It used to be that I would sometimes read something and interpret it to mean X (sometimes, even if the author expressed it sloppily). Then I would say “I think the author meant X” and get into arguments with people who thought the author meant something different. These arguments would be very frustrating, since no matter how certain I was of my interpretation, short of asking the author there was no way to determine who was right.
At some point I realized that there was no reason to make claims about the author’s intent. Instead of saying “I think the author meant X”, I could just say “this reads to me as saying X”. Now I’m only reporting on how I’m personally interpreting their words, regardless of what they might have meant. That both avoids pointless arguments about what the author really meant, and is more epistemically sensible, since in most cases I don’t know that my reading of the words is what the author really intended.
Of course, sometimes I might have reason to believe that I do know the author’s intent. For example, if I’ve spent quite some time discussing X with the author directly, and have a good understanding of how they think about the topic. In those cases I might still make claims of their intent. But generally I’ve stopped making such claims, which has saved me from plenty of pointless arguments.
In policy contexts (not just political policy, but like, making group decisions of almost any kind), it tends to matter a lot what the author intended, since that’s often a natural schelling point for resolution of ambiguities that later gets referred to.
See for example courts trying to interpret what previous courts intended with a judgement, or what a law was intended to do. Same for company decisions to move ahead with a project. In almost any context with stakes, the intention of the author continues to matter (though how much varies from context to context, though my sense is almost always a good amount).
Yes but it’s also not rare for legal scholars to see “legislative intention” as nothing but a convenient fiction that courts employ to retain some semblance of objectivity. In principle, they could drop such language and refer directly to their interpretation of the statutory text, right? The intellectual labor involved is unchanged: each judge considers their community’s surrounding norms and common sense assumptions to understand what a law is “really” trying to do. Whether or not this interpretation is ascribed to authorial intention is basically superfluous.
It used to be that I would sometimes read something and interpret it to mean X (sometimes, even if the author expressed it sloppily). Then I would say “I think the author meant X” and get into arguments with people who thought the author meant something different. These arguments would be very frustrating, since no matter how certain I was of my interpretation, short of asking the author there was no way to determine who was right.
At some point I realized that there was no reason to make claims about the author’s intent. Instead of saying “I think the author meant X”, I could just say “this reads to me as saying X”. Now I’m only reporting on how I’m personally interpreting their words, regardless of what they might have meant. That both avoids pointless arguments about what the author really meant, and is more epistemically sensible, since in most cases I don’t know that my reading of the words is what the author really intended.
Of course, sometimes I might have reason to believe that I do know the author’s intent. For example, if I’ve spent quite some time discussing X with the author directly, and have a good understanding of how they think about the topic. In those cases I might still make claims of their intent. But generally I’ve stopped making such claims, which has saved me from plenty of pointless arguments.
The useful thing is the ideas you take away, it’s rarely relevant if the author intended them or not.
In policy contexts (not just political policy, but like, making group decisions of almost any kind), it tends to matter a lot what the author intended, since that’s often a natural schelling point for resolution of ambiguities that later gets referred to.
See for example courts trying to interpret what previous courts intended with a judgement, or what a law was intended to do. Same for company decisions to move ahead with a project. In almost any context with stakes, the intention of the author continues to matter (though how much varies from context to context, though my sense is almost always a good amount).
Yes but it’s also not rare for legal scholars to see “legislative intention” as nothing but a convenient fiction that courts employ to retain some semblance of objectivity. In principle, they could drop such language and refer directly to their interpretation of the statutory text, right? The intellectual labor involved is unchanged: each judge considers their community’s surrounding norms and common sense assumptions to understand what a law is “really” trying to do. Whether or not this interpretation is ascribed to authorial intention is basically superfluous.
At least some scholars see a meaningful difference between “original intent” and “original public meaning.”
This feels very flavoured like A Principled Cartoon Guide to NVC’s view on avoiding communication failures!