Abstract

Quine's philosophy, early and late, proceeds from the natural standpoint, that is the explicit acceptance of science. This paper attempts to explain what this means and how it fits with his early criticism of reductive empiricism. A kind of horizontal reductionism remains, it is argued, which aims to explain the import of his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. In the second part of this paper an argument is developed to cast doubt on the significance of this thesis. Because of the possibility of languages containing grue-like predicates, the very idea of determinacy loses all significance. The natural standpoint cannot rescue determinacy and thus cannot provide support for indeterminacy