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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Quine's indeterminacy of translation thesis shows that no fact of the matter fixes synonymy relations between expressions, even in principle, undermining any naturalistic grounding.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Indeterminacy of translation needn't entail indeterminacy of meaning; stable internal representational states can ground synonymy naturalistically.
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    • 2.Quine conflates epistemic indeterminacy (unknowability) with metaphysical indeterminacy (absence of fact), but facts can exist beyond access.
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    • 3.Modern neuroscience and formal semantics provide naturalistic accounts of meaning that escape Quine's behaviorist constraints.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Translation manuals can be constructed that are empirically equivalent yet assign different meanings, showing synonymy lacks determinate grounding.
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    • 2.Naturalistic theories reduce meaning to physical facts, but multiple incompatible physical configurations equally fit the same linguistic behavior.
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    • 3.No finite behavioral or neurological data uniquely determines reference, making synonymy relations underdetermined in principle.
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