Indeterminacy of Translation

This essay tackles Richard Rorty's main criticisms of W.V. Quine, and assesses the relevance of Quine's philosophy of language to Rorty's neopragmatism.
It was written as an Honor's thesis written under the supervision of Dr. Ira Singer and Dr. Terry Godlove at Hofstra University. It passed with high honors.

Naturalism is the dominant characteristic of Quine's philosophy. This paper presents a more comprehensive and sympathetic clarification of Quine's naturalized epistemology (NE for short), and vindicates its main positions by critically responding to three objections: replacement (that Quine's NE replaces of traditional epistemology), circularity (that Quine's NE is viciously circular), and non-normativity (that Quine's NE lacks normative dimension). It also addresses Williamson's three critics against naturalism (primarily Quine's version). The paper concludes that both the objections and Williamson's critics largely stem from misreading or misinterpretation. It argues that Quine's NE still contains illuminating, reasonable, and valuable insights worthy of further development.

This focusses on a certain theme of the 1986 closed conference at Stanford featuring Quine, Davidson, Føllesdal and Dreben, a transcript entitled the 'Stanford Conversation' having just been released: the contrast between traditional epistemology and Quine's naturalized epistemology. A central fixture of the latter is the notion of stimulus meaning. Davidson objects to the notion repeatedly and vehemently, finding it unacceptably private or at least idiosyncratic, and indeed urging that it is of no epistemic or semantic relevance. On the contrary, Davidson contends, what is needed for both epistemology and semantics are simply the ordinary, public objects of reference, at least in typical cases. In opposition to Davidson, Føllesdal makes an interesting counter-suggestion to Quine's stimulus meaning. It construes observation sentences as having meaning-like properties which are publicly available, yet, unlike the distal items insisted on by Davidson, they are still proximate. I generalize and sharpen Føllesdal's suggestion, in such a way as to answer the reservations that Quine himself expressed. Meanwhile Dreben and Quine urge that, so far as one has naturalized epistemology firmly in mind, Davidson's alternative is simply not available, not least because it seems for all the world to presuppose reference. I stress this.

This article discusses three recent books that focus on the mutual relation between science and religion, particularly as it emerges in prophetism. The first is Timothy Jenkins's (2013) reanalysis of a 1950s study on an end-of-the-world cult referring to UFOs; the second is Stephan Palmié's (2023) collection about Afro-Cuban religion in Miami and Havana in its relation to science; and the third is Ramon Sarró's (2023) study of a Kongolese scientist/inventor who proposed a writing system under prophetic inspiration. The three books are comments on what it is to practice critical analysis in a world where the interaction of science and religion is not to be treated lightly, for its effects are ever more complex, ever harder to decipher. Albeit adopting very diverse tones, all three books carry deeply humanist, political warnings.

O presente artigo busca explora a obra de Sören Kierkegaard através da análise do conceito de liberdade do absoluto, entendida como a condição fundamental para a existência autêntica. O estudo se concentra na relação entre liberdade e existência, destacando a importância do salto de fé para a realização da verdadeira liberdade, que só pode ser alcançada na entrega ao absoluto. A análise é feita a partir da perspectiva da “Angústia”, uma metáfora para o indivíduo que, consciente das suas limitações e possibilidades, opta por uma vida orientada pela fé. O artigo visa, assim, compreender como a existência humana é moldada pela tensão entre possibilidade e necessidade, e como a liberdade emerge a partir dessa dialética.

A critical analysis of Quine metaphysics leads to the idea that nothing exist independent of natural sciences. This obliges us into the question: can metaphysics be reduced to a natural science? To tackle this question Quine dismantles First Philosophy by considering it as prior philosophy which is meaningless in the context of natural sciences. Affirmatively, he adopts naturalism whose locus is science. In line with this, he revived metaphysics from its speculative or abstract nature to a discipline that is continuous with natural sciences. This is attained through the pragmatic value of metaphysics. That is, via its application in the scientific processes. But in the final analysis metaphysics cannot be accommodated by natural sciences because it would be the loss of its essence of speculation and abstraction. The abortive revival of metaphysics is also explained by the fact natural sciences have a common denominator which is the scientific method and metaphysics is not structure on this method.

Behaviorism, naturalized epistemology, metatheoretical structuralism, indeterminacy of translation. la epistemología naturalizaDa De Quine vs. la inDeterminación De la traDucción. un enFoQue estructuralista* Quine's naturalized epistemology Vs. the indeterminaCy of translation. a struCturalistiC approaCh

Este artigo trata das correspondências conceituais entre duas das teses centrais da proposta filosófica de Willard Van Orman Quine, a inescrutabilidade da referência, por meio da qual Quine apresenta exemplos para a fundamentação da sua teoria da indeterminação da tradução; e a relatividade ontológica, com a qual Quine trata das diversas possibilidades que os linguistas dispõem enquanto realizam observações para a tradução de novas línguas. Essas teses de Quine estão fortemente vinculadas em razão de sua centralidade para a teoria da indeterminação da tradução, isto é, da impossibilidade de obtermos um significado referencial preciso. Em vista desta escolha temática, intrínseca às origens da epistemologia naturalizada, intenciono apresentar elementos introdutórios à filosofia da linguagem de Quine, que explicitem a correspondência conceitual elementar de seu pensamento, isto é, que demonstrem a indissociabilidade entre a tese da inescrutabilidade da referência e a consequente relatividade ontológica. Com a constatação da não-dependência de postulados ontológicos para a eficácia semântica e intersubjetiva da linguagem, podemos afirmar que é em razão da indeterminação da tradução que a inescrutabilidade da referência é constatada.

Willard Van Orman Quine and Donald Davisdson seem to be on the opposite sides of the search for meaning. While Quine’s most famous insight is his arguments against the determinacy of meaning, Davidson is mostly remembered for making the connection between Tarski’s theory of truth and the age-old problem of meaning. But this characterization does not bring either justice. The two are inextricably linked, not only because Davidson considered himself a faithful student of his mentor Quine until his death, but because they are grappling with the same fundamental problem: given the indeterminacy of meaning, how are we able to talk and, more importantly, how can we be understood? In this paper, I argue that Davidson’s theory of radical interpretation does not contradict Quinean meaning skepticism, nor does it try to. I start by reconstructing Quine’s arguments to draw a distinction between between the Standard Picture (SP) of meaning (which Quine rejects) and the Radical Picture (RP) of meaning (which Quine accepts). I then argue for Davidson’s fundamental continuity with this project. I do this by first showing that his theory radical interpretation presupposes a rejection of SP meaning. Then, I show that Davidson’s radical interpretation is only an account of RP meaning and not SP meaning.

There has been much discussion of the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects. However, there has been little discussion of the relationship between Meinongianism and the indispensability argument. According to strong Meinongianism: i) some objects do not exist; ii) we can refer to and quantify over nonexistent objects to make true statements about them; and iii) nonexistent objects are the truthmakers of sentences which contain reference to or/and quantification over nonexistent objects. In this paper, against the mainstream Quinean meta-ontology, I argue that there are nonexistent mathematical objects as truthmakers and that nonexistent mathematical objects make a difference for the way the concrete world is.

is not one of our more cautious and hesitant thinkers. He has derived some quite astonishing conclusions from what he takes to be the present state of cognitive science. One shocker was his suggestion that a great many lexical concepts (e.g. "xylophone, " "grandmother") might be innate (1983, p. 279). Another, the topic of Garrett and Graham's paper, is his argument that a naturalistic psychology (NP) is impossible in practice. One may take a variety of stances with respect to these claims. Some regard them as stunning discoveries, others simply as puzzles for cognitive philosophers and psychologists to solve, still others as reductiones ad absurdum of the entire enterprise of cognitive science. Garrett and Graham defend NP. They claim to argue not against Fodor's cognitive "computationalism" but only against his rejection of NP. While I share many of their intuitions regarding criteria for scientific status, Garrett and Graham do not succeed in the task they set for themselves. Their rejection of Fodor's anti-naturalism succeeds only if certain central tenets of Fodor's cognitivism (rationalism, computationalism) are also rejected. In other words, Garrett and Graham belong in the "reductio ad absurdum" camp of Fodor's commentators.

is not one of our more cautious and hesitant thinkers. He has derived some quite astonishing conclusions from what he takes to be the present state of cognitive science. One shocker was his suggestion that a great many lexical concepts (e.g. "xylophone, " "grandmother") might be innate (1983, p. 279). Another, the topic of Garrett and Graham's paper, is his argument that a naturalistic psychology (NP) is impossible in practice. One may take a variety of stances with respect to these claims. Some regard them as stunning discoveries, others simply as puzzles for cognitive philosophers and psychologists to solve, still others as reductiones ad absurdum of the entire enterprise of cognitive science. Garrett and Graham defend NP. They claim to argue not against Fodor's cognitive "computationalism" but only against his rejection of NP. While I share many of their intuitions regarding criteria for scientific status, Garrett and Graham do not succeed in the task they set for themselves. Their rejection of Fodor's anti-naturalism succeeds only if certain central tenets of Fodor's cognitivism (rationalism, computationalism) are also rejected. In other words, Garrett and Graham belong in the "reductio ad absurdum" camp of Fodor's commentators.

This is a reminiscence and short biographical sketch of the late philosopher and cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor. It includes a summary of his main proposals about the mind: his "Language of Thought" hypothesis; his rejection of analyticity and conceptual role semantics; his "mad dog nativism"; his proposal of mental modules and-by contrast-his skepticism about a computational theory of central cognition; his anti-reductionist, but still physicalist, views about psychology; and, lastly, his attacks on selectionism. I conclude with some discussion of his idiosyncratic style and of his aesthetic and other interests. An appendix provides some memorable quotes.

This study identified and characterised Wittgenstein’s socialised epistemology. It examined some arguments against Wittgenstein’s socialised epistemology. It also assessed the strength of Wittgenstein’s socialised epistemology in light of the arguments against it. This was with a view to redirecting epistemology from its endless attempts in refuting radical skepticism to providing a solid ground for knowledge in Wittgenstein’s notion of “forms of life”.
The study made use of both primary and secondary sources of data. The primary source comprised a close reading of Plato’s “Theatetus”, Roderick Chisholm’s Theory of Knowledge, D.W. Hamlyn’s The Theory of Knowledge, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s The Blue and Brown Books, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigation, and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. The Secondary source included books, journal articles and the Internet. The data collected were subjected to conceptual analysis and philosophical argumentation.
The results showed that Wittgenstein’s epistemology was a rejection of the orthodox epistemology, which assumed a representational relationship between words and objects in providing valid basis for knowledge. The study discovered that Wittgenstein treated knowledge as a product of epistemic community. It found out that in spite of its shortcomings Wittgenstein’s epistemology remained a plausible alternative approach to orthodox epistemology. It also discovered that contrary to the criticisms against Wittgenstein’s socialised epistemology, there were numerous merits that made it worth adopting as an approach to the problems of knowledge. The study concluded that rather than endlessly seeking to refute radical skepticism, epistemologists should be contented with knowledge as provided by the form of life embedded in an epistemic community. It also concluded that it was in this form of life that the nature of knowledge could be properly understood and attained as a socialised phenomenon.

No contexto do debate entre realistas e antirrealistas científicos, é razoável afirmar que a tese da subdeterminação de teorias científicas pela evidência, ao lado da metaindução pessimista e da crítica à inferência da melhor explicação, constitui um dos principais argumentos contra a defesa explicacionista do realismo científico. Embora haja diferentes versões dessa tese na literatura, o problema da subdeterminação apresenta-se, via de regra, como um desafio de caráter geral à racionalidade envolvida no processo de escolha entre hipóteses ou teorias rivais que sejam igualmente adequadas às evidências disponíveis. O objetivo geral da nossa tese é investigar se, e até que ponto, a aceitação da tese da subdeterminação representa um obstáculo recalcitrante para o realismo científico. Nosso trabalho terá como objeto específico de análise uma recente formulação do
problema da subdeterminação elaborado pelo filósofo americano Kyle Stanford em 2006, o chamado “Problema das Alternativas não Concebidas”. Argumentaremos que é possível formular uma solução realista para os desafios provenientes da Nova Indução Pessimista e do Problema das Alternativas não Concebidas. Procuramos, na nossa tese, elaborar uma defesa do realismo que não seja circunscrita a uma discussão acerca da racionalidade da crença envolvida na existência ou não de entidades inobserváveis. Em acordo com Chakravarty (2007), Worral (1989) e Egg (2012), sustentamos que uma defesa mais sofisticada e resiliente do realismo científico deve basear-se em um realismo de “propriedades e relações” com ênfase nas interações causais e não deve se restringir a um problemático realismo de entidades.

I argue that there are good reasons to assume that Quine's theory of reference and ontology is incompatible with reductive statements-such as 'Heat is molecular motion' or 'Rabbits are conglomerations of cells'. Apparently, reductive statements imply certain intertheoretical identities, yet Quine's theory of reference and ontology seems incompatible with intertheoretical identities. I argued that treating, for the sake of reconciliation, reductive statements along the lines of Quine's theory of an ontological reduction (which does not imply intertheoretical identity) fails. Then I discussed two alternative strategies on behalf of Quine to handle reductive statements: the Holistic Strategy (which appeals to Quine's notion of an all-encompassing background theory) and the Individuative Strategy (which draws on Quine's notion of an apparatus of individuation). I argue that the Individuative Strategy promises to succeed. However, the Individuative Strategy obliges to revising Quine's theory of an ontological reduction-a revision that, as I argue, can and should be implemented.

This paper provides an exposition of the structuralist approach to underdetermination, which aims to resolve the underdetermination of theories by identifying their common theoretical structure. Applications of the structuralist approach can be found in many areas of philosophy. I present a schema of the structuralist approach, which conceptually unifies such applications in different subject matters. It is argued that two classic arguments in the literature, Paul Benacerraf’s argument on natural numbers and W. V. O. Quine’s argument for the indeterminacy of translation, can be analyzed as instances of the structuralist schema. These two applications illustrate different kinds of conclusions that can be drawn through the structuralist approach; Benacerraf’s argument shows that we can derive an ontological conclusion about the given subject matter, while Quine’s structuralist approach leads to a semantic conclusion about how to determine linguistic meanings given radical translation. Then, as a case study, I review a recent debate in metaphysics between Shamik Dasgupta, Jason Turner, and Catharine Diehl to consider the extent to which different instances of the structuralist schema are conceptually unified. Both sides of the debate can be interpreted as utilizing the structuralist approach; one side uses the structuralist approach for an ontological conclusion, while the other side relies on a semantic conclusion. I argue that this has a strong dialectical consequence, which sheds light on the conceptual unity of the structuralist approach.

The essentialist thesis of Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam takes the truth of necessary a posteriori propositions as one of its main premises. The latter requires that both proper names and general names be rigid designators. The rigidity of general names for natural kinds has stimulated much wider debates than that of proper names. Applying the indeterminacy thesis to the whole process of natural kind terms' reference-fixing, Chenyang Li argues that natural kind terms are not rigid designators and then it is unwarranted that there are necessary a posteriori truths about natural kinds. My aim in this paper is to explain the indeterminacy phenomena in fixing the reference of natural kind terms articulated by Li, to argue that natural kind terms are rigid in a relative sense, and to elaborate their rigidity mechanism. In section I, I will examine Li's argument in detail and present his conventionalist conception of natural kind terms' reference. Then in section II, I will clarify the indeterminacy thesis and argue in what sense terms are determinate. Finally, in section III, I will illuminate the rigidity mechanism of natural kind terms and defend an updated version of the causal theory.

Austin and Quine on the a n a l y t i c / s y n t h e t i c distinction Both John Langshaw Austin and Willard Van Orman Quine were critical of the traditional division of propositions into the two categories: analytic and synthetic. their criticism has, however, a different character. Quine questions the usefulness of the notion of analyticity, whereas Austin does not accept the view that every proposition should be considered either analytic or synthetic. According to Quine, we have to abandon the notion of analyticity because we cannot define it in a satisfactory way. Quine’s criticism is based on his conviction that the very notion of meaning is suspicious from the scientific point of view. this general outlook is supported by arguments the point of which is to show that we cannot avoid an indeterminacy of translation. Austin criticises the distinction for different reasons. According to him, it is not the notion of meaning which is suspicious, but a certain model of this notion ...

Jakobson's famous classification of three types of translation is the point of departure for a discussion of "translation proper," or translation from one natural historical language to another. Eco's comparison of the terms interpretation and translation show that they overlap but are not synonymous as there is a limit to translation that does not hold for interpretation. A translation strategy that aims for equivalent effect is guided by the intentio operis as well as by the regulative hypothesis of the encyclopedia, which takes into account the inferential and pragmatic conditions of communication that are implied but not explicit in the text. The paper compares insights from what has been called the "cultural turn" in Translation Studies with Eco's regulative hypothesis of the Encyclopedia as a dynamic interpretative strategy.

Translation can be seen as one of the last figures of the so called linguistic turn-after understanding, dialogue, communication. Nowadays translation seems to be on its way of becoming a research paradigm for human sciences. However in chaotic situations of contemporary global communication it is an idea of intranslatability which often comes to the foreground. For the author of the article it does not mean a complete impossibility of translation but rather various stumbling blocks in translating process. It is important to realize that it is by means of translating process that domains of commensurable experience between cultures and ways of thinking are finally created: we never find them in preexisting forms.

Reed (2022) states that according to Ullin Place's latest view, intensional statements are not necessarily connected with mentalist language and explanations, and intensionality is the mark of the conversational. This is false. Place's view is that intensionality is the mark of a quotation. Quotations are sentences that express the content of propositional attitudes. They are characterised by what Frege called 'indirect reference' and Quine 'referential opacity'. Intensionality is nothing more than this. Intensional statements stating propositional attitudes are at the heart of the mentalist language. Propositional attitudes are dispositions. Dispositions are the nature of things and are at the core of all sciences. The doings of a person are the active manifestations of dispositions. Place defines mentalism at the level of the person, which is also the level of behaviourism. This contrasts with a standard definition of mentalism at the subpersonal level, also known as centrism. Doing or behaving is interacting with the environment. This is common to the scientific approaches at the level of the person. Articulating the same conceptual foundation and language and each approach having its dialect must be possible. This is "relevan[t] for understanding the types of language that could be used in explanations given by behavioural science" (Reed, 2022).

In his 1987 article "Indeterminacy, Empiricism and the First Person", John Searle argues that we actually know what we mean; therefore, W. V. O. Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation must be wrong. In this paper, I will try to identify the mistakes in Searle's criticism of Quine's story. I will argue that Quine's indeterminacy thesis can be construed as containing two thesesthat is, the immanent indeterminacy and the transcendent indeterminacy. With these two indeterminacies in mind, Quine's indeterminacy thesis will still remain tenable even if we actually know what we mean.

This thesis is an attempt to investigate the relation between the views of Wittgenstein as presented by Kripke (Kripke's Wittgenstein) and Donald Davidson on meaning and linguistic understanding. Kripke's Wittgenstein, via his sceptical argument, argues that there is no fact about which rule a speaker is following in using a linguistic expression. Now, if one urges that meaning something by a word is essentially a matter of following one rule rather than another, the sceptical argument leads to the radical sceptical conclusion that there is no such thing as meaning anything by any word. According to the solution Kripke's Wittgenstein proposes, we must instead concentrate on the ordinary practice of meaning-attribution, that is, on the conditions under which we can justifiably ascribe meaning to each other and the utility such a practice has in our life. Davidson has also argued that following rules is neither necessary nor sufficient for explaining success in the practice of meaning something by an utterance. According to his alternative view of meaning, a speaker's success in this practice is fundamentally a matter of his utterance being successfully interpreted by an interpreter in the way the speaker intended. On the basis of these remarks, Davidson raises objections to Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical argument and solution. In this thesis, I will argue that Davidson has failed to fully grasp the essentially sceptical nature of the argument and solution proposed by Kripke's Wittgenstein. I will argue that as a result of this Davidson's objections and his alternative solution to Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical argument are mistaken. These criticisms are pursued via an investigation of Davidson's problematic reading of Quine's sceptical arguments for the thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. Having criticized Davidson's actual response to Kripke's Wittgenstein, I will claim that Davidson's best option for resisting the sceptical problem is to adopt a form of non-reductionism about meaning. Claudine Verheggen's recent claim that Davidson's use of the notion of triangulation will help to establish non-reductionism will be argued to be a failure. I will urge that the main obstacle in defending a non-reductionist view is the problem of accounting for the nature of self-knowledge of meaning and understanding. After discussing Davidson's account of self-knowledge and Crispin Wright's objection to this account, I will argue First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my primary supervisor, Prof. Alex Miller, for the continuous support of my Ph.D study, for his encouragement, patience, and motivation throughout my research project. Without his precious guidance and counsel, this thesis would not have been possible. I would also like to thank my secondary supervisor Assoc. Prof. Greg Dawes for his advice and helpful comments on the drafts of the thesis. I am grateful to Prof. Penelope Mackie for her insightful feedback on the thesis. For their helpful discussions, I would also like to thank Dr. Kirk Michaelian, Prof. Rod Girle, and Prof. Max Cresswell. I wish to express my appreciation to my friends who have contributed and supported me by their stimulating discussions, especially Daniel Wee, Takahiro Yamada, and Ali Kalantari. I owe a special thank you to my family, to my mother, for her constant patience, love, and care, and to my brothers and sister for supporting me in whatever way they could during my study. I especially thank my brother, Hassan, for always being there to support me in every difficult decision I have made. Most importantly, I would like to express my appreciation to my wife and best friend, Saeedeh Shahmir, who has always been a constant source of strength and inspiration for me. Without her continuous encouragement and support, I would not have been able to complete this thesis at all. I am also grateful to the University of Otago for financially supporting this thesis by granting me a University of Otago Doctoral Scholarship. vi the next target of this chapter. According to Wright, Davidson's account fails, since it leads to a dilemma: speakers' authoritative knowledge of their beliefs must either be granted before interpretation takes place, in which case self-knowledge is presupposed rather than explained, or be credited after interpretation takes place, in which case there will be no real difference between the way the speaker knows himself and the way the interpreter knows the speaker. I will argue that Wright's objection fails because it neglects Davidson's actual explanation of self-knowledge. Nonetheless, I will also argue that Davidson's account fails for other reasons. This means that Davidson's account of self-knowledge would not be successful in dealing with KW's sceptic's argument from queerness. As the final part of this chapter, through considering Wright's judgement-dependent account of meaning and intention as an alternative response to KW's sceptic, I will suggest that Davidson's account of intending manifests the essential features of such a judgement-dependent account. According to Davidson's view, when an agent intends to ϕ, she makes an unconditional, all-out judgement that doing ϕ is desirable for her. I will suggest, tentatively, that this type of account is capable of being extended to the case of meaning. The chapter hence concludes that, although Davidson's actual response to KW's sceptic fails, he may have the resources to provide us with a non-reductionist, judgement-dependent account of meaning, which has the potential to resist KW's sceptic's sceptical argument.

Davidson has famously argued that conceptual relativism, which, for him, is based on the content-scheme dualism, or the "third dogma" of empiricism, is either unintelligible or philosophically uninteresting and has accused Quine of holding onto such a dogma. For Davidson, there can be found no intelligible ground for the claim that there may exist untranslatable languages: all languages, if they are languages, are in principle inter-translatable and uttered sentences, if identifiable as utterances, are interpretable. Davidson has also endorsed the Quinean indeterminacy-underdetermination distinction. The early Quine, as well as the later Quine, believe that the indeterminacy of translation casts serious doubt on the existence of facts of the matter about correct translation between languages. In this paper, I will argue that Quine cannot be the target of Davidson's argument against conceptual relativism, and that Davidson's argument is in conflict, among others, with his endorsement of the Quinean indeterminacy-underdetermination distinction. I will show how this conflict results in a radical departure from Quine with respect to the matter of factualism about fine-grained meanings.

Gianfranco Bettetini is the father of Italian audiovisual semiotics and one of the key figures in the history of contemporary semiotics, contributing to the development of fundamental theories including text conversation, and audiovisual temporality. His academic research was undertaken mainly at the Universit a Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, where he was full professor of the theory and techniques of social communication, and then Director at the Postgraduate School in Communication (2002-present, Alta Scuola in Media, Comunicazione e Spettacolo, or ALMED: Graduate School of Media Communication and Performing Arts). From the onset, Bettetini's research went hand in hand with his work as a director and prominent television writer for Italian public television (RAI), directing productions that have remained in the public imagination (entertainment programs such as Campanile Sera and L'amico del giaguaro (The Friend of the Jaguar); advertising campaigns such as Carosello). His directorial efforts have also included sports broadcasts, documentaries, news programs, and theatre on television. From 1969, he focused on writing and directing films produced by RAI, most notably, Stregone di citt a (The City Sorcerer, 1973), Semmelweiss (1980), L'ultima Mazurka (The Last Mazurka, 1986). He is also a writer, and has authored six novels. His ample bibliography will be retracedat least partiallythroughout the interview. Suffice to say that at the Universit a Cattolica, where Bettetini formed the research community of the Milan School (Giaccardi 2003), many important exponents of the communication sciences were formed, some of whom are still present, such as

The "observational categoricals" constitute a very special set of sentences of great importance in the last phase of Quine's work. According to Quine, the grammatical structure and therefore the role played by these sentences considered by the philosopher as the neutral empirical content of theories would solve several difficulties in semantics and epistemology. Most urgent among them would be: the incommensurability of theories, their empirical verifiability, as well as explaining the language learning process. In consequence of the importance of their task and their rather late appearance, we consider quite relevant to investigate in details the origin of these choice, as well as the structure and function of these sentences, very peculiars to Quine's semantical approach.

O objetivo desse artigo é lançar luz sobre a tese da indeterminação da referênciade Quine, usando para isso a distinção feita por Frege entre agregados e conjuntos. Alémda distinção fregiana, usaremos também algumas noções de teoria dos modelos, tais como“modelos alternativos” e “morfismos entre traduções”.

Everyday metalinguistic ascriptions ("My name is Oliver", "Swahili ng'ombe means cow", "She lied about you") seemingly attribute properties to phenomena of a distinctively linguistic ontology. However, non-representational approaches to cognition, such as ecological psychology, cannot accommodate this linguistic ontology without contravening their nonrepresentational principles. An alternative might be to construe metalinguistic ascriptions as 'folk' fictions which are, strictly speaking, false. Yet this would render unintelligible the practical role that metalinguistic ascription occupies in everyday discourse. We suggest another alternative. By analogy to mindshaping approaches in folk-psychological debates, we propose a nonrepresentational account of metalinguistic ascription as a form of language-shaping. Metalinguistic ascriptions shape language behavior over temporal and social scales by prospectively shaping discursive niches.

Przesłanki te-wraz z wynikającym z nich twierdzeniem (S)-tworzą tzw. argument z niewiedzy (AI) 2. Głównym celem pracy jest logiczna rekonstrukcja możliwego uzasadnienia przesłanki 1) tego argumentu. Zanim jednak przedstawię tę rekonstrukcję (opartą o pewien fragment logiki epistemicznej), kilka słów o przesłance 2). Hipoteza sceptycyzmu W zdaniach tworzących powyższy argument mowa o tzw. hipotezie sceptycyzmu. Przyjmijmy, że głosi ona: wszystkie nasze przekonania są błędne (a ściślej: dla dowolnego podmiotu x: jeżeli x jest przekonany, że p, to nieprawda, że p) 3. Niekiedy treściowe rozwinięcie hipotezy sceptycyzmu jest bardziej obrazowe. Utrzymuje się, że w żaden rozumny sposób nie można wykluczyć ani tego, iż jesteśmy zwodzeni przez złośliwego demona, ani tego, iż to, co spostrzegamy lub co myślimy, zależy wyłącznie od woli jakichś szalonych naukowców, którzy uwięzili nasze mózgi w naczyniach. Gdyby tak było, jak obrazowo przedstawiają to obrońcy sceptycyzmu, świat, który bierzemy za rzeczywisty, materialny, samoistny i niezależny względem umysłów, byłby światem snu, fantazji, czymś, co pewien umysł przeżywa, czymś, co mogłoby przepaść wraz z nim. Gdyby mój mózg był np. uwięziony w naczyniu i kontrolowany przez złośliwych naukowców, żadne moje przekonanie, o którym sądzę, że zo-2 Patrz DeRose 1995: 1 oraz Brueckner 1994. Rafał Palczewski (2004: 54) formułuje argument następująco: "(1) Nie wiem, że nie-HS; (2) Jeśli nie wiem, że nie-HS, to nie wiem, że Z; [zatem] (3) Nie wiem, że Z. Przy czym: Z-sąd stanowiący przedmiot naszej codziennej wiedzy […]; nie-HS-jest skrótem na «hipoteza sceptycka jest fałszywa»". 3 Recenzent mojej pracy zwrócił uwagę, że hipoteza sceptycka powinna brzmieć:

Blackburn and Searle have argued that Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation results in a denial of the sort of first-person authority that we commonly concede we have over our mental and semantical content. For, the indeterminacy thesis implies that there is no determinate meaning to know at all. And, according to Quine, the indeterminacy holds at home too. For Blackburn, Quine must constrain the domain of indeterminacy to the case of translation only. Searle believes that Quine has no other choice but to give up on his behaviorism. Hylton, however, has attempted to defend Quine against these objections, by arguing that Quine’s naturalistic claim that speaking a language is nothing but possessing certain dispositions to act in specific ways would enable him to accommodate first-person authority. I will argue that the objections from Blackburn and Searle, as well as Hylton’s solution, are all problematic when seen from within Quine’s philosophy. I will introduce a sort of Strawsonian-Wittgensteinian conception of first-person authority and offer that it would be more than compatible with Quine’s naturalistic philosophy.

Charles Travis, Shadows, and the Tension between Platonism and Naturalism Abstracta, including entities like propositions and possible worlds, are frequently appealed to as explanatory tools in discourse concerning the semantics of natural languages and mental representation. Philosophers and linguists include such platonic entities in their respective theories for their ability to explain how expressions in natural languages and mental representations obtain their representational content, as well as how different speakers may understand the same expression or how different thinkers may have thoughts that represent the world in the same manner. Anti-platonist philosopher Charles Travis, however, takes issue with theories of representation that rely on such platonic entities. He and Wittgenstein identify "shadows" for representations of the world as common elements across many different philosophical theories, and Travis' book Unshadowed Thought is both an attempt to argue against the existence of shadows as well as a proposal for his own non-platonic theory of representation. In this article I provide an overview of Travis' notion of shadows, the philosophical views that rely on shadows, and his alternative for theories of representation reliant on shadows, which he calls "occasion-sensitivity." After that, I discuss how both certain shadowy theories of representation and occasion-sensitivity describe the semantic content of modal words, or words that represent non-modal facts about the world in terms of necessity, possibility, and contingency. These theories' respective ways of describing modals I then evaluate for their ability to accommodate ontological naturalism, the position that all existents in the actual world fundamentally reduce down to the basic physical entities as described by the true physics. A consequence of Travis' anti-platonism is that his occasion-sensitivity view is not subject to some

The philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine schooled us on the indeterminacy of translation using the example of a tribesman speaking the unknown language Arunka employing the locution 'gavagai' whenever he saw what we might think is a rabbit. But while we might think that 'gavagai' refers to the object rabbit, we can never know for sure what the tribesman is actually referring to when employing 'gavagai'. There is, after all, an inscrutability of reference.  This short piece explores implications for Christology of the  inscrutability of rabbit reference.

RESUMO No segundo capítulo de "Word and Object", Quine procura mostrar o quanto da linguagem pode ser esclarecida em termos estimulantes, bem como a limitação da tradução a partir de diferentes esquemas conceituais. O autor apresenta a tese de indeterminação da tradução por meio de uma situação de tradução radical. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar de que modo Quine desenvolve a tradução radical e destacar os conceitos de informações colaterais, significado estimulativo e esquema conceitual. Em seguida, procuraremos mostrar que a teoria do significado de Jakob Von Uexküll é um caso exemplar da tese de indeterminação da tradução: os processos de significação entre diferentes organismos vivos correspondem a um processo de tradução radical que se depara com dificuldades semelhantes àquelas que levam à indeterminação da tradução segundo Quine.

This paper aims to undertake a brief recollection of a debate between Quine and Davidson on where the element providing the empirical content of observation sentences should be placed in the causal chain world- speaker. According to Quine, who holds what may be called "Proximal Conception," such an element might be placed on the sensory surface of the speaker, i.e. near to this element in that causal chain − proximal stimulus; Davidson, on the other hand, criticizes Proximal Conception arguing that it would lead, in the last instance, to skepticism and a relativization of truth; he suggests Quine abandon it and adopt Distal Conception, which he advocates, a position that holds this stimulus might be placed on the objects and events by themselves about which the sentences speak, i.e. in a position farther away from the speaker − distal stimulus. Despite Davidson's suggestion, Quine refuses till the end to officially adopt Distal Conception, although he makes some modifi...

There is evidence in the psychological literature for representations of objects (Pylyshyn's visual indexes) that refer to and track, not properties, but what in our sort of world typically turn out to be individual physical objects. I am concerned with how such representations acquire their content. Two strategies for accounting for the content of representations are a) representations of particulars refer to the entity that caused them; and b) representations of particulars refer to the entity whose properties are represented by the visual system. The first strategy faces the "which link" problem: since any one of the links in the causal chain leading to the token representation counts as a cause of the token representation, no particular link is individuated as the referent. I examine a recent proposed solution to this problem (Fodor's counterfactual triangulation) and conclude that it fails to determine whether the referent of a visual index is an object, as opposed to a state of affairs, or an event. The problems with the first strategy are a reason to explore the second strategy: representations of objects refer to the entity whose properties are represented by the visual system. I adopt Fodor's asymmetric dependency account (ADA) of intentionality to account for how representations of properties get their content. Fodor's account is chosen not because it is free of problems, but because it has the structure of a theory that promises to deal with many of the classic problems that befall informational semantics (e.g. the disjunction problem). Since ADA is designed to work for causal relations between properties and not for causal relations between particulars, it cannot, by itself, account for how representations of particulars get their content. So I suggest that ADA be supplemented with conceptual role semantics to account for the logico-syntactic roles of representations of particulars. In particular, I suggest that to represent objects the visual system requires the capacity to form and store in memory definite descriptions containing: a) predicates referring to spatio-temporal relations; and b) temporal indexicals.

There is evidence in the psychological literature for representations of objects (Pylyshyn's visual indexes) that refer to and track, not properties, but what in our sort of world typically turn out to be individual physical objects. I am concerned with how such representations acquire their content. Two strategies for accounting for the content of representations are a) representations of particulars refer to the entity that caused them; and b) representations of particulars refer to the entity whose properties are represented by the visual system. The first strategy faces the "which link" problem: since any one of the links in the causal chain leading to the token representation counts as a cause of the token representation, no particular link is individuated as the referent. I examine a recent proposed solution to this problem (Fodor's counterfactual triangulation) and conclude that it fails to determine whether the referent of a visual index is an object, as opposed to a state of affairs, or an event. The problems with the first strategy are a reason to explore the second strategy: representations of objects refer to the entity whose properties are represented by the visual system. I adopt Fodor's asymmetric dependency account (ADA) of intentionality to account for how representations of properties get their content. Fodor's account is chosen not because it is free of problems, but because it has the structure of a theory that promises to deal with many of the classic problems that befall informational semantics (e.g. the disjunction problem). Since ADA is designed to work for causal relations between properties and not for causal relations between particulars, it cannot, by itself, account for how representations of particulars get their content. So I suggest that ADA be supplemented with conceptual role semantics to account for the logico-syntactic roles of representations of particulars. In particular, I suggest that to represent objects the visual system requires the capacity to form and store in memory definite descriptions containing: a) predicates referring to spatio-temporal relations; and b) temporal indexicals.

В интервью английского теолога Каллиста Уэра обсуждается его опыт перевода литургических  текстов, а также «Добротолюбия», собрания произведений православных авторов IV—XV веков. In this interview, the English theologian Kallistos Ware discusses his experience of translating liturgical texts and the Philokalia, a collection of writings from Orthodox Christian spiritual masters dating from the fourth to the fifteenth century.

В интервью английского теолога Каллиста Уэра обсуждается его опыт перевода литургических  текстов, а также «Добротолюбия», собрания произведений православных авторов IV—XV веков. In this interview, the English theologian Kallistos Ware discusses his experience of translating liturgical texts and the Philokalia, a collection of writings from Orthodox Christian spiritual masters dating from the fourth to the fifteenth century.

What did Quine take himself to be contributing to the debate about meaning with regard to his claim about the indeterminacy of translation? This chapter offers a reconsideration of what to take as Quine's target in tracking the evolution of his debate with Carnap that crystallizes in the indeterminacy thesis. Quine, I claim, ultimately realizes that the only explanatory function a theory of meaning could serve would be to assume the presence of antecedent features that then permit a systematic determination delimiting the set of meaningful terms and meaningful statements. Such a theory explains because it provides non-accidental, indeed determinate reasons for membership in that set. This specific assumption therefore attributes a special metaphysical status to meaning. lt is metaphysical because it takes such features as in place prior to any empirical inquiry and in a way that can be tested for but not disconfirmed by evidence. This chapter documents Quine's efforts over time to articulate and specify how this issue about the nature of meaning separates him from Carnap.