Underdetermination versus indeterminacy

this idea and the indeterminacy of meaning. Both theses caused a revolution in the philosophic world in the sixties, generating a cascade of articles and doctoral theses. Agitation seems to have cooled down, but the point is still debated and it may be experiencing a renewed resurgence. Both theses make their appearance in Word and Object, Quine’s work from 1960, and they will be a constant in his ulterior writings, going under several reformulations and clarifications. Each one of these ideas, underdetermination of theories and indeterminacy of meaning, deserves a deep analysis by itself, but we will centre here specifically on the relation between them, since it has proved to be an excellent way of clarifying both ideas. T. Bonk’s work discusses the relations between both theses in chapter 6, named «Underdetermination and Indeterminacy». The sections of this chapter are: «Underdetermination and Translation», «Indeterminacy versus Underdetermination», «Empirical Investigations of Cognitive Meaning», «Indeterminacy and the Absence of Fact» and «Quine’s Pragmatic Interpretation of Underdetermination». I will present here my own reconstruction of the issue, which should serve me to show the points I find obscure in Bonk’s study. 1. Underdetermination