Indeterminacy Thesis Research Articles

How to Cabin the Realist Indeterminacy Thesis: On Green, Positivism, and the Sources of Law

How to Cabin the Realist Indeterminacy Thesis: On Green, Positivism, and the Sources of Law

Davidson and Quine on translation: the challenge from the Global South

This essay continues the project of Dilip M. Menon’s Changing Theory: Thinking Concepts from the Global South by illustrating how concrete examples drawn from Chinese philosophy expose problems with the influential translation theories of Donald Davidson and W. V. Quine. First, I show that Donald Davidson’s argument in “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” conflates learnability with translatability. Second, I argue that, while W. V. Quine’s indeterminacy thesis is true, his famous and dramatic “Gavagai!” thought experiment is less convincing than simple examples drawn from everyday translation practice. Third, Davidson’s and Quine’s arguments may have had the unfortunate effect of helping to support ethnocentrism in the mainstream Anglo-American philosophical tradition.

Quine and First-Person Authority

Blackburn and Searle have argued that Quine‘s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation results in a denial of the sort of first-person authority that we commonly concede we have over our mental and semantical content. For, the indeterminacy thesis implies that there is no determinate meaning to know at all. And, according to Quine, the indeterminacy holds at home too. For Blackburn, Quine must constrain the domain of indeterminacy to the case of translation only. Searle believes that Quine has no other choice but to give up on his behaviorism. Hylton, however, has attempted to defend Quine against these objections, by arguing that Quine‘s naturalistic claim that speaking a language is nothing but possessing certain dispositions to act in specific ways would enable him to accommodate first-person authority. I will argue that the objections from Blackburn and Searle, as well as Hylton‘s solution, are all problematic when seen from within Quine‘s philosophy. I will introduce a sort of Strawsonian-Wittgensteinian conception of first-person authority and offer that it would be more than compatible with Quine‘s naturalistic philosophy.

Translating Observation Sentences

Abstract I argue that pace Quine, indeterminacy of translation affects observation sentences. I illustrate this indeterminacy with examples and show how it is tied to the indeterminacy affecting the analytical status of observation categoricals. I propose my own construal of the thesis of indeterminacy of translation, according to which indeterminacy is based on the inextricability of meaning and belief. I explain why this construal should be favored over Quine’s.

W.V.O. Quine’s “Indeterminacy Thesis of Radical Translation” and the Logic Problem in the Expression of African Thoughts

Western missionaries, ethnographic and anthropological scholars arrived in Africa, quizzed the pre-colonial African, and adjudged her, pre-critical and pre-logical, since the latter could not disclose or express thoughts according to the dictates or criteria initiated by the former. The criteria are the former’s language and logic. The West’s fundamental but implicit aim is to unearth African equivalents of Western concepts and the failure to discern these have placed the contemporary African in a status quo where she is on the intellectual defensive. Through the method of conversational philosophy, this research interrogates the linguistic and logical assumptions with which the West quizzed pre-colonial Africans. Whereas it invokes and concedes to William Van Orman Quine over the indeterminacy in meaning while translating word for word, from one language to the other, this research goes on to reinforce how the inadequate classical bivalent logic, which undergirds their assessment of African thoughts, is the culprit. After exploring the character of this intellectual misappropriation, this study invokes Gottlob Frege’s discourse on the tandem between logic and language, to foreground that the failure of comprehension whilst translating is not traceable to pre-colonial Africans but to the Western ethnographic and anthropological scholars via the excessive reliance on the background classical logic that underpins thought in that tradition. From this leaning, it becomes clear that the pre-colonial African is neither pre-critical nor pre-logical but intellectually unique in ways beyond the comprehension of the West.

Problems of the Uncertainty of Law through the Prism of the Metamodern

The aim of the study is to form the fundamental problems of interpretation of legal texts on the basis of modern philosophical approaches, as well as the search for possible ways to overcome them. The focus of the article is the legal interpretation in international law, due to a number of special characteristics, like the extreme diversity of cultural and legal traditions, the relative primitiveness of international relations, etc. The author does not seek to draw prescriptive conclusions, but to describe descriptively the workings of the language of law, its understanding and use. The problem of the perception of texts is not new for science, but the relevance of this work is related to the analysis of the postmodernist critique of the interpretation of law. The main part of this critique focuses on two fundamental problems: semantic indeterminacy, when subjects put different meanings into the words they use, and also structural indeterminacy, demonstrated by M. Koskenniemi, when the arguments of the parties are seen as equivalent, making it impossible to make a truly reasoned choice between the arguments presented by the parties. Overcoming postmodernist criticism is possible on the basis of the concept of metamodern, which implies overcoming the main ideas and concepts of the modern and postmodern era. General scientific methods are used, in particular, deduction — to apply the concept of metamodern to individual problems of interpretation, as well as induction — to form general conclusions based on the analysis of the practice of interpretation of legal texts. The removal of the postmodern thesis of semantic indeterminacy of texts is based on the appeal to the ideas of modernity about the establishment of rules of interpretation and acceptance of certain limits of reasonable interpretation. Overcoming the identified structural ambiguity in the application of legal norms lies in rethinking the universal hierarchical organized system of values of modernity. In the modern world, a system with quasi-hierarchical values operates, where, in the absence of an explicitly constructed universal hierarchy, states view some values as higher in priority than others, making it possible for courts to choose between value-based arguments.

Równania mądrzejsze od swych odkrywców

This article aims to critically analyse the concept of the development of science, as proposed by Wojciech Sady in the work Struktura rewolucji relatywistycznej i kwantowej w fizyce [The Structure of the Relativity and Quantum Revolution in Physics]. The author uses Ludwik Fleck’s concept of thought styles and thought collectives to analyse the problem of how two great scientific revolutions took place in 20th-Century physics in terms of the rise of quantum theory and special relativity. Sady argues that the way of thinking of scientists is determined by the particular thought style in which they were educated, and that great scientific discoveries are not the result of “creative imagination”, but a product of deductive reasoning, in which scholars closely adhere to the formalism of mathematical theory and the results of experiments. Therefore, scientific discovery in physics is made “on paper” rather than “in the mind of a scientist.” In the “battle of equations with the imagination,” equations always win, and scientific discovery is more a result of the work of a scientific community than solitary geniuses, and can only be made at the right time in history, called the “discoverygenic situation.” The concept of the development of science presented in The Structure is directed against the incommensurability thesis and the indeterminacy thesis.

Emotions as indeterminate\xa0justifiers

Sentimentalists believe that values are crucially dependent on emotions. Epistemic sentimentalists subscribe to what I call the final-court-of-appeal view: emotional experience is ultimately necessary and can be sufficient for the justification of evaluative beliefs. This paper rejects this view defending a moderate version of rationalism that steers clear of the excesses of both “Stoic” rationalism and epistemic sentimentalism. We should grant that emotions play a significant epistemic role in justifying evaluations. At the same time, evaluative justification is not uniquely or especially dependent on emotions. The anti-sentimentalist argument developed in this paper is based on the indeterminacy thesis. The thesis states that the evaluative properties picked out by our emotional responses are too indeterminate to play a central role in our evaluative practices. I argue that while the indeterminacy thesis undermines the final-court-of-appeal view it supports the claim that emotional responses can provide prima facie justification for evaluative beliefs.

Sędzia między realiami polityczności a imperatywami etycznymi. Odpowiedź na recenzję Mateusza Wojtanowskiego

The project of a critical philosophy of adjudication – the application of the presuppositions of critical jurisprudence to the area of judicial application of law – is, to a large extent, a polemic with Artur Kozak’s project of juriscentrism. Whereas the critical philosophy of adjudication accepts, by and large, juriscentrism’s claims concerning especially the social construction of legal reality, it does not accept the views concerning the determination of judicial decisions by institutional imperatives. Adopting Duncan Kennedy’s conception of the moderate indeterminacy thesis, critical philosophy of adjudication claims that the imperatives following from so-called traditional legal methods cannot be seen as limiting the judge when she needs to decide an intepretive dilemma. What the judge may perceive as resistance, are in fact ideological, political and economic imperatives, only cloaked in legal form. This leads to the conclusion that, in essence, a judicial decision has a political character, because it is never fully determined in an unequivocal manner by legal materials (provisions, precedents, intepretive habits), but it always remains, to a certain extent, open. In consequence, the judge, acting under the reality of the political (i.e. structural social conflicts) should not only follow the imperatives of the lex (legislation) and the ius (legal tradition), but also should abide by moral imperatives. The latter include, on the one hand, the requirement of transparency of legal reasoning (e.g. not concealing the extra-legal factors behind a decision), and, on the other hand, a conscious choice of the ideological premises of the decision. Critical philosophy of adjudication, as an emancipatory project, prefers in this respect a pro-emancipatory stance of the judge, i.e. that she strives to make decisions maximising the actual scope of freedom of the individual and liberating her from any form of domination.

The Return of Forgotten Critique: Some Remarks on the Intellectual Sources of the Polish Populist Revolution

The Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, or PiS), which has been ruling in Poland since 2015, has developed a specific narrative about the law and judiciary, which constitutes the ideological background of its stance in the conflict concerning the rule of law in the country. The main tenets of the legal ideology of Law and Justice include the views that judicial decisions are not determined by legal texts (the indeterminacy thesis), and that judges are part of an elite who are detached from society at large and are attempting to impose the liberal world-view upon a conservative society. The aim of the paper is to deconstruct those ideological constructs in a search for their possible sources in certain critical currents in the legal theory of the Polish People’s Republic, represented by Stanisław Ehrlich, Leszek Nowak and Jarosław Ładosz. The paper notes interesting parallels between the legal ideas developed by those three legal theorists and the current narrative put forward by Law and Justice. Whilst stopping short of claiming a direct and conscious inspiration, the paper nonetheless hypothesises possible avenues of influence, including the academic mentorship of Ehrlich over Jarosław Kaczyński in the early 1970s and Nowak’s involvement in the ‘Solidarity’ movement in the 1980s following his anti-Marxist intellectual and political turn. The paper concludes that legal critique in Poland, after a period of being repressed in the 1990s, is now returning; however, whilst its first appearance (in the socialist period) was a ‘tragedy’ (due to its inability to subject socialist law to any form of critique), its current return is a ‘farce’, since critical tools are used not for their original purpose (emancipation), but in order to further a populist-conservative project.

Privacy Law’s Indeterminacy

Abstract Fools rush in. ALEXANDER POPE, AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM (London, 1711). The full quotation is, “For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.” Id. at 66. She who hesitates is lost. Adaptation of the line, “The woman that deliberates is lost.” JOSEPH ADDISON, CATO: A TRAGEDY, AND SELECTED ESSAYS 30 (2004). See also OLIVER WENDALL HOLMES, SR., THE AUTOCRAT AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE 29 (1858) (“The woman who ‘calculates’ is lost.”). American legal realism numbers among the most important theoretical contributions of legal academia to date. Given the movement’s influence, as well as the common centrality of certain key figures, it is surprising that privacy scholarship in the United States has paid next to no attention to the movement. This inattention is unfortunate for several reasons, including that privacy law furnishes rich examples of the indeterminacy thesis — a key concept of American legal realism — and because the interdisciplinary efforts of privacy scholars to explore extra-legal influences on privacy law arguably further the plot of legal realism itself.

Logical pluralism, indeterminacy and the normativity of logic

According to the form of logical pluralism elaborated by Beall and Restall there is more than one relation of logical consequence. Since they take the relation of logical consequence to reside at the very heart of a logical system, different relations of logical consequence yield different logics. In this paper, we are especially interested in understanding what are the consequences of endorsing Beall and Restall’s version of logical pluralism vis-à-vis the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide to reasoners. In particular, the aim of this paper is threefold. First, in Sections 2 and 3, we offer an exegesis of Beall and Restall’s logical pluralism as a thesis of semantic indeterminacy of our concept of logical consequence – i.e. understood as indeterminacy logical pluralism. Second, in Sections 4 and 5, we elaborate and critically scrutinize three models of semantic indeterminacy that we think are fit to capture Beall and Restall’s indeterminacy logical pluralism. Third, in Section 6, following Beall and Restall’s assumption that the notion of logical consequence has normative significance for deductive reasoning, we raise a series of normative problems for indeterminacy logical pluralism. The overall conclusion that we aim to establish is that Beall and Restall’s indeterminate logical pluralism cannot offer an adequate account of the normative guidance that logic is taken to provide us with in ordinary contexts of reasoning.

Semantic Facts and a Priori Knowledge

AbstractThis paper is a response to a paper by Marcus Giaquinto in which he argues that lexical meaning is moderately indeterminate and that this poses a problem for the linguistic view of a priori knowledge. I argue that accepting the moderate indeterminacy thesis as he presents it is perfectly compatible with both the linguistic view in general and the specific suggestion that some a priori knowledge can be explained by appealing to synonymy. I also argue that, in fact, Giaquinto's considerations speak in favour of the linguistic view rather than against it. The general lesson is that, contrary to what might be suspected, the linguistic view does not presuppose an implausibly simple and tidy conception of lexical meaning.

Quine’s behaviourist theory of language

Within Quine?s philosophy, behaviorism is most present in the language learning context, both in children?s learning their native language and in translating an unknown language. It was directed against mentalistic semantics and referential theories of meaning. We will focus the examination of Quine?s behaviorism on the thesis of indeterminacy of translation, since there we will find all the elements necessary for further analysis. We will try to explicate the content of the thesis of indeterminacy of translation and point out the key problems which it faces. We will show exactly what kind of behaviorism Quine is defending and to what degree is his theory of language a successful alternative to mentalistic theories of meaning.

Who are the Norm-Addressees in a Legal System? Some Hints Towards a Neglected Conclusion

Among the most common grounds underlying the so-called indeterminacy thesis is a two-steps argument: 1) that law is an interpretive practice, and that evidently legal actors more generally hold different (and competing) theories of interpretation, which lead to disagreements as to what the law is; 2) and that, as there is no way to establish the prevalence of one theory over the other, indeterminacy is pervasive in law. In this paper I challenge this argument. In particular I claim that a proper understanding of law as an authoritative communicative enterprise sheds new light on the relation between the functioning of the law and our theories of interpretation, leading to what can be considered a neglected conclusion. After introducing the problem and the perspective adopted, in section two I examine the peculiar relation between sender and receiver of legal norms, conceived of as authoritative speech-acts. This leads to the question of ‘who are the addressees of norm-sentences?’, which I take up in section three. It is argued that there are sound meta-theoretical reasons to consider lay-people as the first and foremost addressees of legal communication. Finally in section four I deal with the consequences of this latter claim for our meta-theory of interpretation, the most important being the need to recognise the prevalence of the linguistic criterion of interpretation amongst the ones available. This is necessary, I argue, for the existence of a legal system as such.

Some Realism about Legislation

The historical movements we are used to pigeonhole as ‘Legal Realism’ did not give pride of place to legislation in their investigations about the law, being rather interested, either in dealing with adjudication and case-law (American Realists), or in working out a general theory of legal norms and legal sources (Scandinavian Realists). Nonetheless, if considered as a philosophical view maintained also by legal philosophers other than strict ‘historical Realists’ (like, e.g., Jeremy Bentham, Hans Kelsen, and ‘new’ Continental analytical jurists), Legal Realism may be credited with a full-fledged theory of legislation. Such a theory will be accounted for in the present essay, by pointing out and explain what may be considered its basic claims, i.e.: (i) the will-of-the-text thesis; (ii) the norm-formulation thesis; (iii) the no one-to-one correspondence thesis; (iv) the structural indeterminacy thesis; (v) the structural mercy thesis.

Legal indeterminacy – nieokreśloność prawa w doktrynie amerykańskiej

This article concerns the issue of legal indeterminacy in American doctrine. Legal indeterminacy in simple words means that law does not always determine the answear to a legal question.It has its origins in the 1920s and 30s, when the argument that Anglo-American law is indeterminate was developed by the legal realists. In the 1980s a new group of legal academics, known as ?Crits? (from Critical Legal Studies) revived and unfold this thesis. Although today it is regarded as passé, it seems that not all Crits? arguments are insubstantial. The author of this article provides basic information about the thesis of legal indeterminacy, its development and kinds (radical indeterminacy, underdeterminacy), explain the relation between uncertainty and indeterminacy, and give some examples.

What is Left of the Law and Society Paradigm after Critique? Revisiting Gordon's “Critical Legal Histories”

For more than twenty-five years, Robert Gordon's “Critical Legal Histories” has been savored by legal historians as one of the most incisive explanations available of what legal history can and should be. Gordon's essay, however, is of significance to the course of sociolegal studies in general. This commentary offers an appreciation, and a critique, of “Critical Legal Histories.” It explores Gordon's articulation of the central themes of critical legal studies, in particular his corrosion of functionalism and embrace of the indeterminacy thesis, and assesses the consequences for sociolegal and legal-historical analysis of the resultant stress on the contingency and complexity of social life.

Implications of Indeterminacy: Naturalism in Epistemology and the Philosophy of Law II

In a circulated but heretofore unpublished 2001 paper, I argued that Leiter’s analogy to Quine’s “naturalization of epistemology” does not do the philosophical work Leiter suggests. I revisit the issues in this new essay. I first show that Leiter’s replies to my arguments fail. Most significantly, if – contrary to the genuinely naturalistic reading of Quine that I advanced – Quine is understood as claiming that we have no vantage point from which to address whether belief in scientific theories is ever justified, it would not help Leiter’s parallel. Given Leiter’s way of drawing the parallel, the analogous position in the legal case would be not the Legal Realists’ indeterminacy thesis, but the very different position that we have no vantage point from which to address whether legal decisions can ever be justified. I then go on to address the more important question of whether the indeterminacy thesis, if true, would support any replacement of important legal philosophical questions with empirical ones. Although Ronald Dworkin has argued against the indeterminacy thesis, if he were wrong on this issue, it would not in any way suggest that the questions with which Dworkin is centrally concerned cannot fruitfully be addressed. The indeterminacy thesis is a bone of contention in an ordinary philosophical debate between its proponents and Dworkin. Of course, if the determinacy thesis were true, no one should try to show that it is false, but this triviality lends no support to the kind of replacement proposal that Leiter proposes. I conclude with some general reflections on naturalism and philosophical methodology.

Naturalism in Epistemology and the Philosophy of Law

In this paper, I challenge an influential understanding of naturalization according to which work on traditional problems in the philosophy of law should be replaced with sociological or psychological explanations of how judges decide cases. W.V. Quine famously proposed the “naturalization of epistemology.” In a prominent series of papers and a book, Brian Leiter has raised the intriguing idea that Quine’s naturalization of epistemology is a useful model for philosophy of law. I examine Quine’s naturalization of epistemology and Leiter’s suggested parallel and argue that the parallel does not hold up. Even granting Leiter’s substantive assumption that the law is indeterminate, there is no philosophical confusion or overreaching in the legal case that is parallel to the philosophical overreaching of Cartesian foundationalism in epistemology. Moreover, if we take seriously Leiter’s analogy, the upshot is almost the opposite of what Leiter suggests. The closest parallel in the legal case to Quine’s position would be the rejection of the philosophical positions that lead to the indeterminacy thesis.