Meaning" In The Dense Fog

With the "linguistic turn", unprecedented attention has been paid to the meaning of language. Almost every main representative of analytic philosophy has his own theory of meaning, so does Quine, whose theory of meaning is rooted in the soil of skepticism.My dissertation consists of four chapters:Chapter one: Quine's criticism of traditional theories meaning. First, Quine criticized the theory of designation and the theory of conception. He objected firmly their tendency to look on the meaning as substance, which he regarded as a myth happening in exhibition. Moreover, he proposed that we should no longer use "meaning", because it was too obscure. However, the view that the meaning could be certain can find its refuge in the theories of logical positivism.Quine, who knew logical positivism very well, made an expert and rigorous attack upon its vital points. As a result, the "criteria of synonymity" and the "reduction" were collapsed.Chapter two: Quine's indeterminacy of translation thesis and theory of indeterminacy of meaning. In order to fight back against positivists' arguments and destroy his opponents' last fort, basing on his concepts of "stimulus meaning" and "observation sentence", Quine studied problemssuch as "radical translation", and then proposed his indeterminacy of translation thesis and theory of indeterminacy of meaning from the standpoint of behaviorism. The meaning, drawn by Quine's arguments, fell into the thick fog.Chapter three: Reflections on Quine's arguments. Why can Quine have such outlooks and techniques for his arguments? We believe they are all closely related to his view to logic. "From the logical point of view" is not only the name of Quine's masterpiece, but also the explanation of the origin of his thought, ways and characteristics of his thinking: the first-order predicate logic was the background of his skepticism to "meaning". On the basis of reflecting upon Quine's argument, we discussed these problemsbriefly --"how does language become real?" and "where does themeaning originate?". Our answers are that encoding has language becomereal and decoding gives the "soul" of language--the meaning. Encodingfeatures both variety and similarity and decoding features both openness and socialization. Therefore, the meaning, an attribute of language, is a unity of either subjectivity and objectivity or uncertainty and certainty. Quine's skepticism to "meaning" is just the concentrated reflection of uncertainty of meaning.Chapter four: Conclusion. We should pursue the certainty of meaning from uncertainty, seek objective content from subjectivity, and search the meaning of a sentence out of the whole context. Perhaps this is the fundamental approach to clarify the meaning of language, also is the best enlightenment of Quine's skepticism to "meaning", moreover, is the hopeful light thrown on the "meaning" in the dense fog...