Inscrutability of Reference as a Result of Quine’s Structuralism
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F62690094%3A18460%2F20%3A50016986" target="_blank" >RIV/62690094:18460/20:50016986 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198864288.003.0005" target="_blank" >http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198864288.003.0005</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198864288.003.0005" target="_blank" >10.1093/oso/9780198864288.003.0005</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
Inscrutability of Reference as a Result of Quine’s Structuralism
Original language description
In his later writings Quine is increasingly explicit about that fact that his view of language is, in a certain sense, structuralistic. Structuralist interpretations of non-empirical, especially mathematical theories are now commonplace, but I argue that Quine's thought experiment with radical translation can be interpreted as showing that even empirical theories cannot be anchored in reality so firmly as to evade the same structuralist nature. Therefore, the peculiar form of structuralism extends to the whole of our theories – the terms of all of them are best seen as meaning not definite substances, but nodes in certain structures. Moreover, radical translation shows – or purports to show – that the structure behind any natural language allows for some non-trivial "automorphisms" – that mapping the meaning of rabbit on that of undetached rabbit part, provided we make an appropriate remapping of many other meanings, does not change the language. Inscrutability of reference is then only a direct consequence. It follows that the objections often raised against Quine – namely that he reaches the absurd identification of rabbits with undetached rabbit parts – miss their point. There are two senses of sameness – "nominal" sameness and sameness "up to isomorphism"; and the point of structuralism is to point out that it is sometimes the latter that is crucial. And this is what is done by Quine – far from denying that rabbits and undetached rabbit parts are – nominally – different things he argues that from the viewpoint of semantics it is not this nominal sameness that is relevant, that the imperative of semantics, as he puts it, is "save the structure and you save all".
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
C - Chapter in a specialist book
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2020
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Book/collection name
Quine, Structure, and Ontology
ISBN
978-0-19-886428-8
Number of pages of the result
14
Pages from-to
82-95
Number of pages of the book
320
Publisher name
Oxford university press
Place of publication
Oxford
UT code for WoS chapter
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