UNDERSTANDING QUINE'S THESES OF INDETERMINACY

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AbstractThe state of the art as regards the thesis of indeterminacy of translation is as follows. Very much has been said about it, most of which is based on misunderstandings. No satisfactory formulation of the thesis has been presented. No good argument has been given in favour of the thesis. No good argument has been advanced against it.In this paper, I attempt to clear up some of the misunderstandings, to provide a satisfactory formulation of the thesis in non-naturalistic terms, to demonstrate how a naturalistic substitute can be derived from this formulation, to refute the best know arguments for and against the thesis, and to show how it relates to the thesis of indeterminacy of reference, the theses of semantic and epistemic holism and to the thesis of underdetermination of theory by data. Finally I argue that there is an interesting sense in which the indeterminacy is a matter of degree, and express my opinion that this degree is probably not very high.