Abstract

Gareth Evans produced a powerfulline of argument against Quine's well-known Thesis of the Inscrutability of Reference. In one part of his attack, Evans argued that, under certain conditions, structural simplicity may become truth-conducive for semantic theories. Being structurally more complex than the standard semantic theory, perverse semantic theories a la Quine are an easy prey for Evans' considerations. The bulk of the paper will be devoted to addressing Evans' criticism. By reviewing the classical/connectionist debate in cognitive science between a hypothetical sympathizer of “cognitive orthodoxy" and the friend ofconnectionism, I shall contend that the Quinean has nothing to fear from a classical reading of Evans' considerations.