Quine’s philosophy of language

Quine’s position is motivated by his scientific naturalism, by the position that a serious understanding of linguistic phenomena should not uncritically help itself to the idea of meaning and related concepts. The thought experiment of radical translation involves translation into English of a previously unknown language; this clarifies what naturalism requires and prohibits, and affords a way of finding out the objective standing of the idea of cognitive meaning. He concludes that translation is indeterminate; there is no one right way to portray a person’s language. In dismissing meaning from the arsenal of naturalistic concepts, Quine in effect dismisses analyticity, which is conceived to be truth due solely to meanings of words. In holism, Quine sketches an alternative theory of knowledge that dispenses with the concept: Human knowledge is like a loose-jointed web of belief, not like a vertical structure built upon a foundation of experiential statements. Ordinary expressions are often vague and imprecise; Quine’s response is not to find out better what they mean but, if the need is felt for some theoretical purpose, to propose replacements which serve the necessary functions without those problems.