Author: J JonesJ Jones Date: Apr 21, 2008 15:10
The context-driven approach to meaning - that meaning is delivered
through a context, and not vice versa - led to so many problems that
soon Quine abandoned it and relented: translation - he conceded in his
seminal tome, "Word and Object" - is indeterminate and reference is
inscrutable. There are no facts when it comes to what words and
sentences mean. What subjects say has no single meaning or determinately
correct interpretation (when the various interpretations on offer are
not equivalent and do not share the same truth value). (see Vaknin)
Certainly, there are no facts that tell us the meanings of sentences and
words. Just as in art there are no facts of composition or colour that
tell us the intended aesthetic experience.
But where Quine went wrong was in claiming that where there are no facts
about words that can inform of us their meaning, then we can conclude
that their meaning is 'indeterminate'. Quine retains the context that
meaning arises from individual words or sentences. This is a property of
traslation and not of language. But language is emergent:
'indeterminacy' may arise for translation but cannot arise for language.
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