“But it is an empirical question. With math, plus with some reasonable assumptions, you can prove that you can unambiguously determine the correct mapping even from the outside. In a world where you can tell someone to think of a square, and then use functional magnetic resonance imaging and find a pattern of neurons lit up in a square on his visual cortex, it is difficult to agree with Quine that the word “square” has no meaning.”
Of course the word “square” has meaning, but that meaning may be different from our meaning. In a world where society told this individual all the time that an “square” is really a triangle with an X in it, and then you do that experiment, you’ll see what that individual thinks a square is...and he’d be right, going off the definitions and meanings that society have told him about a square. Doesn’t help the researcher who is trying desperately convince said research subject what a square is “supposed” to be.
That’s not the angle Quine was taking. He was saying words don’t have meanings. There are behaviors, and streams of words correlated with behaviors, but nothing inside a head that is a “meaning”. Quine was not talking about cases where one person would point to a square and say “square”, and another person would point to a triangle and say “square”. He was talking about cases where two people both point to an equilateral triangle and say “equilateral triangle”, but one meant “triangle with all three sides the same” and the other meant “all three angles the same”. That’s not a great example, but it is a short example. Or where you ask them to raise their right hand, and they both raise their right hand, but one person unknowingly has the perception of raising his left hand, and “feels” left the way others feel right. Quine argues that these are not singular examples, but that all language is undermined by indeterminacy like this.
“But it is an empirical question. With math, plus with some reasonable assumptions, you can prove that you can unambiguously determine the correct mapping even from the outside. In a world where you can tell someone to think of a square, and then use functional magnetic resonance imaging and find a pattern of neurons lit up in a square on his visual cortex, it is difficult to agree with Quine that the word “square” has no meaning.”
Of course the word “square” has meaning, but that meaning may be different from our meaning. In a world where society told this individual all the time that an “square” is really a triangle with an X in it, and then you do that experiment, you’ll see what that individual thinks a square is...and he’d be right, going off the definitions and meanings that society have told him about a square. Doesn’t help the researcher who is trying desperately convince said research subject what a square is “supposed” to be.
That’s not the angle Quine was taking. He was saying words don’t have meanings. There are behaviors, and streams of words correlated with behaviors, but nothing inside a head that is a “meaning”. Quine was not talking about cases where one person would point to a square and say “square”, and another person would point to a triangle and say “square”. He was talking about cases where two people both point to an equilateral triangle and say “equilateral triangle”, but one meant “triangle with all three sides the same” and the other meant “all three angles the same”. That’s not a great example, but it is a short example. Or where you ask them to raise their right hand, and they both raise their right hand, but one person unknowingly has the perception of raising his left hand, and “feels” left the way others feel right. Quine argues that these are not singular examples, but that all language is undermined by indeterminacy like this.
I understand the example. Thanks. Helps me to understand why you object to it.