Diálogos, 86 (2005) · pp.

000-000

LITERARY INTENTIONALISM AND THE IDENTITY

THESIS: A FILÉ IN THE OINTMENT?
TIMOTHY CHAMBERS

(1) William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley’s watershed work, “The

Intentional Fallacy,” famously divided philosophers and critics into a pair
of rival camps: intentionalists and anti-intentionalists.1 But where, p r e -
cisely, should the battle-line be drawn? In 1970, Beardsley offered a sim-
ple candidate: the Identity Thesis. To be an intentionalist, that is, is t o
maintain “that what a literary work means is identical t o what its author
meant in composing it.”2 Since the thesis is so straightforward, and
(presumably) at the heart of a prominent intentionalist’s pivotal text,3 it’s
unsurprising that Beardsley’s framing of the issue has proven alluring, of
late.4
To be sure, some commentators worry about so-narrowing the issue.
Even if the Identity Thesis’ foes proved triumphant, Noël Carroll o b -

1 W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy,” Sewanee Re-
view 54 (1946): 468-488.
2 Monroe C. Beardsley, The Possibility of Criticism (Detroit: Wayne State Univer-
sity Press, 1970), p. 17.
3 The text, of course, is E.D. Hirsch, Validity in I n t e r p r e t a t i o n (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1967).
4 Discussions which presume that intentionalism is committed to the Identity
Thesis (or a comparably strong condition – see note 12, below) include: Steven
Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, “Against Theory,” in Against T h e o r y , ed. W.J.T.
Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 11-30, Richard Shusterman,
“Interpretation, Intention, and Truth,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46
(1988): 399-411, George Dickie and W. Kent Wilson, “The Intentional Fallacy: Defend-
ing Beardsley,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53 (1995): 233-250, as well a s
their subsequent discussions of this essay (Wilson, “Confession of a Weak Anti-
Intentionalist: Exposing Myself” and Dickie, “Reply to Noël Carroll”) in Journal o f
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (1997): 309-312.

1
2 TIMOTHY CHAMBERS D86

serves, “it would only warrant anti-intentionalism with respect to o n e

kind of artistic interpretation – viz., the literary intentionalism of words
and word sequences.”5 The worry is a worthy one; after all, the Inten-
tional Fallacy has traditionally been entertained across the arts.6 Then
again, there’s something to be said for Beardsley’s gambit. For either the
literary arts are (let’s say) sufficiently analogous to the non-literary arts, or
they aren’t. If the former, then our resolutions concerning literary inten-
tionalism will carry over to the non-literary arts, and Beardsley’s restric-
tion is harmless; if the latter, then literary intentionalism ought to b e
studied independently of the intentional question in the non-literary arts,
and Beardsley’s boundary guards against treating dissimilar matters simi-
larly.
The foregoing argument, though, presupposes that the Identity The-
sis aptly characterizes literary intentionalism. On this point, I disagree.
(2) Our first clue that the Identity Thesis mischaracterizes Hirsch in
particular, and literary intentionalism in general, springs from an infor-
mal philosophers’ heuristic: the Principle of Charity. Our reading of an
opponent’s efforts, that is, “should minimize the assumption of false
belief” – especially egregious howlers – on our opponent’s part. Rather,
one’s reading should reflect “the standard practice of attempting to find
a sympathetic reading of texts.”7 Hence my brief project: to recount,
first, how the Identity Thesis is vulnerable to an array of devastating
counterexamples, and second, to show that (Hirsch’s) intentionalism
plausibly admits a reading that evades the counterexamples. Charity,
then, would entail that we need not read the (Hirschean) intentionalist as
committed to the Identity Thesis.
(a) If we grant broad scope to Beardsley’s phrase, “literary work,”
and allow it to encompass workaday bits of speech, then the Identity

5 Noël Carroll, “The Intentional Fallacy: Defending Myself,” Journal of A e s t h e t -

ics and Art Criticism 55 (1997): 305-309, at p. 306.
6 E.g., painting and sculpture – see Nan Stalnaker, “Intention and Interpretation:
Manet’s Luncheon in the Studio,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54 (1996):
121-134, Sidney Gendin, “The Artist’s Intentions,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criti-
cism 23 (1964): 193-196, and Isabel C. Hungerland, “The Concept of Intention in Art
Criticism,” Journal of Philosophy 52 (1955): 733-742.
7 The foregoing quotes are from, respectively, Penelope Mackie, “charity, princi-
ple of,” in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich (New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1995), p. 130, and Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
(Boston: Little, Brown Publishers, 1995), p. 404n2.
(2005) LITERARY INTENTIONALISM AND THE IDENTITY THESIS 3

Thesis fails if we can find simple cases where expressions fail to m e a n

what their authors (or speakers) intended to express. Yet such examples
are easy to find, and exemplify three types.
(i) Misspeaking. What if the speaker intends to utter one word, b u t
accidentally utters another? In their recent defense of Beardsley, George
Dickie and W. Kent Wilson invite us to “[c]onsider the problem raised
by misspeaking.” Suppose, for example, that
Antoine misspeaks and says, “There is a filé in your soup.” (Filé is a thick-
ener used in gumbo.) Brennan, knowing there is a filé in his soup, answers
irritably, “I know”….Suppose Antoine then realizes that he has misspoken
and says, “I intended to say there is a fly in your soup.” Is it not reasonable
for Brennan to say, “That may be what you intended to say, but it is not what
you said.”?
So much for the Identity Thesis – and, Dickie and Wilson infer, so m u c h
for (Hirschean) intentionalism, as well:
This argument is convincing to some, but it would not be to Hirsch…he
would insist that intention determines meaning and, therefore, that Antoine’s
utterance…means that there is a fly in Brennan’s soup. Of course, his insis-
tence is not an argument.8

(ii) Malapropism. What if a speaker utters the phrase they’d in-

tended, but is mistaken concerning what the phrase, in fact, means?
“The trouble with [Hirsch’s] view,” David Novitz avers, “is that authors,
like speakers, make mistakes….They may be guilty of malapropisms…,
and as a result they may fail to say what they mean. The resultant passages
have a meaning which is different from the author’s meaning.”9
In some proffered counterexamples, it’s unclear which of these two
foregoing categories the critic intends. Suppose, Dickie writes,
Tom says to Bill, “I weaned the orphaned calf,” intending to communicate
that he had taken care of the calf….Bill says, “Didn’t you mean to say, ‘I nur-
tured the orphaned calf’?” “Yes,” Tom answers, “I nurtured the orphaned
calf.” Bill now knows what Tom intended to say, but the original sen-
tence…has not been interpreted to mean, “I nurtured the orphaned calf.10

8 Dickie and Wilson, p. 237. The Antoine-example plays a recurring role in the
essay – cf. pp. 238, 244, and 245.
9 David Novitz, Knowledge, Fiction, and I m a g i n a t i o n (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1987), p. 106.
10 George Dickie, “Reply to Noël Carroll,” p. 311.
4 TIMOTHY CHAMBERS D86

Now, had Tom initially intended to use the word, “weaned”? If not, then
we have a case of misspeaking (type (i)); if so, then we have a case of
malapropism (type (ii)).
(iii) Authorless Texts. What if there’s no author at all? “Some texts,”
Beardsley points out, “have been framed without the agency of an
author, and hence without authorial meaning, nevertheless have a mean-
ing and can be interpreted.” A poem composed by a computer p r o -
gram, for instance, “has meaning, but nothing was meant by anyone.”11
All of these examples trivially show that the Identity Thesis is false, ei-
ther because the author haphazardly misspoke, or the author was mis-
taken about how a word is conventionally used, or there’s no author in
the first place. But do these examples tell against literary intentionalism?
(b) Only if intentionalists in general (or perhaps Hirsch in particular)
commit themselves to the Identity Thesis (or some similarly sweeping
surrogate12). Beardsley purports to find such a commitment. “It is a task
for the historian of culture,” Hirsch writes (and Beardsley quotes), “to
explain why there has been…a heavy…assault on the sensible belief that
a text means what its author meant.”13 Fair enough; but a question re-
mains: does Hirsch take this identity to obtain categorically? Or does it
obtain only if certain preconditions are fulfilled? A more careful reading
reveals that the latter is what Hirsch presumes. “Verbal meaning,” h e
writes, explicitly defining the term, “is [(i)] whatever someone has willed
to convey by a particular sequence of linguistic signs and [(ii)] which can
be conveyed (shared) by means of those signs.”14 Moreover, note that
(iii) the claim, “this phrase verbally means such-and-such” bears norma-
tive force; it makes the strong claim that “this phrase ought to b e inter-
preted as meaning such-and-such.”15

11 Beardsley, Possibility of Criticism, p. 18.

12 E.g., that author’s intention “determines” the text’s meaning (see Dickie a n d
Wilson’s passage, above), or that author’s intention “entails” the text’s m e a n i n g
(William C. Dowling, “Intentionless Meaning,” in Against T h e o r y , p. 89), or that
there’s an “unseverable link…between what a speaker means by an utterance a n d
what the utterance means” (John Biro, “Intentionalism in the Theory of Meaning,”
The Monist 62.2 (1979): 238-259, at p. 245).
13 E.D. Hirsch, Validity in I n t e r p r e t a t i o n (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1967), p.1, quoted in Beardsley, The Possibility of Criticism, p. 17.
14 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, p. 31.
15 Ibid., pp. 24-27.
(2005) LITERARY INTENTIONALISM AND THE IDENTITY THESIS 5

So how does intentionalism, so-framed, fare when confronted with

the three types of counterexample? As it turns out, each of the three
parts of Hirsch’s Thesis can be marshaled against each of the three coun-
terexamples to the Identity Thesis. Respectively:
(i) We quickly see that misspeaking fails to tell against intentionalism;
for such examples fail to fulfill Hirsch’s first condition. “Did you intend
to use the word, ‘filé’?” we might ask Antoine. “No, I said that inadver-
tently – by accident,” he would no doubt answer. In which case, even the
textbook Hirschean need not insist that Antoine’s utterance, “There’s a
filé in your soup” means t he re’s a fly in your soup; for to will-to-do-X-
by-doing-Y presupposes that one does Y intentionally16 – and in
Antoine’s case, he didn’t intend to utter the word, “filé.”
(ii) Hirsch’s second precondition serves to dispatch the malaprop-
ism-variety of counterexample. For we see that, even if a speaker (or
author) intends to express something by using the phrase they
intentionally utter, this is still insufficient for concluding that the inten-
tionalist ought to invest the words with the intended meaning. In inter-
pretation (as in Kantian ethics), ought implies can; and in this domain,
public linguistic norms bound what meanings words can be used to ex-
press. So even if, e.g., Antoine had believed that “filé” meant fly, an in-
tentionalist could quite naturally disabuse him of this misconception:
“you can’t use ‘filé’ in that way,” he’d rejoin. The (Hirschean) intentional-
ist need not reject the obvious: sometimes convention and context suf-
fice for ruling out what a text can’t mean – even if that’s what an author
intended it to mean. Hence Hirsch’s example:
If a poet intended his poem to convey desolation, and if to every competent
reader his poem conveyed only a sense that twilight is approaching, then

16 Compare Jeremy Bentham’s example (“Of Intentionality,” in An I n t r o d u c t i o n

to the Principles of Morals and L e g i s l a t i o n , eds. J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart (1781;
London: The Athlone Press, 1970), ch. viii): “You intend to hurt a man, suppose, b y
running against him, and pushing him down: and you run towards him accordingly:
but a second man comes in on a sudden between you and the first man, and before
you can stop yourself, you run against the second man, and by him push down the
first.” (pp. 84-85) Now, did I intend to hurt my target? Yes. Did I intend to hurt h i m
by pushing the second man onto my target? No; because I didn’t want to collide into
the second man, and, a fortiori, I didn’t intend – or, to borrow Hirsch’s verb, “will” –
to collide into him.
6 TIMOTHY CHAMBERS D86

such public unanimity would make a very strong case (in this particular in-
stance) for the practical irrelevance of the author’s intention.17
Again, the (Hirschean) intentionalist need not insist that Humpty-
Dumpty was correct: “when somebody does in fact use a particular
word sequence, his verbal meaning cannot be anything he might wish it
to be….the interpreter…is obliged to understand only those meanings
which ‘the public norms of language’ permit.”18 Hence Hirsch’s refer-
ence to linguistic norms as bearing, not a “determining,” but rather a
“codetermining influence” on a text’s verbal meaning.19
(iii) Does it follow from Hirsch’s principle that an authorless text
“can’t be interpreted,” or doesn’t have “a meaning,” in the sense of b e -
ing interpretable? The definition’s third tenet tells against such an im-
plausible corollary. To be sure, authorless texts lack verbal meaning; b u t
all that follows from this is that we won’t20 be in a position to say, “the
computer’s poem ought to be interpreted to mean such-and-such.” And
this, as one intentionalist has argued,21 is far from implausible.
It’s also worth seeing how the second and third tenets assist in dis-
patching another sweeping charge made against intentionalism. In gen-
eral, Hirsch tells us that one is entitled to say “the text ought to be read
this way” if and only if we can appeal to “a genuinely discriminating
norm;” that is, we can gauge our interpretive conjecture’s success with
respect to “a determinate object.”22 Now, suppose there are cases where
the author’s intention is unnecessary for achieving such determinacy;
consider a case where public norms of language, coupled perhaps with
context of utterance, narrow down the meanings that can be conveyed
by a given text to a single, unique, meaning-candidate. (These cases, b y
the intentionalist’s lights, are rare, especially in literary contexts.) In
those cases, the intentionalist is free to maintain that the “use of language
is,” as Hirsch himself says, “uniquely constitutive of meaning” – i.e., that
we ought to interpret the text in question in the single way convention-

17 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, pp. 12-13.

18 Ibid., p. 30.
19 Ibid., p. 27.
20 Or, more exactly, most probably won’t – see below.
21 P.D. Juhl, “Do Computer Poems Show That an Author’s Intention Is Irrelevant
to the Meaning of a Literary Work?” Critical Inquiry 5 (1979): 481-488.
22 Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, pp. 26-27.
(2005) LITERARY INTENTIONALISM AND THE IDENTITY THESIS 7

c u m-context permits.23 It’s therefore an uncharitable move to wed the

(Hirschean) intentionalist to the thesis that “textual or situational contexts
are never sufficient to determine meaning.”24
Does allowing occasional cases where linguistic norms fix a text’s
meaning “undermine [the intentionalist’s] own argument”?25 Such a
charge overlooks the following syllogism. Consider those cases w h e r e
linguistic norms and context reduce the interpretive possibilities of a
text (or utterance) to a unique meaning-candidate. Now, either the author
(or speaker) intended the text (or utterance) to express that candidate-
meaning, or else the author intended something else. If the former case
obtains, then Hirsch’s definition entails, unshockingly, that the candi-
date-meaning is indeed the text’s verbal meaning. Suppose the latter
case obtains; then the author intended to use the text’s words in a man-
ner contrary to unambiguous public norms, in a way such words “can’t
be used.” But then we have a familiar case of a mistake or malapropism;
and as we’ve seen (recall 2.b.i and ii), Hirsch’s definition only entails that
the author’s intention is not the text’s verbal meaning – i.e., we are not
obliged to interpret the text as the author intended. Either way, the Hir-
schean definition doesn’t contradict common sense: that where linguis-
tic norms and context alone narrow a text’s possible interpretations to a
single, unique candidate, then we ought to interpret the text as express-
ing that meaning-candidate. And so, either way, the intentionalist doesn’t
contradict himself by agreeing with that bit of common sense.
(3) The debate over intentionalism is a spirited one. But one need not
be an intentionalist to recognize that, faced with two readings of a philo-
sophical position, one ought to presume one’s opponent intended the
more viable view. For if we seize upon a reading which puts a position it
its worst light, we invite a dispute that generates only heat.

Rhode Island College

23 Ibid., p. 28.
24 Dickie and Wilson, “Defending Beardsley,” p. 236 (emphasis added).
25 Ibid.