Naturalist Structuralism's Aporia? Essentialism, Indeterminacy, and Nostalgia – a response to Paul Livingston

Abstract

This essay argues that what Livingston calls the “structuralist” project, combined with a naturalistic, external approach to language, does not in fact lead to a paradoxical failure to match lived language. Quine’s indeterminacy argument is not a consequence of naturalism and structuralism, but is rather a consequence of thorough anti-essentialism, a thesis he shares with Derrida and Davidson. Contemporary naturalism is in fact not committed to Quine’s thesis. Davidson’s views are a purification of the views of Quine, removing Quine’s empiricist appeal to stimulus meaning and Quine’s scientism. Davidson abandons the conventionalist conception of language but retains the “structuralist” conception of language, as captured by a truth-definition. The indeterminacy thesis is a consequence of anti-essentialism applied to semantics, that is, the denial of transcendental signifieds. The essay concludes by arguing that Quine’s aporia (which is also Davidson’s and Derrida’s aporia) is a discovery rather than a paradox.