Willard Van Orman Quine

Indeterminacy of Translation 163
have vast freedom of choice in fixing these correlations and the conditions
on them, and this seems to be one reason Quine thinks there
is indeterminacy of translation. Although the analytical hypotheses
are only part of a whole translation manual (which must also include
information about syntax), they do the main work:
There can be no doubt that rival systems of analytical hypotheses can fit the
totality of speech behavior to perfection, and can fit the totality of dispositions
to speech behavior as well, and still specify mutually incompatible
translations of countless sentences insusceptible of independent control.
(WO 72)
However, this claim does not amount to an argument. As we shall
see, opponents can maintain that the totality of behavioral dispositions
exerts such powerful constraints on the choice of analytical
hypotheses that there is no scope for substantial conflict between
rival schemes.
A further consideration to which Quine appeals is what Dummett
has nicknamed the ‘inextricability thesis’: the view that there
is no such thing as pure knowledge of meanings uncontaminated
by factual beliefs. This holistic view, set out so effectively in “Two
Dogmas,” comes into play throughout his discussion.
In Word and Object it is hard to be clear just which considerations
are supposed to constitute his main reasons for the indeterminacy
thesis and which he regards rather as corollaries of it. But in a later
article, “On the Reasons for Indeterminacy of Translation” (1970), he
distinguishes two main lines of argument: “pressing from below” and
“pressing from above.” Pressing from below is prominent in Word
and Object. It consists of “pressing whatever arguments for indeterminacy
of translation can be based on the inscrutability of terms”
(RIT 183).
8. pressing from below
The radical translators notice that the jungle people tend to assent to
‘Gavagai’ in circumstances where English speakers would assent to
the one-word sentence ‘Rabbit’. Both sentences are highly observational,
so the translators have pretty strong independent evidence for
rendering ‘Gavagai’ by ‘Rabbit’. But even given similarly strong reasons
for the translation of every single observation sentence of each of
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