A striking feature of contemporary analytical philosophy is its concern with exotic anthropological scenarios, stories in which we encounter an isolated and completely alien tribe and try to understand its language and activities. The most important source of this interest is W. V. O. Quine's discussion of radical translation, which was continued by his most eminent follower Donald Davidson under the label of radical interpretation. Radical translation/interpretation is interpretation from scratch, the attempt to understand the actions and utterances of a completely unknown community without the benefit of any previous acquaintance.1 Both Quine and Davidson use the idea of such anthropological encounters as a heuristic device. Its purpose is to ensure that we approach linguistic behaviour and the problem of meaning from a perspective which they deem proper. The expedition into the jungle is a campaign in support of a philosophical anthropology, a philosophical account of language and human behaviour in general. In Quine, and until recently in Davidson, this heuristic function has been linked to the idea that ‘radical translation starts at home’: all linguistic understanding is based on radical translation, and we have to interpret even our own utterances. Elsewhere I have argued that this is a mistake (Glock 1994b; Alvarez 1994; Glock 1995). In my view it is related to an error which Wittgenstein pinpointed in PI §§198–202, namely that of supposing that since it may always become necessary to interpret a rule, all rule following must involve interpretation.

To deny that we always engage in radical translation when we communicate is not to reject Quine's and Davidson's approach to genuine cases of radical translation. Indeed, the consideration of radical translation may serve a heuristic role in a philosophical anthropology precisely because it is such a special case. At any rate, this was the view of Wittgenstein, whose remarks on deviant practices and alternative forms of life are the second important source of the analytical debate. Before Quine, Wittgenstein discussed, albeit briefly, the ‘ethnological point of view’ or ‘anthropological method’ which we adopt when coming to understand such an (actual or invented) alien community (CV 37; Rhees 1965, 25).