Constraints on interpretation: A reply to Wayne Proudfoot

Abstract

In Religious discourse and first person authority (Godlove 1994), my ques tion was: Why do so many scholars of religion seem to think that religious people are not really talking about what they seem and claim to be talking about, namely, invisible, intelligent powers? I argued that the answer has less to do with scholarly arrogance or reductionism run amok than it does with the very nature of linguistic interpretation. Roughly: An indispensable moment in interpretation the interpreter's appreciation of the connection between a speech act and its mental and physical environment, its history. This already hints at why speakers are generally authoritative as to the meanings of their words: because they know without appeal to evidence to what they intend their words to apply. But, when it comes to religious discourse, this natural history often unavailable and in the case of abstract monotheism, often unavailable in principle. The main burden of the article was to suggest that the answer to my question lies in that unavailability. In his perceptive response, Wayne Proudfoot advances two sorts of objec tions to my argument. First, he objects to my conception of the methodology of interpretation. Second, he disputes my readings of several of the individual authors to whom I appeal, in particular Hume and Durkheim. As to the methodology of interpretation, Proudfoot sees it as something like an inference to the best explanation; he says that it is an elaboration of the 'principle of charity' Godlove mentions (Proudfoot 1995: 283). Since I am all for charity, whether any large issues divide us here depends on how each of us envisions the details of the elaboration. So, to lay my cards on the table, I see charity as imposing at least these four distinct, unavoidable constraints on interpretation. (1) Semantic and attitudinal holism. In assigning content to beliefs (and other propositional attitudes), and meaning to utterances and sentences, we unavoidably assume the content of many neighbouring potential beliefs, utter ances, and sentences. Thus, no matter how broad the smiles or how vigorous