Denial

It is the mistaken view that there are propositions, Quine mantains, that results in a mentalistic view of meaning and what he refers to as "the myth of the museum". This myth holds that there are specific mental states, for example, ideas or thoughts, that we express when we use language. Quine claims this is a mistake because, just as we can translate sentences in another language differently depending on which translation manual we choose, we can interpret the sentence we use to specify the content of a propositional attitude differently depending on which interpretation manual we choose. (Interpretation, for Quine, is logically comparable to translation. In both cases we are equating one set of words with another.) Imagine that someone tries to tell us that he or she believes that evolution ocurred by natural selection. Because Quine claims that we can give alternative interpretations, in our own words, of the sentence representing what is believed, he denies that there is anything determinate that the person believes. Because we can apply the indeterminancy thesis to our own inner discourse by translating our own words into different words in our language, Quine further denies that there is something determinate that we believe.

In the place of science of intentionality, Quine proposes the development of a thoroughly behavioristic analysis of human behavior. He acknowledges that we do use intentional idioms like believes in daily life to describe ourseleves and other, but, because such terms are groundless,they must be dispensed with when we return to science: "If we are limning the true and ultimate structure of reality, the canonical scheme for us is the austere scheme that knows no quotation but direct quotation and no propositional attitudes but only the physical constitution and behavior of organisms".

~ Quine