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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
There is a theory about knowledge of the meanings of words which has been held by philosophers as different as existentialists and crude empiricists.1 It may be called the empiricist theory, and is stated thus:
If anyone fully understands the meaning of ‘x’, then the object(s) denoted by ‘x’ must have been experienced or ‘encountered’ by that person.
page 31 note 1 For example, Martin Buber's I/You doctrine involves the view that only by an encounter with God in an I/You relationship can one fully know what God is.
page 31 note 2 For a discussion of the importance of this consequence for Anselm and for the integrity of the argument see my ‘The Fool and the Ontological Status of Anselm's Argument’, The Heythrop Journal xv (1974), 406–22.Google Scholar
page 32 note 1 Dupré, Louis, ‘The Moral Argument, the Religious Experience and the Basic Meaning of the Ontological Argument’, Idealistic Studies iii (1973), 266–76. See especially pp. 274–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 32 note 2 Hocking, William Ernest, The Meaning of God in Human Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912), pp. 313–14Google Scholar. This issue has been discussed in an unpublished doctoral dissertation at Georgetown University, 1971, by Mary Giegengack O.S.U. to whom I am grateful for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
page 33 note 1 Rescher, N. ‘The Ontological Proof Revisited’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy xxxvii (1959), 138–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rynin, D., ‘On Deriving Essence from Existence’, Inquiry vi (1963), 141–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Independence is attested to by correspondence with Rynin in the early 1970s when he was still unaware of Rescher's article.
page 33 note 2 Rynin, , op. cit. p. 151.Google Scholar
page 33 note 3 Ibid. p. 152.
page 33 note 4 Reicher, , op. cit. p. 143.Google Scholar
page 33 note 5 Ibid. p. 144.
page 34 note 1 Ibid. pp. 141–2.
page 34 note 2 Rynin, , op. cit. pp. 150–1.Google Scholar
page 35 note 1 Rynin clearly recognizes the differences in these notions of meaning and essence when he notes, his italics: ‘In the sense indicated by the foregoing considerations and for at least that one idea we attempt to express by the word “God”…essence involves existence’ (p. 154) and when he describes the person who has climbed K-2 but lost several toes and some fellow climbers in the process: ‘For the first time he really understands it [what “to climb K–2” really means] and this understanding came only upon having achieved the climb…Of course, the abstract essence, meaning of, “to climb K–2” was [before the climb] clear enough to him…But the reality corresponding to this pale phrase was something else again’ (p. 151).
page 36 note 1 Rescher, , op. cit. p. 142.Google Scholar
page 37 note 1 Rynin, , op. cit. p. 141.Google Scholar
page 37 note 2 Ibid. p. 142.
page 38 note 1 Ibid. p. 153.
page 38 note 2 Rescher replaces ‘meaning’ of a word with ‘understanding of the meaning’ of a word, yet still equates it with ‘definition’ of a word, e.g. ‘God's existence does…“follow” from the definition of the term…in the sense that that body of experience indispensable to an adequate understanding of this…word is necessarily also adequate to validate reasoned assent to this proposition’ (p. 143) and ‘Its truth “follows” from its meaning in the sense that, once a body of experience adequate as a basis for a grasp of the meaning of the terms is given, this is ipso facto adequate as a basis for the truth of the proposition in question’ (p. 143). (My italics throughout.)
Similarly Rynin equates ‘meaning’ with ’meaning for us’, and he slides from ‘essence’ to ‘fully grasped essence’ and ‘having the essence before us’ and ‘fully comprehending the essence’. Thus: ‘Is there any meaning that involves existence? or, better, Are there any terms such that their very meaning for us presupposes their having denotation or reference?’ (p. 146) and ‘…essence involves existence, or rather, that insofar as we fully grasped…that intended meaning we would find it realized’ (p. 154) and ‘From the essence we should be able to deduce existence, for the existence would be a necessary condition of really having the essence before us, of fully comprehending it’ (p. 151). (My italics throughout.) On Rynin's awareness of the different senses of ‘meaning’, see p. 35n.
page 39 note 1 For development and defence of this, see my article cited in note 2 on page 31.
page 39 note 2 Rescher, , op. cit. p. 148.Google Scholar