Willard Van Orman Quine

Indeterminacy of Translation 179
the method of measurement adopted; see E. Levy, “Competing Radical
Translations: Examples, Limitations and Implications,” Boston Studies
in the Philosophy of Science 7 (1971): 590–604. While Levy himself argues
that his example is far from establishing the indeterminacy thesis –
indeed his article is an attack on it – Quine has said that in view of the
example one can scarcely question the thesis. I cannot discuss the example
here but would argue that only by begging the question can it be
taken to support Quine’s thesis.
15. H. Field, “Theory Change and the Indeterminacy of Reference,” Journal
of Philosophy 72 (1973): 462–81.
16. M. Levin, “Forcing and the Indeterminacy of Translation,” Erkenntnis
14 (1979): 25–31.
17. See G. Massey, “The Indeterminacy of Translation: A Study in Philosophical
Exegesis,” Philosophical Topics 20 (1992): 317–45.
18. Quine says that he is “prepared to pass over whatever traces of underlying
indeterminacy there may be in the signs for assent and dissent
themselves” (RWO 317).
19. For one clear example of this argument from structure, see J. Bennett,
Linguistic Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976),
262. There is a version in M. Dummett, “The Significance of Quine’s
Indeterminacy Thesis,” in Truth and Other Enigmas (London: Duckworth,
1978), 372.
20. P. Hacker, “Wittgenstein and Quine: Proximity at Great Distance,” in
Wittgenstein and Quine, ed. R. Arrington and H.-J. Glock (New York:
Routledge, 1996), 15–16.
21. D. Lewis, “Radical Interpretation,” Synthese 27 (1974): 345.
22. Ibid., 343.
23. See WO 20–5, RWO303, and RR 137 ff.
24. R. Rorty, “Indeterminacy of Translation and of Truth,” Synthese 23
(1972): 443–62. Also see R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 202 ff.
25. For detailed discussion, see R. Kirk, Translation Determined (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1986), 215–36.
26. For the previous two quotations from Wittgenstein, see L. Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell,
1953) §199 and §206. For his ideas on interpretation, see §§143–206.
27. S. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1982), 55–7.
28. For a Wittgensteinian perspective on the relations between Wittgenstein
and Quine, see P. Hacker, “Wittgenstein and Quine: Proximity at Great
Distance,” in Wittgenstein and Quine, ed. R. Arrington and H.-J. Glock
(New York: Routledge, 1996).
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