The 'correct' meaning may be unknowable or a meaningless idea.
The exact identity of two people's meanings for the same words
is too much to ask for. A degree of functional equivalence is
enough, and sometimes we need to estimate that degree itself,
both the likelihood of any functional equivalence and the
likelihood of its breaking down at any particular level of
detail.
In my review of _The World on Paper_, I noted the interesting
case that in dialogue, one's interlocutor's interpretation of
utterances (their own, and ours) are "privileged" in certain
very practical senses (for the coordination of activity). But
that it is an error of hermeneutical practice to carry such
notions of authorial privilege or intentionality over to
cases where there is no such dialogue to worry over (long dead
authors of written texts). In such cases there may be others
whose interpretations have practical privilege (others in our
reading communities, for example), but all these privileges
are only practical ones, not essential ones grounded in the
nature of language, communication, or meaning, as is sometimes
asserted. JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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