On the scalability of intentionality and interpretability

The qualities of intentionality and interpretability as mentioned in the previous post are not understood to be absolute or a binary. There exists the potential within this burgeoning theory for greater or wider intentionality and interpretability between two texts. However, the scaling of these qualities exists within a theoretical understanding that allows no upper limit to either, and in fact rejects the notion that either could be capped.

Applying this idea to specific texts, within postmodern thought it is reasonable to say that a shopping list can be a site of meaning-making, can be thought to have infinite intentions and used as a site for creating infinite meaning. The same could be said for Finnegan's Wake. But while neither has a limit to the meaning they can take part in making, it seems reasonable to say that Finnegan's Wake provide more material, is a more fecund site to make meaning, has a greater, richer level of intentionality and interpretability than the shopping list.

Therefore, the scalability I posit is not expressed as different peaks, as different levels of meaning-making that different texts can achieve, but might be understood as differences in the speed by which each reaches to infinity.

Indulge me a few examples, becausem frankly, I can't decide which I like best.

A subroutine that adds one to itself ad infinitum reaches the same theoretical "end," that being infinity, as a subroutine that adds one million to itself at each iteration, yet the one-million-adding subroutine can be seen as more "robust."

A human couple, a rabbit couple, and a fruit fly couple, all immortal, could each produce infinite offspring, but at wildly different rates.

Given infinite time, both the room full of monkeys and a single monkey would eventually pen Hamlet, yet would clearly demonstrate a scalable emasure of "monkeyness."

This distinction is important, is an underpinning of my thinking, especially given that I feel that the relative strength of a text meaning-making ability, as expressed by scalable intentionality and interpretability, may be a measure of a text's "literariness."

While, of course, accepting that any such measurement will be influenced by the measurer, just as a text's actual made meaning is dependant on the actual individuals that make up the artist-in-fact and audience-in-fact. This is, after all, quantum, and not a refutation but refinement on postmodernity.

My starting point

I figure the best place to start is with a mission statement, or at least a first swing at one. This theory as a whole springs from a paper I wrote in grad school, and will make use of some terminology, which follow the statement, initially introduced there.

Quantum Literary Formalism (which is not directly related to New Formalism) attempts to identify and define the formal operation of text and meaning within a descriptive as opposed to prescriptive paradigm (analogous to the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammer), firmly grounded in a universal model of human understanding that is based upon the implications of the Uncertainty principle and Quantum Mechanics.

Central terms in Quantum Literary Formalism

- author-function/audience-function - the nodes within the performance/actualization of the text that represent the functions of author-in-fact/audience-in-fact

- author-in-fact/audience-in-fact - the actual, physical, grounded-in-time-and-space participants in the performance/actualization of the text

- intention/interpretation - that which was intended to be communicated/created by the author-in-fact / that which was interpreted/created by the audience-in-fact

- intentionality - all that might have been intended by the author-function, better understood as having the quality of potential intention / all that might have been interpreted/created by the author-function, better understood as having the quality of potential interpretation

These last two qualities are not absolute, but rather scalable, which will be explained further in a future post.