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)

Quine has famously put forward the indispensability argument to force belief in the existence of mathematical objects (such as classes) due to their indispensability to our best theories of the world (Quine 1960). Quine has also advocated the indeterminacy of reference argument, according to which reference is dramatically indeterminate: given a language, there’s no unique reference relation for that language (see Quine 1969a). In this paper, I argue that these two arguments are in conflict with each (...) other. Whereas the indispensability argument supports realism about mathematics, the indeterminacy of reference argument, when applied to mathematics, provides a powerful strategy in support of mathematical anti-realism. I conclude the paper by indicating why the indeterminacy of reference phenomenon should be preferred over the considerations regarding indispensability. In the end, even the Quinean shouldn’t be a realist (platonist) about mathematics. (shrink)

In his logical foundation of arithmetic, Frege faced the problem that the semantic interpretation of his system does not determine the reference of the abstract terms completely. The contextual definition of number, for instance, does not decide whether the number 5 is identical to Julius Caesar. In a late writing, Quine claimed that the indeterminacy of reference established by Frege’s Caesar problem is a special case of the indeterminacy established by his proxy-function argument. The present paper (...) aims to show that Frege’s Caesar problem does not really support the conclusions that Quine draws from the proxy-function argument. On the contrary, it reveals that Quine’s argument is a non sequitur: it does not establish that there are alternative interpretations of our terms that are equally correct, but only that these terms are ambiguous. The latter kind of referential indeterminacy implies that almost all sentences of our overall theory of the world are either false or neither true nor false, because they contain definite descriptions whose uniqueness presupposition is not fulfilled. The proxy-function argument must therefore be regarded as a reductio ad absurdum of Quine’s behaviorist premise that the reference of terms is determined only by our linguistic behavior. (shrink)

The Indeterminacy of Translation and Radical Interpretation The indeterminacy of translation is the thesis that translation, meaning, and reference are all indeterminate: there are always alternative translations of a sentence and a term, and nothing objective in the world can decide which translation is the right one. This is a skeptical conclusion because what it … Continue reading The Indeterminacy of Translation and Radical Interpretation →.

Roads to Reference: An Essay on Reference Fixing in Natural Language by Mario Gómez-Torrente provides an ample attack against certain more recent variants of descriptivism in the theory of reference. The book discusses a wide variety of expressions, but the focus of this short note is on proper names and natural kind terms. In the case of proper names, indeterminacy plays an important role in Gómez-Torrente’s critical argument. Some questions related to it are raised. As to (...) natural kind terms, the differences between ordinary kind terms and scientific kind terms are discussed, and the somewhat ignored relevance of reference borrowing for natural kind terms is emphasized. (shrink)

Davidson has always been explicit in his faithful adherence to the main doctrines of Quine’s philosophy of language, among which the indeterminacy of translation thesis is significant. For Quine, the indeterminacy of translation has considerable ontological consequences, construed as leading to a sceptical conclusion regarding the existence of fine-grained meaning facts. Davidson’s suggested reading of Quine’s indeterminacy arguments seems to be intended to block any such sceptical consequences. According to this reading, Quine’s arguments at most yield the (...) conclusion that there are always different ways of representing the facts about meaning, rather than the sceptical conclusion that there are no such facts. It is, however, puzzling how Davidson can endorse the main premises of Quine’s arguments, i.e. his general physicalistic view and his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, and yet resist the arguments’ sceptical outcome. I will argue that Davidson’s construal of Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation is unjustified and faces a problematic dilemma. (shrink)

In the past decade, scholars such as Samuel Freeman, Martin O’Neill, Alan Thomas and others have argued that no matter how widely Rawls’s theory of justice (TJ) was understood as a defence of the welfare state (WS), the socio-economic system Rawls defends and always defended is property-owing democracy (POD). In this article I present the argument that Rawls did not defend POD in TJ. However, while the claim that it was POD the socio-economic system implied by the principle of difference (...) generated heated reactions by defenders of the WS, the argument I raise differs from most of them. In the article I maintain that, for Rawls, principles of justice underdetermine the choice of social systems, and that although this is true of both principles, it is especially true of the difference principle, whose ability to arbitrate between different social and economic policies is limited. I show how the attempt to uniquely determine the set of social and economic policies authorized by the difference principle clashes with what Rawls explicitly states in TJ and contrasts with central aspects of his sociological and political conception of socio-economic decision-making. Although my aim is to show that the difference principle itself does not discriminate among socio-economic systems, this does not preclude that additional reasons can help in narrowing the range of socio-economic systems allowed. With reference to the ideal of social union that Rawls expounds in the third part of TJ, I argue that TJ does, in fact, offer additional reasons to appraise the WS as preferable to POD. I maintain that the centrality Rawls attributes to the social unity of a just society provides the basis for an understanding of Rawls’s position towards POD after TJ. (shrink)

Summary This paper tries to show how the irreducible indeterminacy of textual meanings can be reconciled with epistemological realism which normally presupposes independently existing but determinate objects of knowledge. E.D. Hirsch's project of objective interpretation, including his most recent attempts to show that meanings, in spite of their openness to future modifications, are historically determined objects of knowledge, is being criticized. The paper argues that his use of the semantics and the reference theories of Kripke, Putnam, and others (...) forces him to give up, against his own intention, his methodologically important distinction between meaning and significance. Within such theories a strict separation of linguistic knowledge of meaning and world knowledge can no longer be upheld. Since the application of individually and historically variable world knowledge is unavoidable in the process of understanding texts, the textual meanings reconstructed by readers will always remain indeterminate. (shrink)

Objection to Quine's argument for the inscrutability of reference. The proxy functions don't preserve the relations to experience, contrary to Quine's claims.

In this paper I hope to answer the questions "How do we make something an intentional object?" and "What kinds of things can be intentional objects?" My response will be a direct reference theory following Chisholm. Such a theory has as a consequence, I will argue, different types of indeterminacy in our attitudes. This is due to Chisholm's concept of conceptual entailment. I hold that if the self-ascribed attribute conceptually entails another which gives a different intentional object, then (...) the attitude is indeterminate as to which is the actual object or objects, although all such objects are 'purported' to be such. (shrink)

It is commonly believed that Quine's principal argument for the Indeterminacy of Translation requires an untenably strong account of the underdetermination of theories by evidence, namely that that two theories may be compatible with all possible evidence for them and yet incompatible with each other. In this article, I argue that Quine's conclusion that translation is indeterminate can be based upon the weaker, uncontroversial conception of theoretical underdetermination, in conjunction with a weak reading of the ‘Gavagai’ argument which establishes (...) the underdetermination of the sense and reference of subsentential terms. If underdetermination is considered to be a widespread phenomenon in science, or in inductive reasoning more generally, then the Indeterminacy of Translation will be widespread too. Finally, I briefly consider two issues concerning the scope of this conclusion about the Indeterminacy of Translation: first, whether the argument presupposes behaviourism; and second, whether indeterminacy is restricted to the case of radical translation. I argue that the answer to both these questions is negative, and thus that the thesis of semantic indeterminacy remains relevant to those who disagree with Quine about some issues concerning the nature of mind and language. (shrink)

Indeterminacy of reference appears to be incompatible with the deflationist conceptions of reference: in deflationismDeflationism, the singular term ‘a’ refers to a, if it exists, and to nothing else, whereas if the term is referentially indeterminate, it has a variety of equally permissible reference-candidates: referential indeterminacyReferential indeterminacy and deflationismDeflationism cannot both be maintained. In this paper, I discuss the incompatibility thesis, critically examine the arguments leading to it, and thereby point towards ways in which the (...) deflationist can explain referential indeterminacyReferential indeterminacy. (shrink)

In this essay I present a statement of Quine's indeterminacy thesis in its general form. It is shown that the thesis is not about difficulties peculiar to so-called "radical translation." It is a general thesis about meaning and reference with important consequences for any theory of our theories and beliefs. It is claimed that the thesis is inconsistent with Quine's realism, his doctrine of the relativity of reference, and that the argument for the thesis has the consequence (...) that the concept of stimulus meaning is empty. The sense in which linguistic science, as a branch of behavioral science, is "part of physics" is discussed. An alternative to Quine's view of the nature and content of linguistic science is proposed. It is shown to be consistent with Quine's assumptions concerning the legitimate scope of behavioral science and not to involve the notions of analyticity, synonymy and "prevalent attitudes toward meaning, idea and proposition" ([9], p. 304) rejected by Quine. (shrink)

Though the art of compromise, i.e. of settling differences by mutual concessions, is part of communal living on any level, we often think that there is something wrong in compromise, especially in cases where moral convictions are involved. A first reason for distrusting compromises on moral matters refers to the idea of integrity, understood in the basic sense of 'standing for something', especially standing for the values and causes that to some extent confer identity. The second reason points out the (...) objective nature of moral values, which seems to make them immune from negotiation and barter. If one sincerely holds some moral conviction to be true, than compromising on that belief must be a sign of serious confusion.In order to reach a better understanding of these two reasons, I analyse what is involved in personal integrity and how this relates to moral integrity. I argue that the search for moral integrity naturally brings us to the question of how one could accept moral compromises and still uphold the idea that moral values and principles have an objective authority over us. To address this question I will present a version of moral pluralism which tries to capture the enormous complexity of what should matter to us as moral persons, and which explains why value-rankings are often deeply indeterminate. The general position I defend in this paper is that compromises involving moral values and norms may be morally required and, therefore, be laudable. To sustain this position I will arrive at a view of ethical objectivity that allows the possibility to negotiate about the truth of moral beliefs. (shrink)

In many of his writings, Quine has argued that language is indeterminate in various ways. He has pursued, at length and often, an ingenious conclusion about one such way, which he sometimes calls the inscrutability of reference and, sometimes, the inscrutability of terms. It is the conclusion that one dimension of indeterminacy leaves the references of general terms unfixed among a number of alternatives; further, that no sort of scrutiny of the terms or of the occasions of their (...) utterance could, in principle, provide a means for settling objectively which referent to assign to a term. This single doctrine assumes various guises: there is a firm claim about incompatible but equally acceptable translations of certain Japanese classifiers; there is a somewhat less clear commitment to the inscrutability of a choice between expressions and their Godel numbers as referents for quoted expressions; further, there is a yet more tentative endorsement of Harman's example of the various referents of numerical expressions given by competing set theoretic reductions of number. (shrink)

Though the art of compromise, i.e. of settling differences by mutual concessions, is part of communal living on any level, we often think that there is something wrong in compromise, especially in cases where moral convictions are involved. A first reason for distrusting compromises on moral matters refers to the idea of integrity, understood in the basic sense of 'standing for something', especially standing for the values and causes that to some extent confer identity. The second reason points out the (...) objective nature of moral values, which seems to make them immune from negotiation and barter. If one sincerely holds some moral conviction to be true, than compromising on that belief must be a sign of serious confusion. In order to reach a better understanding of these two reasons, I analyse what is involved in personal integrity and how this relates to moral integrity. I argue that the search for moral integrity naturally brings us to the question of how one could accept moral compromises and still uphold the idea that moral values and principles have an objective authority over us. To address this question I will present a version of moral pluralism which tries to capture the enormous complexity of what should matter to us as moral persons, and which explains why value-rankings are often deeply indeterminate. The general position I defend in this paper is that compromises involving moral values and norms may be morally required and, therefore, be laudable. To sustain this position I will arrive at a view of ethical objectivity that allows the possibility to negotiate about the truth of moral beliefs. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that w v quine's indeterminacy thesis can be devastatingly undercut by a straightforward survey of the details of one's own linguistic capabilities. However, Because any such survey must depend upon a repudiation of the quinean doctrines used to generate his thesis, Objections based upon introspective evidence remain question begging without a critique of those more central doctrines. Since such a critique would be sufficient in itself to undermine quine's thesis, Objections based upon introspective gleanings must (...) be abandoned as either question begging or superfluous. (shrink)

The paper seeks to show that Quine’s theses concerning the underdetermination of scientific theories by experience and the indeterminacy of reference cannot be reconciled if some of Quine’s central assumptions are accepted. The argument is this. Quine holds that the thesis about reference is not just a special case of the other thesis. In order to make sense of this comment we must distinguish between factual and epistemic indeterminacy. Something is factual indeterminate if it is not (...) determined by the facts. Epistemic indeterminacy, on the other hand, is due to the lack of evidence. Quine’s claim about the relationship between the two theses is best understood as saying that reference is factually indeterminate, whereas the underdetermination of scientific theories is merely epistemic. But the latter cannot be sustained in light of Quine’s verificationism, holism and naturalism. (shrink)

This article analyses the Italian philosopher and anthropologist Ernesto De Martino’s The Land of Remorse from a philosophical viewpoint. After having presented the main Demartinian concepts (e.g. ‘presence’ and ‘crisis of presence’) and examined the phenomenon of ‘tarantism’ (that is a magical-religious ritual practiced in southern Italy), the author interprets ‘ritual symbols’ as useful ‘fictions,’ which permit to resolve the problem of ‘indeterminacy’ (that refers to vague objects and unknown events), and rescue the human Self from psychological and existential (...) crisis. (shrink)

For Sengzhao (374−414 CE), a leading Sanlun philosopher of Chinese Buddhism, things in the world are ontologically indeterminate in that they are devoid of any determinate form or nature. In his view, we should understand and use words provisionally, so that they are not taken to connote the determinacy of their referents. To echo the notion of ontic indeterminacy and indicate the provisionality of language, his main work, the Zhaolun, abounds in paradoxical expressions. In this essay, I offer a (...) philosophical analysis and rational reconstruction of Sengzhao’s linguistic thought, with a view to exploring the rationale for and purpose of his use of paradoxical language. (shrink)

This article explores the notions of indeterminacy and creation in Castoriadis’ work. The notions of indeterminacy and creation are initially associated with Castoriadis’ conception of Being as Chaos contradicted with what Castoriadis calls “ensemblistic-identitary logic”. The conception of Being as Chaos is then linked with the notion of otherness analyzed as creation ex nihilo. In particular, creation ex nihilo is analyzed in the context of Castoriadis division of Being’s multiplicity into difference and otherness. I will argue that Being’s (...) multiplicity as difference refers to the “ensemblistic-identitary logic” while otherness comes up with a novel form of Being identified as ex nihilo creation. Finally, otherness is approached through Castoriadis’ conception of time whereby otherness and, consequently, time is further associated with Castoriadis’ notion of imaginary as the latter deploys in the social-historical field of mankind through the imaginary significations of society. (shrink)

In ‘Zones of Indeterminacy: Art, Body and Politics in Daoist Thought’, Peng Yu foregrounds the concept of Xu from Zhuangzi’s philosophical writings, and relates this to questions about the political body. Xu refers to a Daoist notion of ambiguity, though it remains unclear as to how to fully define the term. The article explores its meaning through reference to debates of the body, but also liubai painting, which refers to the idea of ‘leaving blankness’, associated with Chinese ink (...) painting. For Peng Yu, the notion of Xu can help us to consider a ‘politics of indeterminacy’ – a means of redefining the status of subject within power structures, or rather a radical re-articulation of how we refer to power relations in the first place. In this interview, with Sunil Manghani and Cheng-Chu Weng, Peng Yu outlines and elaborates upon the main themes of the article. (shrink)

Gilbert Harman, Indeterminacy, Relativity, and Behaviorism: The indeterminacy of radical translation is comparable to the various ways of representing number theory in set theory. Transcendent notions of reference and meaning, which are subject to indeterminacy, can be distinguished from immanent notions that are trivially not subject to indeterminacy. Although Quine's discussions of these issues emphasize behavioral dispositions, he appeals to dispositions as place‐holders for currently unknown underlying physical or functional bases. His discussion in The Roots (...) of Reference shows that considerable understanding can be achieved even at that behavioral level. (shrink)

Discussions of the framework and terminology associated with the right to health tend to treat the indeterminacy of ‘health’ as conceptual noise that the construction of effective policy must not focus on, but find ways of bracketing out. On this basis, the right to health is broadly regarded as a social and economic, rather than a civil and political right. This article draws critically on literature about the implications of developments in medical biotechnologies, to argue that a positive acknowledgement (...) of the indeterminate character of health should transform, rather than simply hinder, the quality of debate over what is to be understood and expected in connection with a right to health. A focus on indeterminacy allows for the perception and the formulation of health-related demands that may not stem from the scarcity of material resources or technical means, but from the misplaced authority of particular voices in defining what possibilities are to be seriously envisaged. This proposition only becomes politically effective, it is argued, when ‘indeterminacy’ (and the capacity for normativity) is referred to life itself and not merely to social and moral judgements about life. Although more immediately pertinent to the concerns of relatively privileged populations, the focus on indeterminacy provides a key to generating a certain symmetry and complementarity of interest, across the privileged/underprivileged divide, in promoting health as a (human) right. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 10.2 (2000) 175-188 [Access article in PDF] Scope Note 38 Bioethics Resources on the Web * Once described as an "enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor" (Pool, Robert. 1994. Turning an Info-Glut into a Library. Science 266 (7 October): 20-22, p. 20), Internet resources now receive numerous levels of organization, from basic directory listings (...) to elaborate "links" (cross-references to other Internet documents) that flash and glow in the dark. In many ways, the Internet functions as a direct extension of the traditional library. Following linked references across various sites is an electronic version of browsing library stacks, and the serendipitous discoveries made while "surfing the Net" recall the wonders of physically going "book-to-book." Although many of the Internet's best aspects augment library strengths by eliminating physical distance from sources, Net resources pose unique problems for researchers. It is not always clear who is responsible for the content of Web documents, when the document was produced, or how often (if ever) it is updated. Internet resource tools, then, must enable researchers to identify appropriate resources and to evaluate what they find when they get there. Web Research as Taking "Snapshots" Given the Internet's visual nature and fluid content, the process of conducting research on the Web has been likened to taking an informal picture of information on a specific date at a particular time. This metaphor also conveys the "zoom-in" aspect of searching through Web pages by going from general to specific categories. In the first section of this Scope Note, National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRCBL) staff present a snapshot of bioethics resources taken during the spring months of 2000. Entries are divided into the categories of directories, electronic journals, full-text documents, news/current awareness, and teaching resources. In the two subsequent sections, this series of categories is repeated for entries on a specific topic within bioethics-genetics-and again for general search and evaluation tools. Where a Web site may contain pages applicable [End Page 175] to more than one category, multiple entries are made for that site with appropriate information for each category.Much as telecommunication advances have strengthened the relationship of patients and providers as partners, the dynamic nature of the Internet acknowledges that the researcher functions as a librarian whenever accessing the Web. It is our hope that BIOETHICSLINE and the other NRCBL databases not only will enable researchers to search the Web more efficiently, but also will help them to evaluate what they find when they get there. Bioethicsline on the Web: An International Plan in Progress Once only available through libraries, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), the funding agency for the ongoing development of the BIOETHICS LINE® database from the Kennedy Institute, has provided free Web access to that database of 63,000 citations since September 1998 through Internet Grateful Med. Plans are now underway to eliminate such specialty databases and incorporate all citations into PubMed (for journal articles) or LOCATORplus (for book-like materials and chapters in books). Both of these databases are likewise available at no cost on the Web. In the transition to PubMed and LOCATORplus some features of BIOETHICSLINE that presently are available may be lost. Researchers are encouraged to contact the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature with search requests or for search strategy assistance with either the current or the future system ([email protected]).The inclusion of bioethics citations in PubMed and LOCATORplus will have several advantages. First, unique keywords from the Bioethics Thesaurus will be considered for inclusion in Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), the indexing vocabulary for PubMed and LOCATORplus, thereby enhancing retrieval of relevant clinical literature by offering more precise terminology covering ethical issues. Second, it will be easier to identify foreign-language materials, which are not currently included in the scope of BIOETHICSLINE. Third, the updating schedule will become more frequent. On the other hand, there may be some loss of searching precision because certain specialized features... (shrink)

It is often indeterminate what function a given computational system computes. This phenomenon has been referred to as “computational indeterminacy” or “multiplicity of computations.” In this paper, we argue that what has typically been considered and referred to as the challenge of computational indeterminacy in fact subsumes two distinct phenomena, which are typically bundled together and should be teased apart. One kind of indeterminacy concerns a functional characterization of the system’s relevant behavior. Another kind concerns the manner (...) in which the abstract states are interpreted. We discuss the similarities and differences between the two kinds of computational indeterminacy, their implications for certain accounts of “computational individuation” in the literature, and their relevance to different levels of description within the computational system. We also examine the inter-relationships between our proposed accounts of the two kinds of indeterminacy and the main accounts of “computational implementation.”. (shrink)

In order to illustrate the nature of the indeterminacy of meaning, Donald Davidson sometimes compares it to the fact that we can measure length or temperature on different scales. In the following paper I try to explain first why we are supposed to expect such an analogy, given the semantics of the word meaning and of the word length or temperature. In the second part I examine how close the analogy is by distinguishing different forms of indeterminacy of (...) meaning (viz., the indeterminacy of reference and the indeterminacy of truth) and ask whether both forms have an equivalent in a theory of measurement. I shall conclude that this is indeed the case. (shrink)

I describe a new problem for metaethical constructivism. The problem arises when agents make conflicting judgments, so that the constructivist is implausibly committed to denying they have any reason for any of the available options. The problem is illustrated primarily with reference to Sharon Street’s version of constructivism. Several possible solutions to the problem are explained and rejected.

: This is an attempt to clarify a vital ontological aspect of Tiantai teaching created by the sixth-century Chinese Buddhist monk Zhiyi. To do this Tiantai must first be distanced from Mou Zongsan's interpretation of its central pattern of nonduality, a reconstructive theory that refers to both Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism and sees a "two-level ontology" in Chinese philosophical traditions, grounded in both the Chinese Buddhist patterns of "nonduality between the sacred and the profane" and the Kantian distinction between "noumena (...) and phenomena." Part 1 of this article is a critical analysis and evaluation of Mou's theory, concluding that the Buddhist patterns of nonduality and the Kantian distinction are not mutually convertible. Part 2 focuses on Tiantai ontology in the specific context of its soteriological relevance, demonstrating that the ideal of "universally saving all sentient beings" in Tiantai soteriology must presuppose the conception of "nonduality of/between the sacred and the profane," and that the ambiguous ontological status of existing things corresponds to this soteriological doctrine in a manner that can only be expressed by a "paradoxical articulation." The ontological meaning of Tiantai teaching is then specified with regard to Zhiyi's discussion of reality and the diversity of existing things. The three constitutive elements of Tiantai Buddhism—the soteriological doctrine of nonduality, ontological indeterminacy, and paradoxical articulation—are all based on an ideal of universal salvation that excludes a level of "being" transcending the realm of sentient beings. This conclusion directly controverts Mou's metaphysical notion of a "two-level ontology.". (shrink)

Putnam’s model-theoretic arguments for the indeterminacy of reference have been taken to pose a special problem for mathematical languages. In this paper, I argue that if one accepts that there are theory-external constraints on the reference of at least some expressions of ordinary language, then Putnam’s model-theoretic arguments for mathematical languages don’t go through. In particular, I argue for a kind of descriptivism about mathematical expressions according to which their reference is “anchored” in the reference (...) of expressions of ordinary language. These anchors add enough to the content of mathematical expressions to forestall the radical kind of indeterminacy that model-theoretic arguments are purported to show, while still leaving room for a plausible, moderate kind of indeterminacy. (shrink)

In Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, Frege attempted to introduce cardinalnumbers as logical objects by means of a second-order abstraction principlewhich is now widely known as ``Hume's Principle'' (HP): The number of Fsis identical with the number of Gs if and only if F and G are equinumerous.The attempt miscarried, because in its role as a contextual definition HP fails tofix uniquely the reference of the cardinality operator ``the number of Fs''. Thisproblem of referential indeterminacy is usually called ``the (...) Julius Caesar problem''.In this paper, Frege's treatment of the problem in Grundlagen is critically assessed. In particular, I try to shed new light on it by paying special attention to the framework of his logicism in which it appears embedded. I argue, among other things, that the Caesar problem, which is supposed to stem from Frege's tentative inductive definition of the natural numbers, is only spurious, not genuine; that the genuine Caesar problem deriving from HP is a purely semantic one and that the prospects of removing it by explicitly defining cardinal numbers as objects which are not classes are presumably poor for Frege. I conclude by rejecting two closely connected theses concerning Caesar put forward by Richard Heck: (i) that Frege could not abandon Axiom V because he could not solve the Julius Caesar problem without it; (ii) that (by his own lights) his logicist programme in Grundgesetze der Arithmetik failed because he could not overcome that problem. (shrink)

A recent proposal by Dr. W. H. McCrae, cosmologist and mathematician, to the effect that decisions between such cosmogonies as those of Hoyle and of Gamow are experimentally impossible by virtue of a general cosmological indeterminacy principle, is here examined and elaborated upon. Some comments on the "antinomies" in Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" are made in reference to this principle as well as to the Heisenberg indeterminacy principle. If McCrae's principle is accepted, we will have moved (...) a long way toward Kant's conclusion that a logically consistent understanding of an underlying "ultimate reality" is outside the confines of science--whatever one may think of Kant's own line of reasoning. (shrink)

Quine and Davidson employ proxy functions to demonstrate that the use of language (behaviouristically conceived) is compatible with indefinitely many radically different reference relations. They also believe that the use of language (behaviouristically conceived) is all that determines reference. From this they infer that reference is indeterminate, i.e. that there are no facts of the matter as to what singular terms designate and what predicates apply to. Yet referential indeterminacy yields rather dire consequences. One thus does (...) wonder whether one can hold on to a Quine--Davidson stance in semantics-cum-metaphysics and still avoid embracing referential indeterminacy. I argue that one can. Anyone adhering to the behaviouristic account pivotal to the Quine--Davidson stance is bound to acknowledge certain facts about verbal behaviour -- that some utterances are tied to situations, that some utterances are tied to segments in situations, that some predicates have non-contextualised conditions of application, and that use involves causal dependencies. The restrictions from these facts ensure that only reference relations generated by means of rather exceptional proxy functions are compatible with verbal behaviour. I conclude that this allows one to rebuff the Quine--Davidson argument for the indeterminacy of reference, as it were, from within. I moreover tentatively conclude that the line of thought laid out provides good reason for just about anyone to hold that there are facts about reference after all. (shrink)

In some cases where we are faced with a decision of whether to prioritize identified lives over statistical lives, we have no basis for assigning specific probabilities to possible outcomes. Is there any reason to prioritize either statistical or identified lives in such cases? The ‘uncertainty argument’ purports to show that, provided we embrace ex ante contractualism, we should prioritize saving identified lives in such cases. The argument faces two serious problems. First, it relies on the principle of indifference, and (...) as such it leads to inconsistent assignments of epistemic probability to possible outcomes. Moreover, even if the uncertainty argument can be reformulated in order to avoid reliance on the principle of indifference, the uncertainty in such cases still undermines any judgment of which course of action – saving a statistical, or rather an identified life – involves the greater burden. The indeterminacy involved in the statistical group might be thought to undermine the argument that application of the principle of indifference leads to inconsistency in this case, but the thought that it does rests on a misunderstanding of the relationship between indeterminacy and reference. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What Does the Indeterminacy Thesis Mean? Is the Law Radically Indeterminate? Is a Modest Version of the Indeterminacy Thesis Defensible? Conclusion References.

Many accept David Lewis's (1983) claim that, among the candidate meanings for our predicates, some are more natural than others -- they do better or worse at ``carving nature at its joints''. Call this claim predicate naturalism. Disagreement remains over whether the notion of naturalness extends ``beyond the predicate'' (à la Sider, 2011). Are the candidate meanings of logical vocabulary also more or less natural? Call this claim logical naturalism. -/- One motivation for predicate naturalism comes from its supposed ability (...) to help rebut various radical indeterminacy arguments associated with Hilary Putnam (1977, 1980, 1981). It does so in combination with a popular meta-semantic theory called reference magnetism. I argue that the same threats of Putnam-style radical indeterminacy rearise for proponents of predicate naturalism -- threats which logical naturalism helps rebuts. So, if we accept predicate naturalism because it helps fend off threats of indeterminacy, we should also accept logical naturalism. (shrink)

McCarthy develops a theory of radical interpretation--the project of characterizing from scratch the language and attitudes of an agent or population--and applies it to the problems of indeterminacy of interpretation first described by Quine. The major theme in McCarthy's study is that a relatively modest set of interpretive principles, properly applied, can serve to resolve the major indeterminacies of interpretation.

Willard Van Orman Quine's work revolutionized the fields of epistemology, semantics and ontology. At the heart of his philosophy are several interconnected doctrines: his rejection of conventionalism and of the linguistic doctrine of logical and mathematical truth, his rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation and his thesis of the inscrutability of reference. In this book Edward Becker sets out to interpret and explain these doctrines. He offers detailed analyses of the relevant texts, (...) discusses Quine's views on meaning, reference and knowledge, and shows how Quine's views developed over the years. He also proposes a new version of the linguistic doctrine of logical truth, and a new way of rehabilitating analyticity. His rich exploration of Quine's thought will interest all those seeking to understand and evaluate the work of one of the most important philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

We review the role of reference within Davidson's T‐theoretic account of language and examine his contention that reference is inscrutable. More generally, we look at the explanatory role of reference in the context of Davidson's philosophy: whether there are explanations that directly appeal to reference, and whether there are explanations that appeal to beliefs about reference.