## 1. Background



In *Aesthetics*, Beardsley develops a philosophy of art that is
sensitive to three things:


1. art itself and people's pre-philosophical interest in and
opinions about art,
2. critics' pronouncements about art, and
3. developments in philosophy, especially, though not exclusively,
those in the analytic tradition.



More than anyone else, Beardsley took a love of the arts, independent
of overarching philosophical commitments, seriously, and tried to make
sense of it. Although he didn't automatically defer to
pre-reflective opinion about or interest in art, he, like Aristotle,
thought they deserved respect and balked at any philosophy of art
that didn't make contact with them, or cavalierly dismissed or
overrode them. His was a philosophy of art based on a love of the
arts--that, and not a love of philosophy or any agenda,
psychological, political, religious, philosophical, or otherwise. The
copious examples and discussions of individual works of art in his
writings illustrate as much, as do his philosophical arguments and
conclusions. Much the same can be said of his concern with, and
respect for, but far from automatic deference to, the remarks of art
critics.



The historical backdrop against which Beardsley developed his
philosophy of art in the late 1940s and early 1950s includes the three
elements mentioned at the beginning of the preceding paragraph. There
were developments in the arts--new forms in music, painting, and
literature had appeared and were appearing--but there was also a
well-established and relatively large canon of works almost
universally regarded as aesthetically superior and worthy of
attention. Art criticism had become an industry, with major schools of
all sorts flourishing: Marxist, Formalist, psychoanalytic, semiotic,
historical, biographical. And philosophy had changed in rapid and
unexpected ways. Analytic philosophy, with its emphasis on language
and strong empiricist tendencies, had gained ascendancy in American
universities in little more than 20 years, and dominated the
philosophical scene.



Beardsley responded to each of the three. His position on developments
in the arts is probably best described as open-minded moderation. He
welcomed new developments, and reference to new works and works that
lack the luster of fame, notoriety, or ready recognition appear
frequently in *Aesthetics* and his other work. He didn't
automatically embrace the latest fad, fashion, or movement, however,
but tried, as he said, to get something out of a work. Failing that, a
work could be ignored, though tentatively and perhaps
temporarily--the fault might be his and not the object's,
he always thought. Certainly, though, the well-established works of
the Western tradition--the Bachs, Goyas, and Popes--had to
be respected and accounted for in any philosophy of art worthy of the
name.



As for art criticism, Beardsley thought that a great deal of it read
like the ruminations of a batter who kept his eyes on the scoreboard,
the fans, his contract, his place in history, or his wife in the
stands--instead of on the ball. Much of it, in other words,
ignored what should be the main object of attention, the work itself.
The school of criticism that attracted Beardsley, and that his
philosophy of art ultimately underwrites, is the so-called New
Criticism. Based in literature, the New Criticism made the literary
work the center of critical attention, and denied, or at least greatly
devaluated, the relevance of facts about the origin of literary works,
their effects upon individual readers, and their personal, social, and
political influence. Close reading is what is required of a critic,
not biographical information about the author, a rundown of the state
of society at the time the work was written, data about the psychology
of creation, predictions about the effects of the work on society, and
certainly not a piece of autobiography detailing the critic's
own personal response to the work. New Critics were explicators more
than anything else, and investigated literary works, and especially
poetry, as if they were found objects--worthwhile ores, rare
jewels, and mundane rocks, each with its own unique properties. As an
expert assayer, the critic must thoroughly and sensitively examine the
objects before him in order to discover their exact nature and, in the
best cases, special value. The rallying cry, in Allen Tate's
words, was, "We must return to, we must never leave, the poem
itself" (Tate 1955, 63). Much the same sentiment is expressed in
Beardsley's remark that "[the critic's] task is to
keep [his] eye on... textual meaning" (PC: 34). Though
based in literary criticism, the New Criticism could be, and should
be, extended to the other arts, Beardsley thought: all art criticism
should make a serious effort to recognize its objects as special,
autonomous, and important in their own right, and not subservient to
ulterior aims or values; all art criticism should attempt to
understand how works of art work and what meanings and aesthetic
properties they have; all art criticism should strive for objective
and publicly accessible methods and standards to test its
pronouncements. The New Criticism did just that, and did what other
criticism, and especially Romantic criticism (in a broad sense of the
term), did not: studiously focused on the work of art itself, as an
object existing in its own right, with its own properties. Far too
much criticism was essentially Romantic, the New Critics thought, and
concentrated on the artist, not the art.



Developments in philosophy were a different story. In general, the
philosophy of art has always been regarded as a backwater by
philosophers, as by far the least rigorous and least important of the
major branches of the field (a sentiment that remains widespread
today), but the low regard in which aesthetics was held was even more
pronounced at the time that Beardsley began work on
*Aesthetics*. In its early, palmy days, analytic philosophy
tended toward logical positivism, which dismissed judgments of
aesthetic value--the core of art criticism, in Beardsley's
estimation--as cognitively meaningless, and ordinary language
philosophy, a species of analytic philosophy that flourished briefly
after World War Two, was unsystematic in its treatment of problems and
even anti-systematic in its objectives--strong philosophical
theses were either verboten, a sign of mistake, or an aberration.
Neither brand of analytic philosophy boded well for aesthetics as a
systematic field of study. There was, however, also a general form of
analytic philosophy not connected with either approach, that is,
analytic philosophy without an overarching commitment to the scientism
of logical positivism or the dogged adherence to everyday language of
ordinary language philosophy. Philosophers like Bertrand Russell, G.E.
Moore, and C.D. Broad, among many others, were analysts without an
agenda, and Beardsley was more in their camp--that is, no
definite camp of analytic philosophy at all--than anyone
else's. For him, an analytic approach to the philosophy of art
meant no more than critically examining the fundamental concepts and
beliefs underlying art and art criticism. Doing philosophy of that
sort required clarity, precision, and a good eye for identifying,
exposing, and evaluating arguments, but left aesthetics, as a
systematic study, as a real possibility.


## 2. The Nature of Aesthetics



Not all the arts could be covered in detail in even so long a book as
*Aesthetics*--it's over 600 pages--so Beardsley
had to content himself with concentrating on three relatively
disparate arts: literature, music, and painting. In keeping with
the conception of philosophy mentioned above, aesthetics was thought
of as meta-criticism. "There would be no problems of
aesthetics", Beardsley says, "if no one ever talked about
works of art.... We can't do aesthetics until we have some
critical statements to work on" (*Aesth:* 1, 4]).
Aesthetics is concerned with "the nature and basis of
criticism,... just as criticism itself is concerned with works of
art" (*Aesth:* 6). The then-current and still widespread
view that philosophy is a second-order, meta-level, and essentially
linguistic activity, taking as its object of study the pronouncements
of first-order activities, such as chemistry, religion, or history, is
reflected in Beardsley's view on the nature of aesthetics.



It's a problematic view, however, and one somewhat belied by
Beardsley's own philosophic practice. Questions like, What sort
of being or existence do works of art have?--a question of
ontology, and one of Beardsley's questions--arise from the
statements of art critics only in that critics use the term
'work of art' and, with that concept available, inquiry
into the ontological status of the objects that answer to it is then
possible. But the question isn't itself one that arises out of,
or concerns the nature and basis of, critical practice, at least not
in any significant sense of the term. For one thing, others besides
critics use the term "work of art"--art dealers and
art suppliers, for example--so the case could just as easily be
made that the ontological question arises out of, and concerns the
nature and basis of, art dealership or art supply-manship. A related
point is that the same argument applies outside the arts. Farmers and
grocers speak of apples, and unless we had some such term as
"apple", the question, What sort of being or existence do
apples have?--again, a question of ontology--couldn't
be posed. It isn't a question that arises out of the cultivation
or sale of apples, however--not in any very direct or meaningful
way--nor is it one that concerns the nature and basis of apple
farming or running a supermarket. Critics, like farmers and art
suppliers, do very well without ontological inquiries; ontological
questions don't lurk in the background, waiting to be asked. In
short, Beardsley's meta-philosophical view that aesthetics is
meta-criticism is underdetermined by the reasons that he advances for
it, inaccurate or correct only if the term
"meta-criticism" is stretched beyond its usual bounds, and
belied to some extent by Beardsley's own
philosophic practice. All of that is not to deny, however, that a
great deal of aesthetics can be profitably viewed as meta-critical, as
a critical examination and evaluation of the nature and basis of at
least some of the statements that art critics make, at least if art
critics are conceived broadly enough to include almost everyone who
has ever stood before a painting, listened to a piece of music, or
read a novel, and then ventured a judgment about it.



Critical statements are of three kinds, Beardsley thinks: descriptive,
interpretative, and evaluative. The first concerns non-normative
properties of works of art that are simply in it, in some sense, and
are available, at least in principle, to anyone of normal eyes and
ears if sufficiently sensitive, attentive, and experienced.
"There is a small red patch in the upper right-hand corner of
the painting" is a descriptive statement, but so is
"Haydn's *23rd Symphony* abounds in
dynamic tension". The philosophical problems that descriptive
statements give rise to involve the concept of form, Beardsley thinks.
Interpretive statements are also non-normative but concern the
"meaning" of a work of art, with "meaning"
here referring to a semantic relation, or at least a purported
semantic relation, between the work and (a small number of exceptions
aside) something outside it. "That's a picture of Notary
Sojac" is an interpretive statement, as are "That's
a picture of a unicorn", "The passage refers to
Brutus's betrayal of Caesar", and "The thesis of
*Macbeth* is exceedingly simple: Thou shalt not kill".
Last, critical evaluations are normative judgments that basically say
that a work of art is good or bad, or how good or bad it is.
"Mozart's 'Turkish March' is an excellent
short piano piece" is a critical evaluation, and so is
"'The Face on the Barroom Floor' is wretched
verse". The judgment "This is beautiful"--the
paradigm of a judgment of taste according to Kant--is sometimes
thought of as a critical evaluation (*Aesth:* 9), but more
often (e.g., *Aesth:* 463, 507), and always in
Beardsley's later writing, as a descriptive judgment, and one
that frequently forms at least a partial basis for a critical
evaluation.


## 3. The Ontology of Art: Phenomenalism and Friends



The first chapter of *Aesthetics* is in part devoted to the
ontology of art--or aesthetic objects, as Beardsley was then wont
to say. The term "work of art" was largely avoided by him
at the time, because, as he later admitted, he did



> 
> 
> not [want] to become enmeshed... in [the question of the
> definition of "work of art", a question] that...
> [had] not convince[d] [him] of its importance or promise[d] any very
> satisfactory and agreeable resolution. (*Aesth:*
> xviii)
> 
> 
> 



That was to change, and Beardsley later did offer a definition of art.
In any case, it's the ontology of "aesthetic
objects" that's first discussed in
*Aesthetics*.



The ontology argued for begins with a distinction between physical
objects and perceptual objects. In speaking of a thing being six feet
by six feet in size and at rest, we're speaking of a physical
object; in speaking of a thing being dynamic and frightening,
we're speaking of a perceptual object. Perceptual objects are
the objects we perceive, objects "some of whose qualities, at
least, are open to direct sensory awareness" (*Aesth:*
31). Aesthetic objects are a subset of perceptual objects. This
doesn't necessarily mean that aesthetic objects aren't
physical objects, however. Aesthetic objects might be other than
physical objects--the conceptual distinction might mark a real
distinction--or they might be physical objects--the
conceptual distinction, though somewhat misleadingly couched in terms
of objects, might simply mark "two aspects of the same"
thing (*Aesth:* 33). At first indifferent as to which
alternative is opted for--Beardsley mentions that he
doesn't "see that it makes much difference which
terminology [that of objects or aspects] is chosen"
(ibid.)--he then proceeds to develop an ontology that stresses
objects more than aspects.



The ontology is phenomenalistic in its leanings, though open to a more
physicalist interpretation. A presentation of an aesthetic object is
defined as the object as experienced by a particular person on a
particular occasion. Essentially, presentations are sense-data of
aesthetic objects. Aesthetic objects aren't presentations,
however, for that would invite not just an uncontrollable population
explosion of aesthetic objects, but chaos in criticism; and neither
are aesthetic objects classes of presentations, for aesthetic objects
must have at least some perceptual properties, but classes, as
abstract entities, have none. However,



> 
> 
> whenever we want to say anything about an aesthetic object, we can
> talk about its presentations. (*Aesth:* 54)
> 
> 
> 



This, Beardsley says,



> 
> 
> does not "reduce" the aesthetic object to a presentation;
> it only analyzes *statements about* aesthetic objects into
> statements about presentations (*Aesth:* 54).
> 
> 
> 



In effect, this is a form of linguistic phenomenalism, and commits
Beardsley to adequate translations of statements about aesthetic
objects into statements about the presentations of such
objects--in effect, statements about experiences of such objects.
As linguistic phenomenalism as a general ontology--or surrogate
for ontology--has met with very strong criticism over the years,
Beardsley's ontology would have problems enough if it stopped
here.



But it doesn't. Not satisfied, Beardsley presses on to
distinguish


1. the artifact--the play itself, say, as written
down--from
2. a particular production of it--the Old Vic's
production, as opposed to the Marquette University theater
department's production--from
3. a particular performance of it--last night's
performance in the Helfaer Theater--from
4. a particular presentation of it--the play as it shows up in
Peter Alelyunas's experience of it, upon attending last
night's performance.



The same distinctions hold across the arts, though differently in
different arts, and somewhat more naturally in some than others. There
is Beethoven's *D Minor Symphony* (the artifact), a
production of it (The Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra's
recording of it), a particular performance of it (my playing the
recording last night, in my house), and particular presentations of it
(mine and other people's experiences of it last night, in my
house). At least in many arts, a single artifact can have many
productions; a single production can have many performances; and a
single performance can give rise to many presentations. As Beardsley
notes, these distinctions collapse to some extent in some of the arts,
and would have to be stretched a bit to fit them all. In reading a
poem silently, he says, the production is the presentation (and I
would also think the performance); "in architecture, the
architect's plans are the artifact; the completed building is
the production" (*Aesth:* 57-58) (and also
presumably the performance); and in painting and sculpture, "the
distinction between artifact and production almost disappears"
(*Aesth:* 58) (with the performance presumably being identical
with both).



But what is the aesthetic object, the object of critical attention?
It's not a presentation or class of presentations, and
it's not the artifact--Beethoven's *9th
Symphony*, for example. If the aesthetic object were the artifact,
it would have contradictory characteristics, since different
recordings of the *9th* have different, incompatible
characteristics: some are shorter than 60 minutes long, some longer.
What's left, and what the aesthetic object must be, is the
production. Thus the primary object of critical attention is the
production of an artifact, and the basic job of the critic is to
describe, interpret, and evaluate such productions.



While interesting, original, and elegant, this position has its
problems. Difficulties with carrying out the translation program that
Beardsley is committed to aside, linguistic phenomenalism is little
more than an attempt to enjoy the benefits of a reductive, sense-data
ontology without paying the price for it. Reductive translations have
commitments; there would be little point in proposing and defending an
elaborate, difficult, counterintuitive, and otherwise inexplicable
translation program, even in schematic form, unless it had some point
beyond translation for the sake of translation. There's either
an ontology and a philosophical purpose behind such
translations--and there certainly seems to be both (an adequate
reductive translation of '*p*' as
'*q*' entails commitment only to the entities
mentioned in '*q*')--or there is not--in
which case the possibility of such translations may be of interest to
linguists and those who like odd parlor games but no one else. In
short, arguing that one can, in principle, avoid speaking of one sort
of entity in favor of another is indirect ontology if it's
philosophy at all, and avoiding taking an explicit stand on ontology
doesn't change the fact. Beardsley would thus seem to be
committed to phenomenalism, despite his explicit claim that aesthetic
objects aren't presentations.



But presentations are ill-suited objects of critical attention in any
case. They're too numerous and variable to ground objective
criticism, and thus too unwieldy to make criticism of any kind worth
the effort. In addition, taking aesthetic objects to be presentations
conflicts with much of the practice--that is, many of the
remarks--of critics themselves. None of this would be news to
Beardsley--he says as much himself in several places--but it
does mean that he shouldn't have walked down the phenomenalist
road as far as he did.



Phenomenalism, even in linguistic dress, also conflicts with
identifying aesthetic objects with productions, since in a great many
cases the production of an aesthetic object isn't the same thing
as a presentation of it. But even if phenomenalism is put to the side
and Beardsley is simply taken at his word, and aesthetic objects are
identified with productions, there are still anomalies. The first and
most important is that the ontological status of aesthetic objects
would be variable to the point of being of little philosophical
interest. A production of a novel, if read silently, is something
mental, a series of thoughts, perhaps conjoined with images. The
production of a play or symphony, however, isn't mental at all,
but a publicly accessible event or process. It thus has whatever
ontological status events or processes do. In architecture, the
production is a building (or a bridge or a walkway), and thus a
physical object (or a cultural object, with physical properties, some
would say). Such wide variability suggests that there's no real
ontology of art at all, nothing firm, finite, or systematically
related enough among the arts to be worth taking note of. A second
problem with taking aesthetic objects to be productions is that, since
some aesthetic objects are mental objects, the problems with
phenomenalism noted at the end of the last paragraph reemerge in at
least some cases, literature among them. A third problem, one in
effect already noted, is that even within one art aesthetic
objects would have a shifting ontological status. In the case of
poetry, for example, if a poem is read silently, the production, and
thus the aesthetic object, is a mental thing, but if the same poem is
read publicly, to an audience, the production, and thus the aesthetic
object, is an event.



By themselves, these objections don't refute Beardsley's views
on the ontology of art. What they show is the price that has to be
paid for them. Perhaps alternative views offer less insight, or
perhaps they offer more insight but at a higher cost, that is,
generate more or even greater anomalies. Beardsley's views might
still be the best, all things considered. If so, the moral to be drawn
may be that the ontology of art isn't a very fruitful or
important area of philosophical investigation, and that no harm to
philosophy or art criticism is done by ignoring it.


## 4. Art as Essentially Institutional



One view that Beardsley certainly did think unacceptable, even if, as
he later came to realize, his own early position wouldn't do, is
that works of art are "essentially institutional".
Depending on the context, this could be a claim either about the
definition of "art" or about the ontology of art.
Beardsley rejects both claims, but it's important to distinguish
them.



In speaking of money as "essentially institutional", a
person is probably claiming no more than that the definition or truth
conditions of "this is money" include a reference to
social institutions. The claim isn't that quarters, dimes,
nickels, and so on fall under a distinct ontological category other
than physical objects, namely, cultural or institutional objects.



If taken ontologically, on the other hand, the force of the claim is
that a work of art isn't a physical object but a different kind
of object altogether, an object whose nature and existence are in part
constituted by culture, tradition, or social institutions. Arthur
Danto's distinction between artworks and "mere real
things"(1981, 1), with beds and ties being paradigms of mere
real things, suggests just such an ontological distinction. For Danto,
it's (1) theories of art and (2) the "aboutness" of
art, or the fact that art is necessarily subject to interpretation,
that make mere real things transform, so to speak, into artworks, and
gain a new ontological status. The nature of a theory of art is never
spelled out by Danto, but apparently all such theories require an
object to be properly placed in an "artworld" to be a work
of art, and not just anyone, at any time, can do such placing. But
even if the indefinite and unexplained nature of Danto's key
concepts is put aside, and the fact that many works of art (for
example, a typical concerto) don't seem to be about anything at
all, or subject to interpretation in any significant sense (at least
until something for it to be about or interpreted in terms of is
cooked up, such as that it's about the very notes being played,
or that it comments on the history of concertos)--even if
that's also put aside, it's hard to see how (1) and (2)
can effect ontological transformations, how things which are otherwise
physical objects become, ontologically speaking, different objects.
Rather, Beardsley thinks, what (1) and (2) suggest is that if a
physical object is a work of art, it has, or at least can have,
properties it wouldn't otherwise have. If a person's a
policeman, he has properties--being able to arrest people, for
example--that he wouldn't otherwise have, but a policeman
has whatever ontological status a person has, no more and no less.
Receiving a certificate from the police academy and putting on a badge
may "transform" a man, but a new object, an essentially
institutional or cultural object, a policeman, doesn't enter the
world because of such doings. The argument that works of art are
cultural objects, not physical objects, because the former have
properties the latter don't, is thus rejected by Beardsley.


## 5. Physical Objects and Kinds



Although Beardsley's early views on ontology tended to either
linguistic phenomenalism or unsystematic pluralism, there were hints,
even at that time, of a simpler and more commonsensical view. That
ontology can be seen lurking beneath the surface of his postulates of
art criticism:


1. The aesthetic object is a perceptual object; that is, it can have
presentations.
2. Presentations of the same aesthetic object may occur at different
times and to different people.
3. Two presentations of the same aesthetic object may differ from
each other.
4. The characteristics of an aesthetic object may not be exhaustively
revealed in any particular presentation of it.
5. A presentation may be veridical; that is, the characteristics of
the presentation may correspond to the characteristics of the
aesthetic object.
6. A presentation may be illusory; that is, some of the
characteristics of the presentation may fail to correspond to the
characteristics of the aesthetic object.
7. If two presentations of the same aesthetic object have
incompatible characteristics, at least one of them is illusory.
(*Aesth:* 46, 48)



Taking "aesthetic object" to mean "work of
art", the underlying ontology isn't a sense-datum ontology
or a mixed-category ontology at all. Several of the
postulates--2, 4, and 6; possibly 3 and 7--are in fact
*prima facie* incompatible with a sense-datum ontology. Rather,
what 1-7 strongly suggest is that a work of art is a physical
object: it's perceptible, publicly or inter-subjectively
available in both time and space, can appear differently from
different points of view and at different times, may not be
exhaustively understood on any given occasion, has properties that may
be correctly or incorrectly perceived, and is such that attributions
to it obey the law of non-contradiction.



Not surprisingly, after 1958 Beardsley



> 
> 
> moved steadily in the direction of some form of non-reductive
> materialism, of seeing how far it is possible to go in treating
> artworks as physical objects. (*Aesth:* xxiv)
> 
> 
> 



The materialism is non-reductive in that works of art have
properties that physical objects generally don't. Such
materialism works well with "singular" works of art, such
as paintings, Beardsley thinks, but "multiple
artworks"--musical compositions which have many
performances, poems which exist in multiple printings--present
problems. The musical composition isn't any single score or
performance, the poem any single printed text. For that reason,
Beardsley once again is driven back in the direction of ontological
pluralism: perhaps works of art are either physical objects (the
singular works) or kinds of physical object (the multiple works), with
"physical object" construed broadly here so as to include
events (such as a dance). This position is only slightly more
economical than Beardsley's earlier one--no works of art
are ideas, which is good, since taking works of art to be ideas
doesn't fit in well with a number of his critical
postulates--and only slightly tidier--essentially, the
proliferation of ontological categories is limited by the broad but
abstract concept of a kind.



Most philosophers would be dissatisfied with such a disjoint ontology,
and Beardsley was no exception. There are basically two ways to avoid
it:


1. subsume physical objects under kinds;
2. subsume kinds under physical objects.



(A third possibility is to subsume both under a broader, inclusive
category. Absent a relatively revisionist ontology, however,
it's hard to see what such a third category would be.) Both
strategies involve assigning primacy to one of the categories, but
each requires that that be done in a way that does justice to what we
say and think about art.



The first proposal, to subsume physical objects under kinds, entails
that the *Mona Lisa* isn't a physical object but a kind
of painting. One difficulty with this is that as a kind, the *Mona
Lisa* wouldn't have any perceptual properties, which is both
strange and in violation of Beardsley's critical postulates. A
second difficulty is that it's a necessary truth--or at
least many philosophers think it's a necessary truth--that
there's only one *Mona Lisa*, yet the view in question
entails that there could be many *Mona Lisas*, many instances
of the kind.



Neither objection is definitive, however. Although Beardsley discusses
neither objection, the first can be deflated by noting that although,
strictly speaking, the *Mona Lisa* is a kind, it has perceptual
properties in that all of its instances do. In other words, since all
instances of the kind have perceptual properties, instances-of-a-kind
are near enough to kinds to allow kinds to have perceptual properties
in an extended sense of the term, by a small conceptual courtesy.
That's close enough for government work (as the saying goes).
Even if this response is acceptable, however, the question of what the
perceptual properties of the *Mona Lisa* are, if two of its
instances differ markedly in their perceptual properties (due, say, to
exposure to sunlight), would remain an odd one. Not an unanswerable
one, however. That question and others like it could be answered by
taking the *Mona Lisa* to be, in effect, an etching, with the
first of its instances as a reference point for others.



That reply, in fact, previews a response to the second objection.
Perhaps it's simply a contingent, historical fact that we
can't create extremely accurate duplicates of paintings, and for
that reason attach great importance to first instances of
painting-kinds. That may be why we're very reluctant to
admit--reluctant to the point of thinking it
impossible--that there could be more than one *Mona
Lisa*.



Even if both objections can be rebutted, though, Beardsley is still
inclined to reject the view that works of art are, all of them,
kinds.



He's also inclined to reject the second view, that works of art
are, all of them, physical objects. Though the topic isn't
pursued at length, his reasons center around the fact that many works
of art--woodcuts, for instance--have multiple instances, and
it's impossible to account for that fact if every work of art is
a physical object. Is Pastijn's *The Last Supper* in Rome
or in Paris? If it's a physical object, it can't be in
both places, so which of the two is it? Since both "Paris"
and "Rome" seem wrong, the correct thing to do is to
reject the assumption that the woodcut is a physical object. Rather,
it's a kind, and has instances that are located in Paris and
Rome.



But if that's enough to quell doubts about some works of art
being kinds, it should also be enough, for the reasons mentioned two
and three paragraphs back, to quell doubts about all works of art
being kinds. The remaining barrier to the first reductive view, that
works of art are, all of them, kinds, would then be removed.



On the other hand, the overall argument could just as easily cut the
other way. If it's physical objects that literally have
perceptual properties, then why not take works of art, all of them, to
be physical objects, with kinds being granted the title in an extended
sense of the term, by a small conceptual courtesy? As traditionally
interpreted, Aristotle holds that in the primary sense a substance is
an individual, but in a secondary sense, by extension, a species is
also a substance. Why not say something similar about works of art?
Why not say, that, strictly speaking, works of art are physical
objects, but in a secondary sense, works of art are kinds?



Beardsley doesn't pursue the issue to the lengths that it has
been here, so it's impossible to know how he'd respond to
the above. On the record, though, he embraces the untidy pluralism
he'd rather avoid. Doing so doesn't especially bother him,
however, as he doesn't think ontological questions as important
as many other questions in aesthetics.

 
## 6. The Definition of Art



As mentioned above, Beardsley "sedulously avoided"
(*Aesth:* 59) the term "work of art" as much as
possible in *Aesthetics*. Even so, he came close to defining
it. "Aesthetic object" is his surrogate term, and he does
offer a schematic definition of it.



The genus of "aesthetic object" is *perceptual
object.* What is its differentia? It's not, Beardsley
argues,


1. a motive or intention, even an aesthetic motive or intention, that
stands behind the creation of the object,
2. an effect, even if an aesthetic effect, that the object produces
in those who experience it, or
3. an attitude, even if, again, an aesthetic attitude, that people
bring to the object.



What's needed is objective differentia, not subjective ones
like (a), (b), and (c). Such differentia could be of either of two
sorts. First, it could express the characteristics of perceptual
objects that all and only aesthetic objects have. This, Beardsley
thinks, can't be done until a great deal of knowledge of
aesthetic objects and the philosophy of art is at hand; and it
isn't. Second, an objective definition could proceed by first
dividing up aesthetic objects into classes according to their sensory
fields--as seen, heard, felt, and so on--and then, within
each field, determining what objective characteristics distinguish
aesthetic objects from other perceptual objects.



The second route is the one Beardsley takes in *Aesthetics*.
Schematically, an aesthetic object is: a visual perceptual object that
isn't in the class of things that plastic forks, crumpled pieces
of paper, and so on are in; or an auditory perceptual object that
isn't in the class of objects that scratches, noises, and so on
are in; etc. This is more the beginnings of an outline of an approach
to a definition than the beginnings of a definition
itself--something Beardsley realizes--and it has problems of
its own. The interesting question, however, isn't what those
problems are or the ultimate success or failure of this "divide
and conquer" approach, but why he adopted it in the first place,
and why he later abandoned it.



He adopted it for two reasons. First, approaches of the (a), (b), and
(c) sort have numerous and serious problems (*Aesth:*
60-63). Second, if art criticism can amount to knowledge, as
Beardsley believes it can, then what's called for is an object
of study that can be examined in its own right, in respect to its own
objective qualities. Both of these factors led him in search of an
objective definition of "aesthetic object". Since,
however, identifying necessary and sufficient conditions seemed out of
the question--there was too much variety among aesthetic objects,
and too much disagreement among philosophers--"divide and
conquer" seemed a better strategy.



The reason why he later abandoned it is that he came to realize not
only that his objections to an (a)-type definition weren't
definitive, but that there's much to be said for an
intentionalistic definition, a definition couched in terms of the
artist's intention.


## 7. Against Institutional Definitions



Before he arrived at that view, though, he spent some time arguing
against a popular definition proposed by George Dickie. According to
Dickie,



> 
> 
> a work of art in the classificatory sense is (1) an artifact, (2) a
> set of aspects of which has had conferred upon it the status of
> candidate for appreciation by some person or persons acting on behalf
> of a certain social institution (the artworld). (Dickie 1974, 34)
> 
> 
> 



Beardsley has no quarrel with (1), but he finds fault with (2) on
several counts.



First, he wonders whether the "appreciation" spoken of can
be any sort of appreciation at all--historical, moral, personal,
professional, or whatever. If it can, the definition is far too broad.
Perhaps, though, it's distinctly aesthetic appreciation
that's meant. In that case, Dickie would have to square his
second condition with his attack on the idea of aesthetic appreciation
as a distinct sort or kind of appreciation.



Second, the idea of candidacy for appreciation is problematic. A
candidate for appreciation can't be merely something, some
property (or aspect), that's potentially appreciable. Too many
properties of too many things are potentially appreciable. If
"candidacy" is interpreted more narrowly and strictly,
however, the idea that a property needs a status like "candidate
for appreciation" bestowed upon it seems wrongheaded. A
candidate for President of the United States, for example, isn't
just anyone who's eligible but someone who has taken at
least some steps toward attaining that office, or someone who has had
an official endorsement. But what's comparable in the case of
aspects of works of art?



> 
> 
> What sort of preparation or endorsement is contained in the assignment
> of candidacy for appreciation? The term suggests that something cannot
> be appreciated until it has been declared a candidate for
> appreciation. (APV: 133)
> 
> 
> 



but being appreciated, or even appreciable, stands in need of no
one's imprimatur.



Third, there's the question of who confers the status of
candidate for appreciation. Dickie's explicit answer is
"some person or acting on behalf of a certain social institution
(the artworld)", with the artworld itself being



> 
> 
> a bundle of systems: theater, painting, sculpture, literature, music,
> and so on, each of which furnishes an institutional background for the
> conferring of the status on objects within its domain (Dickie
> 1974, 33).
> 
> 
> 



In calling the artworld an institution, Dickie says, he's saying
that "it is an established practice" (1974, 31). Music,
painting, literature, and so on are social practices.



Beardsley will have none of this. What it is to act on behalf of an
institution is clear enough when an identifiable social institution,
such as a university, is in question. The president of Marquette
University, for example, declares a tuition hike, or signs a document
granting tenure to David Decker. He acts on behalf of the institution
in doing so, because there are clearly defined rules, roles, rights,
responsibilities, powers, positions, concepts, and acts that
constitute the institution that is the university, and he fits into it
in a way that enables him to raise tuition, or to confer the status of
tenured professor. There's nothing remotely comparable in
"the artworld"--no formal, identifiable set of
interlocking rules, roles, relations, and so on constituting an
institution, and so nothing like an institutional token (comparable to
Marquette University or the Department of the Treasury) with empowered
individuals capable of conferring the status of painting, literature,
or music on objects. What there are are loose collections of people of
various sorts interested in painting, music, and literature. The same
is true of gardening and cooking, however, and roses and veal cutlets
need no social institutions, no "gardenworlds" or
"foodworlds", to be what they are. Neither, Beardsley
thinks, do paintings, poems, or concertos need social institutions,
subdivisions of the "artworld", to be what they are.
Museums, books of poetry, academies of music, and journals of art
criticism exist because of a felt need to accommodate, promote,
explore, and otherwise reap the benefits of pre-existing, logically
prior objects known as works of art. And as for practices,



> 
> 
> Does it make any sense to speak of acting on behalf of a
> *practice*? Status-awarding authority can center in an
> institutional token, but practices, as such, seem to lack the
> requisite source of authority. Perhaps the artworld, as Dickie
> conceives it, could not confer status. (APV: 134)
> 
> 
> 



Last, and independent of the other objections, there is the problem of
circularity. Works of art are defined in terms of the artworld; the
artworld consists of people who have some sort of special doings with
works of art. Ultimately, art is defined in terms of itself. To the
response to this--basically, Dickie's--that the circle
is large enough to make the definition interesting and informative,
Beardsley shakes his head in dismay: if works of art are



> 
> 
> ultimately defined in terms of themselves, some important piece of the
> truth must not have been encompassed in the circle. (APV:
> 134)
> 
> 
> 



Although some of these objections apply to Dickie alone, most,
Beardsley thinks, apply in one form or another to every institutional
definition of art.


## 8. A Neo-Romantic Definition



His own preferred view is neo-Romantic and
intentionalistic--perhaps surprisingly, since Beardsley opposes
Romanticism and intentionalism in the philosophy of art on every other
front. A work of art is defined as



> 
> 
> *either* an arrangement of conditions intended to be capable of
> affording an experience with marked aesthetic character *or*
> (incidentally) an arrangement belonging to a class or type of
> arrangements that is typically intended to have this capacity. (APV:
> 299)
> 
> 
> 



The first disjunct is the more important one; it says that
something's a work if it's an artifact, "an
arrangement of conditions", that was intended by its creator to
be capable of providing an experience with non-negligible aesthetic
character. It's important to realize what's not being said
here. First, the definition doesn't say that a work of art is
intended to provide (or be capable of providing) a full-blown
aesthetic experience. Only "an experience with marked aesthetic
character" is required. Second, the definition doesn't say
that a work of art doesn't or can't have a utilitarian
function, in the everyday sense of the term. A work of art could be a
chair that's many times simply sat in, for example. Third, the
definition doesn't say that the primary intention behind the
creation of the artifact is an aesthetic one. The primary intention
behind the creation of a religious icon, for example, could be to
bring worshipers closer to God. What makes such an icon a work of art,
however, is not *that* intention but another one: the
intention that it be capable of affording viewers an experience with
marked aesthetic character. How marked this character must be
isn't specified, but that may be all to the good. As the exact
extension of "work of art" is somewhat indefinite, so is
the extension of "artifact created with the intention of being
capable of affording an experience with marked aesthetic
character". If the extensions of the two are the same or very
nearly so, and the objects in the "gray areas", the areas
not definitely within or without the extension of the two, are also
the same or very nearly so, then so much the better for the
definition.



The second part of the definition picks up those objects that
definitely are works of art but were created in a mechanical,
almost an assembly-line fashion, or as just another instance of its
kind. Some beautiful vases may fall into the first class, and many
medieval icons into the second. To make sure that the extension of the
*definiens* matches that of the *definiendum*, the
second disjunct of the definition is needed.



Why accept the definition? For several reasons, Beardsley thinks.
First, a definition



> 
> 
> chosen for a role in aesthetic theory should mark a distinction that
> is... significant for aesthetic theory (APV: 299),
> 
> 
> 



and Beardsley's does. Second,



> 
> 
> in selecting key terms for aesthetic theory we ought to stay as close
> as convenient to ordinary use (APV: 300).
> 
> 
> 



Not everyone's use of a term needs to be captured in fashioning
a definition, which would be impossible in any case with a term as
elastic and tendentiously used as "work of art".
Beardsley's definition has the merit of capturing



> 
> 
> reasonably well a use that has been prominent for some centuries and
> still persists quite widely today, outside the speech and writing of
> or about the avant-garde. (APV: 300)
> 
> 
> 



In other words, Beardsley's definition captures the ordinary
extension of a term. The fact that it may not capture the extension of
a term as used by the avant-garde--who may claim that Waltina
Weber's arthritis is a work of art--doesn't count
against it to any appreciable extent. Third, a definition of
"work of art"



> 
> 
> should be of the greatest possible utility to inquirers in other
> fields besides aesthetics--fields to which aesthetics itself
> should (sometimes) be thought of as a support and underpinning. (APV:
> 304)
> 
> 
> 



The fields Beardsley has in mind, more than any other, are art history
and anthropology. Fourth and last, a definition of "work of
art" should "conceptually link... art and the
aesthetic" (APV: 312). That Beardsley's does in spades,
directly defining art in terms of the aesthetic as it does.



What can be said against the definition? Complaints could come from
any number of quarters, but most would focus on its being too narrow.
The definition simply doesn't get the extension of "work
of art" right, it would be argued, because of its antiquated
focus on the aesthetic. Developments in art, art criticism, and the
philosophy of art in the twentieth century have shown the independence
of *art* and *the aesthetic*, with the result being a
marked divergence in their extensions. Pieces of driftwood and stones,
for example, have been displayed in museums and catalogued as works of
art. Artifactuality thus isn't a necessary condition of art. And
many objects obviously have no aesthetic intention behind them, and
yet are works of art. Duchamp's famous *Fountain*, for
example, a urinal turned upside down, is a work of art, but it was
manufactured in a factory. No aesthetic intention stands behind it, it
has no aesthetically interesting properties, and it doesn't
belong to a kind whose members are normally created with an aesthetic
intention. Literally thousands of objects of the same sort can be
found in museums and galleries today. They're listed in museum
catalogues, discussed in art history texts, and analyzed in journals
of art criticism. If they aren't works of art, what are
they?



Beardsley never explicitly responded to this objection, but he
wouldn't be fazed. The objection assumes that if an object is
displayed in a museum--a fine arts museum, not a history museum
or any other sort of museum--or if an art historian or art critic
discusses an object, then it must be a work of art, or at least that
there's very strong reason to think that it's a work of
art. That it's some reason to think so Beardsley wouldn't
deny; but that it's necessarily a strong or definitive reason he
certainly would. Fine arts museums sometimes display the working
clothes or palettes of artists, but they aren't works of art.
This has to do with the fact that even if the primary business of a
museum is to display art, it has other functions as well, and
justifiably extends its mission in various ways. Palettes and working
clothes are an extension in one direction, for one reason, but pieces
of driftwood and stones are a different extension, in a different
direction, and for a different reason. They're
displayed--in small numbers--because they're
aesthetically interesting, just as most works of art are. And
Duchamp's *Fountain* might be displayed not because
it's a work of art--although *presenting* an upside
down urinal to a museum might be regarded as a small joke, and thus a
minor work of art--but because (a) art, as a human endeavor, has
a history, (b) museums, as a social institution, have a duty to
acknowledge and exhibit that history, and (c) *Fountain*, as a
well-chosen memorial to the joke, has a place in that history. Much
the same can be said about the remarks of art critics and art
historians respecting *Fountain* and its many kin. If such
objects are called "works of art" for a long enough period
of time, by a large enough group of people, the term can easily
acquire a secondary sense or a number of derivative senses. Beardsley
is probably alluding to as much in his remarks about the use of the
term by or about the avant-garde. But that the appearance of
coatracks, old shoes, broken sticks, and such like in museums, or that
mention of them in books and journals by art critics and historians
means that "art" in the primary sense is wrongly defined
in terms of artifactuality and aesthetic intention--that
hasn't been shown, he would say. A perfectly good explanation of
such phenomena can be provided in accord with a relatively traditional
definition of art.


## 9. The Intentions of the Artist



Despite his many books and articles, Beardsley is probably best known
for his very first article in aesthetics. In "The Intentional
Fallacy", a paper co-written with William K. Wimsatt and
published in 1946, he argued against the neo-Romantic view that a work
of art means what the artist says it means, or what he intends it to
mean. Since many pens have run dry in writing about--and in the
great majority of cases attacking--The Intentional Fallacy,
another pen will run dry in discussing it below.



The issue can be put in terms of the relation between



(1)
The artist intended *x* to mean *p* in work
*w*


and



(2)
*x* means *p* in work *w*.


According to E.D. Hirsch,
 (1)
 entails
 (2),
 at least if *w* is a literary work, because the meaning of
'*x*' simply is what the writer meant or intended
by '*x*'. Knowing the artist's intention is
thus knowing the work's meaning (Hirsch 1967). That's one
end of the spectrum on the relation between
 (1)
 and
 (2).



Beardsley sits at the other end. He holds that the intentions of the
artist aren't relevant to the interpretation of a work of art at
all.
 (1)
 not only doesn't entail
 (2);
 in and of itself, it provides no direct evidential support for
 (2).
 An artist's intentions have nothing to do with what a work
means.



Between Beardsley and Hirsch are any number of intermediate positions,
in general characterizable as holding that the intentions of the
artist provide some direct evidential support for
 (2) but
 not definitive support. Artists' intentions have some weight,
in other words, but not, as Hirsch in effect has it, infinite weight,
weight that entails that the work means what the artist intends it to
mean. Other factors may well outweigh that of the artist's
intention in a particular case, and the meaning of the work, or part
of the work, not correspond to what the artist intends. Many
philosophers, probably the majority, would subscribe to such an
intermediate position. The question, however, isn't which
position is most popular, but which has the most to say for it.



One steadfast conviction of Beardsley's is that his does. He
returned to the issue of the relation of intention and interpretation
a number of times, and never wavered. In fact, he was more than
consistent on the issue; he also held that



(3)
The artist intended *w* to have descriptive property
*p*


provides no direct evidential support for



(4)
*W* has descriptive property *p*,


and that



(5)
The artist intended *w* to have evaluative property
*e*


provides no direct evidential support for



(6)
*W* has evaluative property *e*.


An artist's intentions are utterly irrelevant to the
descriptive, interpretive, and evaluative properties of his work. If
we want to know what properties a work has, we should examine the
work, not the worker.



And in addition to "The Intentional Fallacy",
there's also the lesser known and lesser discussed "The
Affective Fallacy". In a paper bearing that name (1949), also
co-written with William Wimsatt, Beardsley argued that a
person's affective responses to a work of art are irrelevant to
its descriptive, interpretive, and evaluative properties. If we want
to know what properties a work has, we should look at the work, not
those looking at the work.



Beardsley's claims about the irrelevance of the artist's
intentions to the descriptive and evaluative properties of his work
have elicited little in the way of critical response. That may or may
not mean that philosophers are generally in agreement with him. As far
as the irrelevance of the artist's intentions to interpretation
is concerned, however, there has been a great deal of dissent. Since
there has, what follows will concentrate exclusively upon
interpretation.



Beardsley's arguments against intentionalism are of a variety of
sorts. In "The Intentional Fallacy", he says that the
intentions of the artist are neither "available nor
desirable", with this meaning that such intentions aren't
always available and are never desirable. Since we frequently can and
do correctly interpret a work of art with little or no knowledge about
the artist, the fact that the artist's intentions aren't
always available is enough to show that Hirsch's position is
wrong. But that it's never desirable to consult the
artist's intentions when they're available is what
Beardsley has to prove.



Partial support can be found in his argument that



> 
> 
> Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands
> that it work. It is only because an artifact works that we infer the
> intention of the artificer.... A poem can *be* only
> through its *meaning*... yet it *is*, simply
> *is*, in the sense that we have no excuse for inquiring what
> part is intended or meant. (IF: 469)
> 
> 
> 



In other words, a poem or other work of art is independent of its
creator, just as any other artifact--a pudding or a washing
machine--is. A pudding consists of milk, eggs, and other
ingredients; a washing machine of a metal drum, rubber gaskets, and
other parts; and a poem of words. In all three cases, the parts exist
and are what they are independently of the artificers, and the
artifacts are to be judged--and interpreted--on the basis of
their properties. There's no need to bring in the artificer, for
he doesn't remain behind in the parts, and critical judgment,
including interpretation, concerns the how, why, what, and how well of
the artifact, not the how, why, what, or how well of the artificer.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, not the chef's
intentions.



The principal point at which this argument--admittedly, an
extended reconstruction of a few remarks in "The Intentional
Fallacy"--might be questioned is in the assumption that
works of art are like standard, garden-variety artifacts--lawn
chairs and television sets--in leaving their creators behind. For
Beardsley, a work of art isn't fundamentally different from a
pair of fingernail clippers: it's made and then begins its own
autonomous life. It is what it is--who knows or cares who created
it, and with what intentions. This is a plausible position, but not an
unassailable one. The alternative view is that not all artifacts
lead autonomous lives, and that for some, works of art as well as, on
many people's view, linguistic artifacts of all kinds (sentence
tokens, memos, book chapters, and so on), what they are is intimately
linked to their creator, and more particularly to the intention-laden
conditions of their origin. Put more concretely and slightly too
strongly in terms of an imperfect analogy with physical objects: a
rock isn't space, and to understand a rock we can many times can
ignore considerations of space, but if we remove space altogether from
our understanding of a rock, there isn't a rock to understand at
all. On this view, then, a proper understanding of works of
art--which includes correctly interpreting them--requires
the admissibility of considerations of the artist's intentions,
even if those intentions aren't always available or needed.



But why, Beardsley would ask in reply, are works of art so special?
What makes them categorically different from your run-of-the-mill
artifact? The view in question distinguishes kinds of artifact without
providing a principled or well-argued basis for doing so. At the
least, additional support is needed. Absent such support, the view is
nothing but special pleading.



One possible reply is that there is a non-arbitrary difference between
works of art and other artifacts, namely that other artifacts
aren't essentially meaning-laden and works of art are. Still, in
and of itself, this isn't sufficient, Beardsley would say, for
(i) some works of art, such as "pure music", aren't
meaning-laden, (ii) many objects which aren't works of art, such
as newspapers, are meaning-laden, and (iii) even if (i) and (ii)
weren't true, the fact that all and only works of art are
meaning-laden has to be shown to make for the relevance of
artists' intentions, and that hasn't been done.



In *Aesthetics*, the attack is a little different. "We
must distinguish between the aesthetic object and the intention in the
mind of its creator", Beardsley says, and the irrelevance of the
latter to interpretation can be shown if we consider a certain
sculpture, "a large, twisted, cruller-shaped object of polished
teak, mounted at an oblique angle to the floor". The creator of
the sculpture intends it to "symbolize... Human
Destiny". Try as we might, however, we "see in it no such
symbolic meaning". The philosophical question then is:



> 
> 
> Should we say that we have simply missed the symbolism, but that it
> must be there, since what a statue symbolizes is precisely what its
> maker makes it symbolize? Or should we say, in the spirit of Alice
> confronting the extreme semantic conventionalism [intentionalism] of
> Humpty Dumpty, that the question is whether that object can be made to
> mean Human Destiny?
> 
> 
> 



Obviously, the latter, Beardsley thinks, for the former entails
that



> 
> 
> anyone can make anything symbolize anything just by saying it does,
> for another sculpture could copy the same object and label it
> "Spirit of Palm Beach, 1938". (*Aesth:*
> 18-19, 21)
> 
> 
> 



The argument here is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't go
as far as Beardsley apparently thinks it does. What it shows is that
an artist's say-so or intention isn't absolute as far as
the meaning of his work is concerned. That's a far cry from
showing that
 (1)
 is utterly irrelevant to
 (2).



In addition to sculpture, the irrelevance of the author to the meaning
of his text is also argued for by Beardsley, though only partly by
counterexample. "Suppose someone utters a sentence", he
says.



> 
> 
> We can [then] ask two questions: (1) What does the *speaker*
> mean? (2) What does the *sentence* mean?
> 
> 
> 



Although answers to the two questions usually coincide, they can
diverge; people can mean one thing and say another. The reason
that's possible is that



> 
> 
> what a sentence means depends not on the whim of the individual, and
> his mental vagaries, but upon public conventions of usage that are
> tied up with habit patterns in the whole speaking community.
> 
> 
> 



Sentence meaning--that is, textual meaning--is thus one
thing, and is anchored in the "the whole speaking
community", while speaker meaning--what the author
meant--is quite another, and is anchored in his own, quite
possibly idiosyncratic intentions. Thus an author can be wrong about
what his own work means. A.E. Housman, for example, was probably wrong
in claiming that his poem "1887" wasn't ironic
(*Aesth:*, 25-26).



Once again, there's something wrong and something right in what
Beardsley says. He's undoubtedly right that sentence meaning and
speaker meaning needn't coincide, and that that proves that the
two aren't identical. Thus the author's intention
isn't always the final word on what a text means. That, however,
doesn't prove that the author's intention carries no
evidential weight at all. According to the alternative position, it
does, but in some cases, perhaps the majority of them, not enough to
carry the day. In other cases, however, and perhaps Housman's
among them, the author's intention can tip the scales in favor
of one reading rather than another. In any case, the argument here
might conclude, the unease that many people feel in dismissing Housman
from the interpretation of his poem argues that we should accord his
intentions at least some weight.



In *The Possibility of Criticism*, three arguments are advanced
against intentionalism, which is again taken to be the view that the
meaning of a work of art is what the artist intends it to mean. The
first is that



> 
> 
> some texts that have been formed without the agency of an author, and
> hence without authorial meaning, nevertheless have a meaning and can
> be interpreted. (PC: 18)
> 
> 
> 



What Beardsley has in mind is the kind of verbal mistake made at a
publishing house, or by a computer in scanning a document. He cites
the sentence "Jensen argued like a man filled with righteous
indigestion" as an example of a text that can be read and
interpreted, yet no agency, *a fortiori* no author's
intention, stands behind it. "Indignation" became
"indigestion" at the printer's, by mechanical
error.



True enough, his opponent would say in reply, but what that shows is
that the author's intention isn't identical with the
meaning of a text or needed in all cases to correctly interpret a
text. What it doesn't show is that the author's intention,
if present, is irrelevant to interpretation. Besides, the reply would
continue, printer's errors and similar cases are parasitic on
normal cases in which there is authorial intent. Our conception of a
text is that of an intentionally created artifact of a certain kind,
and cases in which authorial intent is altogether missing are admitted
as texts only by conceptual courtesy, based on the similarity of such
texts to standard, intention-laden texts.



The second argument is that



> 
> 
> the meaning of a text can change after its author has died. But the
> author cannot change his meaning after he has died. Therefore, textual
> meaning is not identical to the authorial meaning.
> 
> 
> 



Bolstering this argument is the fact that



> 
> 
> the OED furnishes abundant evidence that individual words and idioms
> acquire new meanings and lose old meanings as time passes; these
> changes can in turn produce changes of the meaning in sentences in
> which the words appear.
> 
> 
> 



As an example, Beardsley cites a line from a poem written in 1744,
"He raised his plastic arm", and notes that "plastic
arm" has "acquired a new meaning in the twentieth
century". Thus the line "in which it occurs has also
acquired a new meaning" (PC: 19).



This argument is highly doubtful. Just as the doings of the homosexual
community in the 1970s, and the terminology that such doings
introduced, don't mean that the line "Now we don our gay
apparel" has acquired a new meaning in the Christmas carol, a
call to dressing in drag, so the doings of the oil industry in
the twentieth century, and the terminology surrounding petrochemical
products that such doings introduced, don't mean that the line
"He raised his plastic arm" has acquired a new meaning in
the poem, a meaning having to do with the movement of a prosthetic
limb. Newer meanings of a term, distant from original meanings and far
removed in time, are utterly irrelevant to the meaning of a line
written long ago. In effect, the principle of interpretation
underlying Beardsley's argument, that new meanings of a term are
relevant to the interpretation of older texts in which it occurs,


1. underwrites unbridled anachronism,
2. entails ever changing but correct interpretation--that is, no
stable textual meaning--and
3. seriously threatens the autonomy of the text and, by extension,
the autonomy of all works of art.



Although Beardsley might regard (a) as an acceptable consequence of
his argument, at least if "unbridled anachronism" were
replaced with a less loaded term, he'd undoubtedly be unhappy
with (b) and (c). (b) challenges the objectivity of criticism,
something that he's at pains to establish, and (c) endangers his
comprehensive outlook on art and art criticism. Perhaps that's
why he later seems to have renounced the argument, even if only
implicitly (cf. *Aesth:* li).



The third argument is the familiar one that



> 
> 
> a text can have meanings that its author is not aware of. Therefore,
> it can have meanings that its author did not intend. Therefore,
> textual meaning is not identical to authorial meaning. (PC: 20)
> 
> 
> 



While all this can be granted, Beardsley's critic would say, the
last sentence gives the game away: the argument doesn't show the
complete irrelevance of the author's intentions to the meaning
of his work, just that the two aren't identical.


## 10. The Intentionalist Strikes Back



One line of argument to show that



(1)
The artist intended *x* to mean *p* in work w


is logically or epistemically related to



(2)
*x* means *p* in work *w*


begins by noting that the facts expressed by
 (1)
 and
 (2)
 may not be "constantly conjoined", but there's at
least a very strong correlation between the two: the great majority of
cases of (1) are cases of (2), and the great majority of cases of (2)
are cases of (1). More than that, given our knowledge of the world,
it's plausible to assume that there's a causal relation
between type-(1) facts and type-(2) facts: in general, type-(1) facts
bring about or cause type-(2) facts. A universal causal law of the
form, All M-type facts bring about or cause N-type facts,
wouldn't be quite correct in this case, but neither would it be
in the case of throwing rocks and breaking windows. The causal
generalization is sound enough in both, however.

 

That much is common sense and is readily admitted by Beardsley. The
intention of the artist and the aesthetic object "are causally
connected", Beardsley says in *Aesthetics*
(*Aesth:* 19), and if two things, for example, Jones, Sr. and
Jones, Jr., are causally connected, then



> 
> 
> any evidence about the height of either of them will be
> *indirect* evidence about the height of the other, in virtue of
> certain laws of genetics, according to which the tallness of the
> father affects the probability that the son will be tall, though it
> does not, of course, render it certain (*Aesth:*
> 19-20).
> 
> 
> 



Thus, Beardsley adds,



> 
> 
> In the case of aesthetic object and intention we have direct evidence
> of each: we discover the nature of the object by looking, listening,
> reading, etc., and we discover the intention by biographical inquiry,
> through letters, diaries, workbooks--or, if the artist is alive,
> by asking him. But also what we learn about the nature of the object
> itself is indirect evidence of what the artist intended it to be, and
> what we learn about the artist's intention is indirect evidence
> of what the object became. (*Aesth:* 20)
> 
> 
> 



There are two important points to note about this passage. First,
although Beardsley wrote that in his early work he was concerned



> 
> 
> with the logical relevance of information about the intentions of an
> author to the interpretation... of his work,
> 
> 
> 



and he "took the position that there is no such relevance"
(II: 188), in the last sentence he admits that there is a
"logical relation" between
 (1)
 and
 (2):
 (1) is indirect, inductive evidence of a causal sort for (2).
Reasoning from type-(1) facts to type-(2) facts is simply reasoning
from causes to effects. Such reasoning doesn't yield certainty,
but it's generally dependable nonetheless. Thus, in at least
many cases, if we knew that the artist intended his work to mean
*p*, we would have good, though not definitive, reason for
believing that his work means *p*.



The second point concerns the distinction between direct and indirect
evidence drawn by Beardsley. A diary entry is direct evidence of what
the artist intended his work to mean; the artist's intention is
indirect evidence of what his work means. But why the difference? In
both cases, the relation between the items is causal, yet in one the
evidence is direct, and in the other indirect. If a diary entry is
direct evidence of an artist's intention (reasoning from an
effect to a cause), then the artist's intention ought to be
direct evidence of what his work means (reasoning from a cause to an
effect). That's a conclusion Beardsley certainly wants to avoid.
If, on the other hand, the artist's intention is indirect
evidence of what his work means (reasoning, as just noted, from a
cause to an effect), then a diary entry ought to be indirect evidence
of what he intended (reasoning, again as just noted, from an effect to
a cause).



This second way of resolving the tension in Beardsley's remarks
would probably be more acceptable to him, but it still carries
problems in its train. What does the distinction between direct and
indirect evidence amount to on it? Something like this: direct
evidence that *S* is *P* is evidence gleaned from an
inspection of *S* itself, no other objects being taken into
consideration or made epistemic use of. Indirect evidence that
*S* is *P* is evidence that takes objects other than
*S* into consideration, or that makes epistemic use of such
objects. Thus evidence respecting the height of Jones, Sr. is indirect
evidence of the height of Jones, Jr., and conversely; diary entries
are indirect evidence of an artist's intentions, and conversely;
and an artist's intentions are indirect evidence of the meaning
of his text, and conversely. Direct evidence of Jones, Jr.'s
height requires scrutinizing him and not looking elsewhere, however,
and by the same token direct evidence of the meaning of a work of art
requires scrutinizing it and not looking elsewhere.



But the problem with drawing the distinction this way is that objects
other than the work of art itself often have to be consulted in order
to know what the work means, and many of these objects have to be
regarded as legitimate sources of information, lest interpretation
become impossible. The OED is consulted by even the best of critics,
and social histories are many times needed to understand cultural and
historical references. Beardsley knows as much and, from "The
Intentional Fallacy" onward, insisted on the legitimacy of such
sources. But as drawn, the distinction between direct and indirect
evidence doesn't distinguish between dictionaries and diaries,
and Beardsley never did define the direct evidence/indirect evidence
distinction with sufficient precision to put one on one side of the
critical fence, and the other on the other, and have them stay put.
Perhaps the distinction can be drawn in some way along the lines
indicated above (which are suggested by Beardsley's own
remarks), but more rigor and a principled argument would be
needed.


## 11. Halfway Between Induction and Deduction



A different way to draw the distinction, not hinted at by Beardsley
but perhaps acceptable to him, would be in terms of the nature of the
inferential relation between (1) and (2). (1) doesn't entail
(2), but, as Beardsley admits, it does provide inductive support for
(2). (1) may or may not be criterial evidence for (2), however. What
this last claim means can be made clearer by an analogy with W.D
Ross's theory of ethical reasoning.



According to Ross,



(L)
Act *A* is a lie


doesn't entail



(W)
Act *A* is wrong,


for *A* might be right even so, when all ethically relevant
factors are taken into account. If *A* helps to save innocent
people's lives, for example, it's right--actually
right, as Ross says--even though it's a lie. Nor is the
relation between (L) and (W) causal or inductive. Lying doesn't
cause wrongness, and although it might be that most (or even all) lies
are all-things-considered wrong--actually wrong--it might be
that most (or even all) lies aren't all-things-considered
wrong--actually wrong. Regardless of which alternative (if
either) is correct, (L) still provides some reason for thinking that
(W) is true. That's to say that the inference from (L) to (W)
isn't based on an empirical generalization of any kind. Rather
than being deductive evidence or empirically based inductive evidence,
(L) is criterial evidence for (W). All by itself, irrespective of any
other considerations, any other premises, it lends some but not
definitive support to (W). The inference is an immediate one, in
other words, in the logician's sense of the term, and since it
is and isn't grounded on empirical facts, it looks like a
deductive inference. It's not a deductive inference, however:
unlike a standard deductive inference, but like a standard inductive
inference, additional premises--such as "Act *A*
saves many people's lives", or "Act *A* leads
to many people's deaths"--can affect the strength of
the inference, weakening it in some cases, strengthening it in others,
and having little to no effect on it in still others. As with a
typical inductive argument, strength of inference isn't an
all-or-nothing affair. The inference is defeasible, in that
countervailing considerations can weigh against the support the
premise provides, even to the point of nullifying it altogether, or at
least very nearly doing so; but it's also buttressable, in that
additional considerations can bolster or further strengthen such
support, even to the point of making the inference well-nigh
deductively sound. Or, of course, the inference can be strengthened by
some considerations and weakened by others.



What this means is that there can be criterial evidence of an
altogether different sort for (or against) (W).



(3)
Act *A* is an act of betraying a friend


is also criterial evidence for (W), and there are many other examples
of such evidence. Whether the wrongness of an act is constituted by
such factors as lying and betrayal, or whether it's a different
property which supervenes on such factors, is of no moment as far as
the matter at hand is concerned. The important point is the
logic--or better, the epistemology--of the inferential
relation.



What all this has to do with the intentional fallacy is this. The
intentionalist shouldn't claim that (1) entails (2), for that
claim is subject to the numerous counterarguments that Beardsley makes
full use of. But the anti-intentionalist, such as Beardsley,
shouldn't claim that there's "no logical
relation" between (1) and (2), for there clearly is, even on his
own showing, a causally grounded, empirically based, standard
inductive relation between the two. The intentionalist shouldn't
rejoice at this admission, however. For two reasons, such a relation
tells us nothing of any significance about the proper way to interpret
art. First, similar causal relations can be found to obtain in
virtually every domain of inquiry, and they tell us nothing
significant about proper methodology in those domains. The fact that
tall parents generally have tall children, and tall children generally
have tall parents, is of no help in establishing proper methodology in
genetics, or even in telling us where to begin our investigation.
Second, and more importantly, being founded on a causal connection
between two distinct things, namely the artist's intention
and the meaning of his work, the empirical generalization that
underlies the inference from (1) to (2) presupposes that there's
a way to identify the meaning of an artist's work independent of
consulting his intentions. That's not something the
intentionalist who relies only on a causal connection between the two
should be very happy about, for it suggests that the artist's
intentions are altogether extrinsic to and independent of the meaning
of the artist's work.



The real debate about the intentional fallacy is, or at least should
be, over whether (1) provides criterial evidence for (2). Beardsley
argues against an entailment relation between the two, admits that
there's an inductive relation but relegates it to the category
of indirect evidence, and thinks the job is done. The intentionalist
typically wonders how the meaning of a work can be utterly divorced
from the voice, the uttering or creating with an intended meaning, of
the artist, and brings up hard cases to support the relevance of the
artist's intentions. But neither has focused the issue properly.
Beardsley apparently takes direct evidence to be deductively adequate
evidence or evidence gleaned from the object itself, and indirect
evidence to be evidence based on empirical generalizations or gleaned
from something other than the object itself. In neither sense is an
artist's intentions direct evidence of what his work means, and
Beardsley is right that there's an intentional fallacy. But if,
as it should be, direct evidence is identified with criterial
evidence, and indirect evidence with non-criterial but inductive
evidence, Beardsley has failed to establish that there's an
intentional fallacy. On the other hand, the mere strong feeling of the
intentionalist that the meaning of a work isn't independent of
the intentions of the artist who created it is no proof of anything,
and the hard cases brought up in support of the relevance of the
artist's intentions--typically, cases that involve
allusion, irony, or obscure passages--can almost always be
explained or explained away, and not implausibly, by the
anti-intentionalist. The mistake of Beardsley is to neglect a
possibility and thus focus the issue wrongly. The mistake of the
intentionalist is typically not to focus the issue with any degree of
precision, and to rely on relatively vague but strongly held
intuitions.


## 12. Meaning and Speech Acts



What's needed to decide whether there's an intentional
fallacy, whether (1) does or doesn't provide criterial evidence
for (2), is, more than anything else, a theory of meaning. A theory of
meaning is a theory of what it is for *w* (some object, in the
broad sense of the term) to mean *p*. Beardsley was always
aware of the need for a theory of meaning, and in *Aesthetics*
he proposed one, a complicated theory which he later rejected. A few
years later, however, in his final paper on the topic, he
embraced a speech-act theory based on the work of William Alston and
used it to defend the intentional fallacy.



Speech act theory in general is derived from the work of J.L. Austin,
a British philosopher who flourished shortly after World War II.
Austin distinguishes three things a person typically does in uttering
a sentence, say, "The door is open". He utters certain
words--"the", "door", "is",
and "open"--with certain meanings; this is a
locutionary act. He states that the door is open; this is an
illocutionary act. And he convinces someone that the door is open;
this is a perlocutionary act. As Austin says, it is *in*
uttering a sentence with a certain meaning (that is, *in*
performing a locutionary act) that we perform an illocutionary act.
Illocutionary acts have come to be called speech acts. Asserting,
requesting, arguing, ordering, promising, and so on are all examples
of speech acts, but there are many, many different speech acts. Last,
as Austin also says, it is *by* uttering a certain sentence
with a certain meaning that we perform certain other acts, acts partly
defined in terms of their effects on listeners: convincing, enraging,
pleasing, deceiving, and so on. These are perlocutionary acts. I utter
the words "The door is open"; *in* doing so, I
state that the door is open; *by* so doing, I convince you that
the door is open.



These suggestive distinctions led Alston to believe that the meaning
of a sentence is the sentence's total speech act potential, its
potential for performing all of the various speech acts it could be
used to perform. In effect, this is to take the slogan "Meaning
is use" very seriously, and to cash in "use" in
terms of the performance of speech acts. Sentence meaning is primary
on this theory, and word meaning secondary and derivative, since
it's defined in terms of a word's contribution to the
speech act potential of the sentences into which it can figure.
Beardsley thought this theory correct and used it to argue that the
intentional fallacy is indeed a fallacy.



In "Intentions and Interpretations" (1982), he claims that
in composing a poem the poet doesn't perform a speech act, but
rather represents the performance of a speech act or acts. When
Wordsworth writes



> 
> 
> Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour:
>   
> 
> England hath need of thee--
> 
> 
> 



his words are ostensibly addressed to a long-dead poet, but to perform
an illocutionary, any illocutionary action, a person must believe that
he can "secure uptake", that is, secure understanding of
his sentence and the speech act performed. Wordsworth, however, knew
that Milton was long dead and had no such belief. He thus
didn't perform the illocutionary act of addressing Milton or
stating that England needs him. He does represent the performance of
those illocutionary acts, however. What poets and other authors of
literary works do, Beardsley thinks, is represent the performance of
illocutionary acts, not perform illocutionary acts themselves.



To perform illocutionary acts *A*, *B*, and *C*
is therefore one thing; to represent the performance of illocutionary
acts, *A*, *B*, and *C*, quite another. The
latter doesn't entail the former, as the above example shows. In
addition, even if the performance of an illocutionary act is
necessarily intentional in one respect--and Beardsley says that
"only intentional text production can generate illocutionary
actions" (II: 195)--it doesn't follow that the
performance of illocutionary act *x* requires, as a condition
for its performance, the intention to perform *x*. I can
inadvertently insult or warn someone. Some illocutionary acts are
defined in terms of an intention, of course--lying, for instance,
is defined in terms of the intention to deceive--but that
doesn't mean lying is defined in terms of the intention to lie.
That would be circular. And it also doesn't mean that
representing the act of lying requires the intention to deceive.
Storytellers frequently represent the act of lying without having any
such intention. A person could intend to lie, or intend to represent
the act of lying, of course, but those are different matters.



The upshot of this is that



> 
> 
> it is... plain that *representing* [an illocutionary act,
> such as] an accusation cannot have as its condition an intention to
> accuse, and indeed these are somewhat at odds, for to take the
> representational stance is to renounce or withhold or suspend the
> illocutionary action. (II: 197)
> 
> 
> 



The complete argument, then, is something like this:



(1)
The meaning of a sentence '*S*' is its total
illocutionary act potential, that is, its capacity to be used to
perform the speech acts, *I*, *J*, *K*.
(2)
The performance of speech acts *I*, *J*, *K*
in using '*S*' does not require the corresponding
intentions to perform speech acts *I*, *J*, *K*
in using '*S*.'
(3)
Thus, the meaning of '*S*' is independent of
the intentions of the speaker to perform the speech acts that
constitute, as potentially performable acts, the meaning of
'*S*.'
(4)
Differently put, the meaning of '*S*' is
logically independent of the speaker's intention to mean what
'*S*' does in fact mean.
(5)
Therefore, a speaker's intention that sentence
'*S*' mean *p* is logically irrelevant to
whether it does mean *p*.
(6)
But even if
 (4)
 were false, and the meaning, *M*, of a non-literary
sentence--a sentence not in a work of literature--were
partly a function of the speaker's intention that it mean
*M*, the same wouldn't be true of a literary
sentence.


The proof of
 (6)
 is that



(7)
An author does not perform an illocutionary act, *I*,
*J*, *K* in uttering (writing, dictating, signing, etc.)
'*S*.'
(8)
Rather, he represents the performance of illocutionary acts
*I*, *J*, *K* in uttering
'*S*.'
(9)
Representing an illocutionary action involves renouncing,
withholding, or suspending the performance of that action.
(10)
Thus, representing the performance of *I*, *J*,
*K* doesn't require the intention to perform *I*,
*J*, *K*.
(11)
Consequently, even if
 (4)
 were false as far as non-literary sentences were concerned, it would
be true as far as literary sentences were concerned, for the meaning
of '*S*' is logically independent of the
speaker's intention to mean what '*S*' in
fact does mean.


This is an interesting and provocative argument, but it can be
questioned at several points. One of its limitations is that, even if
it's successful, it proves only that an author's
intentions are irrelevant to the correct interpretation of his text.
Essentially employing speech act theory as it does, it doesn't
apply to the interpretation of works of art other than
literature--paintings, sculptures, and dances, for example. This
is a minor point, though, as analogous concepts are probably
available, or could be introduced without too much unnaturalness, in
all the arts.



More bothersome is that the key concept here is an unexplained and
seemingly unexplainable one. No one has provided a rigorous definition
of a speech act. Even these many years after Austin first introduced
the concept in the 1950s, little more has been done to clarify and
ground it than to cite some handy examples, place the foils of
locutionary and perlocutionary acts to the left and right of it, and
invoke the "in" versus "by" distinction found
above and in virtually every other exposition of the notion. Most
philosophers are at least somewhat hesitant to make a concept
that's technical yet so little explained or pinned down the
mainstay of a substantial theory, such as a theory of meaning.



That aside, speech act theories of meaning have received their own
share of criticism over the years. One objection to a theory like
Alston's--and the acceptability of his theory can't
be pursued at length here--is that it explicates sentence meaning
in terms of speech act potential, and thus requires that the
illocutionary acts that a sentence can be used to perform be
identifiable independently of and prior to the meaning of the sentence
used to perform those illocutionary acts. But that's impossible,
the objection runs, and in fact gets things backward. To identify the
act of stating that the door is open, rather than, say, the act of
asking for an ice cream cone, as an act that the sentence "The
door is open" can be used to perform--to identify the
former but not the latter as part of the sentence's speech act
potential--requires that the meaning of the sentence first be
understood and identified. Absent an understanding of its meaning,
it's anyone's guess what acts it could be used to perform.
Speech act potential is a function of meaning, not, as the theory has
it, meaning a function of speech act potential.



Independent of these objections is the fact that the argument
doesn't really prove what it's supposed to. If it's
correct, it shows that within and/or without literary discourse,
it's possible for '*S*' to mean *M*
without it being true that the speaker or author intended that
'*S*' mean M. But all that means is that



> 
> 
> '*S*' means *M*
> 
> 
> 



doesn't entail



> 
> 
> The speaker or author intended that '*S*' mean
> *M*.
> 
> 
> 



In effect, this is another demonstration that Hirsch is wrong, that
sentence meaning isn't identical with speaker meaning. The
question at issue, however, is whether speaker meaning is criterial
evidence for sentence meaning. For all that the argument shows, it
could well be.



There's also the matter of whether literature is representation,
that is, as Beardsley uses the term, one kind of "imitation of a
compound illocutionary act". "The writing of a
poem", Beardsley writes elsewhere (PC: 58, 59),



> 
> 
> is not an illocutionary act; it is the creation of a fictional
> character performing a fictional illocutionary act.
> 
> 
> 



But in his *Essay on Man*, does Pope create a fictional
character who details his views, or does he simply speak his mind in
poetic form? The more intuitive answer is the latter, but Beardsley is
committed to the former. What makes the *Essay on Man*
didactic, he says, is not that it contains arguments put forward by
Pope (arguing is an illocutionary act), but that it contains
imitations of arguments put forward by a fictional character (PC:
60-61). We know this because Pope



> 
> 
> embodies his doctrines in a discourse that flaunts its poetic form (in
> sound and meaning) and directs attention to itself as an object of
> rewarding scrutiny.
> 
> 
> 



The "illocutionary fuse is [therefore] drawn", and the
poem



> 
> 
> relinquishes its illocutionary force for aesthetic status, and takes
> on the character of being an appearance or a show of living language
> use. (PC: 60)
> 
> 
> 



Although this position can't be definitively refuted, it's
implausible and subject to the rejoinder that what Pope did is
himself speak in the poem, making sure that neither aesthetic interest
nor useful instruction were ever altogether lacking. Independent of
strong theoretical reasons for thinking otherwise, that's a
simpler and better explanation than Beardsley's. The point can
be reinforced if didactic literary works other than poems are
considered. Aldous Huxley's essays are literary works, but
it's even more implausible to posit a fictional speaker for
them, and to think of them as imitations of compound illocutionary
acts, rather than simply as compound speech acts performed by
Huxley.



But even if Beardsley's view that a literary work is a
representation or imitation of a speech act is acceptable, still
another curious feature of the argument concerns his treatment of the
distinction between performing a speech act and representing the
performance of a speech act. Beardsley writes as if the two were
mutually exclusive. They're not. While it's true that
it's one thing to state that *p* and quite another to
represent that someone is stating that *p*, representing (in
language) is itself a speech act just as much as stating is.
Representing that someone is stating that *p* is like stating
that someone is stating that *p*--just a speech act with a
more complicated conceptual content and structure than simply stating
that *p*. Given that that's so, the two halves of
Beardsley argument,
 (1)-(5)
 and
 (6)-(11),
 merge.



And it's probably a good thing that representing is a speech
act. If "Milton!" in Wordsworth's poem were being
used in a representation that wasn't the performance of any
speech act at all, that would presumably be because it had no speech
act potential. On the Alston/Beardsley theory of meaning, it would
then have no meaning. Since it evidently does have meaning, it has to
have some speech act potential. And since it seems to share a good
deal of its meaning with "Milton!" as bellowed by a
seventeenth century fish-monger hailing the poet, its speech act
potentials within and without the poem must overlap to a fair
extent--all this on the assumption that the Alston/Beardsley
theory of meaning is correct. The gulf that Beardsley sees between
literary discourse and non-literary discourse, as far as speech acts
are concerned, thus isn't nearly as wide as he seems to think,
even if a literary work is a representation or imitation of a speech
act.


## 13. Criteria and Meaning



The problems with Beardsley's argument are significant enough to
conclude that it needn't be accepted. The question still
remains, however, whether an author's intention that
'*S*' means *M* is criterial evidence for
its meaning M. That question can be asked independently of
Beardsley's argument, but on the assumption that his preferred
theory of meaning is correct (thereby, as in much of the above,
putting to the side general objections to speech act theory and speech
act theories of meaning) or on the assumption that another theory of
meaning is correct. As far as the question at issue is concerned, in
other words, it probably doesn't make much difference whether
the Beardsley/Alston theory is correct, or some other theory is. In
all likelihood, the result would be the same. But regardless of
whether it would or wouldn't, exploring alternative theories of
meaning is impossible in this context, so only the Alston/Beardsley
theory will be considered below.



In addition, though, and as Beardsley's argument in effect
reminds us, there might be important differences between non-literary
and literary discourse, such that what holds (or doesn't hold)
in one doesn't hold (or holds) in the other. The very nature of
literature might itself make a difference. Two determinations are
needed, then, one respecting the relevance or irrelevance of an
authors' intentions in non-literary discourse and one respecting
whether the fact that a discourse is literary makes it importantly
different from non-literary discourse as far as the relevance of
authors' intentions is concerned. In what follows, the issue
concerning non-literary discourse will be discussed first and at
length; the issue concerning literary discourse, second and much more
briefly.



On a speech act theory of meaning, the inference from



(1)
The author intended *x* to mean *p* in work
*w*


to



(2)
*x* means *p* in work *w*


is the inference from



(A)
The author intended *x* to mean *p* in writing work
*w*


to



(B)
*x* means *p* in work *w*.


Further glossed in terms of speech acts (but slurring over
considerations of intensionality), this is the inference from



(C)
The author intended *x* to have illocutionary act potential
*z* in writing *x* in work *w*


to



(D)
*x* has illocutionary act potential *z* in work
*w*,


where the inference is supposedly criterial, and *z* is the
total illocutionary act potential--the potential to perform
illocutionary acts *I*, *J*, *K*--that
constitutes the meaning of *x*. The question at issue here is a
species of a genus, the genus being whether intending that *s*
is *p* is criterial evidence for *s*'s being
*p*, with the differentia being that *s* is a piece of
non-literary discourse and *p* a meaning, a speech act
potential.



Answering this question requires taking a slight detour. In the 1950s
and 1960s premises respecting behavior were frequently said to be
criterial evidence for the existence of mental states of certain kinds
(though the matter wasn't very clearly delineated or explained,
and the term "criterial evidence" didn't exist). The
most discussed example, originating in the work of Wittgenstein,
concerned pain behavior and pain: a person's pain behavior was
said to be criterial evidence for his being in pain. The inference
from (C) to (D) is, near enough, the converse inference, from a mental
state to behavior or, more properly, from a mental state to an effect,
an object (a piece of discourse) having a certain property (a certain
speech act potential).



The central question to ask about any supposed criterial inference is
whether we understand the nature of the phenomena mentioned in the
premise and conclusion to be necessarily caught up with other, but not
in such a way that the presence of either entails the other. If
*A* is a criterion of *B*, then it's a necessary
truth that *A* is evidence for, or counts toward,
*B*--so says Anthony Kenny in speaking of a criterion in
the sense intended here. If a criterion is understood in this
way--and the term is certainly being used in a technical,
non-everyday sense if it is--there's a fair amount of
intuitive appeal to the claim that pain behavior is a criterion for
being in pain. Our understanding of what pain and pain behavior are
seems to connect the two necessarily. That's true even if no one
in pain ever exhibits pain behavior, or everyone exhibits pain
behavior when not in pain. (Admittedly, the scenarios for either state
of affairs would be very strange. Neither is impossible, though.)
Likewise, although every act of lying could turn out to be right, and
every act of non-lying turn out to be wrong, our understanding of what
wrongness and lying are is such that the latter necessarily counts
toward the former. On the other hand, our understanding of drinking
arsenic and dying--of what they are--isn't such that
drinking arsenic is criterial for dying. It's not that our
understanding of dying is somehow necessarily caught up with the idea
of drinking arsenic the way it is in the pain-pain behavior and
lying-wrongness cases. Even if every time a person drank arsenic he
died, and every time a person died he had drunk arsenic, the
connection between the two is purely inductive.



How is it then with the inference from



(C)
The author intended *x* to have illocutionary act potential
*z* in writing *x* in work *w*


to



(D)
*x* has illocutionary act potential *z* in work
*w*?


Consider an example discussed on a number of occasions by Beardsley
and already cited above: Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty says,
"There's glory for you!", and his sentence, he
claims, means there's a nice knockdown argument for you. Alice
doesn't believe him. It means that, Humpty Dumpty explains,
because "when *I* use a word, it means just what I choose
it to mean--neither more nor less". Alice doubts that he
can make the sentence mean that just by choosing that it mean that.
Common sense is certainly on her side. Beardsley's reply is a
little different. He says that because Humpty Dumpty has provided no
stipulative definition of "glory", he knows that Alice
can't be expected to "secure uptake", that is,
understand the novel meaning he attaches to use of the word, and thus
can't intend to perform the speech act of boasting that his
argument for the superiority of unbirthdays to birthdays is a
conclusive one. Since meaning is constituted by speech act potential,
he therefore can't intend to mean "nice knockdown
argument" by "glory" (II: 202-203).



What Beardsley says here is basically correct. To show that the
intentional fallacy is indeed a fallacy, however, to show that (C)
isn't criterial evidence for (D), the premise concerning the
author's intention should be assumed to be true, and the
strength of the inference gauged on that assumption. If a fallacy has
indeed been committed, the premise, considered simply by itself, will
lend no support to the conclusion. But instead of examining the case
of Humpty Dumpty as just indicated, Beardsley questions the truth of
the premise, and correctly finds it wanting. That isn't to the
point.



In fact, several things might be said in favor of a criterial relation
between (C) and (D). First, the cases of moral rightness and pain
suggest that a natural home for criteria is in phenomena that are
undeniable but unobservable. Much, if not all, of what can't be
observed but is obviously real needs a criterion or criteria to gain a
foothold in our thinking and discourse. (It could even be argued that
everything that figures in our thinking and discourse, whether
observable or non-observable, stands in need of a criterion or
criteria. Kenny, for one, holds as much.) Linguistic meaning seems to
be just that sort of thing. Second, rightness, pain, and meaning,
though real, seem to be ontologically slighter than paradigmatically
real things, such as physical objects (stars), forces
(electro-magnetism), or even everyday properties and property
instantiations (weighing five pounds, Philadelphia's being in
Pennsylvania). Their conceptual connections to the well-anchored items
of everyday life--rocks, gravity, shapes--are few in number,
and re-identification of one and the same pain, for example, more
inherently problematic. A pain is not something and not nothing,
Wittgenstein wrote, and though the remark is cryptic, much the same
seems to be true of meaning. Part of its life needs to be breathed
into it by criteria. Third, there's Beardsley's own
concession that "only intentional text production can generate
illocutionary actions", and therefore meaning, on his theory of
meaning. If an author's intention is necessary for a text to
have a meaning at all, that suggests that the intention that
*x* mean *m* is criterial--not logically necessary
but criterial--for x's meaning m. Bolstering this
suggestion is the fact that it's hard to imagine that *x*
means m, but that no one has ever intended that *x* mean
*m* in producing a text that contains *x*.



These considerations, however, are more inconclusive hints at
arguments than arguments themselves. First, the fact that meanings are
unobservable but real suggests that we should be on the lookout for
criteria; it doesn't mean that they have criteria. More is
needed to show that. Numbers, it might be argued, are also
unobservable but real, yet stand in need of no criteria. Second, apart
from the obscurity of the notion of ontological slightness, meanings
are surely no more ontologically slender than numbers, which, again,
seem to require no criteria. Finally, there's the point that
even if the promissory notes that really are the first two
considerations can be made good on, all that would show is that
meaning in general stands in need of a criterion or criteria. It
wouldn't show that a criterion of a text's having meaning
is an author's intention that it have meaning, much less that a
criterion for a text's having the meaning that it has is the
author's intention that it have that meaning.



But the third consideration may come to the rescue here. Beardsley
himself says that intentional text production is necessary for a text
to have a meaning (an admission, incidentally, which goes against a
number of things he wrote earlier in his career), and it's a
natural step from there to an author's intention as criterial
for textual meaning, indeed, as criterial for a conceptual
correspondence between the two (intending to mean m, meaning m). In
addition, even if it's not a necessary truth that if
'*S*' means m, someone at some time intended that
'*S*' mean *m* in producing a token of
'*S*', the former is at least criterial for the
latter.



But why the claim just mentioned isn't a necessary truth is
instructive. It's not because it's possible that
*A*, the first and only user of '*S*',
mistakenly thought there was a linguistic convention according to
which '*S*' means n. Operating on that assumption,
he uttered '*S*', intending it to mean n. However,
because of contextual clues respecting the surroundings in which
'*S*' was used, because of the topic under
discussion when it was used, and because of ignorance and
misunderstanding (of the language and of what A was driving at) on the
part of his listeners, all his listeners took it that there was
already a linguistic convention according to which
'*S*' means m. That's how they understood
'*S*', and they thus believed and acted
accordingly. A, oblivious to the misunderstanding on their part, soon
forgets about '*S*' and the meaning he attached to
it. In these circumstances, '*S*' means *m*
because that's what the language-using community takes it to
mean: in effect, their beliefs and behavior establish a convention
according to which '*S*' means m. The meaning rests
on what might be called "community uptake", not individual
uptake of speech act performance, as Beardsley has it, and not the
speaker's intention, as intentionalists have it.



This strange little scenario is important not so much because
it's a counterexample to the claim that if
'*S*' means m, then at some time someone means
*m* in using '*S*', but as illustrating
something of greater importance: the existence of a linguistic
convention that '*S*' means *m* is a
criterion, in the technical sense explained above, for
'*S*' meaning m. It's not a logically
sufficient condition, not definitive evidence, at least as far as the
meaning of a token sentence is concerned, for in specific
circumstances other factors may override the meaning specified by the
convention. That, in fact, has to be the case if metaphor, synecdoche,
metonymy, and irony are to be possible at all. (Briefly, a token
sentence is a sentence considered as a concrete particular, with a
specifiable spatio-temporal location. Token sentences contrast with
type sentences. A type sentence is an abstract particular, not
locatable in space and time. All token sentences are tokens of a type,
in much the same way that all token 2023 Toyota
Corollas--spatio-temporal objects found on streets and
highways--are tokens of a single type, 2023 Toyota Corolla.
As far as sentences are concerned, what this amounts to is that a
single type sentence, '*S*', can have many tokens.
There's only one type sentence "The door is open",
but there are many tokens of that type, a number of which can be found
in this article.) Linguistic conventions are one factor that has to be
considered in every case of token sentence meaning. They may not be
the last word in determining token sentence meaning--though they
frequently are just that--but they're always the first
word.



Perhaps paradoxically, given what was just said, the counterexample
also illustrates a more important claim, that a speaker's
intention that '*S*' mean *m* is a criterion
for its meaning m, or at least very nearly so. This is because: (1)
linguistic convention is a criterion for token sentence meaning, and a
linguistic convention, as the example shows, is a function of overall
community understanding, treatment, and belief. (2) A speaker's
intention is one component in such understanding, treatment, and
belief, and thus is criterial for linguistic convention. In other
words, since a speaker of a language is a member of the linguistic
community in which he speaks, and since, as Beardsley himself holds,
an intention that '*S*' means *m* involves a
belief that '*S*' means m, the speaker's
intention figures into the overall function that determines the
creation or maintenance of a convention. (3) The relation "is
criterial for" is transitive, or at least very nearly so. If
X's being criterial for Y and Y's being criterial for Z
doesn't entail that *X* is criterial for Z, it still
lends some near criterial support for Z. More briefly but slightly
inaccurately, the argument is that since a speaker's intention
that '*S*' means *m* is criterial for the
existence of a convention that '*S*' means m, and
the existence of a convention that '*S*' means
*m* is criterial for '*S*''s meaning
m, a speaker's intention that '*S*' means
*m* is criterial for '*S*' meaning m. A
speaker's intention must thus be regarded as having some
evidential weight in determining his sentence's meaning. As far
as everyday discourse is concerned, then, the intentional fallacy is
no fallacy at all, strictly speaking.


## 14. The Letter of the Law and The Spirit of the Law



But the letter of the law is one thing, its spirit quite another. Even
if speaker intention counts for something, for two reasons, it
doesn't count for much, at least in the great majority of cases.
One swallow is not a summer, and a single such intention or belief not
a convention or, except in very odd circumstances, sufficient for one.
Cases like those of Humpty Dumpty and the counterexample discussed
above show how slight the weight of a speaker's intention is in
the face of a convention that's already established (the case of
Humpty Dumpty) or even in the process of being established (the case
of A and his community). And the situation we in fact find ourselves
in is just that of Alice. The weight carried by pre-existing
linguistic conventions makes it look as if Humpty Dumpty's
intention has no weight at all. If what was argued above is correct,
it doesn't have no weight, but a microgram is, for practical
purposes, weightless when counterbalanced by a boulder. Thus even if
strictly speaking, there's no intentional fallacy, it would be
much more misleading in practice to say that there isn't one
than that there is one.



The case of Humpty Dumpty shouldn't be misunderstood, however.
The establishment or maintenance of a linguistic convention
isn't simply a matter of majority opinion within a speaking
community. A convention is more than a collection of beliefs,
understandings, and treatments. It carries normative force with it,
and normative force, although undergirded by and impossible without
community support, doesn't simply sway in the direction that the
breeze of majority opinion happens to be blowing at the time. The
normative nature of a convention enables it to be relatively, though
not wholly, resistant to contrary opinion. That's why it's
possible for most people to spell "accommodate"
incorrectly (the conventions of spelling call for it to be spelled
with two '*m*'s, but most people spell it with one)
and why it's possible for most people to have an incorrect
belief about the meaning of the word "fortuitous" (the
conventions of the language call for it to mean *by chance* or
*accidental*, but most people think it means
*lucky*).



The second reason why the conclusion that, strictly speaking,
there's no intentional fallacy is of limited import is in effect
pointed out by Beardsley. The notion of speaker meaning--a
speaker's intention that '*S*' mean
*m* in his utterance of '*S*'--is
parasitic on that of a convention, and thus on sentence meaning. In
intending what he does, that is, in intending that his sentence mean
*m*, and not *n*, *o*, or *p*, a speaker
is perforce trying to conform to what he takes to be a pre-existing
convention. If he doesn't take there to be such a convention, he
needs to stipulate one--which itself involves invoking
pre-existing conventions. If he doesn't do that and
doesn't try to conform to a pre-existing convention,
there's no reason to think that he's trying to
communicate, to utter a sentence with a determinate meaning, or to
perform any speech act at all. In other words, without the assumption
of a pre-existing convention, there's no content to the notion
of an intention to mean anything at all, much less to mean *m*.
Even if a speaker's intention is criterial in determining
conventions and sentence meaning, conventions have to be
conceptualized as relatively independent of the speaker, as logically
prior to speaker meaning, and as a constraint on speaker meaning.



The upshot is that, to put a fine point on it, there's no
intentional fallacy, but that a fine point shouldn't be put on
it. As far as everyday discourse is concerned, proper interpretive
practice directs us to ignore speakers' intentions. For
considered in and of itself, in the context of a living, fully
developed language, a speaker's intention has vanishingly small
weight, noticeable at all, if ever, only in a very small number of
circumstances. An additional merit of this view is that it helps to
explain the facts that (1) in the vast majority of cases, questions of
speaker intention needn't and don't arise in interpreting
a person's remarks; (2) hard cases are
possible--conventions are of necessity open-ended, somewhat
indefinite, and possibly in tension with other conventions; (3)
it's natural, and not entirely unreasonable, to evoke speaker
intention to resolve such hard cases; (4) the gnawing feeling
that the meaning of an utterance isn't altogether divorced from
the meaning intention of its speaker has some basis; (5) despite (3),
proponents of the intentional fallacy can always find ways of
resolving hard cases without invoking the intentions of the
speaker.


## 15. Back to Literary Discourse



So much for non-literary discourse. The second question is: Does what
holds for non-literary discourse also hold for literary discourse?
Beardsley's convinced that it does. He sees no fundamental
difference between the two. There's a lot to be said for that
view. It largely jibes with our interpretive experience and recognizes
the continuity of all forms of discourse. It also doesn't
require us to read by a new set of rules when we put down *The
Racing Forum* and pick up Ruskin, which is certainly appealing.
Those are impressive reasons in its favor, and strongly recommend it
for adoption.



But the key word here is "adoption". The view is a
proposal for how to conceptualize literature (and in the long run art
in general); it isn't dictated by the facts of the case or by
the very concept of literature. An alternative proposal, and a popular
one in many circles, is to conceptualize literature as much more
closely tied to the life of the author, and to attach greater
interpretive weight to his intentions than with non-literary
discourse. This proposal does bifurcate discourse, but, advocates
would claim, there are cultural and aesthetic advantages to doing so.
Three of them are that (1) literature is thereby tied much more
closely to biography, history, and culture in general, (2) the realm
of the aesthetic is not as segregated from, but is much more
integrated into, other valuational realms than it would otherwise be,
and (3) natural, even irrepressible, urges to look beyond art to the
artist aren't automatically frustrated or denigrated, as far as
criticism is concerned. The systematic virtues and vices of both this
position and Beardsley's can't be pursued here, but it is
important to note that the issue is a large and overarching one
concerning how best to conceptualize art and its place in human
life.


## 16. The Internal and the External



Broader than concerns about the artist's intention and
encompassing them is the distinction between external and internal
evidence. The distinction is similar to, but diverges from, that
between direct and indirect evident noted above. "Internal
evidence", Beardsley says, "is evidence from direct
inspection of the object" (*Aesth:* 20). What is internal
is publicly accessible;



> 
> 
> it is discovered [in the case of poetry] through the semantics and
> syntax of a poem, through our habitual knowledge of the language
> through grammars, dictionaries, and all the literature which is the
> source of dictionaries, in general through all that makes a language
> and culture. (IF: 477)
> 
> 
> 



"External evidence", on the other hand,



> 
> 
> is evidence from the psychological and social background of the
> object, from which we may infer something about the object itself.
> (*Aesth:* 20)
> 
> 
> 



What is external is not publicly accessible; it is



> 
> 
> private or idiosyncratic; not [again in the case of poetry] a part of
> the work as a linguistic fact: it consists of revelations (in
> journals, for example, or letters or recorded conversations) about how
> or why the poet wrote the poem--to what lady, while sitting on
> what lawn, or at the death of a friend or brother. (IF:
> 477-478)
> 
> 
> 



In addition to internal and external evidence, there is



> 
> 
> an intermediate kind of evidence about the character of the author or
> about private or semi-private meanings attached to words or topics by
> the author or by a coterie of which he is a member. (IF: 478)
> 
> 
> 



External evidence is verboten, but at least at the time of "The
Intentional Fallacy", intermediate evidence was admissible, the
reason being that



> 
> 
> the meaning of words is the history of words, and the biography of an
> author, his use of a word, and the associations the word had for
> *him*, are part of the word's history and meaning. (IF:
> 478)
> 
> 
> 



Caution has to be exercised, though, for the line between intermediate
evidence and external evidence isn't sharp and



> 
> 
> a critic who is concerned with [internal] evidence... and
> moderately with [intermediate] evidence will in the long run produce a
> different sort of comment from that of the critic who is concerned
> with [external] evidence and with [intermediate] evidence. (IF:
> 478)
> 
> 
> 



The distinction thus drawn is far from clear, though. On the one hand,
information gleaned from a poet's diary, workbook, letters, and
rough drafts, or information about what he was reading or thinking
about as he created his work, isn't internal evidence in that it
can't be had from directly inspecting his poem. On the other
hand, it does seem to be internal, in that such information is
publicly accessible, and might well be part of "all that makes a
language and culture". Resolving that tension is only part of
the issue, however. "The character of the author" or the
"private or semi-private meanings attached to words or topics by
the author or by a coterie of which he is a member" might be
revealed in a diary or workbook, and part of a "word's
history and meaning" might be recorded in a letter. That makes
it sound like intermediate evidence. More than anything else, though,
what a diary or a workbook contains is "evidence [respecting]
the psychological and social background" of a work, and such
information is no different from "revelations... in
journals... or letters". It would thus seem to be external
evidence, as Beardsley talks about it. Is the information found in
diaries, journals, workbooks, rough drafts, letters, and so on
internal, external, or intermediate evidence, then? All three, it
would seem.



Though the distinction between kinds of evidence isn't well
drawn by Beardsley, that may be because when he wrote "The
Intentional Fallacy" his views weren't as clear or
definite as they were later to become, or because he later changed his
mind and became more tough-minded. Intermediate evidence is never
mentioned in *Aesthetics* or in any of his subsequent writings,
and if the distinction between internal and external evidence is
considered only as it's drawn in *Aesthetics*, it's
relatively clean: internal evidence is evidence based on a direct
inspection of the aesthetic object and nothing else; external evidence
is evidence based on sources outside the object. That at least seems
to draw a fairly bright line between the internal and the external.
Unfortunately, drawing the distinction this way re-introduces the
problems about not using external sources noted above in relation to
the intentional fallacy.



All of that said, the feeling remains that there has to be something
to the internal/external distinction, even if it isn't
explicated in a satisfactory way by Beardsley. Intuitively, some
properties are properties of a work, and some properties aren't
properties of a work. Related to this is what's really at issue,
the matter of proper methodology, or the epistemology of
interpretation: some evidence is relevant to what a work
means--and what else but properties of the work itself?--and
some evidence isn't logically relevant to what a work
means--and what else but properties of things other than the
work? Put this way, the distinction seems inevitable, and indeed,
it's hard to see how art criticism can get along without it.
Rejecting it altogether is tantamount to inviting "chaos of
thought and passion, all confused"--in other words, the
potential relevance of anything and everything to interpretation, and
thus no limits on what a work of art can justifiably be said to mean.
Deconstructionists may well welcome such unlimited freedom, but lesser
breeds who like the law--which includes historicist, romantic,
psychoanalytic, and other critics, besides new critics--will
wonder whether the very idea of interpretation has been lost in the
midst of anarchy.



But even if an internal/external distinction of some sort is well-nigh
necessary, it's probably best not to couch it in exactly those
terms. The real issue isn't so much what's in and
what's out as what's relevant and what's not.
Beardsley's terminology not only obscures that fact but
skews the true substantive issue: strongly suggested by the very use
of the terms "internal" and "external" is that
relevant information is internal to a work, that is, propositions
whose subject terms refer to the work or part of the work and whose
predicate terms refer to properties discernible by experiencing the
work; and irrelevant information is external to a work, that is,
propositions whose subject terms refer to something other than the
work or part of the work, or to properties not discernible by
experiencing the work.



In the long run, the distinction will have to be drawn, just as the
issue of the intentional fallacy will have to be decided, on the basis
of a comprehensive theory of meaning in conjunction with a rich and
well-worked-out conception of art.