不確定說意涵之探討：語意取消論或化約傾向論？

語意是當代分析哲學探究的核心問題，而蒯因無疑是在二十世紀對語意進行探究的艱鉅工程裡，最具影響力之當代思想家之一。然而，雖然蒯因的影響遠大，他對語意所採取的自然論立場尚未得到令人完全滿意的理解。一方面，基於蒯因所提出的充滿爭議性之不確定性主張，學界廣泛認為蒯因的自然論立場是一個極端的懷疑論立場：即，語意不存在。另一方面，蒯因在建構其論證時，卻又採取屬於自然性質之傾向來分析所謂的「刺激語意」，來作為語句語意的核心基礎。因此，蒯因的語意自然論立場究竟是一種語意的取消論、亦或是一種語意的傾向化約論，並非十分清楚。本文主要目的有二：一、筆者論述，蒯因的自然論立場在許多哲學家的取消論定位下，是站不住腳的立場；二、在文本的基礎上，蒯因的自然論立場可被刻畫為某種較弱版本的化約論，而此立場較為可行。

關鍵字

語意；傾向；取消論；化約論；自然論

並列摘要

The investigation of linguistic meaning has been central in contemporary analytic philosophy. Quine is undoubtedly one of the most influential thinkers in the 20(superscript th) century in this daunting inquiry. Despite his enormous influence, however, Quine's naturalistic perspective on meaning has not been properly understood. On the one hand, Quine's view, presented in the controversial indeterminacy thesis, is widely taken as a radical form of skepticism, namely, meaning does not exist. On the other hand, Quine invokes and heavily relies on the notion of disposition to analyze the idea of stimulus meaning, which lies at the heart of Quine's discussion of linguistic meaning. It does not seem entirely clear whether Quine attempts to eliminate meaning, or to naturalize meaning by reducing it to dispositions. The aim of this paper is argue for two points. First, construing Quine's position as semantic eliminativism, as many do, Quine's position would be in deep trouble. Second, based on a textual basis, Quine's position can be alternatively construed as a modest form of dispositional reductionism, which is more tenable.