Inscrutability of reference

Last updated

The inscrutability or indeterminacy of reference (also referential inscrutability) is a thesis by 20th century analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine in his book Word and Object . [1] The main claim of this theory is that any given sentence can be changed into a variety of other sentences where the parts of the sentence will change in what they reference, but they will nonetheless maintain the meaning of the sentence as a whole. [2] The referential relation is inscrutable, because it is subject to the background language and ontological commitments of the speaker.

Contents

Overview

Along with the holophrastic indeterminacy, the inscrutability of reference is the second kind of indeterminacy that makes up Quine's thesis about the indeterminacy of (radical) translation. While the inscrutability of reference concerns itself with single words, Quine does not want it to be used for propositions, as he attacks those in another way. [3] He challenges the translation or referential scrutability of whole sentences, proposing his idea of the indeterminacy of translation. In order to accomplish this, Quine makes the statement that there is a so-called holophrastic indeterminacy, which tells that there are always multiple translations of one sentence, which are not only different in the meaning of the single parts of them, but moreover is the whole meaning of both translations dissimilar.[ clarification needed ]According to Quine, there is no way to give an example for holophrastic indeterminacy, because it affects the whole, and every language. Therefore, one has to blindly accept the validity of this hypothesis, or try to make sense of it via reflecting upon the idea[ clarification needed ]. [2] This theory, linked with the inscrutability of reference make up the main characteristics of the indeterminacy of translation.

The inscrutability of reference can also be used in a more extended way, in order to explain Quine's theory of ontological relativity. We are told that, if we try to determine what the referential object of a certain word is, our answer will always be relative to our own background language. Now, as Quine sees it, this idea is not only limited to language, but applies also for scientific questions and philosophical ones. For example, if we are proposed a philosophical theory, we can never definitely characterize the ontological commitments of it. The most we can do, is to adapt this theory to our current background philosophy, that is the theory of which we have already accepted the ontological commitments[ clarification needed ]. [4] Because of this theory, Quine was often regarded as a relativist, or even a scientific skepticist. He, however, insisted that he belongs in neither of these categories, [5] and some authors see in the inscrutability of reference an underdetermination of relativism. [6]

Illustration by the use of gavagai

In his indeterminacy of translation theory Quine claims that, if one is to translate a language, there are always several alternative translations, of which none is more correct than the other. [7] A radical translation is therefore impossible. As a special part of this theory the inscrutability of reference indicates that, in trying to find out to which object a certain word (also sentence, sign etc.) of a language refers, there is never only one single possibility. That is even the case if the possibilities that come into consideration lie very close together. Quine's example of the word gavagai is used to illustrate this. Note that it is also applied at the indeterminacy of translation, but has traditionally been introduced to point up referential inscrutability. The gavagai thought experiment tells about a linguist, who tries to find out what the expression gavagai means when uttered by a speaker of a yet-unknown native language upon seeing a rabbit. At first glance, it seems that gavagai simply translates with rabbit. Now, Quine points out that the background language and its referring devices might fool the linguist here, because he is misled in a sense that he always makes direct comparisons between the foreign language and his own. However, when shouting gavagai and pointing at a rabbit, the natives could as well refer to something like undetached rabbit-parts or rabbit-tropes and it would not make any observable difference. The behavioural data the linguist could collect from the native speaker would be the same in every case, or to reword it, several translation hypotheses could be built on the same sensoric stimuli. Hence, the reference between the term gavagai and its referring object is language- or framework-dependent, and therefore inscrutable. Quine regards this discovery as trivial, because it is already a widely accepted fact that all the different things one word might refer to can be switched out, because of their proxy functions. [7]

Quine does not want to show that those native speakers might speak in interestingly different ways and we cannot know about it, but rather that there is nothing to be known. Not only is it impossible to discern, by any method, the correct translation and referential relation of gavagai, but, in fact, there is not even a correct answer to this question. [8] To make sense of the word gavagai either way, the linguist simply has to assume that the native speaker does not refer to complicated terms like rabbits-tropes. [9] The finding, then, that gavagai means rabbit is not really a translation, but merely a common sense interpretation.

It is important to note that indeterminacy and inscrutability not only occur in the course of translating something from a native, unknown language into a familiar one, but among every language. This holds also for languages which are quite similar, like German and Dutch, and even for speakers of the same language. One cannot with certainty say, what exactly one's conversational partner refers to, when that person is talking about a rabbit. We commonly use the homophonic rule in those cases, i.e., if an individual utters rabbit, we assume the individual uses it in the same way we do. But, as has been shown, there are multiple possibilities which can be indistinguishable from one another. [10] This also applies in our own case. We ourselves do not know what it is we are referring to in using the word rabbit, that is because there is, in Quine's word, no fact of the matter at all. One must not, however, use different possible referential objects in the same translation, because they are incommensurable and the resulting translation hypothesis would contain logical fallacies. [7]

Anti-realist interpretation

Hilary Putnam uses Quine's thesis about the inscrutability of reference to challenge the traditional Realist's view that there is a mind-independent world to which our propositional attitudes refer (e.g. when we talk about or think of something, these things exist not in our minds, but in said mind-independent world). This traditional view implies a correspondence theory of truth and might simply be called Realism about Being. While Michael Dummett already tried to show that the correspondence theory fails to obtain in some particular cases, Hilary Putnam is far more radical, for he claims that this theory fails in every case it is tried to be applied. On Putnam's account, the idea that we refer with our sentences and statements to a mind-independent, nonlinguistic world is an illusion. Further he claims that the problem to deal with is a language philosophical one and uses Quine's inscrutability of reference theory to clarify his point of view. He suggests that, because the referential objects of a language are always inscrutable, the Realist's idea of a mind-independent world is fallacious, because it presupposes distinct referential relations from language to objects in the mind-independent world. [11]

Application in the sorites paradox

The inscrutability of reference is also used in the sorites paradox. The classic example for the sorites paradox mentions a heap of wheat grains from which grains are taken away one by one, until at one time there's only a single grain left. This raises the question of where the line is to be drawn concerning what constitutes a heap. How long does the heap remain a heap? Are two grains still a heap? When one is talking about a heap, one obviously lacks any proper definition of it ready at hand.[ clarification needed ] The referential object of heap is inscrutable, in the sense that there is no such thing and it is not even necessary for the use of the term heap. [12]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Quine, Willard Van Orman (1960): Word and Object. MIT Press; ISBN   0-262-67001-1.
  2. 1 2 Hylton, Peter: Willard van Orman Quine. In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, April 9, 2010.
  3. ↑ Bayer, Benjamin: Quine's Pragmatic Solution to Skeptical Doubts. July 6, 2009.
  4. ↑ Loux, Michael J.: Metaphysics – A Contemporary Introduction. London: Routledge, 3rd edition, 2006, p. 278ff.
  5. ↑ Keil, Geert: Quine zur Einführung. Hamburg: Junius, 1st edition, 2002, 75ff.
  6. ↑ Swoyer, Chris: Relativism. In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, February 2, 2003.
  7. 1 2 3 Keil (2002), 75ff.
  8. ↑ Loux (2006), p. 274ff.
  9. ↑ Loar, Reed: inscrutability of reference.
  10. ↑ Swoyer (2003)
  11. ↑ Loux (2006), p. 272ff.
  12. ↑ Hyde, Dominic: Sorites Paradox. In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, January 17, 1997.

Related Research Articles

In analytic philosophy and computer science, referential transparency and referential opacity are properties of linguistic constructions, and by extension of languages. A linguistic construction is called referentially transparent when for any expression built from it, replacing a subexpression with another one that denotes the same value does not change the value of the expression. Otherwise, it is called referentially opaque. Each expression built from a referentially opaque linguistic construction states something about a subexpression, whereas each expression built from a referentially transparent linguistic construction states something not about a subexpression, meaning that the subexpressions are ‘transparent’ to the expression, acting merely as ‘references’ to something else. For example, the linguistic construction ‘_ was wise’ is referentially transparent but ‘_ said _’ is referentially opaque.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willard Van Orman Quine</span> American philosopher and logician (1908–2000)

Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". He served as the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 1978.

An ontological commitment of a language is one or more objects postulated to exist by that language. The 'existence' referred to need not be 'real', but exist only in a universe of discourse. As an example, legal systems use vocabulary referring to 'legal persons' that are collective entities that have rights. One says the legal doctrine has an ontological commitment to non-singular individuals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sorites paradox</span> Logical paradox from vague predicates

The sorites paradox is a paradox that results from vague predicates. A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are removed individually. With the assumption that removing a single grain does not cause a heap to become a non-heap, the paradox is to consider what happens when the process is repeated enough times that only one grain remains: is it still a heap? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap?

A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their metaphysical status has been a subject of controversy in philosophy, with modal realists such as David Lewis arguing that they are literally existing alternate realities, and others such as Robert Stalnaker arguing that they are not.

"Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is a paper by analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine published in 1951. According to University of Sydney professor of philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith, this "paper [is] sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy". The paper is an attack on two central aspects of the logical positivists' philosophy: the first being the analytic–synthetic distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths, explained by Quine as truths grounded only in meanings and independent of facts, and truths grounded in facts; the other being reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construction of terms that refer exclusively to immediate experience.

Neopragmatism, sometimes called post-Deweyan pragmatism, linguistic pragmatism, or analytic pragmatism, is the philosophical tradition that infers that the meaning of words is a result of how they are used, rather than the objects they represent.

The indeterminacy of translation is a thesis propounded by 20th-century American analytic philosopher W. V. Quine. The classic statement of this thesis can be found in his 1960 book Word and Object, which gathered together and refined much of Quine's previous work on subjects other than formal logic and set theory. The indeterminacy of translation is also discussed at length in his Ontological Relativity. Crispin Wright suggests that this "has been among the most widely discussed and controversial theses in modern analytical philosophy". This view is endorsed by Hilary Putnam, who states that it is "the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories".

A truth-bearer is an entity that is said to be either true or false and nothing else. The thesis that some things are true while others are false has led to different theories about the nature of these entities. Since there is divergence of opinion on the matter, the term truth-bearer is used to be neutral among the various theories. Truth-bearer candidates include propositions, sentences, sentence-tokens, statements, beliefs, thoughts, intuitions, utterances, and judgements but different authors exclude one or more of these, deny their existence, argue that they are true only in a derivative sense, assert or assume that the terms are synonymous, or seek to avoid addressing their distinction or do not clarify it.

The analytic–synthetic distinction is a semantic distinction used primarily in philosophy to distinguish between propositions that are of two types: analytic propositions and synthetic propositions. Analytic propositions are true or not true solely by virtue of their meaning, whereas synthetic propositions' truth, if any, derives from how their meaning relates to the world.

In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought.

Radical translation is a thought experiment in Word and Object, a major philosophical work from American philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine. It is used as an introduction to his theory of the indeterminacy of translation, and specifically to prove the point of inscrutability of reference. Using this concept of radical translation, Quine paints a setting where a linguist discovers a native linguistic community whose linguistic system is completely unrelated to any language familiar to the linguist. Quine then describes the steps taken by the linguist while attempting to fully translate this unfamiliar language based on the only data available: the events happening around the linguist combined with the verbal and non-verbal behaviour of natives.

According to Franz Brentano, intentionality refers to the "aboutness of mental states that cannot be a physical relation between a mental state and what it is about because in a physical relation each of the relata must exist whereas the objects of mental states might not."

<i>Word and Object</i> 1960 book by Willard Van Orman Quine

Word and Object is a 1960 work by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, in which the author expands upon the line of thought of his earlier writings in From a Logical Point of View (1953), and reformulates some of his earlier arguments, such as his attack in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" on the analytic–synthetic distinction. The thought experiment of radical translation and the accompanying notion of indeterminacy of translation are original to Word and Object, which is Quine's most famous book.

This is an index of Wikipedia articles in philosophy of language

<i>The Roots of Reference</i> 1974 book by Willard Van Orman Quine

The Roots of Reference is a 1974 book by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, in which the author expands on his earlier concepts about the inscrutability of reference and examines problems with traditional empiricism, arguing for a naturalized epistemology based on holism.

Holophrastic indeterminacy, or indeterminacy of sentence translation, is one of two kinds of indeterminacy of translation to appear in the writings of philosopher W. V. O. Quine. According to Quine, "there is more than one correct method of translating sentences where the two translations differ not merely in the meanings attributed to the sub-sentential parts of speech but also in the net import of the whole sentence". It is holophrastic indeterminacy that underlies Quine's argument against synonymy, the basis of his objections to Rudolf Carnap's analytic/synthetic distinction. Another kind of indeterminacy introduced by Quine is the "inscrutability of reference", which refers to parts of a sentence or individual words.

The internal–external distinction is a distinction used in philosophy to divide an ontology into two parts: an internal part concerning observation related to philosophy, and an external part concerning question related to philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quine–Putnam indispensability argument</span> Argument in the philosophy of mathematics

The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument is an argument in the philosophy of mathematics for the existence of abstract mathematical objects such as numbers and sets, a position known as mathematical platonism. It was named after the philosophers Willard Quine and Hilary Putnam, and is one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mathematics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Predication (philosophy)</span>

Predication in philosophy refers to an act of judgement where one term is subsumed under another. A comprehensive conceptualization describes it as the understanding of the relation expressed by a predicative structure primordially through the opposition between particular and general or the one and the many.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.