One of the main contributions of philosophers at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century to philosophy of science and semantics was the thesis inspired in the scientific advances of natural and exact sciences, that there is not a single true theory of what goes on in the empirical world, but rather the possibility of constructing multiple versions, equally satisfactory, of an explanation of the world. In the Vienna Circle, more specifically, the conventionalist movement showed (...) its influence primarily in the writings of Neurath, but also, more subtly, in the texts of Carnap. In this paper, I shall examine the theoretical relations between Quine’s holistic thesis and the conventionalist aspects of his work. In order to do this I will discuss Neurath’s holistic coherentism and of the conventionalist and holistic aspects present in Camap’s work, which merge, mainly in the Aufbau, with reduc-tionist aims. Thus, I intend to help to clarify to what extent Quine’s holism depends on a conventionalist position and to what extent conventionalism, in its turn, can get along with reductionist epistemological remains. (shrink)

I explore a Davidsonian proposal for the reconciliation of two theses. One is the supervenience of the mental on the physical, the other is the anomalism of the mental. The gist of the proposal is that supervenience and anomalism are theses about interpretation. Starting with supervenience, the claim is that it should not be understood in terms of deeper metaphysical relations, but as a constraint on the relations between the applications of physical and mental predicates. Regarding anomalism, the claim is (...) that psychophysical laws have to satisfy certain counterfactual cases, in which an interpreter evaluates her past attributions in the light of new pieces of evidence. The proposed reconciliation is that supervenience entails that an interpreter will always attribute the same mental predicates to two individuals with the same physical states. However, supervenience does not imply that an interpreter cannot revise her past attributions to the two individuals. (shrink)

The thesis that mental properties are dependent, or supervenient, on physical properties, but this dependence is not lawlike, has been influential in contemporary philosophy of mind. It is put forward explicitly in Donald Davidson's seminal ‘Mental Events.’ On the one hand, Davidson claims that the mental is anomalous, that ‘there are no strict deterministic laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained’ (1970, 208), and, in particular, that there are no strict psychophysical laws. On the (...) other hand, he insists that the mental supervenes on the physical; that ‘mental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervenient, on physical characteristics’ (1970, 214). (shrink)

The thesis that mental properties are dependent, or supervenient, on physical properties, but this dependence is not lawlike, has been influential in contemporary philosophy of mind. It is put forward explicitly in Donald Davidson's seminal ‘Mental Events.’ On the one hand, Davidson claims that the mental is anomalous, that ‘there are no strict deterministic laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained’, and, in particular, that there are no strict psychophysical laws. On the other hand, (...) he insists that the mental supervenes on the physical; that ‘mental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervenient, on physical characteristics’. (shrink)

This book describes a novel conception of reality, one that uniquely incorporates an idealistic view of existence with an account of objectivity. It introduces a general model of conceptual analysis and demonstrates its effectiveness in exposing and establishing the existence of conceptual ties. The book begins by introducing the tools and principles needed for the conceptual analysis undertaken in chapters that follow. Next, it presents a detailed examination into existence, contingency, idealism, self-consciousness and natural laws. In the process, the author (...) critically examines the conceptions of existence held by Kant, Frege and Russell; argues that the determinations of past, present and future are subjective in the sense that they imply the existence of consciousness in relation to which they are fixed; shows that every possible reality includes sufficient conditions for self-consciousness; and confronts the question of the "uniformity of nature," which states that reality is subject to natural laws. In the end, the idealistic conception of reality developed in this book implies that existence is relative, rather than absolute, in the sense that it is determined in relation to a point of view internal to reality. This view of existence implies that reality necessarily exists. (shrink)

In the early chapters of Mind and the World Order, Lewis develops a theory of meaning which has interesting points of similarity with that mentalistic or propositional theory of meaning which has been rejected by Quine, in Word and Object and elsewhere. There are also interesting similarities, however, between Lewis’ theory and Quine's own naturalistic theory. In this paper, I shall concentrate on one such similarity: namely, the analogy, noticed by Quine, between the predicament formulated in his own thesis of (...) the indeterminacy of translation, and the “predicament of private worlds” in which Lewis’ theory of meaning is involved.These analogous predicaments have a bearing on the problems of the commensurability of scientific theories and of objectivity in science in general; in fact, my primary motivation in attempting to explicate the analogy between Quine's theory of meaning and Lewis’ theory is to clear the way for an assessment of Quine's position on the problem of the objectivity of theories in science. (shrink)

The doctrine that meanings are entitieswith a determinate and independent reality is often believed tohave been undermined by Quine's thought experiment of radicaltranslation, which results in an argument for the indeterminacy oftranslation. This paper argues to the contrary. Starting fromQuine's assumption that the meanings of observation sentences arestimulus meanings, i.e., set-theoretical constructions of neuronalstates uniquely determined by inter-subjectively observable facts,the paper shows that this meaning assignment, up to isomorphism,is uniquely extendable to all expressions that occur inobservation sentences. To do so, (...) a theorem recently proven byHodges is used. To derive the conclusion, one only has to assumethat languages are compositional, abide by a generalized contextprinciple and by what I call the category principle. Theseassumptions originating in Frege and Husserl are coherent withQuine's overall position. It is concluded that Quine'snaturalistic approach does not justify scepticism with regard tomeaning, but should rather result in a view that affiliatessemantics with neuroscience. (shrink)

The famous thesis of the underdetermination of our theories about the world through the available observational data is the basis of Quine's skepsis which forces him to commit himself to the theses of the inscrutability of reference and the indetermination of translation. On the basis of an examination of Quine's distinction between observational and theoretical sentences, I intend to show the impossibility of translating observational sentences without their being affected by the indeterminacy of translation. They too, cannot be translated without (...) the aid of analytical hypotheses only by equating them with observational reports of the language into which they are to be translated. The consequence of this is that the basis of this assumption, the empirical equivalence of logically incompatible systems of the world, loses its point. (shrink)

SummaryMany contemporary philosophers of language believe that realist metaphysics and a beha‐viouristic approach to language are incompatible, debate centring on which is to be given up. In this paper I argue that no incompatibility has been shown to exist. In the first section I attempt to give both a characterization of, and an argument for, behaviourism. Then I attempt to characterize realism more generally than is often done, evaluating the work of Dummett, Quine, Putnam and Wittgenstein, as recently interpreted, in (...) that light. Finally I attempt to sketch a behaviouristic justification of classical predicate logic and offer some programmatic remarks on behaviouristic accounts of mathematics and natural science.RésuméBien des philosophes contemporains du langage, estimant qu'une métaphysique réaliste et une approche behavioriste sont incompatibles, centrent le débat sur la question «lequel des deux doit‐il être sacrifité?» Je montre dans ce papier qu'on n'a jamais pu prouver l'existence d'une incompatibilité. Dans la première partie, je tente de caractériser et de défendre le behaviorisme. Puis j'essaie de caractériser le réalisme plus généralement que cela n'a été souvent fait et évalue dans cette perspective les oeuvres de Dummett, de Quine, de Putnam et de Wittgenstein à la lumière de leurs interprétations récentes. Finalement, je propose une justification behavioriste de la classique logique des prédicats et quelques remarques programmatiques quant à une approche behavioriste des mathématiques et des sciences naturelles.ZusammenfassungManche zeitgenössische Philosophen glauben, dass eine realistische Metaphysik nicht mit einer behavioristischen Betrachtungsweise der Sprache vereinbar sei, wobei sich der Streit um die Frage dreht, welche der beiden Haltungen aufgegeben werden müsse. Ich argurnentiere, dass die Unvereinbarkeit nicht wirklich nachgewiesen wurde. Im ersten Abschnitt versuche ich, den Beha‐viorismus genauer zu charakterisieren und zu seinen Gunsten zu argumentieren. Ich versuche dann, eine allgemeinere Charakterisierung des Realismus zu geben, als das üblich ist, indem ich die Werke von Dummett, Quine, Putnam und Wittgenstein, wie sie neuerdings unter diesen Gesichts‐punkt interpretiert werden, beurteile. lch versuche schliesslich, eine behavioristische Rechtferti‐gung der klassischen Prädikatenlogik zu skizzieren, und lege auch einige programmatische Bemerkungen zur behavioristischen Behandlung von Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft vor. (shrink)

Many economic theorists hold that social institutions can lead otherwise irrational agents to approximate the predictions of traditional rational choice theory. But there is little consensus on how institutions do so. I defend an economic internalist account of the institution-actor relationship by explaining economic rationality as a feature of individuals whose decision-making is aided by institutional structures. This approach, known as the subjective transaction costs theory, represents apparently irrational behavior as a rational response to high subjective transaction costs of thinking (...) and deciding. The theory has two attractive features. First, it reconciles rational choice theory with the increasing body of evidence cataloguing putative errors in economic decision-making. Second, it vindicates the explanatory power of individual choice against externalist challenges; the subjective transaction costs theory keeps economic rationality in the head. (shrink)

Critical race theory guides the analysis of the nature of a white epistemology in psychological science, the consequences for the study of race, and how scientific racism has been possible in the pursuit of knowledge. The article argues that race has not only been misused in the politics of psychology but misappropriated because of the logic of psychological science. The epistemic process is divided into four components to argue that naïve empiricist approaches in psychology, centered on scientific method, prevent an (...) intricate understanding of race. Reasons for privileging method in psychology and the consequences of a white epistemology are discussed, including a narrow epistemic horizon and an inability to account for the temporality and contextuality of psychological phenomena. Ignorance, failure, or unwillingness to account for epistemic complexity when studying race are identified as problems. Questions about who benefits from narrow epistemologies are answered and suggestions for a broader practice of knowledge and education are provided. (shrink)

Quine's essay, “Ontological Relativity” [2] has brought about not a little confusion and disagreement. What is Quine's doctrine, and what are his arguments for it? The following paragraphs search for an answer. First a word about my aims. I will avoid adding to the already extensive discussion of Quine's older thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. Instead, where connections between the old and new doctrines become apparent, I will focus on the connections themselves and their repercussions for ontological relativity.

The idea of there being “no fact of the matter” (NFM) features centrally in Quine’s indeterminacy theses. Yet there has been little discussion of how exactly Quine understands this idea. In this paper I identify, develop and then critically evaluate Quine’s conception of NFM. In Sects. 3–4 I consider a handful of intuitive semantic and ontological conceptions of NFM and argue that none is workable from within Quine’s philosophy. I conclude that the failure of each of these proposals is due (...) to the immanent status of truth and existence for Quine. In Sect. 5 I then present Quine’s official conception of NFM. Briefly, Quine’s idea is that there is NFM between two theories of translation iff those theories are physically equivalent. I develop this idea in detail. Finally, I raise two independent problems for this conception of NFM. In Sect. 6 I argue that Quine’s definition is too strong: given what he means by NFM, his arguments for indeterminacy—even granting all their premises and internal reasoning—simply cannot support his claim that there is NFM regarding translation; instead they establish a strictly weaker conclusion. In Sect. 7 I argue that Quine’s conception of NFM is in significant tension with his thesis of physicalism, and that he must give up one or the other. (shrink)

The paper proposes a synthesis between human scientists and artificial representation learning models as a way of augmenting epistemic warrants of realist theories against various anti-realist attempts. Towards this end, the paper fleshes out unconceived alternatives not as a critique of scientific realism but rather a reinforcement, as it rejects the retrospective interpretations of scientific progress, which brought about the problem of alternatives in the first place. By utilising adversarial machine learning, the synthesis explores possibility spaces of available evidence for (...) unconceived alternatives providing modal knowledge of what is possible therein. As a result, the epistemic warrant of synthesised realist theories should emerge bolstered as the underdetermination by available evidence gets reduced. While shifting the realist commitment away from theoretical artefacts towards modalities of the possibility spaces, the synthesis comes out as a kind of perspectival modelling. (shrink)

W.V.O. Quine's doctrines of the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference are among the most famous and influential theses in philosophy in the past fifty years. Although by no means universally accepted, the arguments for them have been widely regarded as powerful challenges to our most fundamental beliefs about meaning and reference — including the belief that many of our words have meaning and reference in the sense in which we ordinarily understand those notions, as well as beliefs (...) about the particular things meant and referred to in specific cases, such as my belief that in the past my son Brian often referred with affection to his pet rabbit Bigwig. If Quine's doctrines, and the arguments for them, are correct, then beliefs such as these cannot be accepted as true.One might expect that with consequences like these Quine's theses would widely be regarded as obviously incorrect. (shrink)

W.V.O. Quine's doctrines of the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference are among the most famous and influential theses in philosophy in the past fifty years. Although by no means universally accepted, the arguments for them have been widely regarded as powerful challenges to our most fundamental beliefs about meaning and reference — including the belief that many of our words have meaning and reference in the sense in which we ordinarily understand those notions, as well as beliefs (...) about the particular things meant and referred to in specific cases, such as my belief that in the past my son Brian often referred with affection to his pet rabbit Bigwig. If Quine's doctrines, and the arguments for them, are correct, then beliefs such as these cannot be accepted as true.One might expect that with consequences like these Quine's theses would widely be regarded as obviously incorrect. (shrink)

The conception of reflective reasoning, like that of higher order thinking, has been informed by a Cartesian view of the self. Reflection is conceived of as a solipsistic process, in which persons consider their own thoughts in isolation. Higher order thinking has equally been represented as a single thinker considering thoughts at a meta-level. This paper proposes a different conception of reflection and higher order thinking, in which reflective dialogue is seen as the fundamental context in which reflection is possible (...) and higher order thinking engendered. The very process of dialectic defines what it is to be reflective and to think critically. Learning to reflect alone is a consequence of internalising the discourse. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage de Pascal Engel doit être fortement recommandé pour plusieurs raisons. On est d'abord frappé par l'ampleur du travail accompli et l'étendue du domaine couvert. La documentation est fouillée, l'exposé est clair et un équilibre est toujours maintenu entre les questions générales et les questions de détail. Engel ne perd jamais de vue la perspective d'ensemble qu'il s'est donnée et qui concerne la nature de la logique, y compris lorsqu'il s'emploie à faire certaines nuances ou à proposer une distinction (...) subtile. Il aurait été facile en pareille matière de proposer un mauvais choix de thèmes. Là encore, Engel s'est bien acquitté de sa tâche. On a affaire à un ouvrage dans lequel l'auteur va toujours droit à l'essentiel. Plusieurs sujets sont à peine effleurés, mais cette décision est très souvent heureuse puisqu'elle permet à l'auteur d'établir des liens entre des problématiques qui, de prime abord, semblent très éloignées les unes des autres. L'auteur fait montre d'un étonnant esprit de synthèse et plusieurs thèmes font, à ma connaissance, une première apparition dans la littérature philosophique francophone. Il s'agit donc d'une contribution à la philosophie de la logique qui mérite d'être signalée. On regrettera peut-être la présence d'un assez grand nombre d'erreurs typographiques. Dans la plupart des cas, il ne s'agit que de coquilles mais, dans d'autres cas, elles risquent de nuire à la compréhension du texte surtout lorsqu'elles interviennent dans des formules ou des définitions. (shrink)

One of the objections against the thesis of underdetermination of theories by observations is that it is unintelligible. Any two empirically equivalent theories — so the argument goes—are in principle intertranslatable, hence cannot count as rivals in any non-trivial sense. Against that objection, this paper shows that empirically equivalent theories may contain theoretical sentences that are not intertranslatable. Examples are drawn from a related discussion about incommensurability that shows that theoretical non-intertranslatability is possible.

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 601-607, June 2022.

Quine’s thesis of underdetermination is significantly weaker than it has been taken to be in the recent literature, for the following reasons: (i) it does not hold for all theories, but only for some global theories, (ii) it does not require the existence of empirically equivalent yet logically incompatible theories, (iii) it does not rule out the possibility that all perceived rivalry between empirically equivalent theories might be merely apparent and eliminable through translation, (iv) it is not a fundamental thesis (...) within Quine’s philosophy, and (v) it does not carry with it the anti-realistic consequences often associated with the thesis in recent debates. The paper analyzes Quine’s views on the matter and the changes they underwent over the years. A conjecture is put forth about why Quine’s thesis has been so widely misrepresented: Quine’s writings up to 1975 tackled primarily the formulation and justification of the thesis, but afterwards were concerned mostly with the question whether empirically equivalent rivals to the theory we hold are to be considered true also. When this latter discussion is read without bearing in mind Quine’s earlier formulation and justification of the thesis, his thesis seems to have stronger epistemic consequences than it actually does. A careful reading of his later writings shows, however, that the formulation of the thesis remained unchanged after 1975, and that his mature and considered views supported only a very mitigated version of the thesis. (shrink)

This article investigates the implications of string theory for the conception of scientific theory confirmation. The classical understanding of theory confirmation is based on the assumption that scientific theory building is underdetermined by the available empirical data. Several arguments are presented, which suggest a devaluation of this ‘principle of scientific underdetermination’ in the context of string theory. An altered conception of scientific progress emerges that is not based on the notion of theory succession.

There exists a common view that for theories related by a ‘duality’, dual models typically may be taken ab initio to represent the same physical state of affairs, i.e. to correspond to the same possible world. We question this view, by drawing a parallel with the distinction between ‘interpretational’ and ‘motivational’ approaches to symmetries.

Constructivism undermines realism by arguing that experience is mediated by concepts, and that there is no direct way to examine those aspects of objects that belong to them independently of our conceptualizations; perception is theory-laden. To defend realism one has to show first that perception relates us directly with the world without any intermediary conceptual framework. The result of this direct link is the nonconceptual content of experience. Second, one has to show that part of the nonconceptual content extracted from (...) the environment correctly represents features of mind independent objects. With regard to the first condition, I have argued elsewhere that a part of visual processing, which I call “perception,” is theory-neutral and nonconceptual. In this paper, facing the second demand, I argue that a part of the nonconceptual content of perception presents properties that are the properties of mind independent objects. I claim first that nonconceptual content is the appropriate level of analysis of the issue of realism since it avoids the main problems besetting various types of analysis of the issue at the level of beliefs about the world. Then I claim that a subset of the nonconceptual content presents features of objects in the environment as they really are. (shrink)

Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation has puzzled the philosophical community for several decades. It is unquestionably among the best known and most disputed theses in contemporary philosophy. Quine’s classical argument for the indeterminacy thesis, in his seminal work Word and Object, has even been described by Putnam as “what may well be the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the Categories” (Putnam, 1975a: p. 159).

Some critics believe Quine's semantic indeterminacy (indeterminacy of radical translation at home as well as abroad) thesis is true, but innocent, since it is just scientific underdetermination in linguistics. The Quinean reply is that in scientific underdetermination cases there are facts of the matter making claims true or false (whether knowable or not), whereas in semantic indeterminacy cases there simply are not. The critics' rejoinder that there are such facts, studied in linguistics, is met by the final reply that linguistics (...) either on the whole or in part is riddled with appeals to "meanings" and is, thereby, as suspect as analyticity and radical translation. I recommend "saving"(?) linguistics by holding that it is permanently entangled in epistemology. Finally, the argument the critics should have made concerns paralleling semantic indeterminacy to indeterminacies in current quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Professor Prawitz has made four claims in his talk. The first claim is that one should be able to generalize the intuitionistic theory of meaning already available for mathematical discourse to empirical discourse. Since each claim constitutes a step in an argument of a general form in favour of some new kind of antirealistically inclined theory of meaning (with a final pessimistic overtone), I shall go over each claim one by one, check whether the argument which links them in the (...) way described is sound, and assess on that basis the appropriateness of the project (and of the pessimism). (shrink)

Verificationism has often seemed attractive to philosophers because of its apparent abilityto deliver us from scepticism. However, I argue that purely epistemological considerationsprovide insufficient reason for embracing verificationism over realism. I distinguish twotypes of sceptical problem: those that stem from underdetermination by the actual data,and those that stem from underdetermination by all possible data. Verificationismevades problems of the second sort, but is powerless in the face of problems of the firstsort. But problems of the first sort are equally pressing. Furthermore, (...) there is some reasonto think that the two types of problem have a common origin. Thus the desire to avoidscepticism provides insufficient reason for adopting verificationism. (shrink)

A series of lectures organized in part by the Society for Applied Philosophy and entitled ‘Philosophy and Practice’ is presumably aimed at displaying the practical implications of philosophical doctrines and/or applying philosophical skills to practical questions. The topic of this paper, the role of interests in science, certainly meets the first condition. For as will be argued there are a number of theses concerning the role of interests in science which have considerable implications for how one should see the scientific (...) enterprise in general and in particular for how one assesses the claim that science ought to be accorded its priviliged position in virtue of its results and/or methods And in view of the respect and resources accorded to science what could be of greater practical interest? It remains the case, however, that my interest may seem the inverse of that of the organizers of this series. For in looking at the role of interest in science, one is examining, so to speak, the extent to which the sphere of the practical determines what goes on in science. One is exploring ways in which the non-scientific impinges on the scientific. While my primary focus will be on the physical sciences, it will be argued that there is a significant difference between them and the social sciences; a difference which renders the social sciences intrinsically liable to penetration from outside. As will be seen, some of the particular arguments for this conclusion make pressing the question: what about philosophy? The answer, it will be concluded, is that philosophy is insulated from external influences to a considerable extent. In that lies both its importance and an explanation as to why much of it has little practical application. (shrink)

A series of lectures organized in part by the Society for Applied Philosophy and entitled ‘Philosophy and Practice’ is presumably aimed at displaying the practical implications of philosophical doctrines and/or applying philosophical skills to practical questions. The topic of this paper, the role of interests in science, certainly meets the first condition. For as will be argued there are a number of theses concerning the role of interests in science which have considerable implications for how one should see the scientific (...) enterprise in general and in particular for how one assesses the claim that science ought to be accorded its priviliged position in virtue of its results and/or methods And in view of the respect and resources accorded to science what could be of greater practical interest? It remains the case, however, that my interest may seem the inverse of that of the organizers of this series. For in looking at the role of interest in science, one is examining, so to speak, the extent to which the sphere of the practical determines what goes on in science. One is exploring ways in which the non-scientific impinges on the scientific. While my primary focus will be on the physical sciences, it will be argued that there is a significant difference between them and the social sciences; a difference which renders the social sciences intrinsically liable to penetration from outside. As will be seen, some of the particular arguments for this conclusion make pressing the question: what about philosophy? The answer, it will be concluded, is that philosophy is insulated from external influences to a considerable extent. In that lies both its importance and an explanation as to why much of it has little practical application. (shrink)

Two of Quine's most familiar doctrines are: that there is a distinction between underdetermination and indeterminacy; and that there is no distinction between analytic and synthetic truths. An argument is given that these two doctrines are incompatible. In terms wholly acceptable to Quine and based on the underdetermination/indeterminacy distinction, an exhaustive and exclusive distinction is drawn between two kinds of true sentences, which, it is argued, corresponds to the traditional analytic/synthetic distinction. An appendix is used to develop one aspect of (...) the underdetermination/indeterminacy distinction, as construed here, and to discuss, in passing, some of Quine’s more general views on truth. (shrink)

Résumé J’examine la thèse défendue par Donald Davidson selon laquelle un être ne peut avoir des pensées que s’il a été en communication linguistique avec quelqu’un d’autre par le passé. Cette thèse, que j’appelle « l’interprétationnisme radical », dérive de la thèse A selon laquelle il est nécessaire d’avoir les concepts de croyance et de vérité objective pour avoir des croyances, et de la thèse B voulant que la communication linguistique soit requise pour l’acquisition du concept de vérité objective. En (...) réponse à A, je préconise un point de vue contextualiste, selon lequel les normes d’attribution de croyances dépendent du contexte conversationnel. Le contextualisme entraîne non pas que A est fausse, mais qu’elle doit être relative à un contexte. Je montre par ailleurs que contrairement à ce qu’affirme B, l’interaction avec autrui n’est pas nécessaire pour acquérir le concept de vérité objective. Je conclus que les arguments de Davidson soutiennent au mieux l’interprétationnisme modéré, c’est-à-dire l’idée selon laquelle un être a des pensées si et seulement si ces pensées sont interprétables par un interprète pleinement informé.I examine Donald Davidson’s thesis that a creature cannot have thoughts unless it has had a linguistic communication with another creature. This thesis, which I call “Radical Interpretationism”, derives from the claim that it is necessary to have the concepts of belief and objective truth in order to have beliefs and the claim that linguistic communication is required to acquire the concept of objective truth. In response to, I put forward a contextualist viewpoint, according to which the norms of belief attribution are context-dependent. Contextualism entails not that is false, but that it must be relativised to a context. I then show that contrary to what says, interaction with others is not necessary to acquire the concept of objective truth. I conclude that Davidson’s arguments at best support moderate interpretationism, that is, the view that a creature has thoughts if and only if these thoughts are interpretable by a fully-informed interpreter. (shrink)

La thèse de l'indétermination de la traduction de W. V. O. Quine est certainement une des thèses les plus controversées de la philosophie du langage. Le présent article explique en quoi consiste cette thèse et examine les liens qu'elle entretient avec la thèse de la sous-détermination des théories scientifiques. La première section montre comment la thèse de l'indétermination de la traduction découle de la conception behavioriste du langage de Quine. Les sections suivantes exposent deux façons de dériver la thèse de (...) l'indétermination: par le holisme et le vérificationnisme dans la section 2 et par la thèse de la sous-détermination dans la section 3. La section 4 précise la formulation de la thèse de la sous-détermination proposée dans «On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World» et la section 5 expose les critiques exprimées par W. Bechtel à propos de cette formulation. Ces critiques témoignent d'une mauvaise compréhension de la position de Quine et j'essaierai de montrer en quoi elles sont fautives. La section 6 traite des deux façons de dériver la thèse de l'indétermination, à la lumière des modifications apportées à la formulation de la thèse de la sous-détermination. Enfin, la section 7 s'intéresse aux questions de fait relatives à la sous-détermination des théories et à l'indétermination de la traduction. (shrink)

Meinongian 'objects' are evoked in an effort to critique and expand upon traditional theories of reference. The argument stems from an account of Peirce's categories of meaning in light of vague, contradictory, inconsistent, general, incomplete, and incompleteable signs. In addition to signs as either 'true', 'false', or meaningless, the function of imaginary numbers reveals the possibility of a sign's being both 'true' and 'false' or neither 'true' nor 'false', over time, and dialogically speaking. This demands a tolerance for vagueness, ambiguity, (...) contradiction, and incessantly changing meaning. (shrink)

The first part of this paper discusses Quine’s views on underdetermination of theory by evidence, and the indeterminacy of translation, or meaning, in relation to certain physical theories. The underdetermination thesis says different theories can be supported by the same evidence, and the indeterminacy thesis says the same component of a theory that is underdetermined by evidence is also meaning indeterminate. A few examples of underdetermination and meaning indeterminacy are given in the text. In the second part of the paper, (...) Quine’s scientific realism is discussed briefly, along with some of the difficulties encountered when considering the ‘truth’ of different empirically equivalent theories. It is concluded that the difference between underdetermination and indeterminacy, while significant, is not as great as Quine claims. It just means that after we have chosen a framework theory, from a number of empirically equivalent ones, we still have further choices along two different dimensions. (shrink)

I argue that there are good reasons to assume that Quine’s theory of reference and ontology is incompatible with reductive statements – such as ‘Heat is molecular motion’ or ‘Rabbits are conglomerations of cells’. Apparently, reductive statements imply certain intertheoretical identities, yet Quine’s theory of reference and ontology seems incompatible with intertheoretical identities. I argued that treating, for the sake of reconciliation, reductive statements along the lines of Quine’s theory of an ontological reduction (which does not imply intertheoretical identity) fails. (...) Then I discussed two alternative strategies on behalf of Quine to handle reductive statements: the Holistic Strategy (which appeals to Quine’s notion of an all-encompassing background theory) and the Individuative Strategy (which draws on Quine’s notion of an apparatus of individuation). I argue that the Individuative Strategy promises to succeed. However, the Individuative Strategy obliges to revising Quine’s theory of an ontological reduction – a revision that, as I argue, can and should be implemented. (shrink)

This paper reassesses the question of whether Craig’s theorem poses a challenge to Quine's empirical underdetermination thesis. It will be demonstrated that Quine’s account of this issue in his paper “Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World” (1975) is flawed and that Quine makes too strong a concession to the Craigian challenge. It will further be pointed out that Craig’s theorem would threaten the empirical underdetermination thesis only if the set of all relevant observation conditionals could be shown to be recursively (...) enumerable — a condition which Quine seems to overlook — and it will be argued that, at least within the framework of Quine’s philosophy, it is doubtful whether this condition is satisfiable. (shrink)

On the orthodox view in economics, interpersonal comparisons of utility are not empirically meaningful, and "hence" impossible. To reassess this view, this paper draws on the parallels between the problem of interpersonal comparisons of utility and the problem of translation of linguistic meaning, as explored by Quine. I discuss several cases of what the empirical evidence for interpersonal comparisonsof utility might be and show that, even on the strongest of these, interpersonal comparisons are empirically underdetermined and, if we also deny (...) any appropriate truth of the matter, indeterminate. However, the underdetermination can be broken non-arbitrarily (though not purely empirically) if (i) we assign normative significance to certain states of affairs or (ii) we posit a fixed connection between certain empirically observable proxies and utility. I conclude that, even if interpersonal comparisons are not empirically meaningful, they are not in principle impossible. (shrink)