>The reader is free to experience the story however they want, of course.

I think this is the crux of the matter. If an artist creates a work of art with one intention, but the majority of the audience receives it in a different manner -- one that is highly poignant to them -- at some point it does not matter as much socially what the author intended. What is received has far more impact.

Like it or not, Eva was the first effective introduction that many people have with important philosophical concepts. It gets the audience to engage with existential questions in a meaningful way, even if it does not do so in a manner as intellectually rigorous or with all of the historical attributions an academic may find important. To say that the series has no relationship to philosophy is simply very closed-minded.

LOL -- is this a meta-reply? Are you applying your definition of "death of the author" here to decide to interpret what I said as whatever it is you want it to mean?

That is funny, and makes an interesting point, but I don't actually believe you read my response to have an opposite meaning to what "I intended". You might interpret it slightly differently than how I might have written it, but death of the author doesn't give carte blanche to willfully lie about how you received it.

I think the fascinating thing about Eva is that it borrowed deeply meaningful symbology from a different culture, and did so in such a successful way that even those from a cultural background where those symbols have deeper meaning saw it their use still overwhelmingly resonated with them. That likely included in ways that the author could not have predicted or completely understood bc... Not his culture.

The reason this worked undoubtedly has to do with the author successfully reflecting an authentic human experience. That is the essence of good art, and that perhaps gets more into "what is art" rather than "what is philosophy".

Regardless, someone who watched the series and understood it in a way that imbued a different or deeper meaning from the symbols than the author meant did not experience the series "wrong" - no more than someone seeing a mouse in the face of the moon is wrong when someone else sees a face there.

If what the author meant is not and can't be what is overall received, then I don't know how anyone can argue that what the author meant can have much importance.

How we have the capacity to make and share art is a subject of philosophy, and pertinent to how we can share any ideas including any practice of philosophy. Epistemology is kind of meta-philosophy.

The theory is more damning than that - you can believe that you have an idea what the creator meant, but it will always be contrived.

There is no perfect communication, and I think there is an important epistemological truth in that worth grappling with -- especially at a pragmatic level.

You can be annoyed with it all you want, but it is important to realize the limits of senses and information -- all models are models, approximations with limits that breakdown.

But once you know that, there is some freedom in existence to be had -- especially with interpreting art.

Yikes, your assessment is akin to saying the Delphic boat question is simply a manufacturing curiosity. The "death of the author" question is typically considered closely related to post-modernism, which I don't think anyone would claim "isn't philosophy".

A big part of art interpretation is "reading tea leaves" though. How else does abstract art even exist?

Not who you are replying to, but there is some interesting theory on this related to "death of the author". It is not a clean-cut question, with lots of fascinating implications.

I mean, you are free to disagree but there is a ton of theory on that particular question so it's not really a "ha of course not" question. Check out anything related to "death of the author".

Oof... I got down voted to hell for arguing something similar earlier this week, but I'm not steeped enough in sources to be able to reference them on demand. Always a relief to find ideas reiterated elsewhere.

Ha! Ok, well Neuro is not my field XD

No, this is at the DNA level so it's pretty straightforward.

And in case you are wondering, I am a PhD doctor and DNA/genetic testing is in my field of expertise.

...And my guess is the same can be said of someone whose handle is a play on "Oligos", which are synthetic DNA building blocks for this kind of work.