Abstract

A main thrust of much of Quine's work is that meaning, belief, desire, motive and other so-called “intentional phenomena” are under-determined by all possible evidence: the totality of possible evidence could not determine whether two persons meant, believed, desired, or had as motives the same thing. One way to identify a person's beliefs, desires and motives is to frame a theory of his meanings, for then we could ask him what he believed and desired; this will be a theory of translation for his language. But such a theory of meaning, according to Quine, is also not uniquely determined by all the evidence. ThusTo accept intentional usage at face value is … to postulate translation relations as somehow objectively valid though indeterminate in principle relative to the totality of speech dispositions… Such postulation promises little gain in scientific insight …