Abstract

In Word and Object, W.V. Quine made thinkable the idea that speech and cognition bear a burden of semantic indeterminacy. On Quine’s account, the upshot of semantic indeterminacy is that meaning and mentalism resist successful naturalization, and thus fail the test of scientific respectibility. For Quine, semantic indeterminacy is a fatal shortcoming.Recent attempts to naturalize meaning in our thought and our talk (e.g. Dretske 1981, Fodor 1987), belonging to a tradition that has thrived in reaction to Quine, have sought to nail down semantic properties in a scientifically respectable fashion, avoiding the scourge of indeterminacy. However, both Quine and the new redeemers of mentalism may have missed the boat. Three case studies offered here will suggest that a thriving theory of visual perception still makes room for some rather striking indeterminacies.