Linguaggio ed empatia in W.V. Quine

This paper is an attempt at historical-critical reconstruction of W.V. Quine’s theory of empathy in radical translation, in the acquisition of language, and in the ascription of intentional states as propositional attitudes. Only in the last years of his reflection did Quine elaborate his method of empathy in translation and in folk psychology, often contrasting it, even if only implicitly, to the famous principle of charity. The empathic model of translation and interpretation turns out to be an important contribution in the Quinean approach to language, and, in particular, the Quinean analysis of attribution of belief sentences according to empathic method appears to present some affinity with the interpretation in terms of possible worlds.