Title: “Immanent Interpretation”

Bryan Pickel and Derek Ball

Abstract: Famous arguments purport to show that all, or a substantial fragment, of language is indeterminate in meaning.  Quine and Davidson motivated indeterminacy arguments by attending to the possibility of different translations of a foreign language and to the possibility of differing uses of homophonic expressions among speakers of the same language; more contemporary versions focus on the interpretation of context-sensitive expressions such as quantifier domain restrictions (Heck, Buchanan).  We show that these arguments fail because they ignore evidence that is available to interpreters – evidence that arises from the interpreters themselves as language users.  But our aim is not merely to rebut indeterminacy arguments.  We construct a research strategy for interpreters to meet the concerns of the proponents of indeterminacy arguments.  The strategy is available to interpreters in a wide range of cases, but (time permitting) we will also discuss cases (such as the interpretation of AI, or of non-human animals) in which it might fail.