"Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels"
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Quine comes in with a curatorial metaphor and then quietly detonates it. The “myth of a museum” is a jab at a comforting picture of language: meanings sit there, stable and polished under glass, while words simply tag them. That’s “uncritical semantics” because it treats translation as clerical work. Swap English labels for French ones, the exhibit stays put. Easy.
Quine’s intent is to make that ease feel childish. A museum implies inventory, fixed objects, a master catalog behind the scenes. He wants you to notice how much theory is smuggled into that image: that there are discrete “meanings” independent of any language, that words correspond to them cleanly, that reference is a kind of pointing. For Quine, those assumptions prop up big philosophical projects (from analyticity to neat synonymy) that collapse under pressure.
The subtext is his broader argument about indeterminacy: translation is not a one-to-one relabeling because languages don’t divide the world in identical ways, and evidence doesn’t uniquely determine which translation manual is “right.” Even if two translators agree on every observable behavior, they can still map words to different conceptual partitions. The “exhibits” aren’t sitting there waiting; they’re partly constructed by the labeling practices themselves.
Contextually, this is mid-20th-century analytic philosophy turning its skepticism inward. Quine is pushing back on the idea that semantics can be clean, modular, and insulated from psychology, culture, and scientific theory. Switching languages isn’t changing tags on the same display case; it’s renovating the museum.
Quine’s intent is to make that ease feel childish. A museum implies inventory, fixed objects, a master catalog behind the scenes. He wants you to notice how much theory is smuggled into that image: that there are discrete “meanings” independent of any language, that words correspond to them cleanly, that reference is a kind of pointing. For Quine, those assumptions prop up big philosophical projects (from analyticity to neat synonymy) that collapse under pressure.
The subtext is his broader argument about indeterminacy: translation is not a one-to-one relabeling because languages don’t divide the world in identical ways, and evidence doesn’t uniquely determine which translation manual is “right.” Even if two translators agree on every observable behavior, they can still map words to different conceptual partitions. The “exhibits” aren’t sitting there waiting; they’re partly constructed by the labeling practices themselves.
Contextually, this is mid-20th-century analytic philosophy turning its skepticism inward. Quine is pushing back on the idea that semantics can be clean, modular, and insulated from psychology, culture, and scientific theory. Switching languages isn’t changing tags on the same display case; it’s renovating the museum.
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| Topic | Truth |
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