But suppose a radical interpreter were nonetheless irresponsibly to settle for one of the theories the criteria admit and set about using it to interpret the speakers of the language. Then it is tempting to say that, just as Freges choosing to specify the reference of a term in a particular way shows us what sense he takes it to have, so the radical interpreters using her chosen theory amounts to her choosing to regard sentences of the target language as having certain meanings rather than others. That is to say, the same line of thought we considered in the last section seems to lead to the conclusion that a radical interpreter who chose to interpret using a theory that proved (1) rather than one that proved (8) would thereby have chosen to regard utterances of the sentence snow is white as meaning that snow is white rather than that snow is white and

But of course several questions remain: In what sense does using a particular theory of truth to interpret a sentence involve assigning a particular meaning to that sentence? Is there some analogue for ordinary speakers of our irresponsible radical interpreters decision to use one theory of truth rather than another?

Before I continue, I need to say something explicit about the overall structure of the considerations to follow. As I said earlier, I accept a cognitive conception of (occurrent) understanding: Understanding an utterance, according to me, is a propositional attitude Heck (2005a). That view leaves open the question what the content of that attitude is, however, and that is the question I mean now to discuss. How, though, should we evaluate the various proposals that might be made here? The following conditional should be uncontroversial: (1) If B utters a sentence S, which in that context means that p, and if A understands Bs utterance and meets whatever conditions a correct theory of testimony would require us to include at this point, then A is in a position to come to know, or at least justiably to believe, on a certain distinctive kind of ground, that p.

The conditional is uncontroversial because trivial. One might well say that the correct theory of testimony just is whichever theory makes this 13 4 Understanding and Knowledge