Incommensurability and the indeterminacy of translation

Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (2):219 - 223 (1991)
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Abstract

In this paper it is argued that the concept of translation failure involved in Kuhn's thesis of incommensurability is distinct from that of translational indeterminacy in Quine's sense. At most, Kuhnian incommensurability constitutes a weak form of indeterminacy, quite distinct from Quine's. There remains, however, a convergence between the two views of translation, namely, that there is no single adequate translation between languages

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Howard Sankey
University of Melbourne

Citations of this work

Kuhn's changing concept of incommensurability.Howard Sankey - 1993 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (4):759-774.
Ciencia, realidad y racionalidad.Howard Sankey - 2015 - University of Cauca Press.

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References found in this work

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Ian Hacking.
Word and Object.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1960 - Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
Against method.Paul Feyerabend - 1975 - London: New Left Books.
Against Method.P. Feyerabend - 1975 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 26 (4):331-342.
Commensurability, Comparability, Communicability.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1982 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982:669 - 688.

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