Word and Object: Difference between revisions

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In determining the translation of the Jungle sentence 'Gavagai' (whose English equivalent would be 'Look, a rabbit'), the linguist first has to determine which [[stimulation]] prompt the native to assent, and which prompt him to dissent to the linguist uttering 'Gavagai'. For example, if the linguist sees a rabbit, and the native says ‘Gavagai’, the linguist may think that ‘Gavagai’ means ‘Rabbit’. (S)he will then try the sentence ‘Gavagai’ in different situations caused by the stimulation of a rabbit, to see whether the native assents or dissents to the utterance. The native's reaction is elicited by the linguist's question and the prompting stimulation together. It is the stimulation that prompts the assent or dissent, not the object in the world, because an object in the world can be replaced by a replica, but then the stimulation stays the same.

'The class of all the stimulations [..] that would prompt his assent'.<ref name="Quine, Willard Van Orman 2015, p. 29"/> is the ''affirmative stimulus meaning'' of a certain sentence for a given speaker. ''Negative stimulus meaning'' is defined likewise, with assent and dissent interchanged. Quine calls these affirmative and negative stimulus meaning combined the ''stimulus meaning'' of the sentence. However, since we want to account for the fact that a speaker can change the meaning of a concept, we add the ''modulus'' to the definition of ''stimulus meaning'': the time frame in which the stimulations take place. Once the ''stimulus meaning'' has been found, the linguist can then compare it to the stimulus meanings of sentences in English. The English sentence with (near-) identical stimulus meaning to 'Gavagai' functions as a translation of 'Gavagai'.

After Quine has set out the concept of stimulus meaning, he continues by comparing it with our intuitive notion of meaning.<ref name="Becker, E. 2012 p.100">Becker, E. (2012). ''The Themes of Quine's Philosophy: Meaning, Reference, and Knowledge''. Cambridge University Press, p. 100</ref> For this, he distinguished two kinds of sentences: