hello everyone i'm trinity king and today we're going to be talking about intentional fallacies to start off let's define it intentional fallacy is the fallacy of basing an assessment of a work on the author's intention rather than on one's response to the actual work it was used commonly in 20th century literary criticism to help me understand it i like to think of it as intention versus understanding when reading a text we often analyze to form our own interpretation of the work but the concept of intentional fallacy favors what the author themselves meant rather than how we understood it according to britannica the intentional fallacy forces the literary critic to assume the role of cultural historian or that of a psychologist who must define the growth of a particular artist's vision in terms of his mental and physical state at the time of his creative act common example would be the mona lisa for years there have been debates on what it was that she was trying to capture when painting her was it her smile or maybe he wanted to portray a secret cat judging by her facial expression and her posture or perhaps he wants to capture the intentions of a woman's soul whatever dementia truly meant when painting this portrait will forever hold precedence over any interpretations we may have where did it come from the concept was first introduced in a book called the verbal icon which was part published in 1954. in an essay monroe c beardsley and william k wins slimset coined the term intentional fallacy describing it as the mistake of attempting to understand the author's intentions when interpreting a literary work during the time period when they authored this essay the commonly held notion amongst people was that in order to judge the polish performance we must know what he intended and this notion led to what is termed the intentional fallacy how can we apply this concept today first thing we can apply it to is music when writing songs many lyricists use analogies and metaphors to convey an alternative meaning and in today's society it is easier than ever to find out what they really mean there are many sources to help you find this information but a notably popular one will be genius verified this is a youtube series where popular artists explain their song lyrics and what they mean line by mind it often includes personal antidotes and stories of the writing process itself next we have literature as i mentioned before we live in a society where we have information constantly at our fingertips when picking up a new book or even exploring the classics it is very easy to do some research about the author and even the book itself finally we have art many art modern artists paint with a message which they tend to display to the public whether it be through social media or a website online many artists give us the information we need to understand the art you just have to look for it let's do a quick recap intentional fallacy is the fallacy that the value or meaning of a work of art may be judged or determined by the are the artists intentions rather than how we interpret them the concept favors the artist's intention over any interpretation or understanding we may come up with it is important to understand the author artists literacy except letters lyrics etc in order to understand their work and finally there are endless applications of this concept in our everyday lives whether it be music literature or art