Willard Van Orman Quine

Indeterminacy of Translation 159
relations between the individual and the rest of the world do. That
seems to provide a basis for formulating two distinct indeterminacy
theses, one saying only that a uniquely correct scheme of translation
is not fixed by behavioral dispositions, the other saying that it is not
fixed even by all the physical facts, including brain processes. Now,
according to Quine, “[T]he behaviorist approach is mandatory” (ITA
5, PTb 37). He believes that all the facts that bear on meaning are in
some way manifestable in behavioral dispositions. It is only because
of this belief that he can maintain that the indeterminacy thesis entails
that there are no nonbehavioral facts of translation to be right
or wrong about. But if that belief is mistaken, and there are relevant
facts not manifestable in the dispositions, obviously he would want
those further facts to be taken into account. If translation was indeterminate
when the objective facts were restricted to behavioral
dispositions but determinate when brain processes were taken into
account as well, then the weaker thesis would conspicuously fail
to do the philosophical work Quine assigns to his indeterminacy
thesis. It would fail to imply that translation relations, hence beliefs
and desires, are not matters of fact. Indeed he has often insisted
that he thinks translation is underdetermined not just by the facts
about behavioral dispositions but by all the objective facts about the
universe: “The point about indeterminacy of translation is that it
withstands even...thewhole truth about nature” (RWO 303) when
this is supposed to be expressed in terms of physics. 5
6. fitting the facts
What is it for a scheme of translation to fit the facts? We have seen
that merely matching up first-order dispositions to respond has to
be ruled out as trivializing the doctrine, in spite of its sometimes
appearing to be Quine’s own approach. Surely we must avoid a trivializing
interpretation if there is an interesting one to be had – and
there is, as we shall soon see.
One apparently promising approach would be to state constraints
supposed to be individually necessary and jointly sufficient for a
scheme of translation to be empirically adequate. But how do we decide
just which constraints will do? Evidently that depends on what
we are aiming at. Are we trying, for example, to systematize the actual
practice of linguists? Or do we instead want a Quine-acceptable
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