DAVIDSON ON CONCEPTUAL RELATIVISM
Davidson, ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’
Main Claim: Conceptual relativism is unintelligible.
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Conceptual relativism: There may be incommensurable conceptual schemes.
Conceptual scheme: A way of organising empirical content.
Empirical content: the facts, the world, experience, sensation, the totality of
sensory stimuli, etc.
Argument:
1. Belief and meaning are inter-dependent: attributing beliefs to a person is not a
separable enterprise from interpreting his speech behaviour, and vice versa.
2. So, conceptual schemes may be identified with languages (or sets of intertranslatable languages).
3. Therefore, two conceptual schemes C1 and C2 are incommensurable just in case
the languages with which they are identified, L1 and L2 respectively, are not
inter-translatable.
4. If L1 and L2 are not inter-translatable, either: no significant range of sentences in
one language can be translated into the other (complete failure of translation) or
only some significant range of sentences cannot be translated from one language
into the other (partial failure of translation).
5. It is intelligible that there could be a complete failure of translation between L1
and L2 only if the supposed distinction between conceptual scheme and empirical
content is intelligible.
6. This distinction is intelligible only if conceptual schemes either: (i) organise
empirical content or (ii) fit empirical content.
7. Concerning (i), a conceptual scheme organises empirical content in either of two
ways: it organises a single object (the world, nature, etc.) or it organises a plurality
of objects.
8. It is unintelligible that a single object may be organised.
9. So, the distinction between conceptual scheme and empirical content is intelligible
only if conceptual schemes organise pluralities.
10. Now it is intelligible that pluralities may be organised.
11. So, if it is intelligible that C1 and C2 are incommensurable, then it must be that
C1 and C2 organise pluralities differently to one another.
12. But it is intelligible that C1 and C2 organise pluralities differently to one another
only if, in attributing this difference, we make use of familiar principles of
individuation in marking out the pluralities.
13. But if that is so, then L1 and L2, the languages that are identified with C1 and C2,
respectively, are indeed inter-translatable, and so C1 and C2 are, after all,
commensurable.
14. Concerning (ii), a conceptual scheme fits empirical content only if either (a) the
sentences of the language with which it may be identified are made true by
empirical content or (b) the sentences of the language with which it may be
identified are largely true.
15. It is unintelligible that sentences are made true by any thing.
16. So, a conceptual scheme fits empirical content only if the sentences of the
language with which it may be identified are largely true.
17. If the sentences of a language are largely true, then there is a Tarski-style truth
theory for that language.
18. Tarski-style truth theories require that the sentences of the object language be
translatable into the meta-language.
19. If L1 and L2 are largely true, then they are each translatable into a meta-language,
which may serve as a basis for inter-translation between L1 and L2.
20. Hence, L1 and L2 are, after all, inter-translatable.
21. So, it is unintelligible that two conceptual schemes may be completely
incommensurable.
22. Turning now to the supposed intelligibility of partially incommensurable
conceptual schemes, if belief and meaning are inter-dependent (attributing beliefs
to a person is not a separable enterprise from interpreting his speech behaviour,
and vice versa), then a theory of interpretation must account simultaneously for a
person’s beliefs and his speech behaviour without assuming either from the start.
23. One theory of interpretation that satisfies these constraints takes as its evidential
base a person’s attitude of holding true an utterance, and the form of that theory is
given by a Tarskian-style truth theory for the subject’s language.
24. If a theory of interpretation takes as its evidential base the person holding true
utterances and the theory takes the form of a Tarskian-style truth theory, then the
interpreter must assume that the subject’s beliefs are largely true if interpretation
is to be possible.
25. For only on that assumption can there is a link between a subject holding true an
utterance and that utterance being true can a theory of interpretation of the sort in
question be given. With this link in place, the interpreter can observe the subject
holding S true; then infer that S is true; observe the truth condition of S, namely, ‘S
is true iff p’; and then infer the meaning of the subject’s utterance of S, which is
its truth condition.
26. Therefore an interpreter cannot attribute massive error to a subject if he is to give
a workable theory of the person’s speech behaviour.
27. If that is so, then the interpreter can account for supposed differences between
conceptual schemes (his and the subjects) by construing these differences as
differences of belief, differences that are intelligible only against a background of
shared belief.
28. It is therefore unintelligible that there be partially incommensurable conceptual
schemes.