On the Existence of Meanings

Abstract

How is it possible for a word or a sentence to be meaningful and yet not to have a meaning? That this is not merely possible but generally true is the startling conclusion of the considerations Quine advanced in chapter II of Word and Object and which he has refined in subsequent writings, notably “Ontological Relativity” and Pursuit of Truth.l In the present essay I would like to hazard a reconstruction of Quine’s argument — a reconstruction which I hope does justice to it, but which reveals, I believe, a serious defect: namely that although its main assumptions are indeed correct the shocking conclusion cannot really be derived from them. More specifically, I will argue that we should welcome Quine’s sceptical scrutiny of the naive conception of meaning, which he calls “the museum myth”, and in addition that we should endorse a qualified form of his behaviourism regarding semantics; but I will suggest that these ideas ought to have led him, and ought to lead us, to a use theory of meanings rather than to a denial of meanings.