Quinean Indeterminacy and Misclassification

Is that a problem Not necessarily. First of all, it is all too easily taken for granted that Quine s thesis is false. Even though it has far more adversaries than advocates, it has not received yet a generally accepted refutation. True as it is that many of Quine s tenets may be out of fashion for good reasons, it is not really clear whether and to what extent Quine s arguments for indeterminacy hinge on these tenets. I have a suspicion that the general attitude is motivated in part by the fact that Quine s thesis can be easily saddled with blatantly absurd consequences, which, in fact, do not follow from it. Here are two examples. 

One may feel uneasy about this reply because it may seem too powerful. It appears to use a recipe by which one can disarm a wide range of metaphysical realist 

This reply, however, raises a further question. It talks about the superior and the inferior scheme, which suggests that the conceptual schemes are in competition. The idea of competition has to be explained. If there could be only one adequate conceptual scheme in a given domain, there would be no problem. All schemes in the same domain would be competitors. But internal realism allows that there can be more than one adequate conceptual schemes (IR3). The adequate conceptual schemes are not in competition. It follows than that being concerned with the same domain is not sufficient for competition. Indeed, we have already seen an example in which competition is missing, namely the athlete advised by a trainer, a doctor and a physicist specializing in the mechanics of bodily movement (2.1.). We would not say that only one of these experts can be right. Rather, they talk about somewhat 

Let us call the notion of reference used in the first option relative reference , and the notion of reference mentioned in the second option reference simpliciter . Relative reference is a relation between a word within a conceptual scheme to some entity in the quasi-phenomenal world constituted by that scheme. Reference simpliciter is a relation between a word within a conceptual scheme and some entity in the quasi-phenomenal world constituted by the adequate conceptual scheme. Defined in this way, reference simpliciter is also relative reference. It is just a distinguished member of the class of relative reference relations, just as the world simpliciter is just a distinguished member of the class of quasi-phenomenal worlds, and just as an adequate conceptual scheme is just a distinguished member of the class of conceptual schemes. 

So the dilemma is this. We can identify the ordinary notion of reference with two different relations, relative reference and reference simpliciter. If we identify it with relative reference we lose the continuity of discourse. Adopting a new conceptual scheme would amount to changing the subject. Competition would be replaced by different but equal truths . If we identify the ordinary notion of reference with reference simpliciter, we lose the ability to explain changes in linguistic behavior in terms of referential change. What shall we do  

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