A first shot would be to suggest that "x meant something" would be true if x was intended by its utterer to induce a belief in some

"audience" and that to say what the belief was would be to say what

* meant This will not do. I might leave B's handkerchief near the scene of a murder in order to induce the detective to believe that B was the murderer; but we should not want to say that the handkerchief (or my leaving it there) meantwy anything or that I had meantoN by leaving it that B was the murderer. Clearly we must at least add that, for x to have meanty anything, not merely must it have been

"uttered" with the intention of inducing a certain belief but also the utterer must have intended an "audience" to recognize the intention behind the utterance. This, though perhaps better, is not good enough. Consider the following cases:

1. Herod presents Salome with the head of St. John the Baptist on a charger.
2. Feeling faint, a child lets its mother see how pale it is (hoping that she may draw her own conclusions and help).
3. I leave the china my daughter has broken lying around for my wife to see.

Here we seem to have cases which satisfy the conditions so far given for meaningw For example, Herod intended to make Salome believe that St. John the Baptist was dead and no doubt also intended Salome to recognize that he intended her to believe that St. John the Baptist was dead. Similarly for the other cases. Yet 1 certainly do not think that we should want to say that we have here cases of meaning de-What we want to find is the difference between, for example, liberately and openly letting someone know" and "telling" and between "getting someone to think" and "relling."

The way out is perhaps as follows. Compare the following two cases:

1. I show Mr. X a photograph of Mr. Y displaying undue familiarity to Mrs. X.
2. I draw a picture of Mr. Y behaving in this manner and show it to Mr. X.

I find that I want to deny that in (1) the photograph (or my showing it to Mr. X) meantey anything at all; while I want to assert that in (2) the picture (or my drawing and showing it meant oy something (that Mr. Y had been unduly familiar), or at least that I had meant by it that Mr. Y had been unduly familiar. What is the difference between the two cases? Surely that in case (1) Mr. X's recognition of my intention to make him believe that there is something between Mr. Y and Mrs. X is (more or less) irrelevant to the production of this effect by the photograph. Mr. X would be led by the photograph at least to suspect Mrs. X even if, instead of showing it to him, 1 had left it in his room by accident; and I (the photograph shower) would not be unaware of this. But it will make a difference to the effect of my picture on Mr. X whether or not he takes me to be intending to inform him (make him believe something) about Mrs. X, and not to be just doodling or trying to produce a work of art.