The Fallacy of the Intentional Fallacy

The Fallacy of the Intentional Fallacy

(Is the Author Truly Dead?)[1]

Kaveh Behbahani

In the late 1940s, two sensational articles stirred up a storm in the Anglo-Saxon literary community: the essay “The Intentional Fallacy”[2] (1946) and the essay “The Affective Fallacy”[3] (1949). These two articles were the product of a collaboration between the American critic and theorist William K. Wimsatt[4] and the American philosopher of art Monroe Beardsley[5]. The gist of the first article (in keeping with the spirit of its time) was that discerning the intention (or intent) of the author (or creator) of a work of art (specifically a literary work) is neither possible nor necessary for understanding the work they have produced. Instead, what matters for analyzing a work is solely the work itself, in and of itself. In this piece, while reviewing Wimsatt and Beardsley’s arguments in the article in question, we will take a look at the criticisms leveled by one of the renowned contemporary American analytic philosophers of art, Noël Carroll[6], against the arguments presented in “The Intentional Fallacy.” We will also, amidst Carroll’s critiques of the intentional fallacy, touch upon the “multi-category approach” in art criticism that Carroll advocates.

By the end of the first half of the twentieth century, the “New Criticism”[7] movement had become the dominant movement in United States literary criticism. A movement whose main leaders (with the exception of the Englishman Richards) were natives of the southernmost states of America. It was they who considered the primary mission of the critic to be the close reading of the text[8] and saw the text of the work as possessing an ultimate end that must be examined independently. In their view, the text has its own rites and is sufficient unto itself for its own understanding. But what does this “autonomy”[9] of the text mean? An example can shed some light on the matter. The Argentine football team faced the Queen’s team in the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup. Exactly four years after the end of the Falklands War between the two countries. Maradona scores the “Goal of the Century,” and Argentina, the gladiatorial victor of the modern age, advances to the World Cup final. But suppose you ask a football analyst to analyze the Argentina-England match. They must explain to us why Argentina crushingly defeated the islanders. We must see what elements our analyst uses to analyze this match. Suppose they consider Argentina’s defeat by Margaret Thatcher’s strategies in the Falklands War as the main reason for the Argentine team’s victory and say that “the Argentines’ victory was a compensation[10] for the Falklands defeat.” That historic defeat was so great and impactful that it gave the Argentine players more energy and motivation to win. But imagine another analyst who, apart from the green rectangle of the pitch and the events occurring within it, refers to no “external” factor to explain England’s defeat. The second analyst considers the green rectangle of the pitch an autonomous[11] and self-sufficient[12] entity. For them, neither the players’ repressed complexes matter, nor the living conditions of the people of the two countries, nor their victories and defeats, nor other such external factors. For them, what matters is that the sweeper[13] did not do their job properly and did not fill the gap between the goalkeeper and the defenders well. Or that the right winger of one of the teams did not have enough stamina to move back and forth, or the goalkeeper repeatedly guessed the ball’s trajectory incorrectly, and so on. This is precisely what the “New” Critic does with the text of a work of art (for instance, with a piece of poetry). The text of the artwork is to them what the green rectangle is to the second analyst. They analyze the text of the poem and have nothing to do with the psyche of the poem’s creator, their livelihood, their society, their motivation for writing the text, and suchlike. The New Critics believe that the author’s biography has no bearing on the artistic value (and/or interpretation) of their work.

New Criticism was perhaps a reaction to the dominance of positivism up to the early twentieth century. The spectacular and astonishing successes of the empirical sciences were "no miracle!"[14] but rather the result of an efficient methodology[15] that brought tangible, verifiable (positive) truth to humankind. Given this state of affairs, why shouldn't other disciplines adopt the scientific methodology? Why shouldn't the "superstitions" of past ages be discarded? Why shouldn't one test all of one's beliefs against the touchstone of science and the scientific method? A claim that can be proven or disproven by reference to experience is a meaningful claim whose truth or falsity can be inquired into. By this reckoning, metaphysical claims and theological beliefs (and even ethical and aesthetic judgments) become meaningless, and there is no longer any ground for speaking of their correctness or incorrectness. To find out whether a claim is meaningful or not, we must clarify its meaning thoroughly to understand whether there is empirical confirmation or refutation for it. If this claim, in none of its formulations, makes contact with the world of facts, then it is a meaningless or nonsensical[16] claim. To clarify my point somewhat, let me give an example. "Forty is a sacred number." Is this claim true? First, one must ask: what is the meaning of this statement? What does it mean that the number forty is sacred? Let us test a few hypothetical answers to this question. Suppose someone says that what is meant by the sacredness of the number forty is that a human being reaches intellectual maturity at the age of forty, and for this reason, forty is an important and sacred number. If this is what is meant by the sacredness of the number forty, then this claim is a meaningful claim that is clearly false. Experience shows that there are many who reach maturity and intellectual ripeness before or after the age of forty. Or perhaps you might say that what is meant by this statement is that the average person reaches intellectual maturity at forty. Again, this statement is meaningful and can be refuted or confirmed by reference to experience. But what is meant by the sacredness of the number forty might be something else. Perhaps someone might say that the meaning of the sacredness of the number forty is that a set of events of religious or spiritual significance bear some relation to the number forty: the Prophet of the Muslims was appointed to prophethood at the age of forty, or Christ the Prophet fasted and prayed in the wilderness for forty days, and events of this sort. But this claim is still not sufficiently clear. One must ask: is the number forty sacred because a set of important religious and spiritual events are somehow related to it (for example, in the fortieth year, or the fortieth month, or the fortieth day, such-and-such an event occurred), or conversely, because forty is a sacred number, a set of important spiritual and religious events establish a relation with it? If the number forty is sacred because important religious and spiritual events are related to it, then the claim of this number's sacredness is clearly a false claim. How many non-spiritual and non-religious events are there that bear a relation to forty? It may well be that a certain earthquake occurs forty days after the birth of a certain saint, and a certain spiritual figure passes away forty months after the death of a certain loved one, or cases of this sort, which are probably not hard to find and will refute the claim of the number forty's sacredness; and besides, how many important religious and spiritual events are linked with numbers other than forty? For instance, Christ was appointed to prophethood at the age of thirty, and there are many such cases. Therefore, bearing a relation to the number forty is neither a necessary condition for sacredness nor a sufficient condition for it. By reference to the external world, the falsity of such a claim can be demonstrated. But someone who believes in the sacredness of the number forty might answer differently and say that the reason forty is sacred is not that important events are related to it, but rather, because forty is a sacred number, such important events establish a relation with it. In this case, the sacredness of forty does not mean that a set of important events are related to it. It is here that if the sacredness of the number forty cannot be interpreted in such a way that it is refutable or confirmable by reference to the world of facts, positivist philosophers will say that this claim is nonsensical or meaningless, and characterizing it with the attribute of true or false has no basis. (In the words of some philosophers, this claim is not truth-apt[17]; that is, it does not have the capacity to be true or false.)[18] Positivists do the same thing with every claim; that is, they reduce linguistic propositions to logical propositions that correspond to the facts of the real world and, in light of this correspondence, are verifiable or falsifiable. And the proposition

‌that cannot be supported or refuted by a fact or facts falls outside the circle of meaningful propositions.

One of the methods of clarification among the positivists was to identify the connotative implications[19] of concepts and separate them from the denotative implications[20] of those concepts, in order to reduce the "slipperiness" of ordinary language and refine it. A task similar to what we did in the example of the sanctity of the number forty. But the domain of art (and poetry in particular) is the arena of connotative implications. Poetry, first and fundamentally, is not supposed to speak merely about the facts of the external world in a clear and transparent language. Poetry is the domain of the figurative, not the literal. Given this situation, the positivists, who naturally do not get along well with metaphor, symbol, irony, ambiguity, amphiboly, and many such things, consider them to belong to the dark ages of human thought and the era of the dominance of religion and superstitious rituals[21]—that is, an era when the world, in the words of the German sociologist Max Weber, had not yet been disenchanted.[22] Positivism pushes the bullying of scientific thought to its limits. Philosophy and theology were so humiliated that they constantly sought to attach themselves to scientific methodology.[23] The dominance of positivism means the swallowing of poetry in the stomach of scientific methodology, and New Criticism was determined to build a strong fortress around poetry by constructing a separate house for it[24]: the world of the work is the form or shape of the work, which is a complete and transcendental[25] world. A world that is neither time-bound nor harmed by socio-political storms and tempests. Formalism was the legacy of the German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant for the proponents of New Criticism, and it provided them with the opportunity to claim independence and autonomy for the microcosm[26] of poetry.[27] Now, in the light of this newly emerged formalism, one could say that however esteemed science may be, its world and the logic governing it differ from the world and logic governing poetry.[28] The truth is that New Criticism was the night of formalism.

The article "The Intentional Fallacy" was born with such motivations and in such a context, pregnant with the seed of its counterpart view in French structuralism, namely "The Death of the Author" by the French literary theorist Roland Barthes. Wimsatt and Beardsley argued that to clarify the meaning of a poem, referring to information and data "outside" the text of the poem (for example, the cultural circumstances of the poet's time or their livelihood) is incorrect. The critic and the audience must refer only to the text (to the words written on the paper), and referring to extra-textual factors is committing a fallacy called the intentional fallacy. One who commits the intentional fallacy confuses psychological facts about the author of the work with facts about the work of art (the poem). Committing the intentional fallacy means failing to understand that the causal explanation of a work (the psychological causes of creating a work, or any cause outside the text) differs from its interpretation and artistic evaluation. Wimsatt and Beardsley's view can be called anti-intentionalism[29]:

"Regarding the relationship between the meaning of a literary work (the meaning inherent in the text[30]) and the intention of its author (the author's intended meaning[31]), two conflicting views can be proposed: intentionalism[32] equates the meaning inherent in the text with the author's intended meaning: the meaning of the text is the meaning the author had in mind. Anti-intentionalism does not accept that the meaning inherent in the text is the same as the author's intended meaning and believes that the meaning inherent in the text possesses autonomy: the meaning inherent in the text resides objectively within the work itself and 'is embodied in language' and conceptually has no relation to the author's intention (in the view of anti-intentionalists, if these two happen to coincide, it is an insignificant accident)."[33]

Wimsatt and Beardsley’s anti-intentionalism is meant to serve as a bulwark against relativism[34] in literary criticism. When we resort to external criteria for reading and evaluating a poem—criteria that have no place in the nature of the work’s text—we consign the poem itself (or the text of the work) to oblivion. The poem, independent of poet, audience, and the external world, possesses its own little cosmos, and the critic’s task is to discover the laws governing this inner world. In their view, once a poem is published, it no longer belongs to the poet or the critic but to the public, and this opens the way for a democratic approach to the literary work; in this respect, the work of the New Critics resembles that of the Protestant reformers in their struggle against elitism in the reading of sacred texts. They state, “The poem is not the critic’s own and not the author’s (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it). The poem belongs to the public.” (Wimsatt and Beardsley, p. 470)[35] With this view, they seem to diminish the dominance and authoritarianism of the author and creator of the text, giving the audience a freer hand and greater freedom in the interpretation and/or artistic evaluation of the work of art.

Let us begin with an overview of the article’s various sections. The article “The Intentional Fallacy” has five sections. The authors’ main argument appears at the very beginning of the first section. “We shall argue that the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art…” (Wimsatt and Beardsley, p. 468). It is clear that by success they mean not financial success or success in attracting an audience or suchlike, but aesthetic success. Aesthetics in this sense, in their view, has an autonomous sphere that is not sullied by external factors and is a distinct praxis with its own criteria for success or failure. The gist of their critique of their contemporary academic masters is that for a critical aesthetic judgment of a work, the intention and motive of its creator must be bracketed out so that, in their own words, room is made for an “objective criticism” of the work. They write, “the evaluation of a work of art is a public matter; the work is measured against something outside the author” (Wimsatt and Beardsley, p. 447). Of course, for readers familiar with phenomenology, it is worth noting that intention in Wimsatt and Beardsley’s view bears no relation to the concept of intention in phenomenology. In their view, intention means “the design or plan in the author’s mind. Intention has obvious affinities with the author’s attitude toward his work, his feeling, and what made him write” (Wimsatt and Beardsley, p. 470). The article begins with five propositions that, according to the authors, “seem axiomatic,” though a certain ambiguity sometimes overshadows these propositions. In the first proposition, they acknowledge the importance of the author’s intention in creating an original work but say that this does not mean the author’s intention should be the standard for judging the work. The cause of the poem’s creation should not be brought into its criticism. The second proposition poses a simple dilemma. If the poem has succeeded in expressing the author’s intention, then there is no need to refer to the author’s intention, and the text itself will reveal everything. But if the poem has failed to express the author’s intention, then “the poem provides insufficient evidence, and the critic must turn to evidence outside the text itself to find proof for an intention that is not present in the poem’s text” (Wimsatt and Beardsley, p. 469)[36]. In the third proposition, the authors offer a definition of poetry, namely that “poetry is a feat of style by which a complex of meaning is handled all at once” (ibid., p. 469), and they continue that “the reason for a poem’s success is that all or most of what is said or implied is relevant [to the whole work], and what is irrelevant must be discarded, like ‘lumps in a pudding or ‘bugs’ in a machine’” (ibid., p. 469). In this respect, “judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine,” and this means that “a poem differs from practical messages, which are successful if and only if we correctly infer the intention of their creator” (ibid., p. 469). With this proposition, they distinguish between poetic communication (the poetic sphere, which has an aesthetic dimension) and practical communication (the practical sphere, which has a cognitive dimension). The fourth proposition separates the author’s personality from the personal meanings expressed in his work. “The thoughts and attitudes implicit in a poem cannot […] be attributed to the author at all except by biographical inference” (ibid., p. 470). The fifth proposition states that if an author revises his work, it is clear that his intention was to write the revised work, and his original intention in the earlier work is no longer his intention in the current work. The authors probably mean that it makes no sense to say that the earlier versions of an author’s work better reveal his intention. Here, in a footnote, they point out something worth mentioning. They write, “To speak of ‘means’ and ‘end’ in poetry instead of ‘part’ and ‘whole’ is a close relative of the intentional fallacy” (ibid., p. 487). The point is that one cannot say the words and lines of a poem are instruments for conveying its author’s intention. The world of the poem must be analyzed through the connection of the text’s parts with its whole.

In the second part of the article, the authors trace the lineage of the intentional fallacy back to Romantic literary theories and state that “the intentional fallacy is a Romantic fallacy.” They seek the roots of the intentional fallacy in the discussions of the Syrian sage Longinus on the sublime[37] and refer to the German poet Goethe, who said that to critique a work one must ask what the author intended. They address the concept of expression, which is the key concept of Romantic art theory, and turn to one of the first to formulate this concept philosophically: the twentieth-century Italian idealist philosopher Benedetto Croce[38] (Wimsatt and Beardsley p. 472). Expression was a concept that had replaced the ancient concept of “mimesis”[39] (or, more broadly, “representation”[40]) in mimetic theories of art. Theories that used the concept of expression to explain the work of art believed that the artwork is not an imitation or representation of what exists in the external world, but an outpouring or expression of the artist’s emotions and feelings.[41] It is clear that a theory which explains the artwork through the artist’s inner world must, as a rule, be an intentionalist theory. As the contemporary philosopher of art Sebastian Gardner says, “the expression theory[42] is explicitly committed to intentionalism, and formalism is committed to anti-intentionalism (the mimetic theory is undecided)”[43]

In the third part of the article, the authors state that the psychology of the work[44] differs from the discipline of criticism. (Wimsatt and Beardsley p. 476) It makes no difference whether Coleridge composed his famous poem Kubla Khan after consuming a certain narcotic (“anodyne”) or whether the practice of “yoga” was the source of a certain poem’s composition. Of course, the authors say that a day may come when the discipline of objective, evaluative criticism of the work merges with the psychology of artistic creation, and terms that describe the author’s intention (such as “sincerity, genius, and originality”) become one with evaluative terms (such as “coherence, maturity, and subtlety”). But today, these two endeavors are worlds apart (ibid. p. 476).

In the fourth part of the article, Wimsatt and Beardsley distinguish between two types of reasons and evidence regarding the meaning latent in a work of art: “there is a difference between internal evidence[45] and external evidence[46] for the meaning of a poem” (ibid. p. 477). Internal evidence is “public. These meanings are discovered through the semantics and syntax of the poem, through our habitual knowledge of the language, through grammars, dictionaries, and all literature which is the source of dictionaries, and in general through all that makes a language and culture” (ibid. p. 447). Internal evidence is text-based and, since everyone has access to the text of the work, is common property, but external evidence is “private and idiosyncratic; it is not a part of the work as a linguistic fact: it consists of revelations (in journals, for example, or letters or reported conversations) about how or why the poet wrote the poem . . .” (ibid. 447-8). External evidence more often than not (though not always) misleads the critic. The audience is a stranger to the poet’s private thoughts and has no way of discovering them. But every audience member sees and reads the words and lines of the poem. The authors of the article give an example. A critic from the first half of the twentieth century named Charles Coffin seeks to establish a link between lines from a poem by one of the fathers of English Romanticism, John Donne, and the astronomical knowledge of his era, and to show that the imagery of his poem was influenced by his knowledge of astronomy. Wimsatt and Beardsley, while acknowledging that John Donne was familiar with Galileo, Kepler, and other great astronomers, ultimately concluded as follows:

«Knowing [John] Donne's interest in the new science may add another layer of meaning and give another semantic halo to the stanza in question, though even saying this contradicts the words of the poem. To consider the central metaphor of the poem as geocentrism and its antithesis as heliocentrism is to depose the English language and to prefer private evidence [our knowledge of astronomy] over public evidence [the lines of John Donne's poem] (to prefer the extra-textual to the intra-textual).» (Ibid., p. 482).

Wimsatt and Beardsley, in the final section of the essay (section five), address the problem of «poetic allusion»[47]. They cite Eliot as an example, whose works are replete with allusion, and some, to understand them, turn to the work of the nineteenth-century Scottish anthropologist James Frazer, namely The Golden Bough, and Elizabethan dramas. But they say «misjudgment of allusion can entangle us in the intentional fallacy». They write «the allusions Eliot employs, due to their seductive power, work if we recognize them, and even if we do not recognize them, they still largely work.» (Ibid., p. 483). As if not knowing the allusions of a poem hardly matters! They name critics who believe that to understand Eliot's poem «The Waste Land,» referring to the footnotes the poet himself appended to the poem is sufficient. It is here that Wimsatt and Beardsley write «as if it would have made no difference if Eliot had invented his sources,» something the novelist Sir Walter Scott had also done. They believe these footnotes should be considered part of the poem, not extra-textual signs indicating the author's intention. (Ibid., p. 484). Wimsatt and Beardsley give another example from Eliot's own poetry. In a line near the end of his famous poem «The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,» Eliot writes: «I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.» The line resembles a line from a poem by John Donne where the poet says: «Teach me to hear mermaids singing.» The question arises for the reader: «Does Eliot's poem allude to John Donne's poem? Was Eliot thinking of Donne?» By presenting examples, they conclude that such similarities are «unimportant» for the objective mode of criticism «and it is better not to waste time thinking about them.» (Ibid., p. 486). They continue, «The answer to such a question has neither relevance to the poem 'Prufrock' nor is it a critical inquiry.» (Ibid., p. 487). They even attack Eliot, stating that «a conspicuous fault, if there is one in the work of Eliot and his contemporary poets, is precisely this excess of scheming and contrivance.» (p. 485). It is here that one thinks to oneself: a theory that dares to go so far as to exclude the great Eliot from the circle of poets seems an overly audacious and demanding theory.

Let us clarify their point with a more local example, not unlike Wimsatt and Beardsley's own example. Hafez writes:

From my star, a fortunate glance is on the way, for last night / Between the moon and my beloved's face, there was a moqabeleh. (Ghazal 215)

«Moqabeleh» means confrontation, with an implicit connotation of opposition and rivalry. At the same time, moqabeleh is a term in ancient astronomy. Moqabeleh means two planets are positioned exactly opposite each other, and in ancient astronomy, the moqabeleh of the moon and other planets was considered a fortunate and auspicious event. Hafez, while referring to the rivalry and confrontation of his beloved's face with the moon's disk, considers this celestial opposition a propitious occurrence. But before him, another Shirazi poet, Mosleh al-Din Sa'di, also used the term moqabeleh:

The moon cannot make moqabeleh with her face / And if it does, everyone will blame the moon (Ghazals, Ghazal 231).

Sa'di, however, as is evident, says this celestial opposition will not occur because the moon does not dare to stand face to face with his beloved's countenance, and if it does, everyone will reproach the moon for coming to challenge a rival so much more powerful than itself. Hafez has a couplet with the same theme but devoid of astronomical terms:

Your cheek cannot be likened to the moon in the sky / One cannot compare a friend to just any worthless person. (Ghazal 136)

As we know, Saʿdi lived before Hafez. One may ask whether Hafez and Saʿdi actually knew the astrological meaning of the word moqābele (opposition). Is the first line quoted from Hafez influenced by Saʿdi’s line in form, or is the second line quoted from Hafez influenced in content? Wimsatt and Beardsley tell us that these questions have no bearing whatsoever on the artistic evaluation of the verses of Hafez and Saʿdi, nor on the interpretation of their lines, and that asking them is a futile exercise which a critic concerned with “objective criticism” will avoid.

This was a summary of Wimsatt and Beardsley’s view in the article under discussion. In informal logic, there is a well-known fallacy called the Ad hominem fallacy, which some have loosely equated with the “motive and motivated” fallacy[48]. This fallacy seeks to teach us that it is wrong, when examining the truth or falsity of a claim, to investigate the character of the speaker instead of the claim itself. Bertrand Russell argued that an insoluble paradox had lodged itself in the foundations of set theory. That he was an atheist and a drinker, or that he had designs on the wife of our aforementioned T. S. Eliot, has no bearing on the truth or falsity of his claim about the set-theoretic paradox. Philosophy purports to issue universal[49] and necessary propositions, and in this respect differs from psychology, which depends on the contingent[50] features of an individual’s personality. The fallacy known as motive and motivated asks us not to consider the intention and motive of the speaker when examining the truth or falsity of their claims. Just like the intentional fallacy, which asks us not to consider the intention and motive of the speaker in the aesthetic evaluation of their artistic text (and/or in the interpretation of their speech). In both types of fallacy, the author’s intention is a black box to which recourse, even if possible, is undesirable.[51]

But is the “intentional fallacy” truly a fallacy? Is there a flaw in the reasoning of someone who refers to the author’s intention to interpret a text or evaluate it artistically? The intentional fallacy seeks to convince us that, for instance, criticism based on the author’s biography leads us into error. But does the intentional fallacy itself not lead into error? Although today it is unlikely that anyone still speaks of a self-sufficient literary text untainted by history, culture, or even the author’s personality, the merit of formalism lies in revealing to us the importance of attending to the formal elements of the text. But can all aspects of the work be reduced to the formal elements of the text? Is it never necessary, in order to better understand the intra-textual formal elements, to refer to extra-textual elements? Is there a precise separation between extra-textual evidence and intra-textual evidence? Do these two have no commerce with one another, and is there a wall as thick as the Great Wall of China between them? One of the serious critics of Wimsatt and Beardsley’s view is the contemporary American philosopher of art Noël Carroll. In what follows, we will take a look at Carroll’s criticisms of the intentional fallacy.

Carroll, in his book On Criticism, speaks of the criticism of criticism (or metacriticism).[52] He wants to provide a philosophical theory for the critical act. His main task in this work is to revive artistic evaluation and valuation[53] in criticism, declaring it the primary function of criticism and critique. Of course, critics do other things as well: describing the work of art, classifying it, interpreting it, and so on and so forth. But the critic's main task is artistic evaluation, which consists of discovering the artistic values of the work (evaluation) and ultimately its overall valuation. Borrowing a term from Latin, he says that artistic valuation (or evaluation) is primus inter pares, meaning first among equals. (On Criticism, Carroll, p. 6).[54] In the Middle Ages, the king was described with this same phrase, meaning that in the feudal system, the king's power was greater compared to the power of the nobles and landowners. Carroll wants to restore the lost throne to artistic evaluation (or valuation) and make it king of the realm of art criticism once again. But in order to turn artistic evaluation into the primary mission of criticism, he must re-humanize criticism. He believes that in contemporary critical approaches, evaluation (or valuation) has been limited to ideological and political values (for example, based on various forms of sexual and racial discrimination and concepts such as logocentrism and the like). In fact, contemporary criticism, instead of being an aesthetic critique of the work, provides theories for interpreting the work (ibid., p. 6). These theories of interpretation "emphasize processes that are not entirely within the sphere of the author's intention (such as the unconscious, forces of production, the functioning of language itself, etc.)" (ibid., p. 6). Carroll says that such critical theories (for example, structuralist theories) are anti-humanist or post-human[55] theories, in the sense that personal agency is not central to them (ibid., p. 6). This is where the prerequisite for reviving a criticism whose primary mission is artistic evaluation (or valuation) is the humanization of the critical act. For this reason, he considers the subject (or object) of criticism to be the artist's activity in creating their work. The critic must examine whether the artist has achieved the accomplishment they intended. That is, the critic must examine whether the artist has failed or succeeded in reaching the goals they had in mind. The prerequisite for evaluating a work of art is knowing what the artist's intention was. Conjecture about artistic intention[56] is one of our entry points into the world of the work. This means that the artist has agency[57] in creating the work. Before artistic criticism, one must conjecture about the artist's intention and form hypotheses about what it is, because knowing the artist's intention reveals the ends and aims of their work, and the ends and aims of a work are a good criterion for evaluating (or valuing) that work. If we know the artist's aims, we can, in Carroll's own words, gauge the "value of success"[58] of their work according to the extent to which they have achieved the aims they intended.

A major part of the book on Carroll's criticism is devoted to answering the objections facing the theory of criticism as artistic evaluation, and other sections seek to clarify the functions of criticism. But since, in Carroll's view, referring to the artist's intention is a requisite of evaluative art criticism, the intentional fallacy will be troublesome for him. He explains the importance of intention thus: sometimes we exhibit involuntary reactions. An example is that, without having intended to, we suffer a muscle spasm or our breath catches. But sometimes we do something out of volition, that is, we ourselves intend to do that thing. Some human actions are actions based on intent and intention (= intentional actions)[59]. For instance, when we pick up a pen and start writing a letter to a friend. In Carroll's view, the creation of an artwork is among the intentional actions of human beings. That is, a person intends to create an artwork. This is where understanding the artist's action depends on understanding their intention. You must know what the artist intended to do in order to evaluate their work. And when it comes to criticizing an artwork, you must at least know what artistic intention the artist had in mind. To clarify this point, he gives an example and names an American director called Ed Wood[60], who made trashy science-fiction films and has a film called Plan 9 from Outer Space. Among the flaws of this film, for instance, is that the flying saucers were hanging from strings that could be seen! But Carroll mentions a critic who praised Wood's film on the grounds that, in the critic's view, the film displayed a kind of "primitive modernism[61]." (Ibid., p. 61). As if, instead of suffering through watching this film, one could place it alongside Buñuel's works and be as delighted as possible watching it. But how can one know whether Wood made this film so clumsily due to a lack of financial resources, or did not do so out of tastelessness and incompetence? How can it be said that he deliberately wanted to challenge the established conventions of the science-fiction genre? The very straightforward answer is that we must know the director's intention. If the director had no intention of breaking formal conventions and adopting an avant-garde (or progressive) stance, this cannot be attributed to him. In short, the agent's intention is linked to the understanding of their action. If this is so, why should we violate this rule when it comes to artistic action? But according to the intentional fallacy, referring to the artist's intention in the work of evaluating and appraising (and also in interpreting) an artwork is an improper act. This is where Carroll must go to battle with Wimsatt and Beardsley. To do this, he presents three versions of Wimsatt and Beardsley's arguments and critiques those three versions. In what follows, we will address Carroll's versions of the intentional fallacy and review his refutation of these arguments.

Carroll first presents three versions of Wimsatt and Beardsley's arguments in order to subsequently dismiss these three versions.

Wimsatt and Beardsley's first argument in favor of the intentional fallacy: The Argument from Unavailability[62]

Carroll calls Wimsatt and Beardsley's first argument the Argument from Unavailability and formulates it as follows:

"The presupposition of this argument is that intentions are separate from the artwork and inaccessible to the critic. What lies before us is the work itself, not the intentions, which reside in the artist's mind and to which we have no access. It makes no difference whether the artist is alive or dead, but it is clear that this statement is truer in the case of dead artists. [For example,] no one knows what Homer's intention was, because Homer did not record it anywhere [. . . ] Can one be aware of what goes on in the minds of others? This is especially true of artists, who are strange and eccentric beings." (On Criticism, Carroll, p. 68).

Wimsatt and Beardsley's second argument in favor of the intentional fallacy: The Argument from Circularity[63]

In Carroll’s view, “this argument also rests on the same presupposition that the critic has no direct access to the artist’s intentions. Therefore, to discover the artist’s intention, one is compelled to rely entirely on the work itself. Consequently, we are forced to conclude that the work is just as the artist intended it to be.” (ibid., p. 69).

Carroll provides an example to clarify this point: “If a work is boring, we must conclude that the artist’s intention was for the work to be boring. However, if we wish to judge the work based on the artist’s aim (at least as one of our evaluative criteria), we would then have to say that the work’s being boring is a success, since it fulfills the artist’s intention (an intention we have inferred from the work itself). In other words, if the artwork is the only way to discover the artist’s intention, then there is insufficient distance between the work and the author’s intention. Such-and-such a work is boring, therefore the author intended it to be boring, therefore this work is successful. But this reasoning is circular, and moreover, a consequence of this claim is that one can never say that a certain artwork is unsuccessful, especially according to the work’s own criteria.” (ibid., p. 69).

Wimsatt and Beardsley’s third argument in favor of the intentional fallacy: the argument of achievement[64]

Carroll states that there is always a gap between the artist’s intention and the work they have created. He continues, “Artists often have ambitious aspirations, yet how frequently they fail. Many artists testify that they never fully realized their intentions. There is a gap between the artist’s intention and their achievement. Artworks usually fall short of their authors’ expectations. In evaluating an artwork, the critic must consider what the artist has actually managed to accomplish [= the artist’s achievement], not what they intended or wished to do [= their intention].” (ibid., p. 70).

Noël believes that these three interconnected arguments have persuaded many, but he is not convinced that they are as decisive and robust as their proponents imagine. He refutes each of these three arguments separately:

1’- Carroll’s rebuttal of the inaccessibility argument:

Carroll believes that “the claim that artistic intentions are inaccessible is an exaggeration” (ibid., p. 71). One of the gifts of evolution to humanity is that humans possess the power of intention-reading.[65] This ability is, of course, fallible.[66] Many instances of intention-reading have turned out to be incorrect. Yet we humans make abundant use of this ability in everyday life. He writes:

“Someone stands in the bread line, and the baker understands that their intention is to buy bread. A secretary knocks on the door, and the boss concludes they have brought something to sign. A driver stands behind me waiting for me to vacate the parking spot, and I conjecture that they want to park their car. We people read each other’s minds day and night, and many of our guesses turn out to be correct. We are often mistaken, but we guess correctly more often than not. This is a requisite for the survival of human life, and if this is the case in public life, why should it not be so in art?” (ibid., p. 71).

His question is clear. Carroll seems to be right. In everyday life we read intentions, and in our daily interactions we do not seem to judge that discerning others’ motives is impossible. Sometimes this intention-reading happens very quickly and is often intuitive. With a high margin of error. Sometimes intention-reading is carried out with all sorts of weighing and sifting of evidence and clues, which reduces the likelihood of error. Why should artistic intention be a thing apart among intentions? For example, a poem is given to a critic for review, and it is evident throughout that the poet intended to compose a qasida but lost the meter in several places. Why shouldn’t the critic surmise that the author’s intention was to compose a qasida?[67] How is it that when someone in a bank queue is too close to our money, we form the hypothesis that they might be a pickpocket? And these hypotheses are, of course, falsifiable. In addition to doing this with others, humans do the same thing even in understanding their own cognitive processes. That is, they try to grasp their own cognitive processes through hypothesis formation. Today, cognitive psychology defends the view that we humans do not have privileged, special access to our own cognitive processes (such as problem-solving, various judgments, and evaluation and valuation) and merely have access to the products of such processes, but we implicitly hold a theory in mind with the help of which we estimate what has transpired in our minds.[68]

But what if the author has departed this mortal world? Can one still speak of their intention? Noël answers yes. We conjecture about individuals’ intentions from their actions. He says this is common practice in the sciences as well. Is the work of “biological anthropology[69] and archaeology” anything other than “attributing intentions to deceased personages, intentions that have nowhere been recorded”? (ibid. p.72) Why should we not do the same in art criticism? How can one use the artwork to tunnel into the artist’s artistic intention? One important way is to categorize the work. And a key task of the critic (though not as important as artistic evaluation) is precisely to classify works, place them in their proper context, and then evaluate them based on this classification. Critics categorize works according to style, genre, movement, and the like. In Noël’s view, every work belongs to one (or more) categories, and each category has its own specific techniques, ends, and values. Carroll offers an extensive defense of why the objective classification of artworks is both possible and desirable, and that the evaluation and interpretation of a work is made possible partly in light of this very classification.[70] By classifying artworks, we will arrive at local, category-relative[71] criteria for the valuation and evaluation of artworks, and since artistic categories and sub-categories are numerous, one cannot expect to arrive at universal, global criteria with which all artworks can be evaluated. The value of each work emerges within one or more categories. Carroll calls this approach the multi-category[72] approach to criticism. To evaluate and/or interpret an artwork, the critic places it in a category or categories and assesses the work according to the standards and criteria its category demands. Carroll, of course, explains that one should not assume every work belongs to only a single category; rather, many works are the confluence of various genres[73] and for this reason may be valuable and strong in terms of their relation to a certain category, and worthless and weak in terms of their relation to another. He gives the example that the film Beetlejuice by the American director Tim Burton is a mixture of the horror genre and the comedy genre, or that Henry David Thoreau’s Walden is a book about nature as well as a self-help guide, a social critique, and a spiritual exercise.[74]

I would like, following the view of the contemporary Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, to formulate Noël’s view differently. In MacIntyre’s view, human rationality and moral values are matters confined within human traditions. In this view, we do not have rationality but rationalities. Different traditions of thought cultivate their own rationalities and methods of reasoning. MacIntyre saw ethics and moral values as tradition-laden matters—matters nurtured within one or more traditions[75]. The human being is an animal that carries many traditions and sub-traditions, some of which may perhaps be placed within a larger tradition. We were not “born yesterday from our mother” and we have stories and narratives aplenty that determine who we are and “what is our geography?”[76], and communication among human beings also finds meaning in the shadow of these very narratives. I think, by borrowing the concept of tradition, one can say that Noël defends a kind of artistic evaluation confined within tradition[77][78]. I believe Noël’s multi-category approach to criticism can be explicated thus: every work of art is situated and has come into being within one (or more) aesthetic traditions. We do not have tradition-immaculate beauty (or aesthetic value), and every tradition has its own schools, genres, styles, techniques, movements, canonical texts[79], and so on. Why? Because works of art seek to communicate and interact with their audiences, and traditions provide the scope for this interaction. From Carroll’s perspective, at least one single intention can be attributed to artists, and that is that they want to exchange something with the audience, and the prerequisite for this communication is remaining faithful to the process that the artistic category or the tradition in which the work is situated imposes upon the audience and the work. Something that can be called the poetics of the work. The poetics of works of art gain consistency and durability within traditions.[80] Of course, reference to the work of art is not the only clue that leads us to the author’s intention. Sometimes the author themselves even reveals their intention and purpose. For instance, if you read “Collected Ghazals” on the cover of a contemporary poet’s book, you can understand that their intention was to compose ghazals, or Carroll tells us that “novelists up to the end of the nineteenth century often added a preface to the book and recounted their intention” (ibid., p. 74). Some might object that the author may lie in stating their intention. Or perhaps they may not wish to lie but deceive themselves. One can even state it more strongly than this. Did not the great psychoanalyst of the modern world, Sigmund Freud, say that human actions possess strong unconscious drives and that the human psyche resembles an iceberg, of which self-consciousness is merely the protruding tip? Well, how do we know that the artistic intentions of artists (who, according to Freud, see “daydreams”[81]) are not deeply unconscious and hidden from their view? Noël will tell you: is it any different in everyday life? The crux of Noël’s argument lies precisely here, that art is not a separate, isolated sphere. In everyday life, we also speculate about the intentions of others, even if there is a risk that they might lie, deceive themselves, or that unconscious drives might be at play in their behavior. Is it not the case in daily life that we might say someone is projecting, or that someone “is angry about something else” and is misdirecting their anger (the defense mechanism known as displacement of the object of anger or hostility[82])? Sometimes we even catch ourselves, for example, having exaggerated in a certain event, or cases of this sort. It must be remembered that intention-reading is, of course, a fallible matter. The clues that lead to intention are, in the parlance of philosophers, “prima facie”[83] clues. That is, if other evidence and documents are found that are stronger than that clue and override it, we will immediately acknowledge the error of our intention-reading. But as long as we have no reason to reject our clue and other evidence also corroborates it, we will trust it. For example, we consider someone’s moans as evidence of their intention to express their sorrows and pains, but after a while we will discover they have a habit of repeated whining (the defense mechanism of storytelling[84]).

Regarding artists as well, one can have defeasible clues for discerning the artist's artistic intention, the most important of which is the work of art itself. And of course, the only intention relevant to evaluative criticism is the artist's artistic intention.[85]

اما نقد چند-مقوله‌ای کرول با یک ایراد جدی روبه‌روست: برخی می‌گویند هر اثر هنری اثری منحصربه‌فرد و یکتاست. نگاهی که کرول به آن می‌گوید «توهم رمانتیک». دست‌کم بسیاری از هنرمندان مدرن کم‌وبیش چنین داعیه‌ای دارند. آوانگاردیسم نهفته در هنر مدرن این پیش‌فرض را درون خود دارد که کار هنرمند این است که سنت‌کُشان راه بیندازد و به قواعد و شگرد‌های تثبیت‌شده در دل سنت‌های زیبایی‌شناختی وَقعی نگذارد و حتی طرزِ هنری خودش را مدام نقض کند. دیکُرم‌ها[86] یا فضیلت‌های هنری در نگاه هنرمندان پیشرو برای درهم‌شکسته شدن ساخته‌شده‌اند و مدام باید به ذائقۀ عمومی سیلی زد[87]. ذات هنر انقلابی‌گری است و محافظه‌کاری و اعتدال در آن جایی ندارد. در این وضع، ما با آثار هنری‌ای روبه‌رو هستیم که ژانر ستیزند و نمی‌توان آن‌ها را در مقوله، جنبش، مکتب (یا به تعبیر عام‌تر سنتِ) خاصی گنجاند. بسیاری از اندیشمندان پسامدرن از امحای همین مقوله‌بندی‌ها و ژانر‌شناسی‌ها گفته‌اند. عطف نظر به اینکه انگار این آثار در هیچ سنت زیبایی‌شناختی خاصی نمی‌گنجند آیا ارزش‌گذاری هنری چنین آثاری با رویکرد چند-مقوله‌ای امکان دارد؟

اجازه بدهید این ایراد را جور دیگری تقریر کنم. اگر ارزش‌گذاری هنری یا ارزش‌های زیبایی‌شناسی اموری محصور در سنت‌ها باشند آن‌وقت تکلیف خلاقیت و نوآوری هنری چه می‌شود؟ چنانکه پیداست بداعت و اصالت در پرتو همین بدیع بودن از سنت‌های زیبایی‌شناختی فاصله می‌گیرند. امر نو به‌واسطۀ نو بودن و تازگی‌اش پیشینه‌دار نیست که در سنتی قوام پیدا کرده باشد و بتوان آن را در مقوله‌های مسبوق جا داد.[88] نقضِ بدیع و خلاقانۀ قاعده‌ها کاری نیست که به لطف قواعد از پیش موجود انجام شود. البته احتمالاً هنرها اغلب نه خلاقیت محض که آمیزه‌ای از صناعت و خلاقیت‌اند ولی سویۀ بدیع و نوآورانۀ هنر را چطور می‌توان مقوله‌بندی و تَبَعش ارزش‌گذاری کرد؟ آیا رویکرد چند-مقوله‌ای یا ارزش‌گذاری سنت‌محور رویکردی محافظه‌کارانه به هنر نیست؟

پاسخ نوئل ساده و سرراست است:

«اما در مورد آثاری که نمی‌توان آن‌ها را در یکی از ژانرهای جاافتاده جا داد، می‌شود گروه‌های مرجع[89] از آثار مشابه ساخت و با مقایسه با سایر اعضای گروه مرجع از اهداف و غایات اثر موردبحث سر درآورد. لذا با قرار دادن آثار در دستۀ مربوطه‌شان می‌توان به اهداف آن‌ها پی برد. (همان‌طور که منتقدان فرانسوی گروه مرجعِ فیلم‌نُوار را ساختند)»  (همان ص. 28).

سنتِ سنت‌شکنی هم سنتی است که دست‌کم یک قاعده دارد و آن اینکه از رسالت‌های هنرمند تخطی از قواعد تثبیت‌شده و گریز از تصلب همۀ فضیلت‌های هنری است. قاعدۀ قاعده‌گریزی مدام و فراگیر هم قاعده‌ای است. و تازه «بخش عظیمی از همین هنر آوانگارد در ذیل جنبش‌هایی جا گرفته است. جنبش‌هایی مانند کوبیسم، فوتورئالیسم، پاپ آرت، مینیمالیسم، پست مدرنیسم و غیره و ذلک». (همان ص. 95)

کَرول تصدیق می‌کند که هر آن ممکن است مقولۀ هنری تازه‌ای پدید آید و برخی مقوله‌های هنری موجود نیز مدام در حال تغییر و تحول‌اند. اما این مقوله‌های نو‌ظهور از هیچ (ex nihilo) زاده نمی‌شوند. بلکه می‌توان فرایندهای تحول مقوله‌ها و زایش مقوله‌های تازه را شناخت: هم‌آمیزی ژانرها، جفت زدن مقوله‌ها به یکدیگر، کنار گذاشتن یک شگرد یا یک سبک غالب و روی کار آوردن یک شگرد یا یک ارزش هنری مغفول و مواردی ازاین‌دست ازجملۀ این فرایندهاست. با بررسی این فرایندها می‌توان پدید آمدن یک مقولۀ تازه یا تحول مقولات پیشینه‌دار را ردگیری کرد. هنر آوانگارد نیز از دل فرایندهایی ازاین‌دست بیرون می‌آید و منتقد کاربلد معمولاً فهمی اجمالی از  این‌جور آثار نوظهور دارد (همان ص. 184 و 185).

دست‌آخر او اضافه می‌کند که حتی اگر به فرض (فرضی که خود او می‌گوید احتمالش بسیار اندک است) اثری پدید آید که نتوان آن را در هیچ مقوله‌ای جا داد باز می‌توان از بررسی بستر تاریخی- اجتماعی آن به اهدافش پی برد. او می‌گوید «آثار هنری مانند سایر مصنوعات بشری به دلایلی ساخته می‌شوند که با بررسی بستر و زمینۀ درست شدن اثر می‌توان به آن دلایل رسید و برحسب آن دلایل تخمین زد که اثر با معیارهای خودش [یا مقوله‌اش] تا چه حد کامیاب است.» (همان ص. 191).

Therefore, Carroll does not find the first formulation of Wimsatt and Beardsley's argument in favor of the intentional fallacy convincing.

-2' Carroll's Refutation of the Circularity Argument

The circularity argument told us that the author's intention can only be grasped by referring to the text. The artist's intention is a black box to which we have no direct access. The only clue that informs us of the author's intention and is available to us is the text itself. Consequently, there is no way but to say that the author's intention is his work. To discover the author's intention, one must refer to his work, and on the other hand, the author's work is his intention, and this means circularity. The evidence for A is B, and the evidence for B is A. To identify the intentions behind the work, we use the work itself, and then we use those same intentions to evaluate the work, and this measuring of the work against itself is a philosophical virus that philosophers call circularity. For example, consider a work in which the creator's intention has been executed to the letter. It is clear that we do not have access to the author's mind (dead or alive), but by referring to the work, we can discern his artistic intention. However, if for any reason the artist was unable to execute his intention as he wished, we still have no way to his intention, and the only thing before us is the work of art.

Carroll believes one can escape this circularity. "We do not have direct access to the artist's intention. This is true. But we have much indirect evidence and indications for it. Because, as we said earlier, artworks belong to categories[90] (such as styles, movements, traditions, etc.), and if we place the work in its appropriate category, we can find a way to the artist's intention." (Ibid., p. 75). And moreover, artistic manifestos, the artist's letters, diaries, and interviews all provide clues to reaching the author's artistic intention.[91] Of course, our most important reference is the work itself, but the work is not the only reference. It is here that Wimsatt and Beardsley's strict separation between internal evidence / external evidence seems to weaken somewhat. Carroll concludes:

"So, firstly, there is evidence and indications outside the artwork itself that lead to the artist's intention, and secondly, sometimes the artwork alone provides evidence and indications that show what the artist intended and/or where they failed to achieve it. Thus, the circle is broken, and the circularity argument fails." (Ibid., p. 76).

3'- Carroll's Refutation of the Achievement Argument

The achievement argument says that instead of the artist's motive, one should pay attention to what they have achieved. Even if we had a way to discover the artist's intention (which, in Wimsatt and Beardsley's view, we do not), why should we fundamentally do so? The critic should deal solely with the product (= the artwork), that is, with whether the author's intention has been successfully "realized" or not.

Carroll responds by saying that, of course, it is not the artist's intention and motive that are evaluated. "For example, the critic does not say, 'Wow! What a good intention!' Rather, the critic deals with the artist's achievement or the product of their agency." (Ibid., p. 77). But the point is that an artistic action is properly understood when we know the intention of its agent. By knowing the agent's intention, one can examine whether their work was successful based on the criteria they themselves intended. Therefore, the artist's intention is undoubtedly relevant to the evaluation of their work. He returns to the example of Ed Wood's science-fiction film and writes:

"Deviation from Hollywood codes cannot be the achievement of the film Plan 9 from Outer Space. Because if we consider deviation from the norm[92] an action behind which there is an intention [i.e., we consider it an intentional action], then Wood could not have performed such an action, since he is simply not of that caliber. An action beyond someone's cognitive capabilities is not their doing [...] Also, if you know that Wood's intention was to make a valuable science-fiction story, then knowing this is also relevant to evaluating his work." (Ibid., p. 78).

It is true that the object or subject of art criticism is the artist's achievement, i.e., the work of art itself, but one must know that the work is the locus of the artist's agency. In other words, the artistry of the artist is manifested in the work, and the subject of criticism is precisely this manifested achievement of artists in the product of their labor (the work of art).

In short, a true understanding of the artist's achievement depends on understanding their intention; for example, to evaluate the achievement of a novice artist in the style of Abstract Expressionism, you must know that their intention was to paint, not to play and pour paint onto the canvas. In sum, Carroll also rejects the third version of Wimsatt and Beardsley's argument.[93]

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[1] This article was published in the literary and artistic monthly Hengam, Issue 3, Year 3, Esfand 1396, pp. 5-16, which I have re-edited here.

[2] The Intentional Fallacy

[3] The Affective Fallacy

[4] William K. Wimsatt

[5] Monroe Beardsley

[6] Noel Carroll

[7] New-Criticism

[8] Close reading means examining the complex relationships between the formal elements of the text and its content.

[9] autonomy

[10] "Compensation" in the above phrase can and is better understood in its psychoanalytic sense as well: a type of defense mechanism whereby a person compensates for their failure and defeat in area "A" with a major victory or repeated victories in area "B."

[11] autonomous

[12] self-contained

[13] sweeper

[14] A reference to a statement by the contemporary philosopher of science Hilary Putnam in defense of scientific realism.

[15] efficient

[16] non-sense

[17] truth-apt

[18] For an example of such positivist analyses and the relationship between meaning and reason among positivists, see Ayer's Philosophy, Robert M. Martin, translated by Kaveh Behbahani, Ney Publishing, 1390, pp. 57 to 61.

[19] connotation

[20] denotation

[21]  Many of these poetic devices can also be found in myths and religious texts. For example, paradox (a sentence with internal contradiction), which is a favored device of poets, is abundant in religious texts. In the Bible we read, "Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it," or in the Quran we read, "When you threw, it was not you who threw" (ما رَمَیتَ ِاذ رَمَیتَ). The renowned French philosopher and ethnologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl considered contradiction to be one of the mechanisms of the primitive human mind. Positivism, by discarding superstition (whether in the guise of myth, religion, or poetry), was determined to rid humanity of primitiveness. Interestingly, even science itself cannot be demystified. The empirical sciences make extensive use of metaphors, and many contemporary thinkers (such as the Anglo-American analytic philosopher Max Black) believe that although metaphor is not susceptible to truth or falsehood, it can bring knowledge to human beings.

[22] demystified

[23]  In our own Iran, during the 1970s and 1980s, we witnessed the dominance of this very scientism among intellectuals. "Scientific philosophies" had become a byword for Iranian Marxists, and the religious were seeking confirmation for religious propositions in science, speaking of the "Thermodynamics of Worship" (the title of a book by Mehdi Bazargan).

[24]   The domination of positivism (in the sense of the excessive bullying of science) must be distinguished from the respectability of scientific thinking. Science is precious, but within its own limits. And what exchanges it cannot have with art and philosophy! But the totalitarianism of scientific thought and methodology is another matter. The totalitarianism of the logic of science creates for us a time like the one Charles Dickens depicts in his readable novel Hard Times. The autocrat of scientific praxis sought to occupy the colorful, poetic, aesthetic land.

[25] transcendental

[26] microcosm

[27]  Drawing on the distinction made by the American literary critic M. H. Abrams in his famous work The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, one can say that the art theory of the New Critics is a kind of "objective theory" of art. A theory that explains the work of art by itself (by the text of the work). He contrasts this type of theory with mimetic theories (whose concern is the relationship of the artwork to the external world), pragmatic theories (which deal with the relationship between the artwork and the audience), and expressive theories (which focus on the relationship of the artwork to the artist himself).

[28]  For example, the important New Critical critic, Richards, used the term "pseudo-statement" to separate scientific truth from poetic truth. A statement is a sentence that is empirically verifiable. In contrast, poetic sentences are not empirically verifiable or falsifiable, and for this reason, they only resemble statements in form but are not real statements, and applying the criterion of science to them is fundamentally incorrect.

[29] anti-intentionalism

[30] textual meaning

[31] authorial meaning

[32]  intentionalism

[33] See, Aesthetics, Sebastain Gardner, published in The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Second Edition, Edited by Nicholas Bunnin, E. P. Tsui-James, Blackwell, P. 248.

[34] relativism

[35] References to the article by Wimsatt and Beardsley are from the following article:

1. K. Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley, The Intentional Fallacy, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27537676?origin=JSTOR-pdf.

This article was translated into Persian in 1372 by the dear and learned friend Ali Masoumi, in the book The Lotus Circle, Navid Publications, under the title “The Fallacy of Intention.” Unfortunately, the book is out of print and I could not find this translation. I myself translated the quoted passages of the article from the original text into Persian.

[36] As we shall see later, Noël formulates this principle under the title of “the argument from circularity.”

[37] For reading Longinus’s famous treatise, see Longinus’s Treatise on the Sublime, translated by Reza Seyed Hosseini, Academy of Persian Language and Literature, 1378.

[38] Fortunately, a work by Croce on this subject has been translated into Persian: General Aesthetics, Benedetto Croce, translated by Fuad Rouhani, Elmi va Farhangi Publications, ninth edition, 1392.

[39] imitation

[40] representation

[41] Translating the verb express from English into Persian in the philosophy of ethics and the philosophy of art is somewhat troublesome. There is a difference between when we say something about our emotions and when we express our emotions. Suppose I say about myself that I am a touchy person. Then this statement of mine is a statement about my emotions that is either true or false. But if, in the middle of an argument, I start shouting and yelling, then I have not said something about my emotions; rather, I have expressed my emotions (in this case, my anger), and this expression is not characterized by the attribute of truth or falsity. In other words, there is a difference between “expressing” (express) and “saying” (say). When I say something (for example, I say the weather is cold today), my statement is about something (the weather). But when I express my anger, I am not saying something about anger. What is there is the manifestation of anger. English-language philosophers draw our attention to this subtle difference between the verb express and the verb say. Persian-speaking translators have chosen various equivalents to show this difference. Some have considered the appropriate equivalent for express to be “ebrāz” (manifestation) and some “farānamāyi” (display). The renowned Iranian thinker Mostafa Malekian has sometimes used the equivalent “vasf-ol-hāl” (description of state). In this book, I have used the equivalent “bayān” (expression), which is the suggestion of most translators. A good source for reading about expressive theories and the criticisms leveled against them: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art, Noël Carroll, translated by Saleh Tabatabai, third edition, 1392, published by the Academy of Arts Press, pp. 93 - p. 168.

[42] expressive theory of art

[43] Aesthetics, Sebastain Gardner, published in The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Second Edition, Edited by Nicholas Bunnin, E. P. Tsui-James, Blackwell, P. 248.

[44] psychology of composition

[45] internal evidence

[46] external evidence

[47] Poetic allusiveness

[48] As far as I know, this equivalent was first used by the Iranian thinker Abdolkarim Soroush. Abolqasem Fanaei, however, rightly disagrees with this equivalence. The phrase ad hominem itself means attacking the claimant instead of critiquing the claim. Fanaei believes that the fallacy of motive and motivated is a good equivalent for the appeal to motive fallacy, which is more specific than the former fallacy. This precise distinction is not relevant to our discussion, and I continue to use the more established equivalent. And that, in my belief, the intentional fallacy generally bears resemblances to ad hominem and specifically to appeal to motive. For Fanaei's discussion, see On the Conflation of Motive and Motivated, Abolqasem Fanaei, a summary of the article was published in Shahrvand-e Emrooz magazine, and the full text is available online.

[49] universal

[50] contingent

[51] Perhaps proponents of the fallacy of motive and motivated believe that discovering the intention of the speaker of a claim is possible but not desirable. Wimsatt and Beardsley, of course, besides saying that the author's intention has no bearing on the artistic value and meaning of the work, also believe in the impossibility of discovering the author's intention. It is not without interest to note here that sometimes (and rarely) a "fallacy" can, in another system of thought, be a method of thinking. For example, the ad hominem fallacy, through sheer repetition, constitutes a method for the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. His method of working is, in the words of some, a kind of "philosophical psychology." For instance, what philosophical conclusions did he not draw from the fact that Socrates was ugly and that Christ, in his view, was resentful! It is interesting that some trace the lineage of the death of the author theory to Nietzsche's views on the death of God. Of course, Nietzsche said "God is dead," but his author-caressing tendencies indicate that he constantly revives the author and slays him again with the dagger of his devastating critiques. In my opinion, it is unlikely that Nietzsche, were he alive, would have accepted the death of the author in such formulations (whether French or English).

For an account of Nietzsche's commissions of the fallacy of motive and motivated, see

What Nietzsche Really Said, Kathleen M. Higgins, Robert C. Solomon, Chapter 5, p. 125- 176

Abolqasem Fanaei writes that some consider the conflation of "motive and motivated" always a fallacy, and some never consider it a fallacy. He speaks of a third group who believe this is sometimes a fallacy and sometimes not. Fanaei himself, by distinguishing knowledge into investigative knowledge (knowledge through reason) and imitative knowledge (knowledge through testimony), argues in favor of the third view and considers the conflation of motive and motivated a fallacy in the context of investigation/acquisition of knowledge, but does not consider the same act a fallacy in the context of imitation/acquisition of knowledge through testimony. For the details of his arguments, refer to On the Conflation of Motive and Motivated, Abolqasem Fanaei. I suspect there is another fallacy that is the method of philosophizing for some other philosophers, and that is the so-called genetic fallacy, which is specifically the working method of philosophers like Nietzsche and Foucault, but under the name genealogy. The details of this matter require another occasion.

[52] meta-criticism

[53] evaluation

[54] The gist of Carroll's argument in this book is that the critic performs seven tasks that influence one another. These seven tasks are: 1- description, 2- classification, 3- contextualization, 4- analysis, 5- elucidation, 6- interpretation, and 7- evaluation. In Carroll's view, the critic performs at least one of tasks one through six along with the seventh task (evaluation or valuation). In other words, the presence of one of tasks one through six is a necessary condition for the critical act, and evaluation itself alone is also a necessary condition for criticism. Valuation accompanied by one or more actions from one through six constitutes the sufficient condition for the critical act. Carroll's point is that criticism consists of reasoned evaluation; that is, the critic must find the artistically valuable features of the work and assess the overall artistic value of the work, but must support their evaluation/valuation with reasons rooted in at least one of actions one through six. See

On Criticism, Noel Carroll, Routledge, 2009, P. 84-86.

A Persian translation of this book has been published with the following details. Since I had read the book carefully and taken extensive notes before its translation was published, I did not consult the Persian translation, and all references and quotations are from the original text and my own rendering: دربارۀ نقد (گذری بر فلسفۀ نقد)، Noël Carroll, Saleh Tabatabai, Nashr-e Ney, 1396.

[55] Post-human or anti-humanistic criticism

[56] artistic intention

[57] agency

[58] Success value

[59] intentional acts

[60] Ed Wood

[61] primitive modernism

[62] inaccessibility argument

[63] circularity argument

[64] achievement argument

[65] mind-reading

[66] fallible

[67] My dear friend and eloquent poet Vahid Davar drew my attention to the interesting point that the word qasideh (ode) essentially means that which the poet intends to compose.

[68] See the influential article below. I should add that this article was written in critique of the privileged and special access of humans to their own minds and mental processes. The gist of the authors Nisbett and Wilson's argument is that they seek to demonstrate through empirical experiments that humans are always theorizing about their own minds as well, and of course, these theorizations are accompanied by error. Theorizing about one's own mind is no different from theorizing about the minds of others in terms of fallibility. In short, just as we theorize to understand the author's intention, the author also has no choice but to do the same to understand their own intention. If we accept this view, it must be said that while the author holds no special position in discerning their own intention, the audience also lacks such a position. In summary, in the valuation and interpretation of an artwork, there is no difference between the author and the audience; both deal with hypotheses, theories, and speculation. In Carroll's view, to interpret and/or evaluate an artwork, we must offer the best hypothesis about the true intention of the work's author regarding the work in question.

Telling more Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes, Richard Nisbett, Timothy Wilson, Psychological Review · March 1977

[69] physical anthropology

[70] See. On Criticism, pp.170- 190

[71] category-relative

Some call this approach of Noël the use of genre-specific criteria; that is, criteria that, within a genre (and "all other things being equal"), are considered artistic value. See.

The Use of Reason in the Evaluation of Artworks, Commentaries on the Turner Prize, Les Gillon, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 75

[72] plural-category approach

[73] genre-splicing

[74] On Criticism, pp. 181-182

[75] Tradition has at least three meanings, and our intent in this discussion is one of those meanings. One meaning of tradition is something antiquated, a long-standing and ancient custom that is obsolete and outmoded. For instance, when we say the tradition of burying daughters alive among the pre-Islamic Arabs, we mean tradition in this sense. In this sense, someone might wish to revive a part of tradition or to let it die out. The second meaning of tradition is a common sphere of various celestial thoughts that is unchanging and fixed. Tradition in this sense is a set of transcendental and eternal truths. This concept of tradition is common among perennialists (or proponents of perennial wisdom). But the third meaning of tradition refers to matters (specifically) narratives and stories that have been handed down from one generation to the next and have likely been transformed or improved. Our meaning of tradition in this text is tradition in the third sense. That is, the canonical narratives and texts in light of which people's address and interaction with one another becomes possible. As is evident, tradition in this sense is something dynamic that is perhaps constantly and gradually renewed, although it may have remained stagnant for long periods and rigidly refused dialogue with other traditions, requiring fundamental revisions. A good equivalent for this third meaning of tradition is "farādahish" (meta-tradition).

[76] Reference to lines from Shamloo's poetry: "Jokh Emrooz" and "Joghrafiyā-ye Mā Kojāst?" from the collection Madāyeh-e Bi-Seleh.

[77] tradition-bound aesthetics

In a book on the aesthetics of food and eating (Kargadan Publishing), which will likely be released soon, I have defended tradition-bound taste (or the sense of taste confined by tradition). For a more detailed discussion of the concept of tradition and MacIntyre's view, see. The Philosophy of MacIntyre, Jack Russell Weinstein, Ney Publishing, 1390, pp. 137-197, and of course I must note that T. S. Eliot's important essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is among the writings that inspire this view.

[78] Of course, Carroll himself repeatedly uses the word tradition in his discussions, but ultimately, as is evident, the word genre is more important and more frequently used by him. In my belief, tradition is broader than genre, and genre, movement, school, technique, style, etc., all take shape within aesthetic traditions. Some also believe that the concept of genre in Carroll's language is used "very loosely" and is sometimes conflated with style or movement. In my opinion, if the basic unit for classifying a work were the aesthetic tradition, and then genre, movement, style, etc., in the next stage—though this statement requires further reflection and scrutiny. See.

The Use of Reason in the Evaluation of Artworks, Commentaries on the Turner Prize, Les Gillon, Palgrave Macmillan, pp.53-54.

[79] canonic

[80] It should be noted that there is an important similarity between the New Critics and Carroll. Both the New Critics and Carroll consider "literary canons"—that is, the body of important and established works in art history—to possess objective aesthetic values. This is in contrast to postmodern thinkers and critics, who view the canonicity of the canon as the product of socio-political forces. Of course, the New Critics seek the aesthetic superiority of canonical works solely in their form, whereas Carroll does not believe in formalism.

[81] daydream

[82] displacement of hostility

[83] prima facie

[84] confabulation

[85] Carroll defends in detail the similarity between interpreting a work of art and interpreting everyday interactions in the following article:

Art, Intention and conversation, Noel Carroll, Published in Intention and Interpretation, Edited by Gary Iseminger, Temole University Press, 1992, pp.97-131.

He also responds to the objections raised against this view in the following article:

The Intentional Fallacy: Defending Myself, Noel Carroll, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Summer, 1997), pp.305-309

[86] decorum

[87] A reference to the manifesto of one of the radical modern movements, Futurism: "Slapping the face of public taste."

[88] I found it interesting that a similar objection arises against the Aristotelian account of the concept of virtue. Aristotle believed that a person acquires virtue through gradual habituation and familiarization with a competence. The renowned contemporary epistemologist Linda Zagzebski says, "The idea that virtue is acquired through gradual habituation is one of Aristotle's most reasonable legacies. However, there are virtues that do not seem to be acquired through habit at all: the virtues of originality and creativity, which not only do not require habituation but seem to flourish in its absence." (Virtues of the Mind, Linda Zagzebski, translated by Amir Hossein Khodaparast, Kargadan Publishing, 1396, pp. 179 and 180.)

[89] reference classes

[90] category

[91] A very striking example: Nino Frank, the translator of the works of the modern Irish writer James Joyce, would consult the author about the translation of Joyce's works and inquire about his intention. The translator understood from Joyce's words that the meaning of the work was not important to him; what was more important was the musicality of the language. Joyce also writes in a letter to his daughter Lucia: "Only God knows what meaning lies in my prose. It is enough that it is pleasing to the ear..." (James Joyce, Chester G. Anderson, translated by Houshang Rahnema, Hermes Publishing, 1387, p. 144 and p. 146.) It should be noted that in this case, the author's intention was not to present a specific content with a fixed message, but to offer melodic and pleasing prose. But Chester Anderson's book, with Houshang Rahnema's excellent translation, is, as it happens, an example that shows how events in the life of a great and famous author like Joyce influence the text of his works.

[92] transgression

[93] Of course, the discussions raised in this context were primarily concerned with Carroll’s defense of the relevance of the author’s intention to artistic evaluation (or valuation), and we dealt less with his defense of appealing to the artist’s intent and theorizing about it in the interpretation of the work of art. These two are, of course, not unrelated; that is, to evaluate a work of art, one must have an understanding of it, and grasping the values of a work requires some interpretation. For a detailed discussion of this issue and Carroll’s reasons for opposing anti-intentionalism in the realm of interpretation, and not merely evaluation, see the following sources:

On Criticism, Noel Carroll, VIII. Artistic Intentions Again: ROUND II—Intentions and Interpretation P. 134-152

Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays, Noel Carroll, Cambridge, 2003, Part 3: Intentions and Interpretation, P. 157-213.

Art, Intention and conversation, Noel Carroll, Published in Intention and Interpretation, Edited by Gary Iseminger, Temole University Press, 1992, pp.97-131.

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Author: Kaveh Behbahani

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