WILLIAM IRWIN

Authorial Declaration and Extreme Actual

Intentionalism: Is Dumbledore Gay?

abstract
Authorial and artistic declarations would seem to be a boon to interpreters who favor actual intentionalism. However, because
they believe there are limits on the power of authors and artists to embody their intentions in their works, moderate actual
intentionalists hold that some intentions are irrelevant. Looking closely at authorial declaration about the sexuality of Albus
Dumbledore in the Harry Potter novels, I argue in favor of the extreme actual intentionalist position that genuine authorial
declarations should not be ignored because authorial intention always determines meaning. The answer to the question in the
subtitle is that we do not know with certainty, even though there is a definite right answer. We can argue for the answer we
think is most likely, however. And aided by the distinction between meaning and significance, extreme actual intentionalism
provides a clear and consistent way of making such arguments while avoiding the problem of being stuck with an interpretation
we find aesthetically displeasing.

i. introduction meaning and significance makes available a plu-

Looking closely at an authorial declaration about
the sexuality of Albus Dumbledore in the Harry
Potter novels, this article clarifies the actual in-
tentionalist position on declarations: they are not
the same as intentions, though honest declara-
tions are important evidence of intentions.1 Most
defenders of actual intentionalism prefer moder-
ate actual intentionalism because it seems more
reasonable in its claim that authorial intention
must be supported by linguistic convention. This
article argues, however, that extreme actual inten-
tionalism is superior because it is more consistent
and parsimonious, holding that intention is always
sufficient for meaning, and because the problems
extreme actual intentionalism appears to face con-
cerning conventions turn out not to be problems
at all. Intention is limited by belief, and thus our
ability to intend is more constrained than moder-
ate actual intentionalists typically recognize. Nor
are we stuck with unappealing interpretations,
because, despite extreme actual intentionalism’s
limitation on meaning, the distinction between
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 73:2 Spring 2015
C 2015 The American Society for Aesthetics
rality of possible interpretations.
ii. what did rowling intend?
In an interview with readers, J. K. Rowling was
asked if Albus Dumbledore had ever been in love.
Rowling responded that she had “always thought
of Dumbledore as gay.”2 This surprised, indeed
shocked, many people. Even the most careful
and obsessive readers of the Harry Potter books
had never thought that Dumbledore was gay. So
this revelation struck some readers as illegitimate.
You cannot intend after the fact. If Rowling did
not intend Dumbledore to be gay while she was
writing, then she could not just intend him to be
gay after the books were published.
In response to the challenge that she could
not make such a declaration about Dumbledore,
Rowling said, Dumbledore “is my character. He
is what he is and I have the right to say what I
say about him.”3 So perhaps she intended for him
to be gay all along. As textual evidence for her
142
claim, Rowling pointed to Dumbledore’s relation-
ship with Gellert Grindelwald. Fans could now un-
derstand Dumbledore’s line “You cannot imagine
how his ideas . . . inflamed me” in a new light.4 In-
deed, Rowling suggested that her revelation helps
us understand Dumbledore better, saying, “To an
extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little
more because falling in love can blind us to an ex-
tent? But he met someone as brilliant as he was,
and . . . was very drawn to this brilliant person,
and horribly, terribly let down by him.”5
So is Dumbledore gay? If, in writing, Rowling
intended to communicate that he was gay, then the
answer for the actual intentionalist is yes. Rowling
has suggested that was her intention, but it is not
certain that it truly was her intention. A person’s
declaration of intention is not always sufficient to
establish that intention. We all occasionally lie or
mislead others as to our intentions in day-to-day
life, and authors are not always above such de-
ception when it comes to their novels. To remove
any doubts, Rowling could make public her notes
and backstory writing that clearly show that she
had intended Dumbledore to be gay while she was
writing. If she did, that would firmly establish for
the actual intentionalist that Dumbledore is gay.
It would be paranoid at that point to suggest that
she forged the notes and backstories.
The actual intentionalist still might wonder,
though, why Rowling did not make her inten-
tion clear in the novels. Given the reaction af-
ter she first declared that Dumbledore is gay, the
answer might be that she did not want to invite
controversy that would distract from the novels.
As another possibility, Tamar Szabó Gendler sug-
gests that perhaps Dumbledore’s sexuality never
comes up in the books because his sexuality is in-
visible to Harry Potter and his peers, saying that
“by introducing Dumbledore as a character with
whom readers come to identify, Rowling catches
her readers in an act of unwitting toleration; she
brings them to recognize that like interracial dat-
ing, sexual orientation is such a nonissue as not to
warrant explicit mention.”6 This would be a good
explanation except for the fact that interracial dat-
ing is depicted in the novels whereas same-sex dat-
ing is not. If being gay was no big deal in the world
of Harry Potter, then why are no gay relation-
ships explicitly mentioned? There are, after all,
any number of heterosexual relationships explic-
itly mentioned. The complete absence of any men-
tion of gay relationships makes the world of Harry
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Potter seem more intolerant than the real world.
Indeed, we know that the Harry Potter world is
full of intolerance. Surely, the Death Eaters would
not approve of Dumbledore’s homosexuality.
Certainly, Rita Skeeter should have found some
evidence of it in her investigation, especially since
the implication is that there was an attraction be-
tween Dumbledore and Grindelwald.
Rowling said that she had “thought” of Dumb-
ledore as gay. So it is possible that Rowling thought
of Dumbledore as gay without intending him to be
gay. By ‘intention’ I mean a desire to, and a be-
lief that one can, produce an effect that one plans
to produce. Intentions need not be formed all at
once, and in the case of art, the relevant effect
is an understanding, reaction, or perlocutionary
effect.7 Perhaps Dumbledore being gay was just
a passing thought for Rowling. That is, she may
have thought of him as gay without intending to
communicate that fact about him. If so, it is not
clear that Rowling’s thought is relevant in deter-
mining the meaning of the text. Likewise, Rowling
revealed in the same interview that she thought of
Neville Longbottom as going on to marry Hannah
Abbott, but she clearly did not intend to commu-
nicate that in the text of the novels.8 Such thoughts
can be interesting, but are they relevant? Let us
leave that question aside for now and come back
to it later in this article.
At the risk of being labeled paranoid, let us
consider the possibility that Rowling was decep-
tive in her declaration about Dumbledore. This,
as it should, involves speculation about her inten-
tions in making the declaration. So, if the spec-
ulation is correct that Rowling was not truthful,
why would she be deceptive in this case? There
are many possible answers, but let us confine our-
selves to one. With the final book, Harry Potter
and the Deathly Hallows, Rowling disappointed
some secular readers with the Christian imagery
of the death and resurrection of Harry Potter,
who sacrificed his life to save others. So she may
have said that Dumbledore was gay in an effort to
please secular readers and distance herself from a
conservative worldview.
When we consider Rowling’s declaration that
Dumbledore is gay we find there is no clear tex-
tual evidence for it. It would be like saying that
Dumbledore is of African descent. There is no
textual evidence for it, and everyone had always
imagined otherwise. Still, if Rowling produced
backstory and notes that showed she had always
Irwin Authorial Declaration and Extreme Actual Intentionalism
intended to communicate that Dumbledore is gay,
then the case would be closed for the actual inten-
tionalist. We could fault Rowling for not making
Dumbledore’s sexuality clearer in the text, but we
could not deny her intention and the meaning.
Since Rowling has not produced such evidence,
the jury remains out. Epistemological uncertainty
is part of the human condition, and it should not
surprise us that it is part of interpretation. The de-
mand to remove that uncertainty is unreasonable.
We can say what we think we know, but we must
admit that we may turn out to be wrong nonethe-
less. As Paisley Livingston says, “The grapes of
intention are, alas, often out of reach, but that
does not make them sour!”9
iii. in defense of extreme actual
intentionalism
Actual intentionalists recognize that declarations
of intention are not always the final word be-
cause artists may wish to deceive us after they
have created their artworks and because some-
times their memories are imperfect. For the ac-
tual intentionalist, though, Rowling’s declaration
that Dumbledore is gay is decisive as long as she
is being truthful. The actual intentionalist camp is
not monolithic, however. It splits between moder-
ate (or modest) actual intentionalism and extreme
actual intentionalism. Moderate actual intention-
alism holds that there are limits on the power of
authors and artists to embody their intentions in
their works, whereas extreme actual intentional-
ism does not hold that there are such limits.10
Moderate actual intentionalism “acknowledges
that the author’s intention is not sufficient to im-
bue the work with a meaning it cannot convention-
ally support, but at the same time preserves the
idea that the author of a work does have a degree
of special authority with respect to its meaning.”11
By contrast, extreme actual intentionalism holds
that the author’s intention is always sufficient to
imbue a work with meaning even when linguistic
convention is violated and even when, as a result,
epistemological access to that meaning is made
difficult. The classic, motivating example comes
from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass,
in which Humpty Dumpty declares that by ‘glory’
he means a nice knock-down argument. Like
Alice, the moderate actual intentionalist finds
it impossible that ‘glory’ could mean a nice
143
knock-down argument. The extreme actual inten-
tionalist does not find this impossible, however.
To see why, let us return to Harry Potter.
There would likely be no disagreement be-
tween the moderate actual intentionalist and the
extreme actual intentionalist that Dumbledore is
gay if it were established that Rowling genuinely
intended it. Consider a fanciful example, how-
ever. What if Rowling said she had always in-
tended Hermione Granger to be a vampire? Even
if she produced notes and backstory that showed
she had that intention, the moderate actual inten-
tionalist would deny that the meaning of the text
includes Hermione being a vampire. After all, ab-
solutely nothing in the text suggests Hermione is
a vampire. This would be the equivalent of saying
that ‘glory’ means a nice knock-down argument.
By contrast, in light of this declaration, the
extreme actual intentionalist would say that the
meaning of the text includes Hermione being a
vampire. Of course, if Hermione is a vampire, then
that makes the text aesthetically flawed because
there is no indication that she is a vampire. So on
aesthetic grounds the extreme actual intentional-
ist could still prefer the understanding and inter-
pretation of the text according to which Hermione
is not a vampire. To use E. D. Hirsch’s terms, that
interpretation would be the significance of the text
that the extreme actual intentionalist could rightly
prefer on aesthetic grounds while recognizing that
it is not the meaning of the text.12 For Hirsch,
Meaning is that which is represented by a text; it is what
the author meant by his use of a particular sign sequence;
it is what the signs represent. Significance, on the other
hand, names a relationship between that meaning and a
person, or a conception, or a situation, or indeed any-
thing imaginable.13
While this distinction is helpful, it does not cover
all interpretations. As P. D. Juhl pointed out, “a
critic who interprets a work as meaning something
other than what the author intended is not as a rule
relating the meaning which the author intended to
something else; nor does his interpretation appear
to presuppose any claim about what the author
meant.”14 The distinction between meaning and
significance is a matter of stipulative definition,
and so to make the distinction optimally useful we
can repurpose it by stipulating the definition of
significance differently. Significance as I conceive
of it, in contrast to Hirsch, does not need to be
144
based in meaning. It does not need to relate the
author’s intention to something else. Rather, sig-
nificance is any understanding of the text other
than what the author intended. Meaning is what
an author intends to communicate, whereas sig-
nificance is any understanding that goes beyond,
or is apart from, authorial intention.
Significance is thus a large catch-all category
that includes all nonintended understandings and
interpretations. Adopting this distinction, inten-
tionalist readers have a plurality of possible un-
derstandings open to them through significance,
even though meaning is strictly limited by autho-
rial intention. Intentionalist readers are not stuck
with a single, unpalatable interpretation; they
can choose to focus on significance rather than
meaning.
Let us return to a question that we tabled ear-
lier: What is the status of thoughts that an author
has but does not intend to communicate? For ex-
ample, it could turn out that Rowling modeled
Cedric Diggory loosely on a boy she knew in
school, though she had no intention to commu-
nicate that to the reader. In that case, intention-
alists of all stripes would agree that it would be
no part of the meaning of the text that Cedric
was modeled on such a person. Knowing that the
character was thus modeled may provide a certain
appreciation—but that is something extra. Ulti-
mately, what matters is intention to communicate,
and that is why the Humpty Dumpty example is
actually not so troubling.
The Humpty Dumpty example would need to
be modified only a little for Humpty Dumpty
to succeed, such that the words do mean what
he wants them to mean. For example, through
repeated use, Humpty Dumpty could establish
the slang or idiolect convention of meaning a
nice knock-down argument by saying ‘glory.’ In
Through the Looking-Glass, having said it once,
explained it, and established the convention with
Alice, Humpty Dumpty can have a reasonable
expectation of being understood by her the next
time. Modifying the example does not address the
concern, however.
What does address the concern is that Humpy
Dumpty is not an intentionalist, but rather a vo-
litionist. In the story, Humpty Dumpty does not
intend ‘there’s glory for you’ to mean there’s
a nice knock-down argument for you. He sim-
ply wills that meaning, and willing is not the
same as intending. He does not think that words
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
mean whatever he intends but rather whatever
he wills.15
Intending involves more than mere willing.
Recall the definition of intention as a desire to,
and a belief that one can, produce an effect that
one plans to produce. Inasmuch as intentions are
comprised in part of beliefs, Humpty Dumpty does
not intend those words to mean what he says they
mean. One of the crucial beliefs involved in in-
tending meaning is the belief that it is possible
that one will be understood by another.16 Humpty
Dumpty wills and desires his words to have the
meaning that he says they have, but he does not
believe they can be understood as having that
meaning by anyone but himself upon their first
utterance. When Alice complains, “I don’t know
what you mean by ‘glory,’” Humpty Dumpty re-
sponds, “Of course you don’t—till I tell you.”17
The problem with Humpty Dumpty is that he
does not actually intend to be understood, even
in principle, by anyone other than himself. Thus
he does not intend the word ‘glory’ to mean a nice
knock-down argument. As Keith Donnellan says
of Humpty Dumpty, “I cannot credit him with that
intention any more than I could credit a seemingly
rational adult with the intention to fly when I see
him flapping his arms up and down.”18
However, what if, in a different scenario,
Humpty Dumpty did intend ‘glory’ to mean a
nice knock-down argument upon first utterance?
In that scenario Humpty Dumpty would need to
have the belief that he could in principle be un-
derstood, if not by Alice then by someone else.
Consider that in the case of a joke or an ironic
statement a speaker may not intend to be un-
derstood by his interlocutor but only intend that
he could in principle be understood by someone
other than himself. For example, as a joke I can say
to a student “There’s glory for you!” and intend by
it “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”
I may have no reason to think that the student will
understand the meaning, but that does not matter.
In fact, I may hope and assume that the student
will not understand the meaning. Still, because I
have the requisite belief, that it is in principle pos-
sible for someone to understand the meaning, I do
indeed intend it.
Agents can intend things they believe are highly
improbable, like a basketball player who takes a
last-second shot from beyond the half-court line.
She does not believe that it is likely that she will
score but she desires it and believes it is possible.
Irwin Authorial Declaration and Extreme Actual Intentionalism
And thus she intends to score.19 Notice that the
same bodily movements could be made, taking a
shot from beyond the half-court line, with a dif-
ferent belief, that is, that there is no chance the
shot will go in. In such a case there would be no
intention to score (even if, against all odds, the ball
goes in). Indeed, such shots without the intention
to score are common, just thrown up perfunctorily,
out of a sense of obligation to display effort.
In another related scenario, Humpty Dumpty
might have the irrational belief that when he says
‘glory’ Alice will know that he means a nice knock-
down argument. In that case, Humpty Dumpty
intends ‘glory’ to mean a nice knock-down ar-
gument, and that is what it means, even though
the communication is unsuccessful. As Samuel
Wheeler says,
if Humpty was deluded about his audience, and had
some unusual correlation in mind—for instance, that in
his favorite novel ‘glory’ occurred in the same position
as ‘knockdown argument’ but on the verso of the page,
and this seemed to Humpty something everyone would
notice—then we could say that Humpty’s communica-
tion attempt was meaningful, but unsuccessful.20
It should not surprise us that irrational agents
sometimes intend incomprehensible meanings.
Belief is the limit on what you can intend. A ra-
tional person may not be able to intend to fly by
flapping his arms, but an irrational person cer-
tainly could. So if you genuinely intend a word
to have an unconventional meaning, it does not
matter how irrational the belief is that it could in
principle be understood. The word does have the
unconventional meaning, even if the communica-
tion is unsuccessful.
There is no limit on what you can mean except
what you can intend, but belief places a limit on
what you can intend. Belief is not strictly volun-
tary, and for rational agents the belief concerning
what an audience could in principle comprehend is
limited by reasonable expectations. As Kent Bach
says,
You do not say something and, then, as though by an in-
ner decree (an intention), determine what you are using
it to refer to. You do not just have something ‘in mind’
and hope that your audience is a good mind reader.
Rather, you decide to refer to something and try to
select an expression whose utterance will enable your
145
audience, under the circumstances, to identify what you
are referring to.21
Ordinarily, we select expressions in conformity
with linguistic conventions, but as Donald
Davidson has argued, linguistic conventions are
like rules of thumb that can be violated.22 Thus,
“there is no word or construction that cannot be
converted to a new use by an ingenious or ignorant
speaker.”23 As an example of one who subverts
convention, we should add to the ingenious poet
and the ignorant Mr. Malaprop an irrational or
deluded Dumpty. Like the poetic innovation or
the pathetic malapropism, an irrational ‘glory’
means what its author intended so long as it is
supported by sincere belief and regardless of
whether the communication is successful. Such
is not the case in Lewis Carroll’s description of
the conversation between Alice and Humpty
Dumpty because in that description Humpty
Dumpty does not have the requisite belief for an
intention. But, as we have seen, in a case where
Humpty Dumpty did have the requisite belief,
‘glory’ would mean a nice knock-down argument.
Let us now consider the preceding discussion in
light of Rowling’s declaration that Dumbledore
is gay. While few, if any, readers had previously
picked up on her intention (assuming she truly
intended it), it would not have been impossible
for someone to pick up on it in light of Dumb-
ledore’s bond with Grindelwald. Rowling cannot
will Dumbledore to be gay after the fact of writ-
ing, but she certainly could have intended to com-
municate that Dumbledore was gay while writing,
even if she intended that communication to be
very subtle and likely to be missed by nearly all
readers. If, though, she merely thought of Dumb-
ledore as gay without intending to communicate
that fact, then that fact is not part of the meaning
of the text. This seems to be the status of the fu-
ture of Neville Longbottom and Hannah Abbott.
Rowling thought about them getting married after
the action of the novels, but she did not intend to
communicate this in the novels. Thus it is not part
of the meaning of the books that these two char-
acters will one day get married. Authors think of
many things while writing, including what to have
for lunch, but only those things they intend to
communicate by what they write are part of the
meaning of what they write.
If Rowling said “I always thought of Hermione
as a vampire” and meant by this that she intended
146
it, this would mean that she believed it was in
principle possible for readers to grasp this mean-
ing. The fact that Hermione is a vampire would,
then, be part of the meaning of the novels. And this
would be so even if Rowling’s belief was irrational
and the communication was unsuccessful such that
no reader actually did realize that Hermione was
a vampire prior to Rowling’s statement. Still, most
of us would conclude that the text is aesthetically
flawed to the extent that we understand it as in-
cluding the fact that Hermione is a vampire. For
aesthetic reasons it would be preferable to con-
tinue to understand the text as if Hermione were
not a vampire. That would be the significance of
the text that most readers would prefer on aes-
thetic grounds.
If by saying that “I always thought of Hermione
as a vampire” Rowling just meant that she thought
of Hermione that way in passing but that she had
not intended to communicate it, then it would not
be part of the meaning of the text that Hermione
is a vampire. But, given that piece of informa-
tion, some vampire-obsessed readers might enjoy
reading the text that way—they would prefer that
significance of the text.
This brings us back to Rowling’s declaration
that she had always thought of Dumbledore as gay.
If what she genuinely meant by that statement was
that she had always intended to communicate that
Dumbledore was gay, however obliquely, then that
implies that she believed it was in principle pos-
sible for readers to grasp that meaning. It would
follow then that Dumbledore is gay. If, however,
what Rowling meant by that statement was that
it was a thought that occurred to her but which
she never intended to communicate by the text,
it would not be part of the meaning of the text
that Dumbledore is gay. Of course it would still
be an interpretation of the text that some readers
would prefer—it would be the significance of the
text that they prefer.
iv. conclusion
The subtitle of this article asks: Is Dumbledore
gay? The answer is that we do not know with cer-
tainty, even though there is a definite right answer,
determined by the author’s intention. We can ar-
gue for the answer we think is most likely, how-
ever. Aided by the distinction between meaning
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
and significance, extreme actual intentionalism
provides a clear and consistent way of making such
arguments while avoiding the problem of being
stuck with an interpretation we find aesthetically
displeasing.24
WILLIAM IRWIN
Department of Philosophy
King’s College Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania 18711
internet: williamirwin@kings.edu
1. By contrast, hypothetical intentionalists do not think
an author’s or artist’s actual intention trumps the inten-
tion that we are epistemically most justified in attributing
to an artwork. This means that authorial statements of in-
tention may be overridden or even ignored. In addition
to seeking the attribution that is epistemically best, hypo-
thetical intentionalists commonly operate on the principle
of charity in attributing the “artistically better” intention
to the author or artist. In light of the available evidence,
they posit the best possible intention, epistemically and
aesthetically. As a methodological procedure, this makes
sense as a preliminary step. What does not make sense,
however, is that the hypothetical intentionalist stops short
of taking into account the most important clue to inten-
tion, the artist’s declaration of intention. Indeed, it is puz-
zling to class hypothetical intentionalists as intentionalists
at all.
2. “J. K. Rowling at Carnegie Hall Reveals
Dumbledore Is Gay; Neville Marries Hannah Abbott, and
Much More,” The Leaky Cauldron, October 20, 2007, http://
www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/10/20/j-k-rowling-at-
carnegie-hall-reveals-dumbledore-is-gay-neville-marries-
hannah-abbott-and-scores-more.
3. “J. K. Rowling on Dumbledore Revelation: ‘He
Is My Character,’” The Leaky Cauldron, October
23, 2007, http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/10/23/j-k-
rowling-on-dumbledore-revelation-i-m-not-kidding.
4. J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
(New York: Scholastic, 2007), p. 716.
5. “J. K. Rowling at Carnegie Hall Reveals Dumble-
dore Is Gay.”
6. Tamar Szabó Gendler, “Is Dumbledore Gay? Who’s
to Say?” in The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hog-
warts for Muggles, ed. Gregory Bassham (Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley & Sons, 2010), pp. 143–156, at p. 154, and cf.
p. 153.
7. This definition is inspired by but differs from
that offered by Paisley Livingston in his Art and Inten-
tion: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
2005), pp. 14–15. Also helpful is the account offered
by Neil Sinhababu, “The Desire–Belief Account of In-
tention Explains Everything,” Nous 47 (2013): 680–
696. The definition of intention is, of course, disputed.
See Kieran Setiya, “Intention,” The Stanford Encyclo-
pedia of Philosophy, Spring 2014 edition, ed. Edward
N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/
intention/.
Irwin Authorial Declaration and Extreme Actual Intentionalism
8. Gendler notes that the fact that Hermione has ten
fingers is not stated, “Is Dumbledore Gay?” p. 148.
9. Paisley Livingston, “Arguing Over Intentions,” Re-
vue Internationale de Philosophie 50 (1996): 615–633, at
p. 633.
10. Noël Carroll calls moderate actual intentional-
ism modest actual intentionalism. More recently he has
also called it “modest, actual mentalism.” See “Art Inter-
pretation,” British Journal of Aesthetics 51 (2011): 117–
135, at p. 121. Also in the moderate actual intentionalist
camp are Robert Stecker, Interpretation and Construction:
Art, Speech, and the Law (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003);
Paisley Livingston, Art and Intention; and Gary Iseminger,
“Actual Intentionalism vs. Hypothetical Intentionalism,”
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54 (1996): 319–
326. Extreme actual intentionalists include Steven Knapp
and Walter Benn Michaels, “Against Theory,” Critical In-
quiry 8 (1982): 723–742, and “Against Theory 2: Hermeneu-
tics and Deconstruction,” Critical Inquiry 14 (1987): 49–68;
and William Irwin, Intentionalist Interpretation: A Philo-
sophical Explanation and Defense (Westport, CT: Green-
wood Press, 1999).
11. Sherri Irvin, “Authors, Intentions and Literary
Meaning,” Philosophy Compass 1/2 (2006): 114–128, at
p. 119.
12. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation (Yale
University Press, 1967). For defense of the distinction be-
tween meaning and significance, see Irwin, Intentionalist In-
terpretation, pp. 46–50, and Kalle Puolakka, Relativism and
Intentionalism in Interpretation: Davidson, Hermeneutics,
and Pragmatism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011),
pp. 170–176.
13. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, p. 8, emphasis in
the original. Hirsch altered his understanding of this dis-
tinction slightly in subsequent works, but not in ways that
address the chief concern about it raised by P. D. Juhl. See
Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation (University of Chicago
Press, 1976); “Meaning and Significance Reinterpreted,”
Critical Inquiry 11 (1984): 202–225; and “Transhistorical
147
Intentions and the Persistence of Allegory,” New Literary
History 25 (1994): 549–567.
14. P. D. Juhl, Interpretation: An Essay in the Philosophy
of Literary Criticism (Princeton University Press, 1980), p.
43.
15. I also make this point in a review of Kalle
Puolakka’s Relativism and Intentionalism in Interpretation,
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71 (2013): 302–
303.
16. To avoid the problem of a private language, for a
new coinage it must be in principle possible for the other
person to understand you.
17. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, in The
Annotated Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and
Through the Looking-Glass, ed. Martin Gardner (New
York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1960), pp. 268–270.
18. Keith S. Donnellan, “Putting Humpty Dumpty To-
gether Again,” Philosophical Review 77 (1968): 203–215, at
p. 213. See also Donald Davidson, “A Nice Derangement of
Epitaphs,” in The Essential Davidson, eds. Ernie Lepore and
Kirk Ludwig (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 251–265,
at p. 258.
19. Sinhababu, “The Desire–Belief Account of Inten-
tion Explains Everything,” p. 681.
20. Samuel C. Wheeler III, “Language and Literature,”
in Donald Davidson, ed. Kirk Ludwig (Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2003), pp. 183–206, at p. 201.
21. Kent Bach, “Paving the Road to Reference,” Philo-
sophical Studies 67 (1992): 295–300, at p. 299.
22. Wheeler, “Language and Literature,” p. 198.
23. Davidson, “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs,”
p. 259.
24. An earlier version of this article was presented
at a meeting of the Long Island Philosophical Soci-
ety and benefitted from discussion there. In addition I
wish to thank Gregory Bassham, Theodore Gracyk, Kyle
Johnson, Megan Lloyd, Vittorio Pelosi, Robert Stecker,
and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and
criticisms.