CONCEPT
The Indeterminacy of Translation
Quine’s proof that two complete translation manuals for a language can fit all possible behavioral evidence while assigning incompatible meanings—and that the words of a language model may refer to nothing more determinate than a human’s.
A linguist stands beside a native speaker in an unfamiliar jungle; a rabbit darts past; the speaker says “Gavagai”; and from this small scene
Willard Van Orman Quine launched the most radical attack on meaning in the history of philosophy. The behavioral evidence—the pattern of assent and dissent across every possible situation—cannot decide whether “gavagai” means
rabbit,
undetached rabbit part,
temporal stage of a rabbit, or
the fusion of all rabbits. Each reading is compatible with every possible observation, because the speaker assents in exactly the same circumstances under all of them. There is no further fact that fixes the reference. This is the inscrutability of reference, and it underwrites the larger thesis of the indeterminacy of translation: one could construct two complete translation manuals for a language, each perfectly consistent with all behavioral evidence, that nonetheless assign incompatible meanings. Quine’s conclusion was not that we cannot discover the correct meaning—as though truth were hidden—but