Stimulus Meaning Reconsidered

The Southern J o u m l of Philosophy (2002) Vof. LX

Stimulus Meaning Reconsidered

Robert Sinclair Simon Fraser University

Meaning is as may be, and may best go without saying.

W. V. Quine

W. V. Quine’s empirical definition of meaning, called ‘stimulus meaning’, has often been depicted as doing important semantic work. Two prominent examples include Folke Tersman’s recent claim that stimulus meaning establishes the standard by which the field linguist is able to translate the native’s utterances within radical translation (1998, 376) and Donald Davidson’s remark tha t the entire activity of radical translation, presumably including the use of stimulus meaning, be seen as providing us with a theory of meaning (1999, 82). In apparent opposition to this type of reading, we find Roger Gibson’s general comment that Quine’s interest in meaning emanates from his more fundamental concern in providing a naturalized account of knowledge rather than from any deep concern over linguistic meaning (1996, 99). The central issue then turns on how we are to understand Quine’s interest in semantics and, more specifically, how the introduction of stimulus meaning helps address this interest. This paper deals with this specific interpretive problem by readdressing the motivations behind Quine’s use of the concept ‘stimulus meaning’. My central interpretive claim echoes Gibson’s general point that Quine’s use of this term should be properly viewed as a by-product of his more basic epistemological concerns and not from any prior interest in semantics. However, unlike Gibson, I provide a much more detailed account of the way in which Quine’s naturalized epistemology is connected to his use of radical translation and

Robert Sinclair currently teaches at Simon Fraser University. His research interests fall mainly within metaphilosophy, epistemology, and the history of analytic philosophy. His article “What is Radical Interpretation? Davidson, Fodor and the Naturalization of Philosophy” is forthcoming in Inquiry.

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stimulus meaning. More specifically, I argue tha t Quine’s reflections on radical translation should not be viewed as an attempt to provide a theory of meaning that explains how meanings themselves are determined. We should rather take Quine’s interest in semantics as involving a reevaluation of the status of semantics itself, once it is subjected to the empirical requirements that he thinks are recommended by his naturalism. Once viewed from this perspective, we will recognize that stimulus meaning is introduced as an empirical surrogate for subjective mentalistic conceptions of meaning and, thus, plays a crucial role in Quine’s naturalist assault on semantic absolutism-the view that meanings are determinate entities existing outside of our interpretive practices.’

I begin with a discussion of Quine’s reflections on the nature of radical translation in order to describe the details relevant for his introduction of stimulus meaning. This allows us t o further consider the way in which this project is related to Quine’s naturalized account of knowledge and how the use of stimulus meaning is designed to criticize theories of meaning that construe meanings as determinate entities. Lastly, I demonstrate how establishing this link between ‘stimulus meaning’ and Quine’s naturalized epistemology helps explain his recent rejection of this crucial term. No longer being necessary for his polemic against propositional accounts of meaning and because of its connection to significant problems internal to Quine’s epistemological project, ‘stimulus meaning’ is dropped, succumbing to the epistemological interests that remain at the core of Quine’s philosophical motivations.

1. Radical Translation and Stimulus Meaning

In chapter two of Quine’s Word and Object, we find his classic discussion of radical translation and the various steps that the field linguist must undergo in order to establish a translation manual for a specific unknown language. Quine introduces the situation present within radical translation in the following way:

The recovery of a man’s current language from his currently observed responses is the task of the linguist who, unaided by an interpreter, is out to penetrate and translate a language hitherto unknown. All the objective data he has to go on are the forces tha t he sees impinging on the native’s surfaces and the observable behavior, vocal and otherwise, of the native. Such data evince native “meanings” only of the most objectively empirical or stimulus-linked variety. And yet the linguist apparently ends up with native “meanings” in some quite unrestricted sense; purported translations, anyway, of all possible native sentences. (1960,281

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This central passage indicates that , in radical translation, a field linguist is attempting to translate the native language of a “hitherto untouched people” without the help of dictionaries or other bilingual interpreters (1960, 28). This restricted situation is not meant to represent the actual situation of the linguist in the field but to point to Quine’s specific philosophical interest in examining the nature of the empirical evidence available for the assignment of meanings to utterances.2 In this idealized situation, the field linguist would begin the construction of a translation manual by noting the native’s verbal reactions to the observable circumstances around him. The linguist does not remain satisfied with such initial translations of the native’s utterances but would test them by waiting for the recurrence of the necessary observations and then himself utter the sentence awaiting the approval or disapproval of the native. As Quine notes, the possibility of such testing depends on the linguist being able to recognize signs for assent and dissent. In taking these initial steps, the linguist has no choice but to “guess from observation and then see how well his guesses work” (1960, 29). If wrong with the translation of assent and dissent, he must simply try again hoping that corrections will facilitate greater success in his subsequent translations.

Quine is careful to point out that the utterances recognized by the linguist as directly linked to the surrounding scene should be seen as prompted by the individual’s neural input. He makes this point precisely because of his interest in extending his understanding of empirical method to the process of translation in order to consider the empirical status of semantics. What is then required is a precise scientifically acceptable counterpart for what is loosely described as an individual’s private subjective meaning.3 Motivated in this way, Quine provides his technical definition of empirical meaning, calling it ‘stimulus meaning’. The stimulus meaning for a sentence S is defined as the ordered pair consisting of the set of stimulations that would prompt assent to S and the set of stimulations that would prompt dissent to S (Quine 1960, 32-3). This understanding of meaning is not introduced in order to capture our intuitive understanding of meaning, or other more luxuriant understandings of this concept, but is ra ther the result of Quine’s philosophical-that is, scientific-interest in isolating that part of our interface with our surroundings that ultimately contributes to the development of cognitive meaning.

Quine continues by asking us to consider what are called ‘occasion sentences’, sentences such as ‘Red’ and ‘It’s raining’, which are t rue or false depending on their circumstances of utterance. I t is these sorts of sentences that the field linguist must first deal with in the process of radical translation, as they can be directly prompted after the subsequent ‘stirnulatory conditions’ t ha t a r e captured within Quine’s definition of

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stimulus meaning. The problem with occasion sentences is that an individual’s assent or dissent to them can depend on “prior collateral information as a supplement to the present prompting stimulus” (1960, 37). This prior collateral information consists of specific background beliefs that can have an affect on an individual’s tendency to accept or reject a specific occasion sentence. Within radical translation, our field linguist has no access to such collateral information, and his own response to the prompting stimulus might be devoid of such information resulting in a discrepancy between his stimulus meanings and those of the native. However, there are some occasion sentences whose stimulus meanings are largely unaffected by collateral information, and by appealing to his definition of stimulus meaning, Quine is able to define this type of sentence:

Occasion sentences whose stimulus meanings vary none under the influence of collateral information may naturally be called observation sentences, and their stimulus meanings may without fear of contradiction be said to do full justice to their meanings. These are the occasion sentences that wear their meanings on their sleeves. (1960,421

Given that observation sentences have relatively stable stimulus meanings, the field linguist can be confident in the translations that are based on such sentences. The activity of the field linguist can now be viewed as the matching of his own stimulus meanings with those of the speaker before him. In pursuing this task, Quine emphasizes that, “stimulus meaning ... may be properly looked upon ... as the objective reality that the linguist has to probe when he undertakes radical translation” (1960, 39).

This discussion, though brief, makes i t easy t o see why several commentators have read Quine’s use of stimulus meaning as providing a useful criterion for translation and thereby providing useful advice for the linguist in his attempt to correctly translate the language in q ~ e s t i o n . ~ Quine explains that he is interested in “how much of language can be made sense of in terms of its stimulus conditions” (1960, 26) and proceeds to introduce a situation called ‘radical translation’, where these stimulus conditions can be carefully isolated through his definition of stimulus meaning. The task now centers on how the linguist is able to proceed in the construction of a translation manual using stimulus meanings as the objective basis for such translations. Stated in such terms, it does indeed look as if Quine is providing a criterion for the creation of translation manuals, that is, a criterion for sameness of meaning from which the linguist can then proceed to make the required translations. Such a reading of the project has led some to conclude that the account of translation depicted within radical translation be seen as providing us with a theory of

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meaning, since i t explains how i t is t ha t the meanings of sentences are determined through the process of t ran~la t ion .~ It is important to realize that this is not Quine’s central concern. While it is true that Quine introduces stimulus meaning as an empirically acceptable definition of meaning, which is able to fix the meanings of observation sentences, this does lead to an account of how i t is tha t meanings a re determined. Rather, Quine is attempting to determine how much empirical sense can be made of semantics itself, by considering to what extent meaning can be objectively determined once we adhere to the empirical requirements of natural science. Stimulus meaning is then the result of this strict adherence to empirical method, and i t is what enables Quine to consider the empirical limits of semantics by indicating how much and how li t t le can be semantically determined through the process of translation. I t is precisely in this way that stimulus meaning is introduced in order to assess the empirical legitimacy of propositional accounts of meaning. Appreciating this point requires noting the way in which Quine’s use of stimulus meaning is connected to his more explicit epistemological interests. This will help us recognize the way stimulus meaning meets the requirements of Quine’s naturalism and thus further highlight i ts important role in his naturalist polemic against absolutist conceptions of meaning.

2. Naturalized Epistemology and Radical Translation

In order to make explicit why Quine’s use of stimulus meaning has a role that , as he says, “transcends translation theory” (Davidson and Quine 1994, 2271, we must consider some relevant details of his epistemological project. It will become evident that the naturalist requirements present within Quine’s approach to epistemology a re also at work with his use of radical translation. This further results in Quine’s introduction of stimulus meaning being conditioned by these same naturalist requirements thus making clear its fundamental role within Quine’s naturalist assessment of semantics.

Stated briefly, Quine’s naturalization of epistemology depicts epistemological concerns as scientific problems. The result is a reformulation of epistemological concerns so that they are now responsive to the methodological and evidential standards that animate natural science. For Quine, the central epistemological task now becomes the pursuit of an improved scientific understanding of how we come to have scientific knowledge. His own attempt at naturalized epistemology offers various hypotheses and speculations concerning this relationship between evidence and scientific theory where he seeks “an improved understanding of the chains of causation and implication that connect the bombardment of our surfaces, at one extreme, with our

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scientific output at the other” (Quine 1995b, 349). This passage helps make apparent that the details of Quine’s epistemology are developed according to standards that he takes to be central to proper scientific method. The standards of clarity and precision and the need for external evidence, which contribute to the crucial ability to predict observable consequences, are the requirements that Quine thinks we must strictly adhere to and which directly inform the development of his epistemology.

In pursuing this improved scientific account of how we achieve scientific knowledge, Quine suggests the method through which he thinks we should examine the relation between evidence and theory:

We can adopt a genetic approach, studying how theoretical language is learned. For the evidential relation is virtually enacted, it would seem, in the learning. This genetic strategy is attractive because the learning of language goes on in the world and is open to scientific study. It is a strategy for the scientific study of scientific method and evidence. We have here a good reason to regard the theory of language as vital to the theory of knowledge. (Quine 1975,75-6)

The importance of language theory for naturalized epistemology becomes evident with Quine’s explanation that the observations that serve to support our scientific theory are the same ones whereby we come to learn language by relating terms to the observations of the world that elicit them.6 Language theory becomes crucial for Quinean epistemology, since the investiga- tion into the evidential support required for science can be usefully examined through the semantic relations that are formed in the learning of language.

It is here that Quine’s naturalized epistemology proceeds by attempting to clarify the causal connections between a person’s sensory input and verbal output. The study of such connections begins by, first, examining the relationship between neural input and observation sentences and then, second, proceeding with a further examination of the relationship between observation sentences and the theoretical sentences of science. For our purposes here, i t is the first relation tha t is of immediate concern. The expressions that are learned by direct association with nonverbal neural input are the familiar observation sentences. We have seen that such observation sentences are an important subset of what Quine calls ‘occasion sentences’, sentences that are true or false on different occasions, with the additional requirement tha t their stimulus meanings are largely unaffected by collateral information. This relationship between neural input and observation sentences is understood in terms of conditioned response where these expressions are learned by direct association with the specific stimulus

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conditions captured within Quine’s definition of stimulus meaning.

By considering such connections between neural input and observation sentences, we have recognized how Quine institutes a strategy for investigating the empirical support of science that complies with the intersubjective methods of science. The project is outlined in accordance with Quine’s insistence on external evidence, where ‘external’ points to the possibility of applying the third person objective viewpoint that characterizes sound empirical method. Because observations and our nerve endings are external, they meet this scientific requirement and can then be utilized by the naturalized epistemologist. This is why a clarification of the connections between a person’s sensory input and verbal output requires providing scientifically acceptable counterparts in the form of ‘stimulations’, or ‘the triggering of sensory receptors’. The usual philosophical concepts of ‘experience’, ‘sense data’, and ‘external world’ find their naturalist counterpart in ‘neural intake’.’ Moreover, as we already seen, this technical presentation of the initial evidential links for science can also be viewed as the empirical channels through which we ultimately come to learn and use words in our language. For Quine, the observation sentences tha t contribute to the empirical support of science are also the links through which we come to learn language by relating terms to the events in the world that elicit them. He can then extend his naturalist commitments to a consideration of the empirical status of semantics by simply shifting his focus away from his primary interest in the empirical support for science and concentrating on that same relation, now specifically in terms of its consequences for semantics. It is through his exploitation of language in articulating his epistemology that enables Quine to consider how his naturalist commitments affect the status of semantics.

This is precisely what Quine undertakes with his introduction of radical translation, which helps make explicit his effort “to approach semantical matters in the empirical spirit of natural science” (1970, 8). The scenario depicted within radical translation helps with this project because it highlights those empirical channels that are relevant for translation and thus enables us to examine the empirical credentials of cognitive meaning by considering how much empirical sense can be made of translation. The result is Quine’s attack on propositional views of meaning, which culminates in his famous thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. It will be useful to briefly discuss the strategy Quine uses in order to draw this conclusion.

Speaking generally, the use of radical translation is meant to make explicit the general poverty of the evidence available for meaning, or stated from a slightly different viewpoint, it is meant to highlight that, with regard t o meaning, we must

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impose as much as we discover (Quine 1992, 49). This is accom- plished with Quine’s explanation of how observation sentences and logical connectives are determinately translated, but once we engage in translation that moves farther away from observation, the linguist must rely on subjective preferences in order to complete his translation manual. As more theoretical sentences are translated, we move farther and farther away from the available evidence, resulting in the conjecture that two translation manuals could be constructed that are both consistent with the available evidence yet differ on other theoretical sentences that are much less directly related to the evidence. Translation has now become indeter-minate, that is, there is no one unique, correct translation of the language in question, and no additional appeal to the relevant evidence will rectify the situation because our translation is made on the basis of the only evidence that is relevant to the task. The result is that we have two, or more, manuals tied for first place; they are equally good translations of a language and there is no further evidence that can change this fact.

This conclusion is reached precisely by Quine’s application of the empirical methods of science to the practice of translation. Proceeding in this way, he looks for a clear operational definition of synonymy by appealing to the empirical evidence that is relevant for the preservation of meaning. Since the point of translation is t o preserve meaning, Quine’s extension of empirical method to meaning involves the idealization known as radical translation. Radical translation then serves two important roles in Quine’s attack on propositional views of meaning: it allows him to focus on the empirical channels he thinks are relevant for meaning, and it deals specifically with translation, a relation between languages that purports to supply the needed identity criteria for meanings. However, working from within the empirical constraints required by his naturalism, Quine is lead to his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, demonstrating that the clarification of synonymy needed for these identities is not forthcoming. The evidence relevant t o translation cannot determine one unique correct translation of the language but several equally good ones, and this questions the idea that translation preserves sameness of meaning: “A sentence has a meaning, people thought, and another sentence is its translation if it has the same meaning. This, we see, will not do” (Quine 1987, 9). Providing a naturalist account of how translation proceeds reveals that the empirical channels relevant for meaning cannot sustain the idea of determinate meanings. This then challenges the viability of philosophical accounts of meaning that depend on the existence of determinate semantic entities like propositions.

In setting up this challenge, stimulus meaning plays a vital role, since this empirical definition of meaning is consistent

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with the naturalist requirements Quine requires for both epistemology and philosophy. In addition, stimulus meaning highlights the notion of evidence that is available for the pro- duction of a translation manual. We then can see that stimulus meaning serves as the objective empirical basis from which Quine can evaluate translation and thus plays a central role in exposing, from within his naturalist perspective, the empirical limits of translation and, in turn, the untenability of semantic absolutism. This concept is then part of Quine’s attempt to determine how much empirical sense can be made of meanings as determinate entities and thereby helps facilitate his naturalist attack on propositional accounts of meaning.8 The motives for the introduction of stimulus meaning can now be brought out in the following way. Beginning with his naturalization of epistemology, Quine proceeds to introduce a scientifically acceptable counterpart for philosophical uses of ‘sense-data’ or ‘experience’, and offers his naturalist alternative ‘neural input’. When he continues by providing a naturalistic understanding of the empirical channels relevant for translation, he must now offer a scientific alternative for the idea of a determinate and private mental meaning, which is stimulus meaning. The motivation for this introduction of stimulus meaning is then captured in his desire to do the same thing within translation that he has done in epistemology, namely, provide scientifically acceptable counterparts for certain concepts that are consistent with sound empirical method. With this concept in hand, Quine can, from his naturalist perspective, examine the evidence relevant for translation, encapsulated with his use of stimulus meaning, and consider whether this evidence can support the idea of determinate meanings.

Quine’s epistemological concerns about the relationship between stimulus and science are then closely connected to his speculations on radical translation. The process of translation where the translator learns words from the native is the same process by which the scientists come to agree on the observations that they report through their utterance of observation sentences. Stimulus meaning points t o the shared causal structure required for success in either of these p rocesse~ .~ Whether we are considering the activity of the field linguist within radical translation or two scientists working in the lab, there exists this shared causal physical structure between participants. When Quine focuses on his naturalistic critique of semantic absolutism, he refers t o this structure as the ‘stimulus meaning’ of the translator and native; when Quine is providing his more general naturalistic account of scientific knowledge, this shared causal structure is simply called ‘neural input’.

Once we see that stimulus meaning is meant to serve as a scientific counterpart of an individual’s subjective mental

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meaning and how it is part of Quine’s naturalist account of translation, we can see what is wrong with taking it as the basis from which the linguist must proceed within translation. When Quine mentions that translation involves the matching of stimulus meanings between linguist and tribesman, he does not envision this as a standard on which to base successful translation; the linguist does not ‘check’ his neural input. This use of stimulus meaning is not semantical in this specific sense. It does not offer advice concerning how one should proceed in translation but rather serves as a naturalist definition of empirical meaning that is then able t o help make explicit the empirical limits of semantics. When Quine claims that stimulus meaning is the objective basis for translation, he is speaking as a theorist, and his naturalized account of what transpires in translation is explained as the successful preservation of stimulus meaning.1° Quine’s use of stimulus meaning should not then be viewed as an attempt to provide a full account of how meanings are determined, since his central concern is to consider how much empirical sense can be made of the idea that there are determinate meanings. Rather than an attempt t o establish a theory of meaning, Quine’s use of stimulus meaning is part of a project that has a narrower focus-to challenge semantic views that treat determinate entities like propositions as the meanings of sentences.ll

3. The Rejection of Stimulus Meaning

Thus far, I have discussed Quine’s introduction and use of stimulus meaning within radical translation and made explicit its important connections with his attempt to provide a naturalistic account of knowledge. This offered a perspective on Quine’s use of radical translation that demonstrated how it is related to his naturalism and indicated why stimulus meaning is not part of an attempt to provide a theory of meaning but is part of Quine’s naturalist assault on the idea of determinate meanings.

Given the importance of stimulus meaning for Quine’s criticisms of semantic absolutism it may be surprising and somewhat puzzling to learn that he has recently dropped the term. One advantage of the interpretation presented here is its ability to better explain the true motivations behind this recent rejection of stimulus meaning. In order to demonstrate this, I will consider some critical remarks made by Folke Tersman in his recent paper ‘Stimulus Meaning Debunked’. Tersman argues that stimulus meaning is unhelpful in defining observation sentences and that it cannot be used as a basis for translation. Since it is unable t o meet either one of these two aims, he suggests that we “let it drop out of our philosophical toolbox” (1998, 371).

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Concerning his first point, Tersman is correct. Initially, as we have seen, Quine does use stimulus meaning to define the notion of observation sentence, but this la ter proves problematic because this definition depends on individuals sharing receptors, which Quine later admits is presumably not the case.12 Any appeal to stimulus meanings to define observation sentences will then fail, since observation sentences require intersubjective agreement, which depends on subjects sharing neural input. Well aware of this problem, Quine has moved to several other definitions of observation sentence, none of which now depend on stimulus meaning with its equating of neural input between indiv id~a1s . I~ Tersman and Quine thus agree t h a t st imulus meaning plays no role in clarifying the nature of observation sentences. However, by focusing solely on this point, Tersman fails to recognize the way in which stimulus meaning is part of Quine’s larger naturalist assault on propositional accounts of meaning. In order to determine how much empirical sense can be made of the idea of fixed meanings, Quine introduces a n empirically acceptable surrogate for meaning, which allows him to consider how much objective scientific sense can be made of the claim tha t there are determinate, fixed meanings. From within this natural is t perspective, stimulus meaning serves as the available evidence relevant for the preservation of meaning but is gradually revealed as too meager a basis on which to sustain the completion of a translation manual. This suggests that meanings cannot be determinate entities, since the identity conditions required for such entities, and presumably encapsulated with a translation manual, cannot be found with the only relevant evidence available, namely, stimulus meaning. It is precisely in this way tha t we have seen how Quine’s extension of his natural is t requirements to translation reveals, on empirical grounds, that the idea of determinate entities cannot be maintained. By not emphasizing these points, Tersman fails to recognize the role st imulus meaning plays within Quine’s polemic against propositional views of meaning.

Tersman’s second point takes Quine’s use of st imulus meaning as a criterion for translation. The linguist is then instructed to translate the native’s observation sentences based on shared stimulus meanings between himself and the native. We have seen some passages from Quine’s Word and Object, which do indeed suggest that stimulus meaning does serve this role in the process of translation. However, as I highlighted above, Quine’s discussion of how the linguist uses stimulus meaning in translation is his theoretical take on what translation involves; Quine never has thought t h a t actual translators proceed by the use of stimulus meanings: “Talk of stimulus meaning was rather my business, my theory of the translator’s activity” (Quine 1996, 159). To take Quine’s discus-

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sion as a recommendation for how the linguist should proceed in translation, fails to see its connections with Quine’s general epistemological project and thus misses, once again, the polemical force of Quine’s motivations in Word and Object.

What is especially interesting about Tersman’s main conclusion is that Quine now agrees; he too has dropped ‘stimulus meaning’ from his recent views. The seeds of this elimination begin with a problem Tersman emphasizes, namely, the lack of shared neural input between speakers. Within his naturalist portrayal of successful translation, Quine in Word and Object postulates an intersubjective homology of neuro-receptors, an intersubjective likeness of stimulation between linguist and native in order to account for how agreement in vocal output is the result of a “community of cause in the neural structure” (Davidson and Quine 1994, 227). Quine notices problems with this in 1965, when he claims how such homology should not be expected and should not matter.I4 By 1990, and repeated in 1992, Quine gives up on this homology claiming that it is not needed, successful translation and interpretation being mandated by our need to communicate, but leaving each individual with their own private stimulus meanings (Quine 1992, 44). Soon after, in a response to a set of articles compiled in the anthology On Quine (1995b), Quine drops his use of ‘stimulus meaning’ altogether, responding to Fdlesdal’s complaint that linguistic meaning is generally thought of as common to members of a linguistic community, while neural intakes, each with their own stimulus meanings, are not comparable from individual to individual. In his most recent writings, Quine accounts for success in translation and scientists’ agreement on observation as the result of empathy and a preestablished harmony of similarity standards in order t o explain how, despite diversity of neural input, we still manage to correctly talk about the same corresponding scene. l5 On technical grounds internal t o his project, we see that Quine must reject the idea of a shared causal structure within science and translation, and because the preservation of stimulus meaning within the process of translation also depends on this identity between the range of neural input of two speakers, it too must be dropped. This makes plain the epistemological importance of this concept, since i t is part of the idea of shared neural input between individuals and is thus part of the naturalized epistemologist’s account of how translation actually proceeds.

There are, then, two problems that lead to Quine’s rejection of stimulus meaning. He gradually realizes that many take this concept as doing important semantic work; it either provides a useful criterion for the process of translation, or, through its use, forms part of a naturalized theory of translation that can serve as a theory of meaning. But Quine is not dealing directly with these semantic issues with his introduction of this concept

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but is simply extending his epistemological concerns to the process of the translation in order t o question philosophical accounts of meaning that rely on determinate meanings. Because of such misreadings, Quine drops the term, realizing, in addition, that he can simply appeal to neural input in order to secure his main conclusions about the indeterminacy of translation.

The second, more significant concern involves the new epistemological problems that Quine feels he needs to address. ‘Stimulus meaning’ is unhelpful with these concerns because it relies on shared neural input between speakers, which Quine has gradually come t o believe is not present between two speakers. Without this shared causal structure between individuals, Quine is then faced with the problem of accounting for our ability to respond to the same distal scene without this shared neural input. It is here that Quine has introduced a preestablished harmony of perceptual similarity standards in order to explain how, despite this diversity of neural input, we still manage to correctly talk about the same distal scene.

So both for technical reasons and interpretive error, Quine drops stimulus meaning, using the more neutral neural input to help deal with his more central epistemological concerns and as t o provide the needed empirical interface described in the process of translation. The concept of stimulus meaning has outlived it usefulness because of the incorrect connotations that it suggests and because of its connection to problems internal to Quine’s more pressing epistemological interests. This discussion serves to demonstrate the kind of fine-tuning that characterizes much of Quine’s amendments to his philosophy, as well as to underscore the point that epistemological concerns remain at the core of his philosophy. Having been introduced to help with Quine’s naturalist criticism of semantic absolutism, the concept ‘stimulus meaning’ eventually succumbs to the more central epistemological problems that continue to dominate Quine’s thought.16

Notes

Quine also provides support for this reading in his 1990a (3) and 1993 (114).

Fodor and Lepore (1994,103-6) are then wrong in thinking that the epidemic position of the radical translator is meant to represent what actual translators know in the field. Chomsky seems to make the same mistake when he presents radical translation as a model for how actual translation ought to be done (2000, 47-8).

Quine makes this point in his 1993 (114). This reading is explicit in Tersman 1998 (376) and is suggested

by remarks in F~llesdal 1999 (141) and Davidson 1990a (131), 1990b (71-21, and 1994 (188).

For this view of Quine’s project see Davidson 1994 (188) and 1999 (84).

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Quine elaborates on this claim in his 1974 (37). In his most recent writings, Quine prefers ‘neural intake’ as his

naturalistic analogue to sensory experience and defines a subject’s global neural intake a t a given occasion as “the temporally ordered set of all firings of his exteroceptors on that occasion” (1995b, 349).

Quine describes the point this way: UMy development of stimulus meaning was an exploration of the limits of an empirically defensible and scientifically indispensable core idea of meaning“ (1986, 367).

Quine makes this point in an exchange with Davidson published in Theoria (Davidson and Quine 1994, 227)

lo See Quine 1996 (159). l1 See Quine 1994 (57), 1995a (77) and 1999 (76). l2 In ‘Propositional Objects’ (Quine 1969a). Also see ‘Stimulus and

l3 For examples see Quine 1981, 1992 (2-3,40) and 1995a (22). l4 See the references in footnote 12. l5 This addition to his view is chronicled in Quine 1995a, 1996,

l6 I would like to thank Steven Davis, B j ~ r n Ramberg, and Alan

Meaning’ (Quine 1969b, 59).

1997,1999,2000a, 2000b, and 2000c.

Richardson for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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