What is indispensable is that, when an expression signifies a meaning, the possibility that it bears another meaning must be excluded. If it could bear another meaning that negates the first, its signification would not be conclusive. But when the intended meaning is known with certainty, the expression’s signification of it is known. If that other meaning is not incompatible with this meaning, the expression’s signifying it does no harm, since it signifies both. If, however, it conflicts with this signification, it is contrary to the intended meaning. It is well known that knowing that one of two contraries holds excludes knowing that the other holds. Thus, knowledge of the intended meaning itself excludes every possibility that contradicts all of this.

The same applies to excluding counterevidence from reason or revelation. Once the intended meaning is known, it is known with certainty that no other evidence, whether revealed or rational, negates it, for that would contradict it. When something is known to hold, the absence of its contradictory is known with certainty.

His argument thus amounts to three premises: certainty depends on what indicates the intended meaning and on what excludes its contrary and its contradictory. The reply is that what indicates the intended meaning necessarily entails an indication of its contrary and its contradictory. Thus, nothing is needed beyond knowledge of the intended meaning itself. Knowledge of the intended meaning is often immediate and unavoidable, like the knowledge arising simply from mass-transmitted reports. For when a person hears