Philosophers have wanted to work with conceptions of word-competence, or concept-possession, on which being a competent practitioner with a word amounts to being a competent judge of its uses by others. I argue that our implicit conception of competence with a word does not have this presupposition built into it. One implication of this is what I call "modesty" in interpretation: we allow for others, uses of words that we would not allow for ourselves. I develop this point by looking at Saul Kripke's discussion of some famous examples given by Benson Mates, concerning beliefs about beliefs. I defend Mates's point against Kripke's claim that an interpreter who is modest in my sense must be "conceptually confused."

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解释谦虚

哲学家们一直想研究词语能力或概念占有的概念，在这些概念上，作为一个有能力的实践者，就等于是一个有能力判断他人使用它的人。我认为我们对单词能力的隐含概念并没有内置这种预设。这其中的一个含义就是我所说的解释中的“谦虚”：我们允许他人使用我们不允许自己使用的词语。我通过查看索尔·克里普克 (Saul Kripke) 对本森·马茨 (Benson Mates) 给出的一些著名例子的讨论来阐述这一点，这些例子涉及关于信念的信念。我为 Mates 的观点辩护，反对 Kripke 的说法，即在我看来谦虚的解释者一定是“概念上的困惑”。