Page 142 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Truth and Meaning
presence of rabbits or rabbit traces. Translations of this sentence as 'A rabbit is nearby,' 'Rabbithood is instantiated locally,' 'There is an undetached part of a rabbit nearby,' and so on, would all fit the evidence. Quine therefore suggests that alternative translation manuals may differ in their translation of words occur- ring in observation sentences while still fitting all the appropriate evidence.
2. The Importance of the Indeterminacy of Translation
Quine's thesis would show that there is no objective notion of synonymy: words and sentences are 'syn- onymous' only relative to a translation manual. This challenges the intelligibility of a number of concepts depending upon meaning or synonymy: the dis- tinction between analytic sentences (those which are true by virtue of meaning) and synthetic sentences would be untenable; no sense would attach to ana- lyzing the meaning of words or concepts; the notion of a proposition, something expressed by any of a class of synonymous sentences, would have to be abandoned. So the thesis threatens ideas which are central to traditional ideas of philosophical analysis.
Our ordinary conception of mind regards people as possessing 'prepositional attitudes,' states like belief having a content given by a 'that-clause': for example, the belief that snow is white; the hope that it will not rain at the weekend, and so on. Any indeterminacy in the meanings of one's utterances will infect one's propositional attitudes. Thus a further consequence of Quine's thesis is lack of an objective basis for prop- ositional attitude psychology: there is no fact of the matter concerning what one believes, other than rela- tive to a manual of translation or interpretation.
Finally the indeterminacy of reference introduces indeterminacy into our ontological commitments: accordingtothetranslationmanualoneadopts,some- one may be speaking of rabbits, of rabbithood, or of
undetached rabbit parts: this is Quine's doctrine of ontological relativity.
3. Responses to Quine's Thesis
Although Quine has not displayed in detail how alter- native translations could fit all his 'evidence,' fewhave doubted the possibility. Critics have generally noted how restricted is the evidence which Quine allows the translator and argued that one can also observe when aliensfindutterancesinappropriate,orwhenthey find the denial of a claim absurd rather than merely eccen- tric. Moreover an adequate translation attributes to the aliens an intelligible set of beliefs and desires as well as standards of plausibility and methods of inquiry which one can understand. And there may be restrictions on the kinds of grammar which must be read into a language.
Such suggestions may merely lessen the degree of indeterminacy without refuting the doctrine. Quine may respond that while such criteria influence which translation one uses, they are irrelevant to the question of 'correctness.' But many philosophers would reject the naturalistic empiricism grounding his position.
See also: Holism; Occasion Sentences and Eternal Sen- tences; Ontological Commitment; Radical Interpret- ation.
Bibliography
Davidson D 1984 Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Quine W V O 1960 Word and Object. Technology Press of the MIT, Cambridge, MA
Quine W V O 1979 Facts of the matter. In: Shahan R W, Swoyer C (eds.) Essays on the Philosophy of W. V. Quine. Harvester, Hassocks
Quine W V O 1990 Pursuit of Truth. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Rorty R 1972 Indeterminacy of translation and of truth. Synthese 23: 443-62
Unlike some Western theories, Indian theories of meaning, though often logical or philosophical in character, are based upon a sound empirical foun- dation because their proponents were familiar with the techniques and results of the Indian grammatical
tradition. It may be noted, furthermore, that Sanskrit terms for 'meaning' are, in general, used only of words, sentences, and other elements of language. There are no Sanskrit expressions corresponding to English 'the meaning of existence' or 'the meaning of
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Indian Theories of Meaning F. Staal