Abstract
W.V. Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation has attracted a great deal of attention in the philosophical literature from both supporters and critics. It is intriguing, deep and important. To my mind it is also a thesis that presents a bleak prospect. If it is correct, then we must jettison mentalistic semantics, eliminating locutions like “understands” and “knows the meaning of” and replace them with talk of behavioural dispositions and the neural states underlying them. At least we should do this so long as we wish our discourse to reflect the true structure of reality, as described by sound science.
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Segal, G. (2000). Four Arguments for the Indeterminacy of Translation. In: Orenstein, A., Kotatko, P. (eds) Knowledge, Language and Logic: Questions for Quine. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 210. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3933-5_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3933-5_10
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