  Quine’s scepticism about the idea of meaning is much criticized. We will mention two criticisms. First, what standards of clarity is he employing, when he says that the notion of analyticity is insufficiently clear? The answer, not explicit in (Quine, 1951), is that the standards are those indicated by our discussion in the previous section; Quine is asking for an explanation which is acceptable by his naturalistic standards (see Lugg 2012). Such an explanation would not presuppose an idea of meaning, and would use such ideas as definition or convention only in ways which are justified by the literal sense of those terms. Second, some responses to Quine’s position here argue that it has obviously absurd consequences, such as that meaningful discourse would be impossible or that we could not understand our language. (See, for example, Grice and Strawson, 1956.) But Quine’s scepticism about meanings does not lead to any scepticism about meaningfulness. If we think of meaningfulness as a matter of having a meaning then we may think that our words cannot be meaningful unless there are meanings. But such a way of thinking is, Quine claims, quite misleading. In (Quine 1953), he offers a rough and ready behavioural account of meaningfulness; it is clear from the way the account proceeds that the success of something along those lines would be of no help at all in defining synonymy or analyticity.