 These considerations, however, are more inconclusive hints at arguments than arguments themselves. First, the fact that meanings are unobservable but real suggests that we should be on the lookout for criteria; it doesn’t mean that they have criteria. More is needed to show that. Numbers, it might be argued, are also unobservable but real, yet stand in need of no criteria. Second, apart from the obscurity of the notion of ontological slightness, meanings are surely no more ontologically slender than numbers, which, again, seem to require no criteria. Finally, there’s the point that even if the promissory notes that really are the first two considerations can be made good on, all that would show is that meaning in general stands in need of a criterion or criteria. It wouldn’t show that a criterion of a text’s having meaning is an author’s intention that it have meaning, much less that a criterion for a text’s having the meaning that it has is the author’s intention that it have that meaning.