Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I THE PLACE OF MEANING TALK IN SOCIO-LINGUISTIC PRACTICE
- 1 The ends and means of translation: critical reflections on Quine's indeterminacy of translation thesis
- 2 Synonymy, analyticity, and a priori authority
- 3 Where do we go from here?: a pragmatist account of normative judgment
- PART II NATURALISM AND MEANING TALK
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The ends and means of translation: critical reflections on Quine's indeterminacy of translation thesis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I THE PLACE OF MEANING TALK IN SOCIO-LINGUISTIC PRACTICE
- 1 The ends and means of translation: critical reflections on Quine's indeterminacy of translation thesis
- 2 Synonymy, analyticity, and a priori authority
- 3 Where do we go from here?: a pragmatist account of normative judgment
- PART II NATURALISM AND MEANING TALK
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The fluctuation of scientific definitions: what today counts as an observed concomitant of a phenomenon will tomorrow be used to define it.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, no. 79INTRODUCTION AND OUTLINE
One of Quine's most important methodological contributions to the philosophy of language has been to focus the theory of meaning on the activity of the translator, on a consideration of the data she has to go on and the criteria for a correct translation. While it is not our purpose to endorse this as the central theoretical context within a mature semantic theory – that is, we do not, in the end, endorse radical translation in the Quinean sense as the fundamental model for all semantic understanding – we do recognize that Quine's stark posing of the epistemic condition of the radical translator is a crucial step along the way to an understanding of what is, or what could be, going on in semantic interpretation.
Central to Quine's discussion of the situation of the translator is his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, according to which the totality of actual and potential speech behavior of a linguistic community – which he takes to be the only ontological ground that exists for claims of meaning – does not suffice to determine a single correct translation manual from one language to another.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Grammar of MeaningNormativity and Semantic Discourse, pp. 19 - 82Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997