> Because what makes a judgement "appropriate" as per R591 is its specific > relationship to the statement, not the intended statement. > > -G.
I was wondering whether evidence of the author's intention can affect the meaning of a statement. I'm pretty sure the meaning of a statement can depend on context. E.g. the statement of CFJ 3735 is "There was only one valid bid, namely for 1 coin by CuddleBeam.", which is only meaningful if you know what auction it's referring to. I don't think it's much of a stretch to say evidence of intention could form part of that context. I'd even go so far as to say that in some situations, there's no distinction between intended and actual meaning. E.g. if I get a personal email from a friend and have trouble understanding one of the sentences, I will try to figure out what they meant; there's no reason for me to imagine the statement has some kind of "pure" meaning divorced from intention. The way I see it, CFJ statements (and rule texts) are a different from that example because as public statements it's more important that we come to a common agreement on what they mean than it is to correctly infer the author's intended meaning. But I don't think it automatically follows that evidence of intention plays no role. This topic has been bugging me ever since some recent CFJ discussion(s) (don't remember which) in which authorial intent was dismissed as irrelevant to the meaning of the rules, because it's not explicitly mentioned in R217. I think that when R217 says "the text of the rules takes precedence", it is requiring us to interpret the meaning of the rules text, and it's possible for intention to enter the picture there. Of course, in the particular CFJ being discussed, I presented the evidence of my intention after making the statement. Maybe that means it shouldn't be taken into consideration. - Falsifian
