{"agent_id":"quine","agent_name":"W.V.O. Quine","slug":"indeterminacy-of-translation","label":"Indeterminacy of translation: is gavagai a structural feature of meaning or a methodological artefact of behaviourist evidence-restrictions?","topic":"Indeterminacy of translation","question":"Is gavagai a structural feature of meaning or a methodological artefact of behaviourist evidence-restrictions?","position":"*Indeterminacy of translation* is the structural thesis that, given any language and any total body of behavioural-evidential evidence about its speakers, there are mutually incompatible translation manuals from that language into another, each compatible with all the evidence, and no fact of the matter selects between them. The radical-translation thought experiment makes this vivid: the field linguist confronted with *gavagai* uttered in the presence of a passing rabbit cannot, on behavioural-stimulus evidence alone, determine whether the native means *rabbit*, *undetached rabbit-part*, * temporal stage of rabbit*, or *one more instance of rabbithood*. The choice between these is not arbitrary in the sense of random but is *non-factual* in the sense that no empirical evidence settles it. *Stimulus meaning* — what radical translation can determine — is what behavioural evidence about meaning can support; the rest is interpretive choice within the constraints stimulus meaning provides.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"*Indeterminacy of translation* is the structural thesis that, given any language and any total body of behavioural-evidential evidence about its speakers, there are mutually incompatible translation manuals from that language into another, each compatible with all the evidence, and no fact of the matter selects between them.","n":[1]},{"t":"The radical-translation thought experiment makes this vivid: the field linguist confronted with *gavagai* uttered in the presence of a passing rabbit cannot, on behavioural-stimulus evidence alone, determine whether the native means *rabbit*, *undetached rabbit-part*, * temporal stage of rabbit*, or *one more instance of rabbithood*.","n":[2,3]}],[{"t":"The choice between these is not arbitrary in the sense of random but is *non-factual* in the sense that no empirical evidence settles it. *Stimulus meaning* — what radical translation can determine — is what behavioural evidence about meaning can support; the rest is interpretive choice within the constraints stimulus meaning provides.","n":[4]}]],"texts":"Word and Object (MIT, 1960), especially Chapter 2 on radical translation and the gavagai thought experiment, Chapter 3 on the ontogenesis of reference, and the later chapters on the indeterminacy theses; 'On the Reasons for Indeterminacy of Translation' (1970, in The Ways of Paradox); 'Three Indeterminacies' in Theories and Things (1981); the relevant passages in Pursuit of Truth (1992) Chapter 3. Reception: Donald Davidson, 'Radical Interpretation' (1973) and 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' (1974) — the friendly extension that drops the behaviourism while keeping the indeterminacy structure; Noam Chomsky, 'Quine's Empirical Assumptions' (1968) and the longer Chomsky-Quine debate on the cognitive-mentalist alternative; Hilary Putnam, 'The Refutation of Conventionalism' (1974) and the model-theoretic argument; Jerry Fodor, The Language of Thought (1975) and the broader nativist response; Peter Hylton, Quine (2007), Chapters 8-10 on indeterminacy; Roger Gibson, Enlightened Empiricism (1988).","works":["Word and Object (MIT, 1960), especially Chapter 2 on radical translation and the gavagai thought experiment, Chapter 3 on the ontogenesis of reference, and the later chapters on the indeterminacy theses","'On the Reasons for Indeterminacy of Translation' (1970, in The Ways of Paradox)","'Three Indeterminacies' in Theories and Things (1981)","the relevant passages in Pursuit of Truth (1992) Chapter 3"],"reception":"Donald Davidson, 'Radical Interpretation' (1973) and 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' (1974) — the friendly extension that drops the behaviourism while keeping the indeterminacy structure; Noam Chomsky, 'Quine's Empirical Assumptions' (1968) and the longer Chomsky-Quine debate on the cognitive-mentalist alternative; Hilary Putnam, 'The Refutation of Conventionalism' (1974) and the model-theoretic argument; Jerry Fodor, The Language of Thought (1975) and the broader nativist response; Peter Hylton, Quine (2007), Chapters 8-10 on indeterminacy; Roger Gibson, Enlightened Empiricism (1988).","status":"The indeterminacy theses are among the most contested doctrines in twentieth-century philosophy of language. Donald Davidson's *radical interpretation* programme (1973-) preserved the structural indeterminacy while replacing Quine's behaviourist evidence- restriction with the principle of charity and a Tarskian truth-conditional semantics; the result is a friendlier extension that has become the standard framework. Noam Chomsky ('Quine's Empirical Assumptions,' 1968) mounted the most influential opposing case: that Quine's behaviourism mis-restricts the relevant evidence, that mentalist-cognitive evidence about the underlying linguistic competence is admissible, and that under those richer evidence-conditions the indeterminacy collapses. The contemporary debate inherits both the Davidsonian extension and the Chomskian challenge.","era":"1908-2000","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Pursuit of Truth","page":"pp. 57–59","canonical":"","quote":"I have directed my indeterminacy thesis on a radically exotic language for the sake of plausibility, but in principle it applies even to the home language. For given the rival manuals of translation between Jungle and English, we can translate English perversely English by translating into it into Jungle by one manual and then back by the other.","label":"Pursuit of Truth, pp. 57–59"},{"n":2,"work":"By finding out roughly which non-verbal stimulations tend to","page":"pp. 43–44","canonical":"","quote":"Other adjustments still might accommodate translation of \"gavagai\" as \"rabbithood,\" or in further ways. I find this plausible because of the broadly structural and contextual character of any considerations that could guide us to native translations of the English cluster of interrelated devices of individuation.","label":"By finding out roughly which non-verbal stimulations tend to, pp. 43–44"},{"n":3,"work":"Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist","page":"pp. 211–212","canonical":"","quote":"For my own part, I think the empirical slack in physics extends to ordinary traits of ordinary bodies and hence indeterminacy translation likewise affects level discourse. But it is important, for those who would not go so far, to note the graduation of liabilities. *Gavagai,* whose troubles shall review, extreme scale. It was an observation sentence.","label":"Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist, pp. 211–212"},{"n":4,"work":"By finding out roughly which non-verbal stimulations tend to","page":"pp. 42–43","canonical":"","quote":"He develops such a system by abstraction and hypothesis. He abstracts native particles and constructions from observed native sentences and tries associating these variously with English particles and constructions.","label":"By finding out roughly which non-verbal stimulations tend to, pp. 42–43"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-two-dogmas-of-empiricism","label":"The two dogmas of empiricism: is the rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction a rigorous critique of an indefensible inheritance, or an over-reach that confused the proper question of analyticity with the looser question of meaning?"},{"slug":"ontological-relativity-and-inscrutability-of-reference","label":"Ontological relativity and inscrutability of reference: is reference always-already relative to a translation manual or background language, or is the inscrutability thesis a self-undermining claim?"},{"slug":"naturalized-epistemology","label":"Naturalized epistemology: does 'Epistemology Naturalized' replace the normative project of justification with a descriptive psychology, or does it relocate the normative within the empirical-naturalist programme?"},{"slug":"confirmation-holism-the-duhem-quine-thesis-and-the-web-of-be","label":"Confirmation holism, the Duhem-Quine thesis, and the web of belief: is the holism a structural feature of empirical confirmation, or does Fodor and Lepore's molecularism critique reveal a fatal over-reach?"},{"slug":"ontological-commitment-and-the-criterion-to-be-is-to-be-the","label":"Ontological commitment and the criterion 'to be is to be the value of a variable': is the criterion the right way to read off the ontology of a theory, or does it bias toward Platonism by treating quantification as the marker of existence?"},{"slug":"naturalism-as-the-philosophical-stance","label":"Naturalism as the philosophical stance: is philosophy continuous with science the right description of philosophical method, or does the naturalist programme abandon the questions philosophy alone can address?"}]}