Abstract
The doctrine that meanings are entitieswith a determinate and independent reality is often believed tohave been undermined by Quine's thought experiment of radicaltranslation, which results in an argument for the indeterminacy oftranslation. This paper argues to the contrary. Starting fromQuine's assumption that the meanings of observation sentences arestimulus meanings, i.e., set-theoretical constructions of neuronalstates uniquely determined by inter-subjectively observable facts,the paper shows that this meaning assignment, up to isomorphism,is uniquely extendable to all expressions that occur inobservation sentences. To do so, a theorem recently proven byHodges is used. To derive the conclusion, one only has to assumethat languages are compositional, abide by a generalized contextprinciple and by what I call the category principle. Theseassumptions originating in Frege and Husserl are coherent withQuine's overall position. It is concluded that Quine'snaturalistic approach does not justify scepticism with regard tomeaning, but should rather result in a view that affiliatessemantics with neuroscience.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Ajdukiewicz, K.: 1935, 'Die syntaktische Konnexität', Studia philosophica: commentarii Societatis Philosophicae Polonorum 1, 1-27.
Bar-Hillel, Y.: 1950, 'On Syntactical Categories', Journal of Symbolic Logic 15, 1-16.
Dummett, M.: 1981, Frege: Philosophy of Language, 2nd edn, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Frege, G.: 1884, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik: eine logisch-mathematische Untersuchung über den Begriff der Zahl, M. & H. Marcus, Breslau.
Frege, G.: 1976, 'Logische Untersuchungen. Dritter Teil. Gedankengefüge', in G. Patzig (ed.), Logische Untersuchungen, 2nd edn, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, pp. 72-91.
Frege, G.: 1979, 'Logic in Mathematics', in H. Hermes, F. Kambartel, and F. Kaulbach (eds.), Gottlob Frege. Posthumous Writings, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 203-250.
Frege, G.: 1980, 'Brief an Jourdain', in G. Gabriel, F. Kambartel, and C. Thiel (eds.), Gottlob Freges Briefwechsel mit D. Hilbert, E. Husserl, B. Russell, sowie ausgewählte Einzelbriefe Freges, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg, pp. 110-112.
Frege, G.: 1983, 'Booles rechnende Logik und die Begriffsschrift', in H. Hermes, F. Kambartel, and F. Kaulbach (eds.), Gottlob Frege. Nachgelassene Schriften, 2nd edn, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg, pp. 9-52.
Higginbotham, J.: 1985, 'On Semantics', Linguistic Inquiry 16, 547-593.
Higginbotham, J.: 2003, 'On Compositionality and Its Consequences', unpublished manuscript.
Hodges,W.: 2001, 'Formal Features of Compositionality', Journal of Logic, Language and Information 10, 7-28.
Husserl, E.: 1970, Logical Investigations, Vol. II, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
Janssen, T.: 1986, Foundations and Applications of Montague Grammar. Part 1: Philosophy, Framework, Computer Science, Centrum voorWiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam.
Janssen, T.: 1997, 'Compositionality', in J. van Benthem and A. ter Meulen (eds.), Handbook of Logic and Language, Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 417-473.
Janssen, T.: 2001, 'Frege, Contextuality and Compositionality', Journal of Logic, Language and Information 10, 115-136.
Johnston, M. and F. Busa: 1999, 'Qualia Structure and the Compositional Interpretation of Compounds', in E. Viegas (ed.), Breadth and Depth of Semantic Lexicons, Vol. 10 of Text, Speech and Technology, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 167-188.
Le?niewski, S.: 1929, 'Grundzüge eines neuen Systems der Grundlagen der Mathematik', Fundamenta Mathematicae 14, 1-81.
Massey, G. J.: 1979, 'Indeterminacy, Inscrutability, and Ontological Relativity', in B. C. van Fraassen (ed.), Studies in Ontology, Vol. 9 of American Philosophical Quaterly/Monograph Series, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 43-55.
Milner, R.: 1977, 'Fully Abstract Models of the Typed Lambda-Calculus', Theoretical Computer Sciences 4, 1-22.
Montague, R.: 1974, 'Universal Grammar', in R. H. Thomason (ed.), Formal Philosophy. Selected Papers of Richard Montague, Yale University Press, New Haven, pp. 222-246.
Partee, B., A. ter Meulen, and R. Wall: 1990, Mathematical Methods in Linguistics, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
Pelletier, F. J.: 2000, 'Semantic Compositionality: Free Algebras and the Argument from Ambiguity', in M. Faller, S. Kaufmann, and M. Pauly (eds.), Formalizing the Dynamics of Information, CSLI Press, Stanford, CA, pp. 207-218.
Pelletier, F. J.: 2001, 'Did Frege believe Frege's Principle?', Journal of Logic, Language and Information 10, 87-114.
Pelletier, J.: 1984, 'Six Problems in 'Translational Equivalence”', Logique et Analyse 108, 423-434.
Plotkin, G. D.: 1977, 'LCF Considered as a Programming Language', Theoretical Computer Sciences 5, 223-255.
Putnam, H.: 1975, 'The Refutation of Conventionalism', in Mind, Language and Reality, Vol. 2 of Philosophical Papers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 153-191.
Putnam, H.: 1983, 'Models and Reality', in Realism and Reason, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1-25.
Putnam, H.: 1986, 'Meaning Holism', in L. Hahn and P. A. Schilpp (eds.), The Philosophy of W. V. Quine, Open Court, La Salle, IL, pp. 405-425.
Quine, W. V.: 1960, Word and Object, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Quine, W. V.: 1961, 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism', in From a Logical Point of View, 2nd edn, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 20-46.
Quine, W. V.: 1970, 'On the Reasons for the Indeterminacy of Translation', Journal of Philosophy 67, 178-183.
Quine, W. V.: 1986, 'Reply to Hilary Putnam', in L. E. Hahn and P. A. Schilpp (eds.), The Philosophy of W. V. Quine, Open Court, La Salle, IL, pp. 427-431.
Quine, W. V.: 1990, Pursuit of Truth, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Russell, B.: 1905, 'On Denonting', Mind 14, 479-493.
Russell, B.: 1908, 'Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types', American Journal of Mathematics 30, 222-262.
von Heusinger, K.: 1991, 'Kategoriale Unifikationsgrammatik', Technical Report 37, University of Konstanz, Konstanz.
Werning, M.: 2003, 'Synchrony and Composition: Toward a Cognitive Architecture between Classicism and Connectionism', in B. Löwe, W. Malzkorn, and T. Räsch (eds.), Applications of Mathematical Logic in Philosophy and Linguistics, Trends in Logic, Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 261-278.
Werning, M.: 2004b, 'The Temporal Dimension of Thought: Cortical Foundations of Predicative Representation', Synthese. Forthcoming.
Wright, C.: 1997, 'The Indeterminacy of Translation', in B. Hale and C. Wright (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 397-426.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Werning, M. Compositionality, Context, Categories and the Indeterminacy of Translation. Erkenntnis 60, 145–178 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:ERKE.0000012876.85940.b3
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:ERKE.0000012876.85940.b3