  Some philosophers hold that the idea of indeterminacy is absurd, or that it amounts to an extreme form of scepticism about whether we ever understand one another, or whether correct translation is possible at all. (See for example Searle, 1987; for a reply, see Føllesdal, 1990.) It is not hard to see how such opinions arise. One picture of communication is like this: you have an idea, a determinate meaning, in your mind and convey it to me by your utterance. To those who have that picture, indeterminacy threatens the whole idea of communication, for it suggests that the conveying is always vulnerable to drastic failure. In the case of translation, the analogous view is that synonymy, or sameness of meaning, is the criterion of correct translation; in that case, indeterminacy may appear as a denial that translation is possible at all.