Question

The intensional fallacy is:

(complete the sentence in a way in which it would make it true)
A. a valid inference that is however unpersuasive because the premises are about someone's beliefs/concepts/ideas to which an outside observer has no access
B. an invalid inference where the Leibniz's law is false
C. an invalid inference where a conclusion about X is invalidly derived from premises about beliefs/concepts/ideas about X
D. the fallacy of basing an assessment of a work on the author's intention rather than on one's response to the actual work.

Answer 1

The intentional fallacy is the error of evaluating a literary work based on the author's intentions instead of the text's formal qualities and the reader's interaction with the work. The intentional fallacy is D. the fallacy of basing an assessment of a work on the author's intention rather than on one's response to the actual work.

Step-by-step explanation:

This fallacy is a concept in literary criticism and it suggests that when analyzing a literary work such as a poem, play, short story, or novel, the author's intended meaning should not be the focus. Instead, interpretation should be based on the extrinsic formal qualities of the work itself. The intentional fallacy argues that the author’s intentions cannot truly be known and that meaning is controlled by the reader's interaction with the text, not by the author's original intent. Thus, literary criticism should concentrate on the text alone and not on external factors such as the author's thoughts, feelings, or intentions.