Word and Object is a 1960 work by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, in which the author expands upon the line of thought of his earlier writings in From a Logical Point of View (1953), and reformulates some of his earlier arguments, such as his attack in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" on the analytic–synthetic distinction.

[3] He argues in favor of naturalizing epistemology, physicalism as against phenomenalism and mind-body dualism, and extensionality as against intensionality.

He also develops a behavioristic conception of sentence-meaning, theorizes about language learning, speculates on the ontogenesis of reference, explains various forms of ambiguity and vagueness, and recommends measures for regimenting language so as to eliminate ambiguity and vagueness as well as to make a theory's logic and ontic commitments perspicuous ("to be is to be the value of a bound variable").

He argues, moreover, against quantified modal logic and the essentialism it presupposes, argues for Platonic realism in mathematics, rejects instrumentalism in favor of scientific realism, develops a view of philosophical analysis as explication, argues against analyticity and for holism, against countenancing propositions, and tries to show that the meanings of theoretical sentences are indeterminate and that the reference of terms is inscrutable.

The same view is displayed in chapter 3 where Quine describes how a baby learns its first words.

The opposite view to Quine's and Skinner's in philosophy of language is represented by Noam Chomsky's linguistic nativism.

[6]: 73 In the second chapter of Word and Object, Quine investigates the concept of meaning.

[8] The linguist can thus only use empirical information, therefore, radical translation will tell us which part of our language can be accounted for by stimulus conditions.

In the experiment, Quine assumes that functional Jungle equivalents of 'Yes' and 'No' are relatively easy to be found.

(S)he will then try the sentence 'Gavagai' in different situations caused by the stimulation of a rabbit, to see whether the native assents or dissents to the utterance.

'The class of all the stimulations [..] that would prompt his assent'[6]: 29  is the affirmative stimulus meaning of a certain sentence for a given speaker.

Quine approaches this question by investigating whether, for occasion sentences, the intuitive notion of synonymy (sameness of meaning) is equivalent to the notion of stimulus synonymy (sameness of stimulus meaning).

Quine uses the example of a rabbit-fly: assume that there is a fly that is unknown to the linguist, that only occurs in the presence of rabbits.

As Becker formulates it: From Quine's perspective, the conclusion to be drawn from our failure to reconstruct intuitive semantics is not that the attempt was misconceived but that our ordinary notions about meaning cannot be made intelligible.

In fact, we cannot even be sure that they are coextensive terms,[9]: 159  because 'terms and reference are local to our conceptual scheme',[6]: 48  and cannot be accounted for by stimulus meaning.

It appears therefore impossible to determine a unique correct translation of the term 'gavagai', since the linguist can take any of the mentioned possibilities and have it correspond to the stimulus meaning through adaptation of logical connectives.

Quine concludes that the linguist can set up his translation manual in different ways, that all fit the native's speech behaviour yet are mutually incompatible.

For this, he first describes a child's process of acquiring reference, by showing the order in which children learn grammatical devices.

In Chapter 5, Quine proposes a system for regimentation, which should help us understand how reference in language works and should clarify our conceptual scheme.

Quine presents a behavioral theory in which the child acquires language through a process of conditioning and ostension.

[6]: 87 As Quine points out: 'The basis combination in which general and singular terms find their contrasting roles is that of predication.

In Chapter 4 of Word and Object, Quine looks at the indeterminacies of reference that are inherent to the (English) language system.

A term is used in purely referential position if its only purpose is to specify its object so that the rest of the sentence can say something about it.

In Chapter 5 of Word and Object Quine proposes a system of regimentation: the paraphrasing of sentences into a 'canonical notation', that we can use to understand how reference works in a language.

For these cases, Quine introduces definitions: we can define singular terms relative to the canonical notation.

He comes to the conclusion that this has to do with the distinction Rudolf Carnap makes between a material mode of speech and a formal one.

It is in these instances that we see what Quine calls semantic ascent,[6]: 249–254  the shift from the material mode of language to the formal one.

He argues that Einstein's theory of relativity wasn't just accepted by the scientific community because of what it had to say about 'time, light, headlong bodies and the perturbations of Mercury'[6]: 251  in the material mode, but also because of its simplicity compared to other theories in the formal mode.

The formal mode allows for a more distant approach to certain problems; however, we are not able to reach a vantage point outside of our conceptual scheme, to Quine 'there is no such cosmic exile'.