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Competing Radical Translations: Examples, Limitations and Implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Edwin Levy
Edwin Levy*
Affiliation:
The University of British Columbia
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Extract

In Chapter II of Word and Object, Quine presents and analyzes some of the philosophical difficulties found in the following situation: a linguist comes upon some jungle natives whose language is entirely unknown to him; the linguist then sets out to provide a translation of the jungle language into English. What the linguist would then be said to produce is a ‘radical translation’. Quine's thesis about radical translation is this: while, in a sense, translations can be produced, there are philosophical reasons why there can be no uniquely correct equivalence class of radical translations.

Although I have stated Quine's theme with respect to radical translation, it must be emphasized that even in this single chapter he is defending a far more general claim, i.e.:

Thinking in terms of radical translation of exotic languages has helped make factors vivid, but the main lesson to be derived concerns the empirical slack in our own beliefs… To the same degree that the radical translation of sentences is undetermined by the totality of dispositions to verbal behavior, our own theories and beliefs in general are underdetermined by the totality of possible sensory evidence time without end. ([10] p. 78)

Type
Contributed Papers
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1970 , 1970 , pp. 590 - 605
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1970

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References

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