21 Authorial Intention and the Varieties of Intentionalism PAISLEY LIVINGSTON Although a comprehensive survey of these complex toples Is out of reach in this essay, nevertheless I hope to provide a schematic overview of some of the main positions and nents in this area, Recent monographs and collections on the topic include (2002), Livingston (2005), Margolis and Rockmore (2000), Stecker (2003), and Thom (2000). Intention Rather diverse theoretical positions have been taken on the question of the nature of intentions (Anscombe 1957; Audi 1997; Bratman 1990). A first dimension of vari- ation concerns assumptions about the link between Intentions and consciousness. It is sometimes held that intentions must be at least “accessible” to conscious introspec- tion, ifthey are not actually the object of some form of occurrent or “focal” awareness, A stronger claim is that all intentions must actualy be conscious to some degree. Many theorists have acknowledged the existence of wholly unconscious intentions as well as Another set of options pertains to the relation between intentions and the other mental items that figure within the preferred psychological model. Reductionist accounts include proposals in which intention Is equated with volition or trying (Ginet 1990), as well as proposals in which intention is reduced to belief and desire (Audi 1973: Beardsley 1978; Davidson 1963: Davis 1984) or some more complex constellation of states or attitudes. Some theorists eschew such reductions and identify Intention as a type of mental state characterized by its function(s). In Alfred R. Mele's influential pro- posal (1988, 1992), intention plays a special motivational and cognitive role because iis an executive attitude towards some plan or means-end scheme, Someone with an intention has a goal as well as a schematic means to the realization of that goal; the Intending person’s attitude towards this plan is a firm yet defeasible commitment to acting on it. The agent's actual motivation at the time of intending is a separate issue, since motivation can diminish or strengthen before the intended time for action 401PAISLEY LIVINGSTON arrives, One can strongly want to do something, for example, without having any intention of doing this thing; conversely, one can intend to do one’s duty without really ‘wanting to do so when one settles on that intention. And the fact that someone does not actually act on a scheme does not mean that the person never genuinely intended to doso. These sorts of cases drive a conceptual wedge between intentions, reasons com- posed of beliefS and desires, and the actions to which intentions sometimes give rise. There Is room for disagreement about what soris of tems can and cannot fill in the blank in “S intends Many philosophers have claimed that only actions that some intending agent, 8, could perform should figure in such clauses (Fleming 1964; Meiland 1970). Some philosophers require that at the time of intending, the action be cone that S does not deem it impossible for $ to perform. Other philosophers (Davis 1984; Harman 1986; Vermazen 1993, 1998) take a more liberal view and allow that inten- tions can range over any number of propositions or states of affairs. Can someone intend that a friend get a raise” without having any intention of doing something to bring about this desired result? If so, how is intending different from wishing? This topi related to the difficult question of how authorial intentions should be explicated. Can an author intend “that the audience grasp a given idea or theme?” The question con- cerning the possible contents of intentions also has implications for our thinking about collective intentions and actions, such as artistic collaboration, Some philosophers (Kutz 2000; Searle 1990; Velleman 1997) ask whether such activities involve a form of intend. ing that is not reducible to a collection of individual intentions ~ as in “I intend that wwe lift the table. ‘There is disagreement as well about the temporal dimensions of intentions. One for- mulation of the basic situation of intending runs: “Some agent, S, intends now (at t,) to perform some action, A, during t;.” When t, < t,, the intention is future-directed or distal; when t, converges on tthe intention is a proximal one. A concept of intentions as future-directed mental states that may or may not lead cr even contribute to some intended, successful action stands in contrast to a notion that John R. Searle (1983) has labeled “intention in action.” This is a term of art for fa type of mental item that is necessarily acted upon and embodied in active trying. It is doubtful, however, whether all of our discourse about intentions and intendings can be captured by the notion of “intention in action.” Even an abandoned intention, that is, one that never triggers and guides an action and so cannot be an “intention in action,” ‘may influence behavior by temporarily ruling out incompatible schemes (Bratman 1987). For example, 8's planning on writing a comedy (which was never successfully com- pleted) could prevent $ from intentionally creating a tragedy ‘The intention someone has now to do something later is logically distinct from that person’s actually acting on that intention, and both intending and acting on an intention are distinct from actually bringing about the target result. An intention is “realized or “successful” when the results of acting on that intention match the contents of the intention, and where this match or fits brought about in the right sort of way. as specified, at Ieast schematically, by the content of the intention (Mele and Moser 1994), Intentions play a variety of roles in the lives of deliberating agents who must nego- tate the passage of time, deal with cognitive limitations, and anticipate the activities 402OY BRNER Fe Ree eee FO AUTHORIAL INTENTION of other deliberating, strategic agents (Brand 1984; Bratman 1987; Mele 1992, 1995). Publicly avowed intentions help us coordinate our activities: commitment to intentions or personal policies helps us budget our resources and achieve long-term goals. In some cases, commitment to longstanding Intentions allows us to avoid wast Ing time on deliberation and helps us resist temptation. Intentions help us organize our ongoing activities. A writer who has committed herself to a long-term artistic scheme can develop a range of intentions subordinate to that scheme. Some of these intentions will arise spontaneously within the framework of ongoing activity, while others may be the product of more or less systematic deliberation over options. Authorial Intention Any attempt to survey opinion on the nature of authorial intention is complicated by ongoing controversy surrounding rival conceptions of authorship (Irwin 2002). There may, however, be some significant measure of agreement that authorship requires the performance of actions informed by certain semantic intentions. Someone who produces reams of texts as part of a typing exercise is not thereby an author; on the other hand, someone who copies someone else’s words verbatim, but presents them as his or her own essay. is the author of a plagiarism. A first question, then, concerns the nature of the semantic intentions (and corresponding actions) necessary to authorship. The question of what conditions are sufficient to authorship cannot be surveyed here, H. Paul Grice's (1989) proposals have dominated philosophical discussions of the ‘question of the nature of an utterer’s Intentions. Grice’s basic aim in this regard was to reduce the semantic intention of a speaker or writer to a complex communicative intention. In one of its most influential versions, the Gricean analysis runs as follows. Someone authors an utterance just in case that person, S, utters (writes, speaks, etc.) something with an intention comprised of the following three sub-intentions: 1 S's utterance, U, is to produce a certain response, R, should there be an audience, A, having some characteristic, C ‘The audience, A, is to recognize S's intention (1); The audience's recognition of $'s intention (1) is to function as at least part of A’s reason for having response R. If, for example, the target response. or R, is the acquisition of a particular belief by some audience, A, what the speaker intends is that the audience's recognition of the speaker's intention to give rise to that belief in the audience will be a reason for the formation of the belief. So the author of the utterance targets not only an idea to be conveyed, but an intended way of conveying it, namely, a mode whereby success is at least partly a matter of the recognition of the intention, A first complaint about this proposal is that its inclusion of a complicated reflexive ‘ooped” intention places speaker's meaning beyond the cognitive capacities of 403