Perhaps paradoxically, given what was just said, the counterexample also illustrates a more important claim, that a speaker’s intention that ‘S’ mean m is a criterion for its meaning m, or at least very nearly so. This is because: (1) linguistic convention is a criterion for token sentence meaning, and a linguistic convention, as the example shows, is a function of overall community understanding, treatment, and belief. (2) A speaker’s intention is one component in such understanding, treatment,