Abstract:

Intentionalism claims that the author’s intentions provide a limit to interpretation, because they partly determine meaning. One type of objection purports to show that certain interpretations deploy features that could not have been intended by the author, because they lack the concepts needed to have that kind of intention. This objection pattern has been instantiated against two intentionalisms, aesthetic and linguistic. In this paper, we show how various kinds of intentions do the work that intentionalism postulates. An important corollary is that considering the objection in various domains allows for a fuller treatment than a piecemeal discussion.