The poverty of the stimulus: Quine and Wittgenstein

Abstract

Quine and Wittgenstein were dominant figures in philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century. Many readers, like Quine himself, have felt that there are deep similarities between the two thinkers, though those similarities are difficult to articulate. I argue that they share the project of understanding the meaning of utterances by reference to the environment of the speaker, though they understand that environment in radically different ways. In particular, Quine has a much thinner conception of the environment than does Wittgenstein. For Quine, the stimulus is impoverished in a way that it is not for Wittgenstein. I also argue that they share a certain deflationary approach to ontology.