Underdetermination and Indeterminacy

Abstract

My starting point in this chapter is this surprising claim: the assertion that the utterances of a speaker can be freely interpreted and reinterpreted so as to render the common sense thesis of fixed, intended sentence meanings baseless. The “indeterminacy of translation” between languages not only has close parallels to the underdetermination of theories, but positively rests on the existence of observationally indistinguishable but conflicting theories, or so it has been claimed. I aim to unravel some of the threads in Quine’s influential argument insofar as they cast light on the ‘pragmatist’ response to empirical irresolubility and the nature of natural knowledge.