Semantic Perversity

This paper consists of two parts. In section I, I explore Christopher Hookway's proposal (1988) to elude a counterexample which Gareth Evans (Evans (1975)) offers against Quine's 'thesis of the inscrutability of reference'. Evans produced a line of argument which suggests that one of Quine's semantically perverse translation manuals is behaviorally incorrect. Hookway modifies the perverse manual to make it behaviorally correct. As we'll see in due course, Hookway's proposal fails to deliver the right satisfaction conditions. Fortunately, just a minor modification will suffice for Hookway to meet Evans's objection. In section II, I shall offer the Quinean a different strategy to bypass Evans's counter, a strategy which is not subject to certain criticisms which may put Hookway's own proposal in jeopardy.