Willard Van Orman Quine

Indeterminacy of Translation 173
as a given foreign one, that can only be because they both mean the
same as each other. Underlying this approach is the idea that Quine
ignores a fundamental feature of language, namely, that it is subject
to rules or norm:
From the point of view of a normative conception of meaning such as
Wittgenstein defends, a behavioristic conception like Quine’s is simply no
conception of meaning at all, not even an ersatz one. Indeed it is no conception
of language, for a language stripped of normativity is no more language
than chess stripped of its rules is a game. 20
One possible reply is that Quine is not denying that it is useful to
talk of our using words in accordance with norms. What he denies
is that there is a uniquely correct way to say what those norms and
uses of words are. If the indeterminacy doctrine is right, the same
linguistic population can be represented as adhering to significantly
different norms. Appealing to uses, norms, or rules appears merely
to beg the question.
Another popular line of attack has been to appeal to constraints
on translation and interpretation. David Lewis has proposed that the
constraints should be “the fundamental principles of our general theory
of persons, [which] tell us how beliefs and desires and meanings
are normally related to one another, to behavioral output, and to sensory
input.” 21 This theory, he says, “must amount to no more than a
mass of platitudes of common sense.” He remarks, “If ever you prove
to me that all the constraints we have yet found could permit two
perfect solutions,...then you will have proved that we have not yet
found all the constraints.” 22 But that is offered as a “credo,” not an
argument. Quine can insist that no justified set of constraints will
ensure that even the totality of physical truths leaves room for only
one correct scheme of interpretation.
A different line of attack has the piquant feature that it appeals
to Quine’s own views in the philosophy of science. Quine encourages
us to take as true whatever theory of the world best fits the
data and best satisfies our vague guiding principles of simplicity and
conservatism. 23 So it seems we must count as facts whatever our
evolving total theory provides for. The objection is that those very
principles seem to rule out any significant indeterminacy. Quinean
principles, it appears, would favor existing schemes of translation
over whatever peculiar alternatives someone might manage to concoct.
In radical translation from Gavagese to English, for example,
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