Abstract

In recent years two opinions have been commonplace in analytic philosophy. One is that the problem of synonymy in the philosophy of language may well be intractable--at least, it has resisted the best efforts to solve it. Another is that the problem of synonymy is an important one, since the clarification of other problems depend on a satisfactory solution to the problem. Without such a solution, we must, for instance, do without a fully satisfying account of how thoughts and ideas might be conveyed between two people of vastly different language backgrounds. ;This dissertation attempts to show that an approach to language based in the view of such philosophers as Ryle and Alston can be usefully applied to the issue of synonymy. Odell's Cipher theory of synonymy is presented as an example. The Cipher theory is then extended from intra-language cases to cases of translation, both between languages used in similar cultural circumstances, and between languages spoken by those of sharp cultural dissimilarity. The results are applied to a few example problems, including the so-called incommensurability problem in the recent history of philosophy of science associated with Feyerabend and Kuhn, the problem of translating ancient religious texts, and problems raised by the cultural relativity hypothesis of Sapir and Whorf. In passing, Quine's view that translation is inevitably indeterminate is considered, and a milder relative of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is presented and defended