Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Click here to configure this browser for off-campus access.
- Lawrence B. Solum (1987). On the Indeterminacy Crisis: Critiquing Critical Dogma. University of Chicago Law Review 54:462.This essay investigates the indeterminacy thesis - roughly the claim that the content of authoritative legal materials (such as the texts of constitutions, statutes, cases, rules, and regulations) does not determine the outcome of particular legal disputes. The indeterminacy thesis can be formulated as either "strong" or weak." The strong version of the indeterminacy thesis is demonstrably false, but several weak versions of the thesis are true but lack the radical implications of strong indeterminacy.The strong indeterminacy thesis is the claim that all cases are "hard" cases - or that in any case any conceivable result can be derived from existing legal doctrine. Strong indeterminacy does not hold if there are easy cases - cases in which some outcomes cannot be legally correct. For example, if it were the case that the first paragraph of this abstract did not slander Gore Vidal, then there would be at least one easy case, and strong indeterminacy would be false.Weak versions of the indeterminacy thesis include the claim that important cases are indeterminate, that the law does not necessarily determine outcomes, or that every case could become indeterminate if political conditions supported indeterminacy. These weaker claims may be true, but they lack the critical bite associated with strong indeterminacy.The essay also distinguishes between "determinacy," "indeterminacy," and "underdeterminacy." The law is "determinate" with respect ot a given case if and only if the set of results that can be squared with the legal materials contains only one member. The law is "indeterminate" with respect to a given case if and only if the set of results that can be squared with the legal materials is identical with the set of all imaginable results. The law is "underdeterminate" with respect to a given case if and only if the set of results that can be squared with the legal materials is a nonidentical subset of the set of all imaginable results.This article was first published in 1987, and some of the author's views have been revised in interim.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
| Export citation | Scholar | At my library 
Similar books and articles
The first part of this paper discusses Quine’s views on underdetermination of theory by evidence, and the indeterminacy of translation, or meaning, in relation to certain physical theories. The underdetermination thesis says different theories can be supported by the same evidence, and the indeterminacy thesis says the same component of a theory that is underdetermined by evidence is also meaning indeterminate. A few examples of underdetermination and meaning indeterminacy are given in the text. In the second part of the paper, Quine’s scientific realism is discussed briefly, along with some of the difficulties encountered when considering the ‘truth’ of different empirically equivalent theories. It is concluded that the difference between underdetermination and indeterminacy, while significant, is not as great as Quine claims. It just means that after we have chosen a framework theory, from a number of empirically equivalent ones, we still have further choices along two different dimensions.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This paper is an attempt to extend the meaning of the concept of indeterminacy for the human sciences. The authors do this by coining the term methodological indeterminacy and arguing that indeterminacy is better understood when linked to specific methodological techniques. Paradoxically, while specific research techniques demonstrate that the issue of indeterminacy is complex, yielding the possibility of types and degrees, it does not eliminate the problem of translation first raised by Quine. However, the authors go on to argue that, from a research perspective, indeterminacy can and must be approached in such a way that it is possible to reduce cases of it, even though never completely eliminating it in the human sciences.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In Word and Object, Quine argues from the observation that ?there is no justification for collating linguistic meanings, unless in terms of men's dispositions to respond overtly to socially observable stimulations? to the conclusion that ?the enterprise of translation is found to be involved in a certain systematic indeterminacy?. In this paper, I propose to show (1) that Quine's thesis, when properly understood, reveals in the situation of translation no peculiar indeterminacy but merely the ordinary indeterminacy present in any case of empirical investigation; (2) that it is plausible that, because the subject of inquiry is language, we are in a better position with respect to such empirical indeterminacies than we are in other areas of investigation; (3) that, in any case, Quine's arguments are impotent, for they are either contradictory or incoherent; and (4) that Quine is led to his radical conclusions because he confuses a trivial and unexciting indeterminacy, which does obtain, with the striking indeterminacy for which he argues, which does not obtain.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: tandfonline.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: tandfonline.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Some critics believe Quine's semantic indeterminacy (indeterminacy of radical translation at home as well as abroad) thesis is true, but innocent, since it is just scientific underdetermination in linguistics. The Quinean reply is that in scientific underdetermination cases there are facts of the matter making claims true or false (whether knowable or not), whereas in semantic indeterminacy cases there simply are not. The critics' rejoinder that there are such facts, studied in linguistics, is met by the final reply that linguistics either on the whole or in part is riddled with appeals to "meanings" and is, thereby, as suspect as analyticity and radical translation. I recommend "saving"(?) linguistics by holding that it is permanently entangled in epistemology. Finally, the argument the critics should have made concerns paralleling semantic indeterminacy to indeterminacies in current quantum mechanics.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: jstor.org journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: jstor.org journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The paper seeks to show that Quine’s theses concerning the underdetermination of scientific theories by experience and the indeterminacy of reference cannot be reconciled if some of Quine’s central assumptions are accepted. The argument is this. Quine holds that the thesis about reference is not just a special case of the other thesis. In order to make sense of this comment we must distinguish between factual and epistemic indeterminacy. Something is factual indeterminate if it is not determined by the facts. Epistemic indeterminacy, on the other hand, is due to the lack of evidence. Quine’s claim about the relationship between the two theses is best understood as saying that reference is factually indeterminate, whereas the underdetermination of scientific theories is merely epistemic. But the latter cannot be sustained in light of Quine’s verificationism, holism and naturalism.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... A recent theory of metaphysical indeterminacy says that metaphysical indeterminacy is multiple actuality: there is metaphysical indeterminacy when there are many ‘complete precisifications of reality’. But it is possible for there to be metaphysical indeterminacy even when it is impossible to precisify reality completely. The orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics illustrates this possibility. So this theory of metaphysical indeterminacy is not adequate.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: dx.doi.org doi.wiley.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: dx.doi.org doi.wiley.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This paper explores the relationships between Davidson's indeterminacy of interpretation thesis and two semantic properties of sentences that have come to be recognized recently, namely semantic incompleteness and semantic indecision.1 More specifically, I will examine what the indeterminacy thesis entails for sentences of the form 'By sentence S (or word w), agent A means that m' and 'Agent A believes that p.' My primary goal is to shed light on the indeterminacy thesis and its consequences. I will distinguish two kinds of indeterminacy that have very different sources and very different consequences. But this does not purport to be an exhaustive study: there may well be other forms of indeterminacy that this ..
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: muse.jhu.edu | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: muse.jhu.edu | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In a circulated but heretofore unpublished 2001 paper, I argued that Leiter’s analogy to Quine’s “naturalization of epistemology” does not do the philosophical work Leiter suggests. I revisit the issues in this new essay. I first show that Leiter’s replies to my arguments fail. Most significantly, if – contrary to the genuinely naturalistic reading of Quine that I advanced – Quine is understood as claiming that we have no vantage point from which to address whether belief in scientific theories is ever justified, it would not help Leiter’s parallel. Given Leiter’s way of drawing the parallel, the analogous position in the legal case would be not the Legal Realists’ indeterminacy thesis, but the very different position that we have no vantage point from which to address whether legal decisions can ever be justified. I then go on to address the more important question of whether the indeterminacy thesis, if true, would support any replacement of important legal philosophical questions with empirical ones. Although Ronald Dworkin has argued against the indeterminacy thesis, if he were wrong on this issue, it would not in any way suggest that the questions with which Dworkin is centrally concerned cannot fruitfully be addressed. The indeterminacy thesis is a bone of contention in an ordinary philosophical debate between its proponents and Dworkin. Of course, if the determinacy thesis were true, no one should try to show that it is false, but this triviality lends no support to the kind of replacement proposal that Leiter proposes. I conclude with some general reflections on naturalism and philosophical methodology.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: dx.doi.org springerlink.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: dx.doi.org springerlink.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ... It is often assumed that there is a close connection between Quine's criticism of the analytic/synthetic distinction, in 'Two dogmas of empiricism' and onwards, and his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, in Word and Object and onwards. Often, the claim that the distinction is unsound (in some way or other) is taken to follow from the indeterminacy thesis, and sometimes the indeterminacy thesis is supported by such a claim. However, a careful scrutiny of the indeterminacy thesis as stated by Quine, and the varieties of the analytic/synthetic distinction, reveals that the two claims are mutually independent. Neither does the claim that the distinction is unsound follow from the indeterminacy thesis, nor that thesis from unsoundness claim, under any of the common interpretations of the analytic/synthetic distinction.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: springerlink.com people.su.se jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: springerlink.com people.su.se jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This paper contains a discussion of Quine's thesis of indeterminacy of translation within the more general thesis that using and understanding a language are to be conceived of as a creative and interpretative-constructional activity. Indeterminacy is considered to be ineliminable. Three scenarios are distinguished concerning, first, the reasons for indeterminacy, second, the kinds of indeterminacy and, third, different levels of a general notion of recursive interpretation. Translational hypotheses are seen as interpretational constructs. The indeterminacy thesis turns out to be a consequence of the externalizing of language, meaning, and epistemology. By means of a three-leveled interpretation model one can substantiate the crucial aspects, first, that indeterminacy is not an indeterminacy of facts of the matter and, second, that there is a significant difference between indeterminacy and underdetermination. In addition, the relationship between indeterminacy, interpretation, and charity is elucidated. Indeterminacy is seen not as an obstacle to but as a condition for communication. Charity and empathy in dialogue are conditional upon indeterminacy. All three components reveal the interpretative-constructional character of the inseparable connection of meaning and experience.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: informaworld.com tandfonline.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: informaworld.com tandfonline.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Lawrence B. Solum, On the Indeterminacy Crisis: Critiquing Critical Dogma
 Back
All discussions
Start a new thread
|
There are no threads in this forum |
Nothing in this forum yet.
