Interpretation and Conversation: A Response to Huddleston

Abstract

The conversation argument for actual intentionalism compares our encounters with artworks to conversations to support the interpretive policy that artists’ intentions should constrain our interpretations of their artworks. Andrew Huddleston argues that intentionalists cannot appeal to conversation, because either the metaphor is inapt (since two conversational requirements go unfulfilled) or, if the metaphor is more aptly construed (as a meta-level dialogue between artist and interpreter on how best to interpret the artwork), it will be incompatible with the intentionalist’s interpretive policy. I argue that, once constraint is understood properly, Huddleston’s conversational requirements obtain; thus the conversation metaphor is apt. I then argue that the meta-level dialogue’s goal of ‘best interpretation’ presupposes aesthetically best rather than epistemically best; if so, intentionalists cannot appeal to such a conversation. I suggest construing ‘best’ more sensibly as epistemically and aesthetically optimal and recasting the meta-level dialogue as a cooperative enquiry rather than a competition. The result is a conversation to which intentionalists can appeal.