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Single Idea 18963

[filed under theme 19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / b. Indeterminate translation ]

Full Idea

The indeterminacy between 'rabbit', 'rabbit stage' and the rest depended only on a correlative indeterminacy of translation of the English apparatus of individuation - pronouns, plurals, identity, numerals and so on.

Gist of Idea

Indeterminacy translating 'rabbit' depends on translating individuation terms

Source

Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.35)

Book Ref

Quine,Willard: 'Ontological Relativity and Other Essays' [Columbia 1969], p.35

A Reaction

This spells out the problem a little better than in 'Word and Object'. I just don't believe these problems are intractable. Quine is like a child endlessly asking 'why?'.

The 19 ideas with the same theme [full translation may be a logical impossibility]:

6318 The doctrine of indeterminacy of translation seems implied by the later Wittgenstein [Wittgenstein, by Quine]
18963 Indeterminacy translating 'rabbit' depends on translating individuation terms [Quine]
1631 You could know the complete behavioural conditions for a foreign language, and still not know their beliefs [Quine]
1632 Translation of our remote past or language could be as problematic as alien languages [Quine]
3988 Indeterminacy of translation also implies indeterminacy in interpreting people's mental states [Dennett on Quine]
6311 The firmer the links between sentences and stimuli, the less translations can diverge [Quine]
6312 We can never precisely pin down how to translate the native word 'Gavagai' [Quine]
6313 Stimulus synonymy of 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not even guarantee they are coextensive [Quine]
6317 Dispositions to speech behaviour, and actual speech, are never enough to fix any one translation [Quine]
6270 The correct translation is the one that explains the speaker's behaviour [Putnam]
6283 Language maps the world in many ways (because it maps onto other languages in many ways) [Putnam]
14206 There are infinitely many interpretations of a sentence which can all seem to be 'correct' [Putnam]
6399 Criteria of translation give us the identity of conceptual schemes [Davidson]
6179 Should we assume translation to define truth, or the other way around? [Blackburn on Davidson]
3495 Shared Background makes translation possible, though variation makes it hard [Searle]
3083 Many predicates totally resist translation, so a universal underlying structure to languages is unlikely [Harman]
3698 Indeterminacy of translation is actually indeterminacy of meaning and belief [Bonjour]
2763 There is an indeterminacy in juggling apparent meanings against probable beliefs [Dancy,J]
6341 Right translation is a mapping of languages which preserves basic patterns of usage [Horwich]