Gracia’s own suggestion is that we can make sense of the determinateness and indeterminateness of meaning by distinguishing between “essential” and “accidental” meanings: “although texts may have a well-delimited core of meaning (an essential meaning), they may have other meanings that are the result of contingent conditions, such as changes in context (accidental meanings).”

He also distinguishes between a text’s meaning and a text’s implications. This makes “clear that there can be a core of meaning for a text that does not include its implications.” Audiences and authors may disagree about meaning because “some persons may include in the meaning some of its implications, whereas others do not.”

This is potentially helpful, but I have a few questions:

Determining what counts as “meaning” and what counts as “implication,” what is “essence” and what is “accident” is either very difficult, or, alternatively, trivializes the essential meaning of a text.

Start with trivialization: The essential meaning of NO SMOKING is that smoking is prohibited. For that particular sentence, there’s not much problem with rendering meaning in a straightforward re-statement of the original sentence. But when we say that the essential meaning of “In the beginning was the Word” is that the Word was in the beginning, we can see how “essentializing” meaning amounts to trivializing it.

As for difficulty: What does count as “essence” in the first sentence of John’s gospel? And what counts as “implication.” Is the obvious allusion to Genesis 1 part of the essence of the sentence? What is the essence of the word “Word” in this context? Does it connote utterance, creative utterance, eternal utterance, divine utterance? To say “Word” simply means “verbal item” doesn’t get at the essence of the sentence but rather undermines the point of the sentence.

Suppose we classify all the theological weight of that sentence as “implication” rather than “meaning,” then can we really say we’ve understood the sentence without picking up the implication? If we say that the theological weight of the sentence is “meaning” rather than “implication,” then we seem to have expanded the core meaning in ways that undermine the whole purpose of the distinction. Put the question this way: Do Jehovah’s Witnesses understand the meaning or essence of John 1:1? Do they simply miss the “implications/accidents”?

John Frame has long argued that we don’t really know the meaning of a sentence unless we know how to use it, unless we know the implications. We don’t know the meaning of “thou shalt not steal” if we don’t know that it implies a prohibition of embezzlement. Frame argues persuasively for a “modified use” view of meaning.

We can also ask: What, according to Gracia, is the goal of interpretation? If it’s to arrive at the “meaning,” then interpretation seems to be little more than paraphrase (which would make the task of interpretation, and the reading of interpreters, tedious in the extreme). But if interpretation is supposed to tease out accidents and implications, how is his proposal different from, say, Gadamer’s? Where are the limits of interpretation?

What’s wrong with saying, as Fish does, that there are (often, perhaps usually) clear, determinate meanings for texts in particular contexts and at particular times , but that a different, quite limited, set of options is available in different contexts and at different times? Hirsch’s example, “The air is crisp,” has, Fish shows, an obvious meaning because it implies a context (something like a morning walk); but put that sentence in the context of a performance of Grieg’s Holberg Suite , and it has a very different meaning; it refers not to a meteorological experience but to a style of piano playing.

What do we lose with Fish’s view? Texts are not wholly up for grabs. Communication is possible, since there is a limited number of possibilities in any particular context. Miscommunication can be easily corrected (as in Fish’s “Is there a text in this class?” example). Interpretation is possible by reconstructing the context for the original utterance. Yet, Fish accounts for all this without appealing to a problematic “essence” or “core meaning.”

Gracia has written a couple of books on these topics, which I’ve not read. Perhaps he addresses these sorts of questions there. And I’m not necessarily endorsing Fish; just wondering where, if anywhere, Fish goes off the beam.