single correct inter‐
pretation.

A second serious objection to anti-intentionalism is the case of irony (Hirsch, 1976, pp. 24–5). It seems
reasonable to say that whether a work is ironic depends on if its creator intended it to be so. For instance,
based on internal evidence, many people took Daniel Defoe’s pamphlet The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters to be genuinely against the Dissenters upon its publication. However, the only ground for say‐
ing that the pamphlet is ironic seems to be Defoe’s intention. If irony is a crucial component of the work,
ignoring it would fail to respect the work’s identity. It follows that irony cannot be grounded in internal
evidence alone. Beardsley’s reply (1982, pp. 203–7) is that irony must offer the possibility of understand‐
ing. If the artist cannot imagine anyone taking it ironically, there would be no reason to believe the work
to be ironic.

However, the problem of irony is only part of a bigger concern that challenges the irrelevance of external
factors to interpretation. Many factors present at the time of the work’s creation seem to play a key role in
shaping a work’s identity and content. Missing out on these factors would lead us to misidentifying the
work (and hence to misinterpreting it).

For instance, a work will not be seen as revolutionary unless the interpreter knows something about the
contemporaneous artistic tradition: ignoring the work’s innovation amounts to accepting that the work can
lose its revolutionary character while remaining self-identical. If we see this character as identity-
relevant, we should then take it into consideration in our interpretation. The same line of thinking goes for
other identity-conferring contextual factors, such as the social-historical conditions and the relations the
work bears to contemporaneous or prior works. The present view is thus called ontological contextualism
to foreground the ontological claim that the identity and content of a work of art are in part determined by
the relations it bears to its context of production.

Contextualism leads to an important distinction between work and text in the case of literature. In a nut‐
shell: a text is not context-dependent but a work is. The anti-intentionalist stance thus leads the interpreter
to consider texts rather than works because it rejects considerations of external or contextual factors. The
same distinction goes for other art forms when we draw a comparison between an artistic production con‐
sidered in its brute form and in its context of creation. For convenience, the word “work” is used through‐
out with notes on whether contextualism is taken or not.

As a reply to the contextualist objection, it has been argued (Davies, 2005) that Beardsley’s position al‐
lows for contextualism. If this is convincing, the contextualist criticism of anti-intentionalism would not
be conclusive.

3. Value-Maximizing Theory

a. Overview
The value-maximizing theory can be viewed as being derived from anti-intentionalism. Its core claim is
that the primary aim of art interpretation is to offer interpretations that maximize the value of a work.
There are at least two versions of the maximizing position distinguished by the commitment to contextu‐
alism. When the maximizing position is committed to contextualism, the constraint on interpretation will
be convention plus context (Davies, 2007); otherwise, the constraint will be convention only, as endorsed
by anti-intentionalism (Goldman, 2013).

As indicated, the word “maximize” does not imply monism. That is, the present position does not claim
that there can be only a single way to maximize the value of a work of art. On the contrary, it seems rea‐
sonable to assume that in most cases the interpreter can envisage several readings to bring out the value of
the work. For example, Kafka’s Metamorphosis has generated a number of rewarding interpretations, and
it is difficult to argue for a single best among them. As long as an interpretation is revealing or insightful
under the relevant interpretative constraints, we may count it as value-maximizing. Such being the case,
the value-maximizing theory may be relabelled the “value-enhancing” or “value-satisfying” theory.

Given this pluralist picture, the maximizer, unlike the anti-intentionalist, will need to accept the indeter‐
minacy thesis that convention (and context, if she endorses contextualism) alone does not guarantee the
unambiguity of the work. This allows the maximizing position to bypass the challenge posed by said the‐
sis, rendering it a more flexible position than anti-intentionalism in regard to the number of legitimate in‐
terpretations.

Encapsulating the maximizing position in a few words: it holds that the primary aim of art interpretation
is to enhance appreciative satisfaction by identifying interpretations that bring out the value of a work
within reasonable limits set by convention (and context).

b. Notable Objections and Replies

The actual intentionalist will maintain that figurative features such as irony and allusion must be analysed
intentionalistically. The maximizer with contextualist commitment can counter this objection by dealing
with intentions more sophisticatedly. If the relevant features are identity conferring, they will be respected
and accepted in interpretation. In this case, any interpretation that ignores the intended feature ends up
misidentifying the work. But if the relevant features are not identity conferring, more room will be left for
the interpreter to consider them. The intended feature can be ignored if it does not add to the value of the
work. By contrast, where such a feature is not intended but can be put in the work, the interpreter can still
build it into the interpretation if it is value enhancing.

The most important objection to the maximizing view has it that the present position is in danger of turn‐
ing a mediocre work into a masterpiece. Ed Wood’s film Plan 9 from Outer Space is the most discussed
example. Many people consider this work to be the worst film ever made. However, interpreted from a
postmodern perspective as satire—which is presumably a value-enhancing interpretation—would turn it
into a classic.

The maximizer with contextualist leanings can reply that the postmodern reading fails to identify the film
as authored by Wood (Davies, 2007, p, 187). Postmodern views were not available in Wood’s time, so it
was impossible for the film to be created as such. Identifying the film as postmodernist amounts to
anachronism that disrespects the work’s identity. The moral of this example is that the maximizer does
not blindly enhance the value of a work. Rather, the work to be interpreted needs to be contextualized
first to ensure that subsequent attributions of aesthetic value are done in light of the true and fair presenta‐
tion of the work.

4. Actual Intentionalism
Contra anti-intentionalism, actual intentionalism maintains that the artist’s intention is relevant to inter‐
pretation. The position comes in at least three forms, giving different weights to intention. The absolute
version claims that work-meaning is fully determined by the artist’s intention; the extreme version claims
that the work ends up being meaningless when the artist’s intention is incompatible with it; and the mod‐
erate version claims that either the artist’s intention determines meaning or—if this fails—meaning is de‐
termined instead by convention (and context, if contextualism is endorsed).

a. Absolute Version
Absolute actual intentionalism claims that a work means whatever its creator intends it to mean. Put oth‐
erwise, it sees the artist’s intention as the necessary and sufficient condition for a work’s meaning. This
position is often dubbed Humpty-Dumptyism with reference to the character Humpty-Dumpty in Through
the Looking-Glass. This character tries to convince Alice that he can make a word mean what he chooses
it to mean. This unsettling conclusion is supported by the argument about intentionless meaning: a mark
(or a sequence of marks) cannot have meaning unless it is produced by an agent capable of intentional ac‐
tivities; therefore, meaning is identical to intention.

It seems plausible to abandon the thought that marks on the sand are a poem once we know they were
caused by accident. But this at best proves that intention is the necessary condition for something’s being
meaningful; it does not prove further that what something means is what the agent intended it to mean. In
other words, the argument about intentionless meaning does a better job in showing that intention is an in‐
dispensable ingredient for meaningfulness than in showing that intention infallibly determines the mean‐
ing conveyed.

b. Extreme Version
To avoid Humpty-Dumptyism, the extreme actual intentionalist rejects the view that the artist’s intention
infallibly determines work-meaning and accepts the indeterminacy thesis that convention alone does not
guarantee a single evident meaning to be found in a work. The extreme intentionalist claims further that
the meaning of the work is fixed by the artist’s intention if her intention identifies one of the possible
meanings sustained by the work; otherwise, the work ends up being meaningless (Hirsch, 1967). Better
put, the extreme intentionalist sees intention as the necessary rather than sufficient condition for work-
meaning.

Aside from the unsatisfactory result that a work becomes meaningless when the artist’s intention fails, the
present position faces a dilemma when dealing with the case of figurative language (Nathan, in Iseminger
(1992)). Take irony for example. The first horn of the dilemma is as follows: Constrained by linguistic
conventions, the range of possible meanings has to include the negation of the literal meaning in order for
the intended irony to be effective. But this results in absolute intentionalism: every expression would be
ironic as long as the author intends it to be. But—this is the second horn—if the range of possible mean‐
ings does not include the negation of literal meaning, the expression simply becomes meaningless in that
there is no appropriate meaning possible for the author to actualize. It seems that a broader notion of con‐
vention is needed to explain figurative language. But if the extreme intentionalist makes that move, her
intentionalist position will be undermined, for the author’s intention would be given a less important role
than convention in such cases. However, this problem does not arise when the actual intentionalist is
committed to contextualism, for in that case the contextual factors that make the intended irony possible
will be taken into account.

c. Moderate Version
Though there are several different versions of moderate actual intentionalism, they share the common
ground that when the artist’s intention fails, meaning is fixed instead by convention and context.
(Whether all moderate actual intentionalists take context into account is controversial and this article will
not dig into this controversy for reasons of space.) That is, when the artist’s intention is successful, it de‐
termines meaning; otherwise, meaning is determined by convention plus context (Carroll, 2001; Stecker,
2003; Livingston, 2005).

As seen, an intention is successful so long as it identifies one of the possible meanings sustained by the
work even if the meaning identified is less plausible than other candidates. But what exactly is the inter‐
preter doing when she identifies that meaning? It is reasonable to say that the interpreter does not need to
ascertain all the possible meanings and see if there is a fit. Rather, all she needs to do is to see whether the
intended meaning can be read in accordance with the work. This is why the moderate intentionalist puts
the success condition in terms of compatibility: an intention is successful so long as the intended meaning
is compatible with the work. The fact that a certain meaning is compatible with the work means that the
work can sustain it as one of its possible meanings.

Unfortunately, the notion of compatibility seems to allow strange cases in which an insignificant intention
can determine work-meaning as long as it is not explicitly rejected by the relevant interpretative con‐
straint. For example, if Agatha Christie reveals that Hercule Poirot is actually a smart Martian in disguise,
the moderate intentionalist would need to accept it because this proclamation of intention can still be said
to be compatible with the text in the sense that it is not rejected by textual evidence. To avoid this bad re‐
sult, compatibility needs to be qualified.

The moderate intentionalist then analyses compatibility in terms of the meshing condition, which refers to
a sufficient degree of coherence between the content of the intention and the work’s rhetorical patterns.
An intention is compatible with the work in the sense that it meshes well with the work. The Martian case
will hence be ruled out by the meshing condition because it does not engage sufficiently with the narra‐
tive even if it is not explicitly rejected by textual evidence. The meshing condition is a minimal or weak
success condition in that it does not require the intention to mesh with every textual feature. A sufficient
amount will do, though the moderate intentionalist admits that the line is not always easy to draw. With
this weak standard for success, it can happen that the interpreter is not able to discern the intended mean‐
ing in the work before she learns of the artist’s intention.

There is a second kind of success condition which adopts a stronger standard (Stecker, 2003; Davies,
2007, pp. 170–1). This standard for success states that an intention is successful just in case the intended
meaning, among the possible meanings sustained by the work, is the one most likely to secure uptake
from a well-backgrounded audience (with contextual knowledge and all). For example, if a work of art,
within the limits set by convention and context, affords interpretations x, y, and z, and x is more readily
discerned than the other two by the appropriate audience, then x is the meaning of the work.

These accounts of the success condition answer a notable objection to moderate intentionalism. This ob‐
jection claims that moderate intentionalism faces an epistemic dilemma (Trivedi, 2001). Consider an epis‐
temic question: how do we know whether an intention is successfully realized? Presumably, we figure out
work-meaning and the artist’s intention respectively and independently of each other. And then we com‐
pare the two to see if there is a fit. Nevertheless, this move is redundant: if we can figure out work-
meaning independently of actual intention, why do we need the latter? And if work-meaning cannot be
independently obtained, how can we know it is a case where intentions are successfully realized and not a
case where intentions failed? It follows that appeal to successful intention results in redundancy or inde‐
terminacy.
The first horn of the dilemma assumes that work-meaning can be obtained independently of knowledge of
successful intention, but this is false for moderate intentionalists, for they acknowledge that in many cases
the work presents ambiguity that cannot be resolved solely in virtue of internal evidence. The moderate
intentionalist rejects the second horn by claiming that they do not determine the success of an intention by
comparing independently obtained work-meaning with the artist’s intention (Stecker, 2010, pp. 154–5).
As already discussed, moderate intentionalists propose different success conditions that do not appeal to
the identity between the artist’s intention and work-meaning. Moderate intentionalists adopting the weak
standard hold that success is defined by the degree of meshing; those who adopt the strong standard main‐
tain that success is defined by the audience’s ability to grasp the intention. Neither requires the interpreter
to identify a work’s meaning independently of the artist’s intention.

d. Objections to Actual Intentionalism

The most commonly raised objection is the epistemic worry, which asks: is intention knowable? It seems
impossible for one to really know others’ mental states, and the epistemic gap in this respect is thus un‐
bridgeable. Actual intentionalists tend to dismiss this worry as insignificant and maintain that in many
contexts (daily conversation or historical investigations) we have no difficulty in discerning another per‐
son’s intention (Carroll, 2009, pp. 71–5). In that case, why would things suddenly stand differently when
it comes to art interpretation? This is not to say that we succeed on every occasion of interpretation, but
that we do so in an amazingly large number of cases. That being said, we should not reject the appeal to
intention solely because of the occasional failure.

Another objection is the publicity paradox (Nathan, 2006). The main idea is this: when someone S con‐
veys something p by a production of an object O for public consumption, there is a second-order intention
that the audience need not go beyond O to reach p; that is, there is no need to consult S’s first-order inten‐
tions to understand O. Therefore, when an artist creates a work for public consumption, there is a second-
order intention that her first-order intentions not be consulted, otherwise it would indicate the failure of
the artist. Actual intentionalism hence leads to the paradoxical claim that we should and should not con‐
sult the artist’s intentions.

The actual intentionalist’s response (Stecker, 2010, pp. 153–4) is this: not all artists have the second-order
intention in question. If this premise is false, then the publicity argument becomes unsound. Even if it
were true, the argument would still be invalid, because it confuses the intention that the artist intends to
create something standing alone with the intention that her first-order intention need not be consulted.
The paradox will not hold if this distinction is made.

Lastly, many criticisms are directed at a popular argument among actual intentionalists: the conversation
argument (Carroll, 2001; Jannotta, 2014). An analogy between conversation and art interpretation is
drawn, and actual intentionalists claim that if we accept that art interpretation is a form of conversation,
we need to accept actual intentionalism as the right prescriptive account of interpretation, because the
standard goal of an interlocutor in a conversation is to grasp what the speaker intends to say. (This is a
premise even anti-intentionalists accept, but they apparently reject the further claim that art interpretation
is conversational. See Beardsley, 1970, ch.1.) This analogy has been severely criticized (Dickie, 2006;
Nathan, 2006; Huddleston, 2012). The greatest disanalogy between conversation and art is that the latter
is more like a monologue delivered by the artist rather than an interchange of ideas.

One way to meet the monologue objection is to specify more clearly the role of the conversational inter‐
est. In fact, the actual intentionalist claims that the conversational interest should constrain other interests
such as the aesthetic interest. In other words, other interests can be reconciled or work with the conversa‐
tional interest. Take the case of the hermeneutics of suspicion for example. Hermeneutics of suspicion is a
skeptical attitude—often heavily politicized—adopted toward the explicit stance of a work.
Interpretations based on the hermeneutics of suspicion have to be constrained by the artist’s non-ironic in‐
tention in order for them to count as legitimate interpretations. For instance, in attributing racist tenden‐
cies to Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island, in which the black slave Neb is portrayed as docile and supersti‐
tious, we need to suppose that the tendencies are not ironic; otherwise, the suspicious reading becomes in‐
appropriate. In this example, the artistic conversation does not end up being a monologue, for the suspi‐
cious hermeneut listens and understands Verne before responding with the suspicious reading, which is
constrained by the conversational interest. A conversational interchange is hence completed.

5. Hypothetical Intentionalism

a. Overview
A compromise between actual intentionalism and anti-intentionalism is hypothetical intentionalism, the
core claim of which is that the correct meaning of a work is determined by the best hypothesis about the
artist’s intention made by a selected audience. The aim of interpretation is then to hypothesize what the
artist intended when creating the work from the perspective of the qualified audience (Tolhurst, 1979;
Levinson, 1996).

Two points call for attention. First, it is hypothesis—not truth—that matters. This means that a hypothesis
of the actual intention will never be trumped by knowledge of that very intention. Second, the member‐
ship of the audience is crucial because it determines the kind of evidence legitimate for the interpreter to
use.

A 1979 proposal (Tolhurst) suggests that the relevant audience be singled out by the artist’s intention, that
is, the audience intended to be addressed by the artist. Work-meaning is thus determined by the intended
audience’s best hypothesis about the artist’s intention. This means that the interpreter will need to equip
herself with the relevant beliefs and background knowledge of the intended audience in order to make the
best hypothesis. Put another way, hypothetical intentionalism focuses on the audience’s uptake of an ut‐
terance addressed to them. This being so, what the audience relies on in comprehending the utterance will
be based on what she knows about the utterer on that particular occasion. Following this contextualist line
of thinking, the meaning of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal will not be the suggestion that the poor
in Ireland might ease their economic pressure by selling their children as food to the rich; rather, given the
background knowledge of Swift’s intended audience, the best hypothesis about the author’s intention is
that he intended the work to be a satire that criticizes the heartless attitude toward the poor and Irish pol‐
icy in general.

However, there is a serious problem with the notion of an intended audience. If the intended audience is
an extremely small group possessing esoteric knowledge of the artist, meaning becomes a private matter,
for the work can only be properly understood in terms of private information shared between artist and
audience, and this results in something close to Humpty-Dumptyism, which is characteristic of absolute
intentionalism.

To cope with this problem, the hypothetical intentionalist replaces the concept of an intended audience
with that of an ideal or appropriate audience. Such an audience is not necessarily targeted by the artist’s
intention and is ideal in the sense that its members are familiar with the public facts about the artist and
her work. In other words, the ideal audience seeks to anchor the work in its context of creation based on
public evidence. This avoids the danger of interpreting the work on the basis of private evidence.

The hypothetical intentionalist is aware that in some cases there will be competing interpretations which
are equally good. An aesthetic criterion is then introduced to adjudicate between these hypotheses. The
aesthetic consideration comes as a tie breaker: when we reach two or more epistemically best hypotheses,
the one that makes the work artistically better should win.

Another notable distinction introduced by hypothetical intentionalism is that between semantic and cate‐
gorial intention (Levinson, 1996, pp. 188–9). The kind of intention we have been discussing is semantic:
it is the intention by which an artist conveys her message in the work. By contrast, categorial intention is
the artist’s intention to categorize her production, either as a work of art, a certain artform (such as
Romantic literature), or a particular genre (such as lyric poetry). Categorial intention indirectly affects a
work’s semantic content because it determines how the interpreter conceptualizes the work at the funda‐
mental level. For instance, if a text is taken as a grocery list rather than an experimental story, we will in‐
terpret it as saying nothing beyond the named grocery items. For this reason, the artist’s categorial inten‐
tion should be treated as among the contextual factors relevant to her work’s identity. This move is often
adopted by theorists endorsing contextualism, such as maximizers or moderate intentionalists.

b. Notable Objections and Replies

Hypothetical intentionalism has received many criticisms and challenges that merit mention. A frequently
expressed worry is that it seems odd to stick to a hypothesis when newly found evidence proves it to be
false (Carroll, 2001, pp. 208–9). If an artist’s private diary is located and reveals that our best hypothesis
about her intention regarding her work is false, why should we cling to that hypothesis if the newly re‐
vealed intention meshes well with the work? Hypothetical intentionalism implausibly implies that war‐
ranted assertibility constitutes truth.

The hypothetical intentionalist clarifies her position (Levinson, 2006, p. 308) by saying that warranted as‐
sertibility does not constitute the truth for the utterer’s meaning, but it does constitute the truth for utter‐
ance meaning. The ideal audience’s best hypothesis constitutes utterance meaning even if it is designed to
infer the utterer’s meaning.

Another troublesome objection states that hypothetical intentionalism collapses into the value-
maximizing theory, for, when making the best hypothesis of what the artist intended, the interpreter in‐
evitably attributes to the artist the intention to produce a piece with the highest degree of aesthetic value
that the work can sustain (Davies, 2007, pp. 183–84). That is, the epistemic criterion for determining the
best hypothesis is inseparable from the aesthetic criterion.

In reply, it is claimed that this objection may stem from the impression that an artist normally aims for the
best; however, this does not imply that she would anticipate and intend the artistically best reading of the
work. It follows that it is not necessary that the best reading be what the artist most likely intended even if
she could have intended it. The objector replies that, still, the situation in which we have two epistemi‐
cally plausible readings while one is inferior cannot arise, because we would adopt the inferior reading
only when the superior reading is falsified by evidence.

The third objection is that the distinction between public and private evidence is blurry (Carroll, 2001, p.
212). Is public evidence published evidence? Does published information from private sources count as
public? The reply from the hypothetical intentionalist emphasizes that this is not a distinction between
published and unpublished information (Levinson, 2006, p. 310). The relevant public context should be
reconstrued as what the artist appears to have wanted the audience to know about the circumstances of the
work’s creation. This means that if it appears that the artist did not want to make certain proclamations of
intent known to the audience, then this evidence, even if published at a later point, does not constitute the
public context to be considered for interpretation.

Finally, two notable counterexamples to hypothetical intentionalism have been proposed (Stecker, 2010,
pp. 159–60). The first counterexample is that W means p but p is not intended by the artist and the audi‐
ence is justified in believing that p is not intended. In this case hypothetical intentionalism falsely implies
that W does not mean p. For example, it is famously known among readers of Sherlock Holmes adven‐
tures that Dr. Watson’s war wound appears in two different locations. On one occasion the wound is said
to be on his arm, while on another it is on his thigh. In other words the Holmes story fictionally asserts
impossibility regarding Watson’s wound. But given the realistic style of the Holmes adventures, the best
hypothesis of authorial intent in this case would deny that the impossibility is part of the meaning of the
story, which is apparently false.

However, the hypothetical intentionalist would not maintain that W means p, because p is not the best hy‐
pothesis. She would not claim that the Holmes story fictionally asserts impossibility regarding Watson’s
wound, for the best hypothesis made by the ideal reader would be that Watson has the wound somewhere
on his body—his arm or thigh, but exactly where we do not know. It is a mistake to presuppose that W
means p without following the strictures imposed by hypothetical intentionalism to properly reach p.

The second counterexample to hypothetical intentionalism is the case where the audience is justified in
believing that p is intended by the artist but in fact W means q; the audience would then falsely conclude
that W means p. Again, what W means is determined by the ideal audience’s best hypothesis based on
convention and context, not by what the work literally asserts. The meaning of the work is the product of
a prudent assessment of the total evidence available.

6. Hypothetical Intentionalism and the Hypothetical Artist

a. Overview
There is a second variety of hypothetical intentionalism that is based on the concept of a hypothetical
artist. Generally speaking, it maintains that interpretation is grounded on the intention suitably attributed
by the interpreter to a hypothetical or imagined artist. This version of hypothetical intentionalism is some‐
times called fictionalist intentionalism or postulated authorism. The theoretical apparatus of a hypotheti‐
cal artist can be traced back to Wayne Booth’s account of the “implied author,” in which he suggests that
the critic should focus on the author we can make out from the work instead of on the historical author,
because there is often a gap between the two.

Though proponents of the present brand of intentionalism disagree on the number of acceptable interpre‐
tations and on what kind of evidence is legitimate, they agree that the interpreter ought to concentrate on
the appearance of the work. If it appears, based on internal evidence (and perhaps contextual information
if contextualism is endorsed), that the artist intends the work to mean p, then p is the right interpretation
of the work. The artist in question is not the historical artist; rather, it is an artist postulated by the audi‐
ence to be responsible for the intention made out from, or implied by, the work. For example, if there is
an anti-war attitude detected in the work, the intention to castigate war should be attributed to the postu‐
lated artist, not to the historical artist. The motivation behind this move is to maintain work-centered in‐
terpretation but avoid the fallacious reasoning that whatever we find in the work is intended by the real
artist.

Inheriting the spirit of hypothetical intentionalism, fictionalist intentionalism aims to make interpretation
work-based but author-related at the same time. The biggest difference between the two stances is that, as
said, fictionalist intentionalism does not appeal to the actual or real artist, thereby avoiding any criticisms
arising from hypothesizing about the real artist such as that the best hypothesis about the real artist’s in‐
tention should be abandoned when compelling evidence against it is obtained.

b. Notable Objections and Replies

The first concern with fictionalist intentionalism is that constructing a historical variant of the actual artist
sounds suspiciously like hypothesizing about her (Stecker, 1987). But there is still a difference.
“Hypothesizing about the actual artist,” or more accurately, “hypothesizing the actual artist’s intention,”
would be a characterization of hypothetical intentionalism rather than fictionalist intentionalism. The lat‐
ter does not track the actual artist’s intention but constructs a virtual one. As shown, fictionalist intention‐
alism, unlike hypothetical intentionalism, is immune to any criticisms resulting from ignoring the actual
artist’s proclamation of her intention.

A second objection criticizes fictionalist intentionalism for not being able to distinguish between different
histories of creative processes for the same textual appearance (Livingston, 2005, pp. 165–69). For exam‐
ple, suppose a work that appears to be produced with a well-conceived scheme did result from that kind
of scheme; suppose further that a second work that appears the same actually emerged from an uncon‐
trolled process. Then, if we follow the strictures of fictionalist intentionalism, the interpretations we pro‐
duce for these two works would turn out to be the same, for based on the same appearance the hypotheti‐
cal artists we construct in both cases would be identical. But these two works have different creative his‐
tories and the difference in question seems too crucial to be ignored.

The objection here fails to consider the subtlety of reality-dependent appearances (Walton, 2008, ch. 12).
For example, suppose the exhibit note beside a painting tells us it was created when the painter got heav‐
ily drunk. Any well-organized feature in the work that appears to result from careful manipulation by the
painter might now either look disordered or structured in an eerie way depending on the feature’s actual
presentation. Compare this scenario to another where a (almost) visually indistinguishable counterpart is
exhibited in the museum with the exhibit note revealing that the painter spent a long period crafting the
work. In this second case the audience’s perception of the work is not very likely to be the same as that in
the first case. This shows how the apparent artist account can still discriminate between (appearances of)
different creative histories of the same artistic presentation.

Finally, there is often the qualm that fictionalist intentionalism ends up postulating phantom entities (hy‐
pothetical creators) and phantom actions (their intendings). The fictional intentionalist can reply that she
is giving descriptions only of appearances instead of quantifying over hypothetical artists or their actions.

7. Conclusion
From the above discussion we can notice two major trends in the debate. First, most late 20 th century and
21st century participants are committed to the contextualist ontology of art. The relevance of art’s histori‐
cal context, since its first philosophical appearance in Arthur Danto’s 1964 essay “The Artworld,” contin‐
ues to influence analytic theories of art interpretation. There is no sign of this trend diminishing. In Noël
Carroll’s 2016 survey article on interpretation, the contextualist basis is still assumed.

Second, actual intentionalism remains the most popular position among all. Many substantial monographs
have been written in this century to defend the position (Stecker, 2003; Livingston, 2005; Carroll, 2009;
Stock 2017). This intentionalist prevalence probably results from the influence of H. P. Grice’s work on
the philosophy of language. And again, this trend, like the contextualist vogue, is still ongoing. And if we
see intentionalism as an umbrella term that encompasses not only actual intentionalism but also hypothet‐
ical intentionalism and probably fictionalist intentionalism, the influence of intentionalism and its related
emphasis on the concept of an artist or author will be even stronger. This presents an interesting contrast
with the trend in post-structuralism that tends to downplay authorial presence in theories of interpretation,
as embodied in the author-is-dead thesis championed by Barthes and Foucoult (Lamarque, 2009, pp.
104–15).

8. References and Further Reading

Beardsley, M. C. (1970). The possibility of criticism. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Contains four philosophical essays on literary criticism. The first two are among Beardsley’s most important con‐
tributions to the philsoophy of interpretation.

Beardsley, M. C. (1981a). Aesthetics: Problems in the philosophy of criticism (2nd ed.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
A comprehensive volume on philosophical issues across the arts and also a powerful statement of anti-
intentionalism.

Beardsley, M. C. (1981b). Fiction as representation. Synthese, 46, 291–313.

Presents the speech act theory of literature.

Beardsley, M. C. (1982). The aesthetic point of view: Selected essays. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Contains the essay “Intentions and Interpretations: A Fallacy Revived,” in which Beardsley applies his speech act
theory to the interpretation of fictional works.

Booth, W. C. (1983). The rhetoric of fiction (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Contains the original account of the implied author.

Carroll, N. (2001). Beyond aesthetics: Philosophical essays. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Contains in particular Carroll’s conversation argument, discussion on the hermenutics of suspicion, defense of
moderate intentionalism, and criticism of hypothetical intentionalism.
Carroll, N. (2009). On criticism. New York, NY: Routledge.
An engaging book on artistic evaluation and interpretation.

Carroll, N., & Gibson, J. (Eds.). (2016). The Routledge companion to philosophy of literature. New York, NY:
Routledge.
Anthologizes Carroll’s survey article on the intention debate.

Currie, G. (1990). The nature of fiction. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Contains a defense of fictionalist intentionalism.

Currie, G. (1991). Work and text. Mind, 100, 325–40.

Presents how a commitment to contextualism leads to an important distinction between work and text in the case
of literature.

Danto, A. C. (1964). The artworld. Journal of Philosophy, 61, 571–84.

First paper to draw attention to the relevance of a work’s context of production.

Davies, S. (2005). Beardsley and the autonomy of the work of art. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 63, 179–83.
Argues that Beardsley is actually a contextualist.

Davies, S. (2007). Philosophical perspectives on art. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Part II contains Davies’ defense of the maximizing position and criticisms of other positions.

Dickie, G. (2006). Intentions: Conversations and art. British Journal of Aesthetics, 46, 71–81.
Criticizes Carroll’s conversation argument and actual intentionalism.

Goldman, A. H. (2013). Philosophy and the novel. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Contains a defense of the value-maximizing theory without a contextualist commitment.

Hirsch, E. D. (1967). Validity in interpretation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
The most representative presentation of extreme intentionalism.

Hirsch, E. D. (1976). The aims of interpretation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Contains a collection of essays expanding Hirsh’s views on interpretation.

Huddleston, A. (2012). The conversation argument for actual intentionalism. British Journal of Aesthetics, 52, 241–56.
A brilliant criticism of Carroll’s conversation argument.

Iseminger, G. (Ed.). (1992). Intention & interpretation. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
A valuable collection of essays featuring Beardsley’s account of the work’s autonomy, Knapp and Michaels’ abso‐
 lute intentionalism, Iseminger’s extreme intentionalism, Nathan’s account of the postulated artist, Levinson’s
hypothetical intentionalism, and eight other contributions.

Jannotta, A. (2014). Interpretation and conversation: A response to Huddleston. British Journal of Aesthetics, 54,
371–80.
A defense of the conversation argument.

Krausz, M. (Ed.). (2002). Is there a single right interpretation? University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Another valuable anthology on the intention debate, containing in particular Carroll’s defense of moderate inten‐
tionalism, Lamarque’s criticism of viewing work-meaning as utterance meaning.

Lamarque, P. (2009). The philosophy of literature. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

The third and the fourth chapters discuss analytic theories of interpretation along with a critical assessment of the
author-is-dead claim.

Levinson, J. (1996). The pleasure of aesthetics: Philosophical essays. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
The tenth chapter is Levinson’s revised presentation of hypothetical intentionalism and the distinction between se‐
mantic and categorial intention.

Levinson, J. (2006). Contemplating art: Essays in aesthetics. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Contains Levinson’s replies to major objections to hypothetical intentionalism.

Levinson, J. (2016). Aesthetic pursuits: Essays in philosophy of art. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Contains Levinson’s updated defense of hypothetical intentionalism and criticism of Livingston’s moderate inten‐
tionalism.

Livingston, P. (2005). Art and intention: A philosophical study. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
A thorough discussion on intention, literary ontology, and the problem of interpretation, with emphases on defend‐
ing the meshing condition and on the criticisms of the two versions of hypothetical intentionalism.

Nathan, D. O. (1982). Irony and the artist’s intentions. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 22, 245–56.
Criticizes the notion of an intended audience.

Nathan, D. O. (2006). Art, meaning, and artist’s meaning. In M. Kieran (Ed.), Contemporary debates in aesthetics and
the philosophy of art (pp. 282–93). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Presents an account of fictionalist intentionalism, a critique of the conversation argument, and a brief recapitula‐
tion of the publicity paradox.

Nehamas, A. (1981). The postulated author: Critical monism as a regulative ideal. Critical Inquiry, 8, 133–49.
Presents another version of fictionalist intentionalism.
 Stecker, R. (1987). ‘Apparent, Implied, and Postulated Authors’, Philosophy and Literature 11, pp 258-71.
Criticizes different versions of fictionalist intentionalism

Stecker, R. (2003). Interpretation and construction: Art, speech, and the law. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
A valuable monograph devoted to the intention debate and its related problems such as the ontology of art, incom‐
patible interpretations and the application of theories of art interpretation to law. The book defends moderate
intentionalism in particular.

Stecker, R. (2010). Aesthetics and the philosophy of art: An introduction. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Contains a chapter that presents the disjunctive formulation of moderate intentionalism and the two counterexam‐
ples to hypothetical intentionalism.

Stecker, R., & Davies, S. (2010). The hypothetical intentionalist’s dilemma: A reply to Levinson. British Journal of
Aesthetics, 50, 307–12.
Counterreplies to Levinson’s replies to criticisms of hypothetical intentionalism.

Stock, K. (2017). Only imagine: Fiction, interpretation, and imagination. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Contains a defense of absolute (the author uses the term “extreme”) intentionalism.

Tolhurst, W. E. (1979). On what a text is and how it means. British Journal of Aesthetics, 19, 3–14.
The founding document of hypothetical intentionalism.

Trivedi, S. (2001). An epistemic dilemma for actual intentionalism. British Journal of Aesthetics, 41, pp. 192–206.
Presents an epistemic dilemma for actual intentionalism and defense of hypothetical intentionalism.

Walton, K. L. (2008). Marvelous images: On values and the arts. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
A collection of essays, including “Categories of Art,” which might have inspired Levinson’s conception of catego‐
rial intention; and “Style and the Products and Processes of Art,” which is a defense of fictionalist intentional‐
ism in terms of the notion “apparent artist.”

Wimsatt, W. K., & Beardsley, M. C. (1946). The intentional fallacy. The Sewanee Review, 54, 468–88.
The first thorough presentation of anti-intentionalism, commonly regarded as starting point of the intention debate.

Author Information
Szu-Yen Lin
Email: lsy17@ulive.pccu.edu.tw
Chinese Culture University
Taiwan