Abstract

Quine's thesis of the inscrutability of reference provides grounds for doubting that the project of naturalizing the contents we ascribe in interpretation will be successful. Quine argues that it possible to give multiple adequate interpretations of a language on which some sub-sentential linguistic expressions are given incompatible interpretations. If so, such expressions fail to have determinate content. The strongest objections to the thesis consist in the exhibition of a sentence that will be assigned different truth-values by the standard and a deviant interpretation. It is shown that there is an interpretation of the apparatus of individuation, in particular the quantifier, which ensures that each whole sentence in a deviant interpretation has the same truth-value as the corresponding sentence in the standard interpretation. ;A weaker basis for resisting Quine's thesis is to suppose that some further evidence is to be found that will tell between the standard and deviant interpretations. A consideration of proposed naturalistic theories of intentionality does not support this supposition. The most promising contemporary proposal is teleological. It is shown that the classes that the most promising theory of teleology assigns as contents diverge from those that we assign in interpretation, so the teleological proposal does not provide an adequate basis for a theory of the contents we actually ascribe. ;Another reason for rejecting Quine's thesis is because it is thought to imply some form of anti-realism. On my defense of the thesis, however, objects that are quantified over in the standard interpretation are quantified over in the deviant interpretation. Therefore anti-realism does not directly follow.