Let us suppose someone says to you...'the fact of the matter is..'
How do we make sense of this speaker's utterance, is it indeterminate just like most speech?
A philosopher like
Quine draws the sceptical conclusion that there is “no fact of the matter” when it comes to saying what speakers or their words mean. The linguistic tribunal is out on this as it were.
So we are into indeterminacy which infects the and interpretation of complete sentences.
and unfinished sentences such as our illustration
Thus the interpretation of sentences as well as terms is indeterminate there is a slack between what has been said and interpretation. Quine is parsimonious since there are no determinate meanings, ergo
there are no meanings, however uncongenial this may be to speakers of sentences endeavouring to convey their 'meanings'.
There are no determinate meanings, therefore, meaning is not determinate.
In place of the traditional picture of meanings as semantical quanta that speakers associate with their verbal expressions, Davidson argues that meaning is the invariant structure that is common to the competing interpretations of speakers’ behavior (Davidson 1999, p. 81).
That there is such a structure is implied by holism: in assigning a certain meaning to a single utterance, an interpreter has already chosen one of a number of competing theories to interpret a speaker’s over-all language.
Choosing that theory, in turn, presupposes that she has identified in the speaker’s utterances a pattern or structure she takes that theory to describe at least as well as any other.
Herein lies the Indeterminacy of Interpretation, for that theory does only at least as well as any other. There is, therefore, no more an objective basis for choosing one theory of meaning over another than there is for preferring the Fahrenheit to the Celsius scale for temperature ascriptions.
Whether there is a “fact of the matter” when it comes to saying what speakers or their sentences mean, therefore, becomes the question whether there are objective grounds for saying that that structure exists.
An interpreter makes sense of her interlocutor by treating him as a rational agent and reflecting on the contents of her own propositional attitudes, and she tracks what his sentences mean with her own sentences
If an interpreter can discern a pattern in a creature’s situated linguistic behavior, then she can make sense of his words; alternatively, if she cannot interpret his utterances, then she has no grounds for attributing meaning to the sounds he produces nor evidence to support the hypothesis that he is a rational agent.
These observations are not a statement of linguistic imperialism; rather, they are implications of the methodology of interpretation - Meaning is essentially intersubjective.
Further, meaning is objective in the sense that most of what speakers say about the world is true of the world.
Some critics object that this statement rests on an optimistic assessment of human capacities for judgment.
Quine, W.V. 1935. “Truth by Convention
How do we make sense of this speaker's utterance, is it indeterminate just like most speech?
A philosopher like
Quine draws the sceptical conclusion that there is “no fact of the matter” when it comes to saying what speakers or their words mean. The linguistic tribunal is out on this as it were.
So we are into indeterminacy which infects the and interpretation of complete sentences.
and unfinished sentences such as our illustration
Thus the interpretation of sentences as well as terms is indeterminate there is a slack between what has been said and interpretation. Quine is parsimonious since there are no determinate meanings, ergo
there are no meanings, however uncongenial this may be to speakers of sentences endeavouring to convey their 'meanings'.
There are no determinate meanings, therefore, meaning is not determinate.
In place of the traditional picture of meanings as semantical quanta that speakers associate with their verbal expressions, Davidson argues that meaning is the invariant structure that is common to the competing interpretations of speakers’ behavior (Davidson 1999, p. 81).
That there is such a structure is implied by holism: in assigning a certain meaning to a single utterance, an interpreter has already chosen one of a number of competing theories to interpret a speaker’s over-all language.
Choosing that theory, in turn, presupposes that she has identified in the speaker’s utterances a pattern or structure she takes that theory to describe at least as well as any other.
Herein lies the Indeterminacy of Interpretation, for that theory does only at least as well as any other. There is, therefore, no more an objective basis for choosing one theory of meaning over another than there is for preferring the Fahrenheit to the Celsius scale for temperature ascriptions.
Whether there is a “fact of the matter” when it comes to saying what speakers or their sentences mean, therefore, becomes the question whether there are objective grounds for saying that that structure exists.
An interpreter makes sense of her interlocutor by treating him as a rational agent and reflecting on the contents of her own propositional attitudes, and she tracks what his sentences mean with her own sentences
If an interpreter can discern a pattern in a creature’s situated linguistic behavior, then she can make sense of his words; alternatively, if she cannot interpret his utterances, then she has no grounds for attributing meaning to the sounds he produces nor evidence to support the hypothesis that he is a rational agent.
These observations are not a statement of linguistic imperialism; rather, they are implications of the methodology of interpretation - Meaning is essentially intersubjective.
Further, meaning is objective in the sense that most of what speakers say about the world is true of the world.
Some critics object that this statement rests on an optimistic assessment of human capacities for judgment.
Quine, W.V. 1935. “Truth by Convention
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