Abstract

The philosophical work of W. V. Quine is best interpreted as a response, not to local problems in the philosophy of language, but to two epistemological and methodological issues: Given only the evidence of our senses, how do we arrive at our theory of the world?, and How much of our science is merely contributed by language and how much is a genuine reflection of reality? In the evolution of Quine's philosophy he has tried to show why the first question can sensibly be answered and the second one cannot. ;After tracking the earlier evolution of Quine's empiricism, I discuss in detail the famous thesis of the indeterminacy of translation in the light of key planks in Quine's theory: holism, language as a social art, his behaviorism, and his rejection of any First Philosophy. ;I then raise some problems about Quine's attempt to account for how we arrive at our theory of the world without recourse to any assumptions about meanings, but based soley on what sensory cues we have about it. I suggest that Quine may rely on notions of observational evidence incompatible with his behaviorism. If so, then this is tantamount to vindicating Brentano's thesis that the irreducibility of intentionality is evidence for an autonomous science of intention. I then compare Quine's empiricism to Husserl's theory of intentionality, which suggests the sort of hypotheses that Quine needs; but I will also argue that Husserl's theory is prey to Quine's attack on the notions of meaning and First Philosophy. Such hypotheses are then merely tentative starting points, compatible with Quine's behaviorism and his circular epistemology. Intentionality then becomes a ladder that we can kick away only after we've climbed it