Peter Hylton: Quine's Naturalism Revisited: Naturalism is Quine's overarching view. In thinking about the world, we must begin where we are; for Quine, that means within a system of knowledge which, as developed and improved, becomes natural science. There is no distinctively philosophical standpoint outside this system. So the philosopher draws on the results of science, which show, for example, that our knowledge of the world comes from stimulation of our sensory nerves. But the philosopher's work is also subject to (...) scientific standards of clarity and rigor. Terms such as ‘meaning’, and even ‘experience’, do not meet these standards and cannot be taken for granted at the outset. Quinean epistemology attempts to account for our knowledge using only terms that Quine takes to be sufficiently clear. The Quinean analogue of metaphysics relies on an ideal of regimented theory: all of our scientific knowledge reformulated so as to make it as clear, simple, and systematic as possible. His claims about ontology, for example, are answerable to that theory. The epistemological project can then be understood as an attempt to show that human knowledge can be accounted for within the narrow confines of regimented theory – and thus treated as a purely natural phenomenon. (shrink)

The Indeterminacy of Translation and Radical Interpretation The indeterminacy of translation is the thesis that translation, meaning, and reference are all indeterminate: there are always alternative translations of a sentence and a term, and nothing objective in the world can decide which translation is the right one. This is a skeptical conclusion because what it … Continue reading The Indeterminacy of Translation and Radical Interpretation →.

W.V.O. Quine's doctrines of the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference are among the most famous and influential theses in philosophy in the past fifty years. Although by no means universally accepted, the arguments for them have been widely regarded as powerful challenges to our most fundamental beliefs about meaning and reference — including the belief that many of our words have meaning and reference in the sense in which we ordinarily understand those notions, as well (...) as beliefs about the particular things meant and referred to in specific cases, such as my belief that in the past my son Brian often referred with affection to his pet rabbit Bigwig. If Quine's doctrines, and the arguments for them, are correct, then beliefs such as these cannot be accepted as true.One might expect that with consequences like these Quine's theses would widely be regarded as obviously incorrect. (shrink)

W.V.O. Quine's doctrines of the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference are among the most famous and influential theses in philosophy in the past fifty years. Although by no means universally accepted, the arguments for them have been widely regarded as powerful challenges to our most fundamental beliefs about meaning and reference — including the belief that many of our words have meaning and reference in the sense in which we ordinarily understand those notions, as well (...) as beliefs about the particular things meant and referred to in specific cases, such as my belief that in the past my son Brian often referred with affection to his pet rabbit Bigwig. If Quine's doctrines, and the arguments for them, are correct, then beliefs such as these cannot be accepted as true.One might expect that with consequences like these Quine's theses would widely be regarded as obviously incorrect. (shrink)

To an ordinary translator, the idea that there are too many perfect translation schemes between any two languages would come as a surprise. Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation expresses just this idea. It implies that most of the 'implicit canons' actual translators use in their assessment of translations lack objective status. My dissertation is an attempt to present a systematic challenge to Quine's view of language and to support the idea that one could develop an (...) objective theory of translation which is also faithful to actual translation practices. ;I expose a non-superficial similarity between external-world scepticism and Quine's meaning-scepticism, and deploy against Quine an objection which closely resembles his own objection to external-world scepticism. I then develop a new interpretation of Quine's reasoning, according to which denying objective status to intuitive 'meanings' is Quine's way of avoiding a sceptical problem about what other people 'really' mean. ;I argue that the intelligibility of Quine's meaning-scepticism turns on an implicit contrast between the perspective of the theorist of language and the perspective of the user of language. Quine's defense of his scepticism features a theorist of language trying to probe an alien language-- a 'radical translator' -- who reasons that her own judgments as a language user lack objective status. ;I take issue with the use Quine makes of the above contrast. I first argue that understanding the goal of radical translators requires knowing what is to be expected of an adequate translation scheme. Since this is something we learn from experience with existing translation schemes, I offer a pre-theoretic description of the practice of translation between known languages. I show how ordinary translators' assessments of the quality of given translations derive from systematic judgments they make as language-users. It is these sorts of judgments that guide actual radical translators in ruling out bizarre alternative translations of the kind Quine entertains in defending his scepticism. A proper theoretical account of radical translation, I conclude, must begin with-- and include-- the perspective of the radical translator as a language-user. (shrink)

Davidson has always been explicit in his faithful adherence to the main doctrines of Quine’s philosophy of language, among which the indeterminacy of translation thesis is significant. For Quine, the indeterminacy of translation has considerable ontological consequences, construed as leading to a sceptical conclusion regarding the existence of fine-grained meaning facts. Davidson’s suggested reading of Quine’s indeterminacy arguments seems to be intended to block any such sceptical consequences. According to this reading, Quine’s arguments at most (...) yield the conclusion that there are always different ways of representing the facts about meaning, rather than the sceptical conclusion that there are no such facts. It is, however, puzzling how Davidson can endorse the main premises of Quine’s arguments, i.e. his general physicalistic view and his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, and yet resist the arguments’ sceptical outcome. I will argue that Davidson’s construal of Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation is unjustified and faces a problematic dilemma. (shrink)

I argue that quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of radical translation is incorrect. the argument exploits the connections between quine's thesis and common sense notions regarding belief. a simple model of belief, taking beliefs to be sets of brain states, is used to give a rigorous restatement of quine's thesis. it is then argued that our need to project the actions of other people from their professions of belief would make the situation quine describes unstable, since persons in (...) that situation would make less accurate predictions of actions than would persons not so situated. (shrink)

W. V. O. Quine's contention that translation is indeterminate has been among the most widely discussed and controversial theses in modern analytical philosophy. This chapter offers some initial reflections on the content and implications of the indeterminacy thesis, and of the presuppositions that Quine makes in treating it as a stepping‐stone to semantic irrealism. It distinguishes Quine's two principal arguments for the thesis: the famous 'gavagai' argument of Word and Object, and the argument from the underdetermination of empirical (...) theory by data emphasized in 'On the reasons for the indeterminacy of translation', and lays out the essentials of the former argument. The chapter assesses the cogency of Evans's objections, and lays‐out certain basic distinctions and implications of the second and more radical argument. The translation of theoretical terms in the native scientists' language can be no more indeterminate than is the selection of an empirically adequate theory of those data. (shrink)

W.V. Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation is the theory which launched a thousand doctorates. During the 1970s it sometimes seemed to be as firmly entrenched a dogma among North American philosophers as the existence of God was among medieval theologians. So what is the indeterminacy thesis? It is very tempting, of course, to apply a little reflexivity and deny that there is any determinate thesis of indeterminacy of translation; to charge Quine with championing (...) a doctrine which has no clear meaning, or which is hopelessly ambiguous. Such a charge is, it is argued in this article, false. His meaning is fairly clear and there is widespread agreement on what the thesis amounts to. The second section of the article looks at Quine's ‘argument from below’ for indeterminacy, then the ‘argument from above’, with concluding remarks in the last section. (shrink)

The paper considers the Quinean heritage of the argument for the indeterminacy of translation. Beyond analyzing Quine’s notion of stimulus meaning, the paper discusses two Kripkean argument’s against the Quinean claim that dispositions can provide the basis for an account of meaning: the Normativity Argument and the Finiteness Argument. An analogy between Kripke’s arguments and Hume’s argument for epistemological skepticism about the external world will be drawn. The paper shows that the answer to Kripke’s rule-following skepticism is analogous (...) to the answer to Humean skepticism: our use of concepts is more basic than, and presupposed by, the statement of the skeptical problem itself. (shrink)

Quine's arguments for the indeterminacy of translation demonstrate the existence and help to explain the rationale of restraints upon what we can say and understand. In particular they show that there are logical truths to which there are no intelligible alternatives. Thus the standard view that the truths of logic and mathematics differ from "synthetic" statements in being true solely by virtue of linguistic convention--Which requires for its plausibility the existence of intelligible alternatives to our present logical truth--Is (...) opposed directly, And not by the espousal of "a more thorough pragmatism". This raises problems about possibility and conceptual novelty. (shrink)

In this paper, I revisit W. V. Quine’s thesis of indeterminacy of translation. I think Quine’s arguments for the thesis are marred by his controversial assumptions about language that amount to a kind of linguistic behaviorism. I hope to cast a new light on the thesis by presenting a strong argument for the thesis that does not rest on those assumptions. The argument that I present in the paper results from adapting Benson Mates’s objection to Rudolph Carnap’s analysis (...) ofsynonymy as intensional isomorphism. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that the concept of translation failure involved in Kuhn's thesis of incommensurability is distinct from that of translational indeterminacy in Quine's sense. At most, Kuhnian incommensurability constitutes a weak form of indeterminacy, quite distinct from Quine's. There remains, however, a convergence between the two views of translation, namely, that there is no single adequate translation between languages.

Quine's arguments for the indeterminacy of translation rest on behaviorist presuppositions [AL 1/29/2004].

R kirk ("analysis", volume 33, 1973, pages 195-201) proposes an argument against quine's deduction of indeterminacy of translation from underdetermination of physical theory. the present paper is a reply to kirk, aimed primarily at showing that his argument is "ignoratio elenchi".

Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation has puzzled the philosophical community for several decades. It is unquestionably among the best known and most disputed theses in contemporary philosophy. Quine’s classical argument for the indeterminacy thesis, in his seminal work Word and Object, has even been described by Putnam as “what may well be the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the Categories” (Putnam, 1975a: p. 159).

Quine has attempted to support his indeterminacy thesis by invoking the assumption that two different physical theories could both be compatible with all possible data. His argument ought to work even if the translation of non-Theoretical sentences is determinate. But this enables us to see that the underdetermination of theory need not produce any indeterminacy in the translation of theory.

Quine’s writings on indeterminacy of translation are mostly abstract and theoretical; his reasons for the thesis are not based on historical cases of translation but on general considerations about how language works. So it is no surprise that a common objection to the thesis asserts that it is not backed up by any positive empirical evidence. Ian Hacking (1981 and 2002) claims that whatever credibility the thesis does enjoy comes rather from alleged (fictitious) cases of radical mistranslation. (...) This paper responds to objections of that kind by exhibiting actual cases of indeterminacy of translation. (shrink)