Talk:Indeterminacy of translation

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This is just a copy and paste of the section in the Willard Van Orman Quine essay, which links to it. Either someone should expand this, or someone should cut the original section, to which I've added a 'main article' link. Any thoughts? Thomas Ash 20:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

On reflection, I think we should definitely go for expanding and improving this - it's not so good, and this important and difficult topic deserves a good (and lengthy!) exposition. I'll try my hand at this when I get time, but please, if you know much about this pitch in! Thomas Ash 23:14, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. The article should mention that it's essentially a reductio on meaning as an entity. "No entity without identity", so synonomy is an equivalence relationship, so must uphold transitivity: if A is synonomous with B, and B synonomous with C, then A is synonomous with B. The argument aims to show that there can exist two translation dictionaries from Home to Native (T1 and T2, say) that both function adiquately to explain the Natives behaviour but lead to a violation of transitivity. ie A under T1 gives B in Native, and B back into Home via T2 gives statement C, but C isn't synonymous with A.