Willard Van Orman Quine

178 robert kirk
postulated is that they accord with exactly the same states of human
organisms, however minutely modulated; all the same hidden states of
nerves. This is the sense in which I say there is no fact of the matter”
(RWA 75).
6. In Word and Object, summarizing the outcome of his use of the notion
of stimulus meaning, Quine states that if the radical translator goes
bilingual, then (1) all occasion sentences can be translated, (2) truth
functions can be translated, and (3) “stimulus analytic” and “stimulus
contradictory” sentences can be recognized. Some writers have assumed
that he regards these as objective constraints on translation. But that
is a mistake: They simply represent the consequences of adopting the
methods he describes.
7. See R. Kirk, Translation Determined (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986),
239–50.
8. So Quine later preferred to call the doctrine ‘indeterminacy of reference’
(see PTb 50).
9. See PTb 50 for emphasis on the contrast between the inscrutability of
reference (construed weakly) and what he there calls the ‘holophrastic
thesis’ of indeterminacy of translation of whole sentences.
10. For development of related points, see C. Hill’s “‘Gavagai’,” Analysis 32
(1972): 68–75, and G. Evans, “Identity and Prediction,” Journal of Philosophy
72 (1975): 346–63. Evans’s suggestions have been particularly
influential: For discussion, see C. Hookway, Quine: Language, Experience
and Reality (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988),
152–9, and C. Wright, “The Indeterminacy of Translation,” in A Companion
to the Philosophy of Language, ed. B. Hale and C. Wright (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1997), 397–426.
11. Quine exploits the notion of proxy functions in his (OR); see also PTb 31
ff. Both Davidson and Putnam offer versions of an argument that uses
the notion of a permutation of individuals in the universe. Putnam’s
version applies to possible worlds as well as the actual world; see D.
Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: University
Press, 1984), and H. Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981).
12. See RWO 303, RIT 180, and RWA 75 (quoted in n. 5).
13. For discussion, see R. Kirk, Translation Determined (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1986), 133–52, and C. Wright, “The Indeterminacy of Translation,”
in A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, ed. B. Hale and
C. Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 413–21.
14. So far as I know he has in print offered only two; see PTb 51. One is
Gerald Massey’s, mentioned later. The other is Edwin Levy’s, which
exploits the ideal that the geometry attributable to a space depends on
Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006