The third article I find ... problematic in places (although good in many others). For example: "You’re not entitled to believe an author means X, when the words on the page are communicating that he means Not X," seems to me to be a qualitatively different statement than "you’re not entitled to believe the moon is made of cheese." There is often a lot more disagreement about what a given set of words on a page mean - and that even goes when the author's available to be asked - than there is about what 'cheese' is and how we could tell whether or not the moon is made of it.
I certainly believe "You may be entitled to believe that an author means X, when the words on the page are communicating to many other people that he means Not X." I don't go so far as to think "all readings are equally valid" - which is probably the extreme post-modernist position he's attacking there - but without a lot of further clarification, I take issue with the way he states it.
And I see from the comments that he prefers Keats to Hume, and thinks that "beauty is truth and truth beauty" is a good counter to "Beauty is no quality in things themselves. It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them." I mean, what the fuck? If you're using the "beauty is truth" line to counter Hume's assertion that beauty is not an intrinsic quality in things, and if (like Mike Bock) you're not inclined to let people differ about what "truth" might be even when interpreting Shakespeare, then presumably not only do you think that beauty is an independent quality that exists outside of people's minds (OK, show me something that isn't a mind that can measure it), but you think there is one true standard for beauty, and someone who thinks an ugly thing is beautiful is simply wrong.
Perception of beauty is one of those areas where I think it might be reasonable for someone to say "I'm/You're entitled to my/your opinion". It's certainly not at all clear to me why I should think my opinion about whether any given thing is beautiful is any more or less valid then your opinion, or anyone else's. I do still have the "entitled by whom?" issue a little, but in the case of beauty I think it's fair to say "entitled by me, and I'm the only one who gets a say in what I'm 'allowed' to find beautiful, so that's all the permission I need."
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I certainly believe "You may be entitled to believe that an author means X, when the words on the page are communicating to many other people that he means Not X." I don't go so far as to think "all readings are equally valid" - which is probably the extreme post-modernist position he's attacking there - but without a lot of further clarification, I take issue with the way he states it.
And I see from the comments that he prefers Keats to Hume, and thinks that "beauty is truth and truth beauty" is a good counter to "Beauty is no quality in things themselves. It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them." I mean, what the fuck? If you're using the "beauty is truth" line to counter Hume's assertion that beauty is not an intrinsic quality in things, and if (like Mike Bock) you're not inclined to let people differ about what "truth" might be even when interpreting Shakespeare, then presumably not only do you think that beauty is an independent quality that exists outside of people's minds (OK, show me something that isn't a mind that can measure it), but you think there is one true standard for beauty, and someone who thinks an ugly thing is beautiful is simply wrong.
Perception of beauty is one of those areas where I think it might be reasonable for someone to say "I'm/You're entitled to my/your opinion". It's certainly not at all clear to me why I should think my opinion about whether any given thing is beautiful is any more or less valid then your opinion, or anyone else's. I do still have the "entitled by whom?" issue a little, but in the case of beauty I think it's fair to say "entitled by me, and I'm the only one who gets a say in what I'm 'allowed' to find beautiful, so that's all the permission I need."