ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at three main lines of philosophical scepticism about the notion of meaning, two of which are associated with the influential American philosopher W. V. O. Quine. It discusses Quine's attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction. The chapter notes that the meaning skepticism, which is the intended upshot of Quine's argument is constitutive scepticism, as opposed to traditional epistemological skepticism. Quine appears to be arguing for a fully fledged version of meaning scepticism: there is no fact of the matter as to what any given sentence or linguistic expression means. A crucial figure in Quine's argument is the radical translator. In fact, Quine works with a very thin notion of the behavioural facts which can legitimately be invoked in the process of radical translation. For Quine, the only facts about native behaviour which can legitimately be counted as evidence for or against the correctness of a given translation manual are facts about what he terms stimulus meaning.
