The Refutation of Conventionalism

I shall discuss conventionalism in Quine's writing on the topic of radical translation and in the writings of Reichenbach and Grunbaum on the nature of geometry. One preliminary remark: in one respect, the situation is extremely complicated with respect to the views of both of these men. With respect to Quine, the situation is so confused that one perhaps should distinguish between two QuinesQuine 1 and Quine 2. Quine 1 is the Quine who everybody thinks wrote Word and Object, that is to say, the Quine whose supposed proof of the impossibility of radical translation, of the impossibility of there being a unique correct translation between radically different and unrelated languages, is discussed in journal article after journal article and is the topic of at least fifty percent of graduate student conversation nowadays. Quine 2 is the far more subtle and guarded Quine who defended his formulations in Word and Object recently at the Conference on Philosophy of Language at Storrs. In the light of what Quine said at Storrs, I am inclined to think that Word and Object may have been widely misinterpreted. At any rate, Quine seems to think that Word and Object has been widely misinterpreted, although he was charitable enough to take some of the blame himself for his own formulations. In what follows, then, I shall be criticizing the views of Quine 1, even if Quine 1 is a cultural figment not to be identified with the Willard Van Orman Quine who teaches philosophy at Harvard. It is the views of Quine1 that are generally attributed to Willard Van Orman Quine, and it is worthwhile showing what is wrong with those views. If I can have the help of Quine2-of Willard Van Orman Quine himself-in refuting' the views of Quine1, then so much the better. There is a similar problem with respect to the work of Reichenbach. The arguments for the conventionality of geome-