Brandom
9/1/09
Notes on “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”
1. The issue (“the third dogma of empiricism”): the scheme/content dualism.
2. Identify conceptual schemes with “sets of intertranslatable languages” [7]. So different
conceptual schemes requires different languages that are not intertranslatable. DD will
consider two cases: complete failures of intertranslatability and partial ones.
3. “Nothing could count as evidence that some form of activity could not be interpreted in our
language that was not at the same time evidence that that form of activity was not speech
behavior.” [7] Cf. Rorty’s butterflies. This is a verificationist move. But its power lies in
the question: what do you mean by the claim that in spite of reason to think what they do is
untranslatable in principle, nonetheless they do mean something?
4. It is sometimes thought that translatability into a familiar language, say, English, cannot be a
criterion of languagehood on the grounds that the relation of translatability is not
transitive….[Saturnian goes into English, and Plutonian into Saturnian] We have to ask how
we recognized that what the Saturnian was doing was translating Plutonian…The Saturnian
might tell us that that is what he is doing…But the it would occur to us to wonder whether
our translation of Saturnian were correct.” [8] [BB: This consideration really belongs with
the discussion of partial translatability later on, I think.]
5. “Suppose that in my office of Minister of Scientific Language I want the new man to stop
using words that refer, say, to emotions, feelings, thoughts, and intentions, and to talk instead
of the physiological states and happenings that are assumed to be more or less identical with
the mental riff and raff? How do I tell whether my advice has been heeded if the new man
speaks a new language? For all I know, the shiny new phrases, though stolen from the old
language, in which they refer to physiological stirrings, may in his mouth play the role of the
messy old mental concepts.” [10]
6. “Giving up the analytic-synthetic distinction has not proven a help in making sense of
conceptual relativism.” [11]
7. “I want to urge that this second dualism of scheme and content, of organizing system and
something waiting to be organizes, cannot be made intelligible and is not defensible. It is
itself a dogma of empiricism, the third dogma. The third, and perhaps the last, for if we give
it up, it is not clear that there is anything distinctive left to call empiricism.” [11] [DD
considers only “lumpers”, but “splitters” (the mind as refracting the white radiance of
eternity”), would have to go, too. Cf. Russell on “bowl of jelly vs. bucket of shot”.]
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8. “The idea is that something is a language, and associated with it a conceptual scheme,
whether or not we can translate it, if it stands in a certain relation (a) predicting or organizing,
b) facing or fitting) to experience (a) nature, reality, b) sensory promptings). The problem is
to say what the relation is and to be clearer about how the entities are related.” [13]. BB:
There are two important important distinction being made here, that subdivide the argument:
i) what is being dealt with conceptually, how the nonconceptual other is metaconceptualized:
as either reality (nature), or experience (sensings); and ii) What the relation between the
conceptual and the nonconceptual is conceived as being: organizing or fitting (coping with).
[p. 14]
9. Main problem with organizing (classifying), whether it is things or experiences, is how they
are construed as identified and individuated. How can this sort of thing be non-conceptual?
And concepts cannot only organize experiences. At some point in the story, they have to
organize or classify objects, too. But how are we to get from the one to the other without
objective concepts?
10. “The trouble is that the notion of fitting the totality of experience, like the notion of fitting
the facts, or being true to the facts, adds nothing intelligible to the simple concept of being
true.” [16]
11. “Since Convention T embodies our best intuition as to how the concept of truth is used, there
does not seem to be much hope for a test that a conceptual scheme is radically different from
ours if that test depends on the assumption that we can divorce the notion of truth from that
of translation.” [17]
12. “Neither a fixed stock of meanings, nor a theory-neutral reality can provide a ground for
comparison of conceptual schemes.” [17]
13. [Turning to the issue of partial failure of translatability:] “What we need is a theory of
translation or interpretation that makes no assumption about shared meanings, concepts, or
beliefs.” [17] But: “The interdependence of belief and meaning springs from the
interdependence of two aspects of the interpretation of speech behavior [BB: cf pragmatism,
looking at what we do as what must ultimately be explained]: the attribution of beliefs and
the interpretation of sentences.” [17] [BB: Tell the story of the progression from classical
pragmatism’s attempt to infer beliefs from actions, to the addition of desires, and then
meanings as elements that must all be assigned simultaneously.]
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14. Argument: can always assign standard beliefs at the cost of weird meanings, and vice versa.
DD: There is no fact of the matter beyond what makes best sense of them relative to us. That
is, interpretability is the standard of assigning either meanings or beliefs to the others.
15. “Since charity is not an option, but a condition of having a workable theory, it is meaningless
to suggest we might fall into massive error by endorsing it. Until we have successfully
established a systematic correlation of sentences held true with sentences held true, there are
no mistakes to make.” [19]
16. “We must conclude…that the attempt to give a solid meaning to the idea of conceptual
relativism, and hence to the idea of a conceptual scheme, fares no better when based on a
partial failure of translation than when based on a total failure. Given the underlying
methodology of interpretation, we could not be in a position to judge that others had
concepts or beliefs radically different from our own.” [20]
17. “In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish
unmediated touch with the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions
true or false.” [20]
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