Davidson - On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme

Perhaps the OP is a bit dry. So let's cut to the good bit:This article kills relativism.

Good. A killing always draws a crowd.

Let the coliseum roar: Davidson! Davidson!

Feel free to take the lead. I'm mostly a weekend philosopher.

Quoting Banno

Perhaps the OP is a but dry. So let's cut to the good bit:This article kills relativism.

How? By assuming again that everything is sharable about respective schemas? I expect Terrapin to chime in and assert something about interpretations of sorts; but, that would be irrelevant wouldn't it, Banno?

Quoting Banno

Perhaps the OP is a but dry. So let's cut to the good bit:This article kills relativism.

There's some crossover with the other thread in which this is mentioned. If do you ever feel like clarifying your position with respect to my comments, I'm reading this thread too, if it's the better place for you to respond.

I'm going to just post Karl Friston's paper here, for anyone who's interested - as I said, there's some crossover between multiple threads on this topic, so I though this might be usefully replicated.

Of key note are -

it [the free-energy formulation in box1] shows that free energy rests on a generative model of the world, which is expressed in terms of the probability of a sensation and its causes occurring together. This means that an agent must have an implicit generative model of how causes conspire to produce sensory data. It is this model that defines both the nature of the agent and the quality of the free-energy bound on surprise.

(my bold)

This formulation [also box1]shows that minimizing free energy by changing sensory data (without changing the recognition density) must increase the accuracy of an agent’s predictions. In short, the agent will selectively sample the sensory inputs that it expects

(my bold again)

Also take a look at box2 showing how the neural architecture is geared towards hierarchical model-dependant inference.

So that's my basic pitch - any way of linking that to Davidson's objections?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

The question of the locus, nature and potence of "a common coordinate system" ought to be fleshed out.

He points out that we expect a common coordinate system, not that there is one.

What facts would we use to assure ourselves that commonality exists?

Quoting Banno

This article kills relativism.

And yet moral relativism, probably the most important sort, survives the article quite nicely.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

"The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view,

I don't know it this was sparked by my comments and the responses to it, but I wasn't saying something about conceptual relativism in my comments. I was saying something about ontic relativism.

Re the Davidson paper, I'll have to read it more carefully later, but for one, I didn't notice anywhere that he actually argued for this:

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common coordinate system on which to plot them;

On the face of it, that claim seems absurd. Why would the possibility of different points of view hinge on their being a common coordinate system on which to plot them?

Say that only two sentient creatures existed, where they arose independently of each other, a billion light years apart. Surely they'd have different points of view (although we'd probably need to well-define just what "different points of view" amounts to in this argument), but how wouild it make sense to say that there's a "common coordinate system on which to plot" those different points of view?

So logically, one doesn't seem to hinge on the other. Davidson would have to present some sort of argument for the claim.

What's a conceptual scheme in the paper?

Conceptual schemes, we are told, are ways of organizing experience; they are systems of categories that give form to the data of sensation; they are points of view from which
individuals, cultures, or periods survey the passing scene.

What distinctive properties are relevant to the paper?

There may be no translating from one scheme to another, in which case the beliefs, desires, hopes and bits of knowledge that characterize one person have no true counterparts for the subscriber to another scheme. Reality itself is relative to a scheme: what counts as real in one system may not in another.

So he cares about, given two conceptual schemes C and D, whether and how it is possible to "translate" elements of C to elements of D in a manner that produces counterparts of C in D and counterparts of D in C. Davidson wishes to question the claim that it is impossible in principle to translate from C to D. Say that C and D are commensurable if some counterpart mapping/translation can occur between them. He wants to doubt whether it is impossible in principle that C and D are commensurable. How? What's his motivating suspicion?

Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common coordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability. What we need, it seems to me, is some idea of the considerations that set the limits to conceptual contrast. There are extreme suppositions that founder on paradox or contradiction; there are modest examples we have no trouble understanding. What determines where we cross from the merely strange or novel to the absurd

A motivating suspicion is that it seems extremely strange that if there are no principles by which to notice contrasts between conceptual schemes, we could not declare them to be not commensurable (henceforth incommensurable). It is strange that conceptual schemes which are posited as incommensurable nevertheless can be contrasted in the forms they give to experience.

Then there's a swerve, an assumed implication which will serve as a Moorean shift.

We may accept the doctrine that associates having a language with having a conceptual scheme. The relation may be supposed to be this: if conceptual schemes differ, so do languages. But speakers of different languages may share a conceptual scheme provided there is a way of translating one language into the other. Studying the criteria of translation is therefore a way of focussing on criteria of identity for conceptual schemes.

The argument sketch so far looks like:

(1) Study criteria under which two conceptual schemes may possibly be translated, or not.
This will link into 2.
(2) If there are irreconcilable differences in conceptual schemes they imply irreconcilable differences in language use.
(3) If there aren't irreconcilable differences in language use, then there aren't irreconcilable differences in conceptual schemes. (2, transposition)

(1) is summarised after a length discussion of cases and counterpoints:

We may now seem to have a formula for generating distinct conceptual schemes. We get a new out of an old scheme when the speakers of a language come to accept as true an important range. of sentences they previously took to be false (and, of course, vice versa). We must not describe this change simply as a matter of their coming to view old falsehoods as truths, for a truth is a proposition, and what they come to accept, in accepting a sentence as true, is not the same thing that they rejected when formerly they held the sentence to be false. A change has come over the meaning of the sentence because it now belongs to a new language.

To find an incommensurable conceptual scheme C given a scheme D, there must be some sentence P which is in C and D such that any translation T which maps P in C to P in D changes the meaning. It is furthermore not a mere revision of belief (X believes that P mapping to X believes that not P), because truth or falsity of a proposition given an interpretation thereof is fully within the scope of the first conceptual scheme. It is a transformation of meaning rather than a revision of belief.

Notice how T seems to act on whole conceptual schemes (and their associated languages) without changing any of the content. This is the real focus of the attack in the paper; for such a T to exist, it has a major presupposition - the scheme-content distinction. He quotes Worf (of the Sapir-Worf hypothesis) as an example:

We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated

This gives a refinement of the argument structure:

(2) If there are irreconcilable differences in conceptual schemes they imply irreconcilable differences in language use.
(3) If there aren't irreconcilable differences in language use, then there aren't irreconcilable differences in conceptual schemes. (2, transposition)
(4) If there are irreconcilable differences in conceptual schemes, they must rely upon the scheme-content distinction.

A long series of intermediary arguments begins with a characterisation of differences in conceptual schemes arriving from differences in the way they structure experience natively to their holder or differences in the way they structure experience relative to experiences formed from a theory-neutral reality. He characterises the first case as where translation procedures fail due to necessary mismatches in meanings in C to meanings in D (meaning applications/senses which cannot be translated in principle) and a case where translation procedures fail due to constitutive/formative experiences C and D being generated by irreconcilable processes. He concludes:

Neither a fixed stock of meanings, nor a theory-neutral reality, can provide, then, a ground for comparison of conceptual schemes. It would be a mistake to look further for such a ground if by that we mean something conceived as common to incommensurable schemes. In abandoning this search, we abandon the attempt to make sense of the metaphor of a single space within which each scheme has a position and provides a point of view.

And goes onto discuss partial failures of translation. Someone can pick it up from there if they like, or bone pick.

Reading through this more slowly now. One big problem with it is that Davidson seems to be just assuming an objectivist, and specifically what amounts to a behaviorist, account of what concepts (and meaning in general) are.

He also seems to introduce a lot of ideas that he doesn't bother to argue for. He's just kind of rambling on about assumptions he makes.

"We may now seem to have a formula for generating distinct conceptual schemes. We get a new out of an old scheme when the speakers of a language come to accept as true an important range of sentences they previously took to be false (and, of course, vice versa). We must not describe this change simply as a matter of their coming to view old falsehoods as truths, for a truth is a proposition, and what they come to accept, in accepting a sentence as true, is not the same thing that they rejected when formerly they held the sentence to be false. A change has come over the meaning of the sentence because it now belongs to a new language."

----This is treating meaning as something necessarily communal and behavioral, and it's ignoring the fact that we're talking about individuals doing things, so that it's ambiguous whether, if it doesn't outright suggest that, we're talking about the very same individuals now accepting as true something they previously took to be false.

On my view, concepts and meaning are things that individuals do in their minds. They're not at all the same thing as third-person observable behavior.

Quoting frank

moral relativism, probably the most important sort, survives the article quite nicely.

Are you sure...?

What would applying the arguments here to moral discourse entail? There's a worthy thread.

Quoting Banno

What would applying the arguments here to moral discourse entail?

That the concept of a vantage point is the best way to understand moral rules.

But maybe I don't understand Davidson. Worldview isn't something a person is usually aware of. I become aware that I have one only when confronted with a different one. So to suggest that a worldview is a set of statements from a certain vantage point is a misconception. That's not what it is at all.

Plus, since the "view" in worldview has to do with conceptions of and interactions with the world, a separation between viewer and world is being inserted where it doesn't belong.

I know you rarely read more than one or two sentences of any post you come across, but if you read this far, maybe you could explain how you understand the applicability of Davidson's argument.

Quoting frank

I know you rarely read more than one or two sentences of any post you come across,

Depends on the content.

Quoting Banno

Depends on the content.

Well, there you have it. Have a good day.

This looks helpful:

"4.3 The ‘Third Dogma’ of Empiricism

Davidson’s rejection of the idea of an untranslatable language (and the associated idea, also common to many forms of conceptual relativism, of a radically different, and so ‘incommensurable’ system of belief) is part of a more general argument that he advances (notably in ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’) against the so-called ‘third dogma’ of empiricism. The first two dogmas are those famously identified by Quine in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ (first published in the Philosophical Review, in 1951). The first is that of reductionism (the idea that, for any meaningful statement, it can be recast in the language of pure sensory experience, or, at least, in terms of a set of confirmatory instances), while the second is the analytic-synthetic distinction (the idea that, with respect to all meaningful statements, one can distinguish between statements that are true in virtue of their meaning and those that are true in virtue of both their meanings and some fact or facts about the world). The rejection of both these dogmas can be seen as an important element throughout Davidson’s thinking. The third dogma, which Davidson claims can still be discerned in Quine’s work (and so can survive the rejection even of the analytic-synthetic distinction), consists in the idea that one can distinguish within knowledge or experience between a conceptual component (the ‘conceptual scheme’) and an empirical component (the ‘empirical content’) – the former is often taken to derive from language and the later from experience, nature or some form of ‘sensory input’. While there are difficulties in even arriving at a clear formulation of this distinction (particularly so far as the nature of the relation between the two components is concerned), such a distinction depends on being able to distinguish, at some basic level, between a ‘subjective’ contribution to knowledge that comes from ourselves and an ‘objective’ contribution that comes from the world. What the Davidsonian account of knowledge and interpretation demonstrates, however, is that no such distinction can be drawn. Attitudes are already interconnected – causally, semantically and epistemically – with objects and events in the world; while knowledge of self and others already presupposes knowledge of the world. The very idea of a conceptual scheme is thus rejected by Davidson along with the idea of any strong form of conceptual relativism. To possess attitudes and be capable of speech is already to be capable of interpreting others and to be open to interpretation by them."

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/davidson/#AgaiRelaScep


It looks like this one should be read first:

Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism"

http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html

Reply to fdrake

Great summary, thanks for doing that.

Quoting fdrake

It is strange that conceptual schemes which are posited as incommensurable nevertheless can be contrasted in the forms they give to experience.

This is the first part I take issue with. He's presuming in this that we successfully contrast them, as distinct from merely making a satisfactory attempt to do so. The long and drawn out debate over some topic could be seen as contrasting the forms (or, as he later discusses, translating the schema), but they could equally be used as evidence of a complete failure to do so. If we deduce that something here must be amis, it could be any element, one of which is the idea that anything at all can be said about our success in contrast/translation sufficient to draw clear conclusions about how beliefs are held.

Quoting fdrake

It is furthermore not a mere revision of belief (X believes that P mapping to X believes that not P), because truth or falsity of a proposition given an interpretation thereof is fully within the scope of the first conceptual scheme. It is a transformation of meaning rather than a revision of belief.

I think this conflates truth values of propositions with beliefs. Obviously on the face of it Davidson is perfectly right, one can revise X=P, to X!=P by changing the meaning of rather than the actual belief, but this doesn't demonstrate that the belief about P hasn't changed, merely that a changein the proposition expressing it is not a sound indicator of whether it has or not.



But my main misunderstanding is what he's using to get from translatability/common reference to ditching conceptual schemes altogether. We're all human, we've all got the same sensory organs with which we perceive the world, we have a pretty similar history (in evolutionary terms)... Is it any surprise our conceptual schemes are similar enough to at least give the impression of translatability? Nothing in that leads to saying we don't have any, especially with the weight of cognitive theory to the contrary which would have to all be re-thought if we're to accept this framing.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Attitudes are already interconnected – causally, semantically and epistemically – with objects and events in the world

How would this be the case when we only have access to those objects and events via our perceptions which themselves are shaped and dependent on schema? I don't 'see' a load of photons, I 'see' a dog, because I'm expecting a dog to be there. Even if there's something missing in the actual photons hitting my retina, some optical illusion, I'll still see a dog. But not if I've no concept of a dog, then I won't be fooled by the illusion, I'll 'see' something else instead.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

What the Davidsonian account of knowledge and interpretation demonstrates, however, is that no such distinction can be drawn.

We'd need to go over the Davidsonian account of knowledge and interpretation for that. It seems ridiculous to me to say that "no such distinction can be drawn." But show the work and we'll see if the argument is ridiculous or not.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Attitudes are already interconnected – causally, semantically and epistemically – with objects and events in the world;

Attitudes certainly can be part of a causal chain, but being part of a causal chain doesn't dismantle distinctions. Setting a ball in a cup might be the way to start a Rube Goldberg contraption that eventually causes an egg to be fried, so there's a causal connection, but that doesn't imply that we can't make a distinction between a ball, a cup, a pan, an egg, a fried egg, and the other one hundred or so things in the contraption between the ball and the fried egg.

Objects and events in the world, outside of minds, do not have attitudes, meaning or an epistemology.

But what is his account that demonstrates that no such distinction can be drawn?

Quoting Isaac

I don't 'see' a load of photons, I 'see' a dog, because I'm expecting a dog to be there.

Your expectations can have an impact on what you see, where you might even misidentify what you see (which we can only know if we can rather identify it correctly, too), but much of the time we see things not because we expect to see them but simply because they're there and we have eyes, etc.

Reply to Terrapin Station

Curiously the same approach as the other post of yours I've just responded to. You post arose as a critique. It's all very interesting to hear what you think, but if you post in response to a specific quote it's read (perhaps erroneously) as indicating that you specifically disagree with that quote, in which case what we'd be looking for is some reason why. Just declaring that an alternative could also be the case doesn't really tie in with the quote.

Reply to fdrake

Thank you for your beautiful analysis.

Moving through the essay at a snail's pace noting possible subtle catalytic phrases.

"Languages we will not think of as separable from souls..."
(Davidson, p7 para. 2)

Bold and possibly playful deployment of the word 'soul'. Watch closely for a secret reprise.

"My strategy will be to argue that we cannot make sense of total failure [of translatability], and then to examine more briefly cases of partial failure."
(Davidson, p7 para. 3)

As regards total failure, Davidson claims "we cannot make sense of [it]." Perhaps taken to imply the impossibility of total failure. To say "we cannot make sense of [it]," is not to say "it cannot occur." It can possibly occur regardless of our ability to make sense of it.

A troublesome paragraph, with a footnote:

"Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not surface irritations, not the world, can make a sentence true. That experience takes a certain course, that our skin is warmed or punctured, that the universe is finite, these facts, if we like to talk that way, make sentences and theories true. But this point is put better without mention of facts. The sentence "My skin is warm" is true if and only if my skin is warm. Here there is no reference to a fact, a world, an experience, or a piece of evidence."*

* Footnote 13: These remarks are defended in my "True to the Facts," The Journal of Philosophy
Vol. 66 (1969). pp. 748-764.
(Davidson, p16, para. 2)

Satisfactory analysis of "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" requires some knowledge of Davidson's "True to the Facts," available here:

http://www.thatmarcusfamily.org/philosophy/Course_Websites/Readings/Davidson%20-%20True%20to%20the%20Facts.pdf

Reply to fdrake Reply to Terrapin Station Reply to Isaac Reply to frank Reply to Wallows

(Still re- and rere- and rerere-reading the paper and requisite secondary sources.)

Davidson's essay appears to conclude on a far more skeptical note than...

Quoting Banno

This article kills relativism.

The essence of his conclusion (in my view, at this moment) is:

There is no basis, multifarious though they may be, for the comparison of conceptual schemes.

Considering different points of view, or different conceptual schemes, Davidson asserts the necessity of a "coordinate system" - later referred to as a "neutral ground" - with which to contrast a multiplicity of conceptual schemes or points of view. (He will conclude by asserting the non-existence of such a "coordinate system" or "neutral ground.")




[i]"The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, seems to betray an underlying paradox. Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common coordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability."

"It is essential to this idea that there be something neutral and common that lies outside all schemes."

"My strategy will be to argue that we cannot make sense of total failure [of translatability]..."[/i]



As regards total failure, Davidson claims "we cannot make sense of [it]." Perhaps taken to imply the impossibility of total failure. To say "we cannot make sense of [it]," is not to say "it cannot occur." It can possibly occur regardless of our ability to make sense of it. Davidson concedes that though it may be impossible to "make sense" of a "total failure of translatability" neither is it the case that "all speakers of language...share a common scheme":



"It would be equally wrong to announce the glorious news that all mankind - all speakers of language, at least - share a common scheme and ontology. For if we cannot intelligibly say that schemes are different, neither can we intelligibly say that they are one."








[i]"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.

The key phrase is: for all I know. What is clear is that retention of some or all of the old vocabulary in itself provides no basis for judging the new scheme to be the same as, or different from, the old."[/i]




Davidson asserts the absence of a "coordinate system" through which to compare old and new conceptual schemes.




[i]"I want to urge that this second dualism of scheme and content, of organizing system and something waiting to be organized, cannot be made intelligible and defensible. It is itself a dogma of empiricism, the third dogma."

"It is essential to this idea that there be something neutral and common that lies outside all schemes."

"To speak of sensory experience rather than the evidence, or just the facts, expresses a view about the source or nature of evidence, but it does not add a new entity to the universe against which to test conceptual schemes."[/i]




Again: There is no "coordinate system" or "neutral ground" or "new entity in the universe" with which to compare a multiplicity of conceptual schemes. There is no "content" with which to compare the scheme.




"Neither a fixed stock of meanings, nor a theory-neutral reality, can provide, then, a ground for comparison of conceptual schemes. It would be a mistake to look further for such a ground if by that we mean something conceived as common to incommensurable schemes. In abandoning this search, we abandon the attempt to make sense of the metaphor of a single space within which each scheme has a position and provides a point of view."




There is no basis, multifarious though they may be, for the comparison of conceptual schemes.

A quote that bears repeating:

"It would be equally wrong to announce the glorious news that all mankind - all speakers of language, at least - share a common scheme and ontology. For if we cannot intelligibly say that schemes are different, neither can we intelligibly say that they are one."

Again, this paragraph appears the most troublesome. Open to anyone's thoughts on it:


"The trouble is that the notion of fitting the totality of experience, like the notions of fitting the facts, or being true to the facts, adds nothing intelligible to the simple concept of being true. To speak of sensory experience rather than the evidence, or just the facts, expresses a view about the source or nature of evidence, but it does not add a new entity to the universe against which to test conceptual schemes. The totality of sensory evidence is what we want provided it is all the evidence there is; and all the evidence there is is just what it takes to make our sentences or theories true. Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not surface irritations, not the world, can make a sentence true. That experience takes a certain course, that our skin is warmed or punctured, that the universe is finite, these facts, if we like to talk that way, make sentences and theories true. But this point is put better without mention of facts. The sentence "My skin is warm" is true if and only if my skin is warm. Here there is no reference to a fact, a world, an experience, or a piece of evidence."

What is it, again, that makes a sentence true? "Nothing, no thing..."

I'll have to spend some time with Davidson's "True to the Facts"...

"For we have found no intelligible basis on which it can be said that schemes are different. It would be equally wrong to announce the glorious news that all mankind -all speakers of language, at least - share a common scheme and ontology. For if we cannot intelligibly say that schemes are different, neither can we intelligibly say that they are one."

"In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with...familiar objects..."


1) We have no basis on which to claim there are a multiplicity of conceptual schemes.
2) We have no basis on which to claim there is a single conceptual scheme.

Therefore: "unmediated touch" with "familiar objects" is "reestablish[ed]."

This conclusion is an unwarranted leap from humble premises. Call in the logicians.

Davidson has omitted premise three:

3) We have no basis on which to claim there are no conceptual schemes.

Davidson's inconsistency relieves the pressure of the most troublesome paragraph, quoted above:

"Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true:"

Okay. But, wait, it's actually:


"...the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions
true..."

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Again, this paragraph appears the most troublesome. Open to anyone's thoughts on it:

Davidson's whole approach seems a little strange to me. How is language grasped from the very beginning?

[quote=Davidson]
Correspondence theories rest on what appears to be an ineluctable if simple idea, but they have not done well under examination.
[/quote]

The problem may be lifting a vague intuition of how 'truth' is often used up to the level of some crisp theory. Why haven't correspondence theories done well under examination? But then which philosophical theories have done well under examination? The entire project of yanking words out of their quasi-automatic use and assuming they can be squeezed for their context-independent essence is suspect.

Under close examination, it becomes apparent (IMO) that we are never done figuring out what we mean. The primary fantasy of a certain kind of philosophy is sharp or perfect meaning (present to something like the subject or consciousness.) Of course this doesn't make trying to speak and live better absurd (though our mortality might do this.)

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

As regards total failure, Davidson claims "we cannot make sense of [it]." Perhaps taken to imply the impossibility of total failure. To say "we cannot make sense of [it]," is not to say "it cannot occur." It can possibly occur regardless of our ability to make sense of it. Davidson concedes that though it may be impossible to "make sense" of a "total failure of translatability" neither is it the case that "all speakers of language...share a common scheme":

This reminds me of some of Stanislaw Lem's science fiction work where there is a total failure to communicate. In the Solaris novel, which has been made into two different movies, an alien ocean has been discovered that is a living organism and exhibits some kind of intelligence, but there is a total failure to communicate with it because it is so alien, and the humans cannot get past their own human concepts to make the leap. However, the ocean may face the same problem when it starts recreating other humans from memories of the research crew, including the main character's deceased wife. This is very disturbing and upsetting to the researchers, and it ultimately explains nothing as the physical imitations don't know why they were created by the ocean.

One of my favorite Tarkovsky films. I'll have to pick up the book.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm But if there isn't one, and there aren't more than one... the only thing left is none.

It's good to see some serious treatment of an interesting argument going on. thanks, @fdrake, for your summary.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Davidson asserts the absence of a "coordinate system" through which to compare old and new conceptual schemes.

Yes; this is what those who take conceptual schemes to be incommensurable must be asserting.

Quoting Banno

But if there isn't one, and there aren't more than one... the only thing left is none.

Davidson doesn't make the claim that "there isn't one". He says there's no basis (no scheme-content distinction to provide the basis) for making the claim that conceptual schemes exist.

Without a content-identification to refer to there's also no basis for making the claim that there are no conceptual schemes.

There's no basis for making any claim at all.

Davidson makes an unwarranted knowledge-claim, no doubt aligned with his dogmas and presuppositions:

There is no basis for claiming the existence of one X.
There is no basis for claiming the existence of many X.
Therefore I know there are no X.

Check the logic.

Possibly, it should read.

There is no basis for claiming the existence of one X.
There is no basis for claiming the existence of many X.
Therefore, there may be no X.

It's significant that Davidson spends very little time on the possibility of the existence of one conceptual scheme. There is as much of a basis to claim one conceptual scheme as there is to claim no conceptual scheme.

Our experience with dealing with folks around here (from solipsists to direct realists) suggests there may indeed be a variety of conceptual schemes, though we have no scheme-content distinction to assist us in making that claim.

Quoting Banno

Yes; this is what those who take conceptual schemes to be incommensurable must be asserting.

Pragmatically perhaps, but not theoretically, which is what Davidson is claiming. You're presuming there's only the possibility of a binary distinction between scheme and content (so if schemes ever are shown to be incommensurable, they must have a commensurable content of one and only one sort).

But this need not be the case. If we were to conceive (as I tried to convey earlier) of reality->perception->schema, then we have a co-ordination system 'reality' which nonetheless is not necessarily the content from which schema are built (perception), yet is linked to it.

Quoting Isaac

But this need not be the case. If we were to conceive (as I tried to convey earlier) of reality->perception->schema, then we have a co-ordination system 'reality' which nonetheless is not necessarily the content from which schema are built (perception), yet is linked to it.

Doesn't a conceptual scheme dictate what we call "real"?

If you're talking about a "higher reality" that is beyond conceptual scheme, it looks like you'll have our perceptual apparatus directed at something we can't know or talk about. Is that what you mean?

Quoting frank

Doesn't a conceptual scheme dictate what we call "real"?

It does, but what we call real and the concept that there might be hidden states of affairs are two slightly different things. One is the actual content, the other merely the acceptance that there is some content.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not surface irritations, not the world, can make a sentence true.

Davidson was a meaning holist. He saw the root of meaning in usage throughout a language community.

It makes sense if you consider that you don't control the meaning of the sentences you speak.

Quoting Isaac

It does, but what we call real and the concept that there might be hidden states of affairs are two slightly different things.

So you're saying our perceptual apparatus is directed at hidden states? Maybe. If I'm looking at the duck rabbit, I may be aware of the lines that make it up, but my senses lock into the rabbit as soon as I see it.

I think in general, we see what's meaningful to us. Think about music that is meaningless. It's hard to lock on to hearing it.

Quoting frank

So you're saying our perceptual apparatus is directed at hidden states? Maybe. If I'm looking at the duck rabbit, I may be aware of the lines that make it up, but my senses lock into the rabbit as soon as I see it.

Yes, that's how I see it. I cited a paper earlier in the thread all about it. Ideas about perception and models of reality based on inference from it seem to be cropping up in a number of related threads at the moment. If you're interested, I strongly recommend the paper.

Quoting Isaac

Yes, that's how I see it. I cited a paper earlier in the thread all about it. Ideas about perception and models of reality based on inference from it seem to be cropping up in a number of related threads at the moment. If you're interested, I strongly recommend the paper.

My interests have veered off into nihilism lately, which is a long way from Davidson. Just a last question: if there are differing conceptual schemes, would translatability be necessary?

Quoting frank

if there are differing conceptual schemes, would translatability be necessary?

Davidson's point is that we couldn't possibly know they were different without some kind of translatability. To have "a sees p as x, whereas b sees p as y", we must have a 'p' for those two views to be about in order for us to see they are incommensurable, not just different aspects of one coherent theory.

Davidson thinks this means they must be translatable and so not really different according to his dissolution of the model/content distinction (his third dogma), but as I said earlier, that only applies to practice not theory. If 'p' were a hidden state, we could presume there were different models of perception, incommensurable in practice due to the lack of 'accessible' coordinating factor, but nonetheless definitely different by reference to the hidden state 'p'.

This certainly seems to tie in better with modern neuroscience than there being no models at all.

Quoting Isaac

Davidson's point is that we couldn't possibly know they were different without some kind of translatability.

I thought it was: if there are different schemes, the very idea of different schemes implies translatability.

Quoting frank

if there are different schemes, the very idea of different schemes implies translatability.

Yes, that's his conclusion, but his route there is via what he considers the relativist would have to say about the different schemes by reference to their content. That not making any sense is what leads him to reject the notion of different schemes. What he missed, however, is reference to hidden states, which makes a distinction between differences one can actually talk about (via a coordinating factor - perception) and differences one cannot talk about (not having access to the hidden states) but can nonetheless quite coherently speculate exists.

Quoting Isaac

Yes, that's his conclusion, but his route there is via what he considers the relativist would have to say about the different schemes by reference to their content.

I think he was just analyzing the concept of a conceptual scheme. If you accept schemes, you have to accept translatability.

Quoting Isaac

What he missed, however, is reference to hidden states,

Transcendentalism? Are you a neo-Kantian?

Reply to frank

Hidden states just refers to the fact that we don't have direct access to the causes of our sensations, they are caused by some hidden states of the world, which we can only infer using models. We meta-model things this way because our perceptions seem inconsistent (both intersubjectively, and temporally) in a manner difficult to explain by variations in points of reference.

Reply to Isaac Garden variety indirect realist, then.

Quoting frank

Garden variety indirect realist, then.

Basically, yes.

Quoting Isaac

Garden variety indirect realist, then.
— frank

Basically, yes.

Indirect realism has been pretty popular since optics and lenses were the big thing. I think Davidson had probably heard of it. :cool:

Another weakness in Davidson's argument:

"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."

A clearer statement of the above might be:

"We are not in a position to judge by way of our underlying methodology of interpretation that others have concepts or beliefs radically different from our own."

Fair enough. But since others consistently claim to hold beliefs (radically?) different from our own, what are we to make of their claims? It would be ipsocentric to suggest our own beliefs are the standard by which the existence of other beliefs are to be analyzed or granted existential status.



Also, as a footnote: Why are we suddenly talking about concepts and beliefs? I'll have to take a look at home after work, but it seems that the bulk of Davidson's argument is centered on concepts without making much of a fuss about beliefs.

Reply to Isaac You are talking about models of perception, yes? The notion that an organism builds an internal image of what is around it, in order to better choose pathways and so on?

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm This looks promising...

But not right now.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm Hm. I've seen more convincing arguments... Is this any more than a play on "basis"?

Quoting frank

Doesn't a conceptual scheme dictate what we call "real"?

That's the presumption.... yes.

Quoting Isaac

It does, but what we call real and the concept that there might be hidden states of affairs are two slightly different things. One is the actual content, the other merely the acceptance that there is some content.

Mystical, hidden stuff... how do we talk about that?

Reply to frank Yep.

Quoting frank

if there are different schemes, the very idea of different schemes implies translatability.

:up:

Quoting Banno

Hm. I've seen more convincing arguments... Is this any more than a play on "basis"?

Not sure. Spell it out.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm Maybe tomorrow.

Anytime is fine.

The first few paragraphs, then.

Davidson begins by characterising the notion of conceptual scheme he wishes to critique. A conceptual scheme is such that what counts as real is relative to the scheme, because the scheme supposedly organises and categorises our experiences. Hence, what is said in one scheme is incommensurable with what is said in some other scheme, since any standard that might be used to relate one scheme to another is itself part of one scheme or another.

Notice that he is not arguing that this is the case, but setting out the characteristics of the notion of conceptual scheme to which the article is being addressed.

The obvious question is, are there advocates of such schemes? Whorf and Kuhn are mentioned later. Feyerabend, arguably. Epistemic relativism is not at all uncommon on this forum.

Davidson gives examples of impressively different descriptions, but notes that these differences are set out in a single language.

This presages the strategy he is going to employ; that the claimed incommensurable descriptions are set out in the one language - in this case, English; and that hence, they are not incommensurate.

SO Davidson sets up a paradox. On one hand is the notion that there are points of view so radically different as to be incomparable. On the other, we could only be aware of this by comparing both points of view.

He then proposes that translation provides a way to compare conceptual schema. Not translation merely from one language to another, since folk with differing languages may share a conceptual scheme; but translation from one conceptual scheme to another. In this way one might be able to identify each conceptual scheme in terms of the way it translates, one into the other.

There's a possible objection here in that one might argue that conceptual schemes somehow inhere in the mind without or before language. Sometimes @creativesoul seems to think something like this. I'd suggest that if this were so, then either this purely mental stuff can be translated into our everyday language, in which case its purpose is lost; or if the mental stuff cannot be translated into our everyday language, then it are irrelevant to the discussion, dropping out like a boxed beetle.

Davidson takes a paragraph to set aside mystical considerations. He seems to find them incoherent.

So we find, if we accept these considerations, that language cannot be set aside unless one also sets aside ones conceptual scheme; we find ourselves in the position of equating translation of language with translation of conceptual scheme. We may say that if what one person holds to be the case cannot be translated for another person, then these two folk hold to distinct conceptual schemes.

We have then a way of elucidating, and differentiating, conceptual schemes based on translation.

Can translation fail totally?

There's then a glorious compression of Davidson's conclusion into a single sentence, containing no less than four negations.

Suppose one sees a certain activity, and wants to know if it is language behaviour or not. Could one recognise a behaviour as language use without also understanding what was being said? Could a cetologist conclude that some given dolphin behaviour was language without also being able to say what the dolphins were discussion - at least in the most general terms?

It seems not. But Davidson is not happy just to accept this, he wants to present an argument for it.

Quoting Banno

Could one recognise a behaviour as language use without also understanding what was being said?

I know when a dolphin is trying to talk but I don't always know what a dolphin is saying. Also a young child. Also (I do life enrichment in long-term care) stroked-out aphasics. But go on.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm And that's why Davidson does not use that argument, but only mentions it here as a conclusion.

Reply to Banno Yes. A brief minor tangent. No problem. I'm more interested in the meat of the scheme-content dogma.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm I read the stuff about scheme-content dogma as another side-issue, part of the set up for the discussion of the implications of T-sentences.

Reply to Banno

That makes sense, considering your fondness for them. How do you read it?

Davidson goes off in search of a way to analyse translation. He's heading to T-sentences, but he takes his time.

There's a brief mention that being able to understand a language seems very close to being able to attribute complex attitudes to folk.

He considers the transitivity of language; language A translates into language B, and so on, until at language X there is no longer anything left from language A. HE raises the issue of how we would know that someone along this path was engaged in translation... how would we be able to tell that Fred was translating language W into language X unless we already understood one or the other? But he rejects this path, too.

Davidson then makes an interesting distinction between two sorts of possible worlds...

In one, we alter what is the case in this world in order to construct other possible worlds. This I take to be the usual brief of modal logic. "...using a fixed system of concepts... we describe alternate universes"; and is associated with a dualism of necessary and possible sentences.

In the other, which he attributes to Kuhn but for which we might blame quite a few others, what is the case is held steady while those observing create their own conceptual worlds. This forces a divide between scheme and content.

All sorts of traps here, too; the difference between analytic-synthetic and necessary-possible, for one.

After a quote from Feyerabend he considers what would be involved in the case where the content was held firm while the conceptual scheme changes, and one finds oneself in a different world.

A favourite argument of mine comes next, one I have borrowed many times, so I will quote at length:

Suppose that in my office of Min- ister of Scientific Language I want the new man to stop using words that refer, say, to emotions, feelings, thoughts and inten- tions, and to talk instead of the physiological states and happen- ings 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.

Thus falls the Churchland's attempt to eliminate folk psychology.

Davidson appears to take analytic-synthetic and scheme-content to be much the same distinction here. I don't quite follow that.

But I will happily join him in rejecting the analytic-synthetic distinction. All language is post-hoc, if you will; none of it has meaning without context; none is known a priori.

So Davidson comes to consider a definition of language and conceptual schemes that is not reliant on translation; that there is stuff, the stuff needs sorting, and the conceptual scheme is what does that sorting. Davidson is here squashing a vast range of philosophical ideas into few small paragraphs; and in summarising it I am insulting it further. Experience, sense data, phenomena, prediction, the given...

He sorts the sorting into two sorts... organising and fitting. Organising is dividing the stuff up into simples and complexes. Fitting involves more interaction, or at least further iteration, as stuff is sorted to suit one's needs, attitudes, or whatever.

He then first considers organising stuff, and next, fitting stuff.

Doubtless in making Davidson's path clear to myself here, I've lost what very few readers remained.

On the edge of my seat here.

So we have a distinction between stuff, and language as sorting that stuff by organising it. Conceptual schema would then be the sorting.

So incommensurable schema would be incommensurable sorting of the same stuff.

Now one might agree that we could disagree as to how to sort this or that; but it makes no sense to suggest we disagree about everything. Davidson talks of organising the closet as opposed to organising the shirts in the closet - it's much the same point as Wittgenstein made in On Certainty; one might doubt something, but one cannot sensibly doubt everything; since then one must doubt the very stuff that makes doubt possible.

So one cannot make sense of incompatible schema in this way.

Quoting Banno

Davidson appears to take analytic-synthetic and scheme-content to be much the same distinction here. I don't quite follow that.

This paper may help to clarify that bit. Are you familiar with it?

"Two Dogmas of Empiricism"

http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html

Then we have the stuff sorted by how we interact with it - how it fits.

Davidson argues that to fit is to be true. Pretty simple.

And this is the bit that @ZzzoneiroCosm questioned earlier in this thread.

I see the argument here as a rejection of defining truth in terms of fit. Davidson takes truth as fundamental. That's why fitting the facts adds nothing to being true, why fitting the conceptual scheme is likewise pointless.

And I agree with this. Theories of truth are fraught, because we already know what it is to be true in any given case, and hence any further discussion can only detract from our understanding.

Or, if you prefer... and so to T-sentences.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm Yep. Davidson was Quine's student, and is considered to be continuing Quine's program.

Dang, dropped my slide. that's the trouble with glass. Not a good day - seem to have broken the ground wire in my Gretsch as well.

I'm off to do other things for a while. Questions and corrections welcome. Also, what bits of what I have written are least clear?

I always preferred glass though. Just need a back-up.

It's all clear to me. I'll probably won't say much till after the T-sentence bit. I did note this inconsistency in Davidson, which may have some connection to your take on the T-sentence:


Davidson's inconsistency relieves the pressure of the most troublesome paragraph, quoted above:

First Davidson says:

"Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true..."

But he closes by saying:

"...the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true..."

Is it nothing or is it objects (specifically, their "antics") that make our sentences true? This looks like a significant inconsistency.

Our attempt to characterize languages or conceptual schemes in terms of the notion of fitting some entity has come down, then, to the simple thought that something is an acceptable conceptual scheme or theory if it is true

T-sentences are central to the way Davidson treats truth, and indeed meaning.

And the criterion of a conceptual scheme different from our own now be- comes: largely true but not translatable.

So an incommensurable conceptual schema will have to be both true and not translatable.

Quoting Banno

You are talking about models of perception, yes? The notion that an organism builds an internal image of what is around it, in order to better choose pathways and so on?

Not entirely, you'd need to read the Friston paper to get a full idea, but I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea, so I'll try to summarise. It's not that an organism builds and internal image of what's around it, so much as the organism has mathematical models of the likelihoods of various causes of the sensations which derive from what's around it. When I say model, I mean mathematical, or at least computational. Davidson seems to see conceptual schema (or at least the claim of conceptual schema which he is dismantling) as a filing cabinet with all the content (the way the world is) filed away. I see conceptual schemes more as rules for behaviour, not content-mediated at all. I don't think our brains are like libraries at all, they're inference machines, actively trying to minimise variance between expectation and sensation, so when Davidson concentrates of the 'storage' aspect (sorting and fitting) he's missing much of where computational neuroscience has gone nowadays

Quoting Banno

Mystical, hidden stuff... how do we talk about that?

Inference.

___

Really nice summary of the paper so far in your latest posts, thanks. If only every thread could go like that - interesting paper > clear exegesis > discussion - we'd have a marvellous forum.

Quoting Banno

So we have a distinction between stuff, and language as sorting that stuff by organising it. Conceptual schema would then be the sorting.

I think this is about right, but I think it misses an elegant bit about the argument. We don't need to know precisely how conceptual schemes work so long as they place necessary constraints on language use. If you can look for the necessary indicators that would be there in language use if conceptual schemes differed wildly, then you don't need to talk about conceptual schemes in general, just about how they should impact language use if they're there at all.

So "language use including interpretation thereof not behaving like there's a scheme-content distinction" is the proposed defeater of "there are wildly varying conceptual schemes that lead to untranslateable sentences between agents that use/have those schemes".

The discussion could be more broad, but it need not be. It's like... propositions and sentences as a minimal worked example.

Quoting Banno

But I will happily join him in rejecting the analytic-synthetic distinction. All language is post-hoc, if you will; none of it has meaning without context; none is known a priori.

This caught my eye. Pointing with words, commanding, asking, apologizing, condemning, etc. aren't post hoc. They're actions as much as running or climbing.

Analysis is post hoc. Identifying the use of logic is post hoc. Separating words from meaning (which is required for translation) is post hoc.

Per Quine, the ability to apply logic to new situations has to be innate. It can't be learned.

Right?

Thanks for the exposition @Banno.

Being somewhat concrete and visual in my thinking, I like to see how things work in practice. So here's one I watched earlier.

There are two aspects that relate somewhat, that I want to mention, and anyway it's a fascinating program if you have access.

The first is a matter of translation. The Himba are said to have 'marriages' but they differ from the Christian tradition in being polygamous, and more of a social organisation than anything remotely romantic or even sexual. Other relationships are translated as having 'girlfriends' and 'boyfriends', and one woman talked quite openly and matter-of-factly about her boyfriend being the father of her most of her children. Marriage for the Himba man seems to be mainly a matter of having someone-or two or three to cook for him. It's a social relation for which there is no English word, and we use 'marriage' with a new meaning that becomes gradually clearer as one watches the programs.

Quoting Banno

So we find, if we accept these considerations, that language cannot be set aside unless one also sets aside ones conceptual scheme; we find ourselves in the position of equating translation of language with translation of conceptual scheme. We may say that if what one person holds to be the case cannot be translated for another person, then these two folk hold to distinct conceptual schemes.

So all I want to say is that in practice, translation has to involve a learning of a new culture - my brief characterisation here is as inadequate as the translation it points out the inadequacy of.

The second aspect has to do with those 'deep biases' of the article linked above, and relates to certain threads current here.

The show has attracted some negative criticism. The representation of Himba participants has been described as racist and exploitative, while the Moffatt family were seen as selfish and ignorant.

Yet while critics of the show may be well meaning, their views portray the Himba as passive victims with neither agency nor power, and the Moffatts as uneducated intruders. This reveals a deeply embedded paternalistic and imperialistic view of both Indigenous and working-class people and highlights why we need TV shows that challenge these biases.

My view of the article's view of the critic's view of the program's portrayal and treatment of a culture, or rather of two cultures, is that there is indeed 'a measurement problem' that is very real, even if the very idea of it is incoherent.

Quoting fdrake

So "language use including interpretation thereof not behaving like there's a scheme-content distinction" is the proposed defeater of "there are wildly varying conceptual schemes that lead to untranslateable sentences between agents that use/have those schemes".

Nothing is in principle untranslatable, but in practice in so many cases, life's too short.

Quoting Banno

He then proposes that translation provides a way to compare conceptual schema. Not translation merely from one language to another, since folk with differing languages may share a conceptual scheme; but translation from one conceptual scheme to another. In this way one might be able to identify each conceptual scheme in terms of the way it translates, one into the other.

There's a possible objection here in that one might argue that conceptual schemes somehow inhere in the mind without or before language. Sometimes creativesoul seems to think something like this. I'd suggest that if this were so, then either this purely mental stuff can be translated into our everyday language, in which case its purpose is lost; or if the mental stuff cannot be translated into our everyday language, then it are irrelevant to the discussion, dropping out like a boxed beetle.

Interesting thread Banno. Just to set aside any misunderstanding, I do not think that conceptual schemes inhere in the mind without or prior to language. To quite the contrary...

Conceptual schemes are metacognitive guidelines of sorts. They are existentially dependent upon rather complex language use. If they alone determine what sorts of things we say are real, then they are a standard for use of the notion. So, rather than thinking that conceptual schemes inhere in the mind without or prior to language, it seems to me that some of the basic elemental constituents of conceptual schemes do, namely rudimentary level thought and belief and all that that requires.

I am in near complete agreement with you and Davidson here, if I understand correctly.



I've recently used the term "incommensurate" to characterize the relationship between two differing views, particularly when there are fundamental differences in frameworks/taxonomies such that they do not translate one into the other as far as certain key terms go. Simply put... one term... more than one referent. The point, I think being made by Davidson and yourself, is that by virtue of my being able to understand that much, by virtue of being able to discern the different referents, the two schemes are translatable one into the other.

Moreover, if there is but one world, this would have to be the case.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

So is it nothing or is it objects that make our sentences true? This seems to be a significant inconsistency.

He's equivocating the use of the word make. It's one of the many jokes he scatters through the text, like the use of the phrase "true to the facts" at the start of that paragraph - a reference to another article of his, in which he appears to accept a correspondence theory of truth. I think it clear from other writings, and from secondary sources, that he rejects any correspondence theory of truth. Further while truth for him involves coherence, he rejects coherence theories of truth.

SO no thing makes a statement true; that is, there is no depth in being true, nothing to be explained, no correspondence to facts or what ever. Quite deflating.

Davidson italicises the thing I think in order to emphasis something like that there can be no theory that sets out the things that make a sentence true. I've italicised makes for you, Zzz, for much the same reason. "The point is put better without mentioning facts"

That's all a bit wobbly. With some reservation I might describe Davidson as saying that there can be no theory of what true is - "nothing makes our sentences true"; but that we are caused to assent to some sentences and not others - the things in the world make us believe such-and-such. The bit that worries you is a play on this.

And that brings out the relation between being true and being believed.

Pretty much all that can be said of truth is found in Convention T; any sentence can be put into the form "p" is true if and only if p.

Notice that the "p" on the left is quoted, not used - I have had so many arguments with folk on these fora simply because they didn't...

Quoting Banno

After a quote from Feyerabend he considers what would be involved in the case where the content was held firm while the conceptual scheme changes, and one finds oneself in a different world.

A favourite argument of mine comes next, one I have borrowed many times, so I will quote at length:

Suppose that in my office of Min- ister of Scientific Language I want the new man to stop using words that refer, say, to emotions, feelings, thoughts and inten- tions, and to talk instead of the physiological states and happen- ings 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.

Thus falls the Churchland's attempt to eliminate folk psychology.

This dovetails nicely with thought, belief, and meaning as correlations. In this case, shiny new phrases play the role of the messy old mental concepts solely by virtue of shared referent.

So, any conceptual scheme worthy of consideration will be true.

What, then, can we say about being true?

T-sentences present a bare minimum It's pretty much undeniable that: "p" is true if and only if p.

Of course, plenty will deny it, especially in an on-line philosophy forum where denying stuff is what we do. From what I've seen over time, those who deny T-sentences simple have not understood them.

I just deleted a detailed account of the bits of a T-sentence, because on thinking about it its probably better to keep it simple. Folk over-think them far too much.

Yet the totality of such English sentences uniquely determines the extension of the concept of truth for English.

So here we have the whole of the truth.

Who'd have thought it could be so simple.

What we must agree on is that any theory of truth that does not stand in good stead with convention T can be rejected out of hand.

We ought also note Tarski's generalisation.

s is true IFF p

in which "s" is some statement and "p" is a translation of that statement.

Quoting Banno

T-sentences present a bare minimum It's pretty much undeniable that: "p" is true if and only if p.

Deflated truth? One has to assume that epistemically, I might be an uneducated pleb that can't understand academic rigour, and that may as well be true too...

SO let's now apply convention T to conceptual schemes.

We saw that any conceptual scheme worthy of the title must be true. What we want to know is if there can be a conceptual scheme that is both true and untranslatable.

So slot that into our generalised T-sentence, replacing "s" with the mooted untranslatable conceptual scheme, and "p" with the impossible translation.

s is true IFF p

Think on that a bit. I hope it is obvious that we could not know that s is true, unless we had a translation of s; but by the very presumption that s is untranslatable, we reach an impasse.

We could not know that some untranslatable conceptual scheme was indeed true.

Hence, the very idea of a true, untranslatable conceptual scheme is incoherent.

QED?

Quoting Isaac

When I say model, I mean mathematical, or at least computational. Davidson seems to see conceptual schema (or at least the claim of conceptual schema which he is dismantling) as a filing cabinet with all the content (the way the world is) filed away. I see conceptual schemes more as rules for behaviour, not content-mediated at all.

Davidson makes pretty much the same point as you, in dividing conceptual schemes into those that organise stuff and those that fit stuff. Yours is of the fit variety.

so this is about your version.

SO it seems to me that your version of conceptual schemes has been addressed twice. Firstly, if your scheme is not intended to be true but merely predictive, then it's not a conceptual scheme of the sort being discussed here, and is irrelevant. Secondly, if your scheme divides the world into stuff and what we do with it then it is based on a false premise.

Reply to fdrake Not sure I follow you.


Um, actually, I am sure I don't follow you.

Quoting frank

Per Quine, the ability to apply logic to new situations has to be innate. It can't be learned.

He said something like that?

And yet in Two Dogmas, he rejects the distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions.

You version of Quine does not match with mine.

Quoting Banno

Notice that the "p" on the left is quoted, not used - I have had so many arguments with folk on these fora simply because they didn't...

Quoting Banno

We ought also note Tarski's generalisation.

s is true IFF p

in which "s" is some statement and "p" is a translation of that statement.

Typo or I didn't...

Quoting Banno

So, any conceptual scheme worthy of consideration will be true.

What does it mean for a conceptual scheme to be true or false? How would we tell the difference?

Reply to unenlightened Thanks.

Davidson's approach is intrinsically extensional. He does this of course to simplify the discussion; but moreover, he elsewhere goes to great lengths to suggest that all that intensional stuff is irrelevant.

It's not unlike Wittgenstein pointing out that the beetle drops out of the discussion - the beetle being the messy, unspoken, intensional stuff. But where are Davidson just ignores intensionality, Wittgenstein takes it to be the most important bit. I'm with Witti.

I watched that program; I thought the Himba showed great dignity and wisdom in dealing with a family that to them would have been childish.

That's not a criticism of the Moffatts. Any western family dropped into that situation would be childish.

Quoting unenlightened

Nothing is in principle untranslatable, but in practice in so many cases, life's too short.

Yep. Language is how we live our lives, and all this analysis is pretty much irrelevant, a jigsaw puzzle, a distraction...

Or for me at the moment, procrastination. I so hate marking.

Quoting Banno

We could not know that some untranslatable conceptual scheme was indeed true.

Hence, the very idea of a true, untranslatable conceptual scheme is incoherent.

Right.

Quoting Banno

He said something like that?

Yes. Truth by Convention. An innate ability isn't analytic knowledge. We have all sorts of innate abilities. It shouldn't be surprising that some of them have to do with applying logic.

Quoting creativesoul

I do not think that conceptual schemes inhere in the mind without or prior to language. To quite the contrary...

Glad to hear it. But sometimes...

Reply to Janus Yeah. Have you read the article?

It's strange that many continental philosophers like Habermas or Derrida might chime in here and say, if everyone we're so full of compassion and understanding, why all the wars in the world?

Care to take a shot at that one, @Banno?

Reply to frank Perhaps it's just that I would not call using logic an ability... It's just beinh coherent.

As for what's innate, I'll leave that tot he psychologists.

Reply to Wallows Charity here is not compassion. It's a fucking hammer.

Quoting Banno

Charity here is not compassion. It's a fucking hammer.

See, and you do have to resort to intentionality, don't you? And, that's where your or Davidson's analysis becomes flimsy.

Quoting Wallows

intentionality

Intensionality. Not the same thing.

Quoting Banno

Intensionality. Not the same thing.

Relatable in the least one should suppose.

Anyway, how do you address that beetle? I have one, and so do you; but, we shouldn't be behaviorist about their relatability?

Edit: Talking lions, family resemblances, language games, etc.

Reply to Wallows This is a thread about Davidson. I've enough to do with just that.

I get a bit pissed off with folk - not you, of course - who think philosophy is easy.

Did you read the article linked in the OP.

Quoting Banno

This is a thread about Davidson. I've enough to do with just that.

OK, I'll respect that.

Quoting Banno

I get a bit pissed off with folk - not you, of course - who think philosophy is easy.

Well, you can lead by example, or just interpret away. I figure you're somewhat more of the example and showing rather than telling type.

Quoting Banno

Did you read the article linked in the OP.

Bits and pieces; but, lemme redo that.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm

SO I hope I've shown that the centre of the argument is about truth and translation rather than common coordinate systems, although of course the two are not unrelated.

Quoting Davidson, Conceptual Schema, pg.7

First, then, the purported cases of complete failure. It is tempting to take a very short line indeed: nothing, it may be said, 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. If this were right, we probably ought to hold that a form of activity that cannot be interpreted as language in our language is not speech behavior. Putting matters this way is unsatisfactory, however, for it comes to little more than making translatability into a familiar tongue a criterion of languagehood.

Languagehood, eh? So, he's the blacksmith here?

The dolphins are worth considering.

They show langauge-like behaviour. The task then would be to find instances of that behaviour to which we could attach an english description... "that was a very tasty fish", or whatever. We could then write

"click-squeek-click" is true iff that is a tasty fish.

But what if all they are doing is playing instrumental music? Base riffs an lead solos. A language without truth.

@unenlightened?

Reply to Banno An author could write a story about untranslatable conceptual schemes and the idea would be coherent. But that's not the kind of scheme Davidson is addressing. He's talking about identifying conceptual schemes while supposedly immersed in one. That's what's incoherent.

Quoting frank

the idea would be coherent.

The story would be coherent, but not the scheme.

Davidson talks a lot about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis glancingly, can you elaborate on how he does away with the cognitivism of the hypothesis, seemingly?

Quoting Banno

The story would be coherent, but not the scheme.

The earthings wouldn't be able to make sense of the alien language, true.

Reply to frank I disagree. Can you see why, after reading this thread?

Reply to Wallows I wrote a thread on that somewhere...


Ah, here it is!

Quoting Banno

But what if all they are doing is playing instrumental music? Base riffs an lead solos. A language without truth.

"all they are doing"? As if we oldies do not provide an eloquent wordless accompaniment to our every movement. A language of groans is all truth. Well perhaps not all, because we all know the difference between performance tears and real distress.

Reply to unenlightened

"Arrrgh" is true IFF bloody arthritis.

Quoting Banno

disagree. Can you see why, after reading this thread?

In the story one human learns the alien language, but it remains untranslatable into any human language. The learner gains a new ability related to temporal perception. It's a great movie.

This isnt the kind of conceptual difference Davidson is disputing.

Reply to frank It's dealt with in the part of the article where Davidson talks about the transitivity of English.

Quoting Banno

It's dealt with in the part of the article where Davidson talks about the transitivity of English.

I don't see how that section applies to the story.

Reply to frank How can you tell that the protagonist has understood the alien language?

Reply to Banno

Let's be honest, people get bullied to death on Facebook/4chan/Reddit/God knows where, on the internets. We seem to bat a blind eye to the distress of the young until it's too late (school shootings, something going on in our great USA).

I don't see how the Sapir-Whorf hypothesi isn't factually relevant to the discussion.

Quoting Banno

How can you tell that the protagonist has understood the alien language?

The author said so.

Quoting Wallows

I don't see how the Sapir-Whorf hypothesi isn't factually relevant to the discussion.

Then the task for you might be to show how it is relevant. Set it out.

But then, even if relevant, is it right?

Reply to frank Yep. It's fiction.

Quoting Banno

Yep. It's fiction.

The author has a transcendent vantage point. We don't.

Quoting Banno

Then the task for you might be to show how it is relevant.

Psychology...Talk therapy? CBT? I think you get the point.

Reply to frank Yep. So what is the lesson? What does your story tell us about conceptual schema?

Quoting Banno

Yep. So what is the lesson? What does your story tell us about conceptual schema?

That people who propose them are assuming a vantage point that their own reasoning says they can't have.

Reply to frank Seems so.

Reply to Banno When Wittgenstein talked about forms of life, did he mean conceptual schemes?

Reply to frank Here's a whole other thread.

Some folk think so; I don't.

Some folk think he meant forms of life to be incommensurable. But I don't see how that could be maintained.

See PI 241.

"So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?" -- It is what human beings say that is true and false, and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.

Have a read of thereabouts. Lots of parallels.

But in the end i think he just meant "form of life" as some sort of collection of language games together with what we do with them.

I have a vague recollection of Feyerabend talking as if language games were incommensurable. If he did, I think he was wrong. Chess 960 is still chess.

@Sam26?

Quoting Banno

I have a vague recollection of Feyerabend talking as if language games were incommensurable. If he did, I think he was wrong. Chess 960 is still chess.

Me too. But it's been awhile. Even visiting this paper has been awhile. I remember getting the gist of it and thinking it a strong argument, but getting caught up in understanding Tarski.

Been enjoying the recap.

Reply to Moliere Cheers.

Reply to Banno Digging through some of my notes on this --

https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057

is a paper that argues in favor of your notion of translatability from the historical perspective while using one of the classic examples Kuhn liked -- from Aristotle to Newton.

My take-away from this was that we can translate one project into another. But I wonder, along the way, what is lost from Aristotle in the translation? What motivates Kuhn to talk of paradigms, where Rovelli wishes to demonstrate harmony between supposedly different worldviews?

And it was probably around this time that I began to have a shift in interests with respect to philosophy that took me down just entirely different paths than science and its history. Hence why I'm still just right here on the issue. :D I just thought you might enjoy the paper.

Reply to Moliere Sweet article. I like the point that Aristotle was dealing with objects in a fluid - One of those things that is obvious, once someone else points it out to you.

It is curious to read everywhere “Why didn’t Aristotle do the actual experiment?”. I would retort: “Those writing this, why don’t they do the actual experiment?”. They would find Aristotle right.

:up:

Reply to Banno Looking forward to sifting through all of this tomorrow.

Reply to Banno It's a very smart paper that caters to my approach, and which drew my interest because -- which may be predictable -- I meant to disagree with it. :)

Though perhaps less so now.

I've finished reading The Very Idea... again.

Going back to this here: Reply to Banno -- I think I see why I got stuck on Tarski. For one he's dense as all living hell. But also Tarski kind of seems to play the lynch-pin in the argument. I'm not grasping coming from the generalized form that Davidson cites

"S is true iff P"

to the conclusion that we could not make sense of a simultaneously true and untranslatable "x" -- I'm not grasping why truth is so important to translation. Or to quote Davidson -

...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.

Perhaps not an assumption. It should be argued for. But I first needed to understand just why truth is so important to translation. It seems that Davidson believes this to be so because without taking such and such a person's beliefs to be true we would be unable to communicate at all -- that there is a kind of kernel of truth (edit: too poetic -- that we must hold beliefs true for another in order to translate?) to making sense of one another. And it seems we do this all the time.

But to list where my suspicion is coming from -- not to persuade -- I think of the opposite also happening; a kind of phenomenological argument. There are times when there's a bed of agreement upon which meaningful disagreement takes place, and there are times when I don't know what another person means and feel this exact sort of disconnect. Which doesn't preclude a bridge, of course, but it seems to me that we encounter what Davidson lays out as an incoherent idea. But this is definitely not the sort of approach which would convince an advocate of Davidson, I'd think, because it is phenomenological and drawing from influence of existential authors.


So onto persuasion, or perhaps a deeper understanding. What's the deal with truth in Tarski? Is it not possible for there to be two languages (reading with Davidson that this is closely analogous to conceptual schemes) with some sentences that are true and are not translatable into one another? I mean I guess in the silly case we could say "The snow is white" is true iff Der Ozean ist Wasser. But that's not what's meant, I think. Would the argument for incommensurability be required to supply two such sentences? And, if we ramp up the charity, couldn't we show how such an example is actually translatable?

Quoting Banno

if your scheme is not intended to be true but merely predictive, then it's not a conceptual scheme of the sort being discussed here, and is irrelevant.

Maybe so, but if that's the case then the comment which drew me to this discussion in the first place is off mark. You claimed that "The idea of models is fraught, and ultimately fails, for reasons outlined by Davidson", so really I was looking, in this discussion, for some justification for that. The possibility that I'm talking about a type of model outside of the scope of Davidson's critique doesn't really tally with a claim that all talk of models ultimately fails. Is there some further discussion in some of Davidson's other works you can direct me to that covers the types of model I might be using?

Presuming for now the second of your options

Quoting Banno

if your scheme divides the world into stuff and what we do with it then it is based on a false premise.

Incommensurable and 'not translatable' are two different claims. If you follow a concept-scheme divide where content is the states of affairs in the world, then yes, it's difficult to see how incommensurable schemes could exist if translatable (the objects of reference being understood). But that only seems to work under that assumption. If, like Kuhn, we see the world as inaccessible directly, then the content of the schemes are perception related to (but not identical to) the actual states of the world. Thus, there'd be every reason to think translatability might be possible, but still have an incommensurable organisation of the sensory perceptions those schemes allow.

It is not that case that a scheme fitting a hidden state is that same as a scheme being 'true' in a Tarskian sense because truth in a Tarskian sense is not about correspondence (nor should it be - I'm quite happy with Tarski's definition). Truth, from a Tarskian perspective would be about translatability between experience and schema which would fall foul of Davidson's criticism and therefore lead to the a conclusion that the distinction must be discarded. But the sorts of models I'm talking about (and to be honest I think the one's Kuhn was talking about too, but I'm no expert on him), suffer no such problem, because the correspondence has nothing to do with truth of propositions, it has to do with behaviour - beliefs, dispositions to act.

Quoting Banno

See PI 241.

"So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?" -- It is what human beings say that is true and false, and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.

Have a read of thereabouts. Lots of parallels.

I was trying to go without ever actually reading Wittgenstein. :shade:

Quoting frank

I was trying to go without ever actually reading Wittgenstein. :shade:

Why cut yourself off? He's as interesting as any other philosopher.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Why cut yourself off? He's as interesting as any other philosopher.

I only got interested in analytic philosophy because I wondered how they answered the problem of induction. I read about Wittgenstein, but didn't see his contributions as being particularly interesting, and probably on the mystical side. What do you like about him?

I'm really not competent to talk about him but I read his two books six or seven years ago and they were interesting enough.

Quoting Banno

What, then, can we say about being true?

T-sentences present a bare minimum It's pretty much undeniable that: "p" is true if and only if p.

Of course, plenty will deny it, especially in an on-line philosophy forum where denying stuff is what we do. From what I've seen over time, those who deny T-sentences simple have not understood them.

I just deleted a detailed account of the bits of a T-sentence, because on thinking about it its probably better to keep it simple. Folk over-think them far too much.

Yet the totality of such English sentences uniquely determines the extension of the concept of truth for English.

So here we have the whole of the truth.

Who'd have thought it could be so simple.

What we must agree on is that any theory of truth that does not stand in good stead with convention T can be rejected out of hand.

We ought also note Tarski's generalisation.

s is true IFF p
in which "s" is some statement and "p" is a translation of that statement.

All of this is clear and non-problematic. It seems silly to split hairs over the T-sentence.

Quoting Banno

It's one of the many jokes he scatters through the text

I have to concede that if Davidson is making jokes or being cute I don't have the background to recognize it.

Quoting Banno

SO no thing makes a statement true; that is, there is no depth in being true, nothing to be explained, no correspondence to facts or what ever. Quite deflating.

To deepen my understanding...

Take the sentence: "The snow is white" is true iff the snow is white.

I take this formula to be the linguistic form the truth must take; but it's a formula without the ability to make a truth-claim. Nothing in this formula is claiming that it's true that the snow is white. The entire thing is a conditional.

So we have a formula, but to put it to use we need a fact: Namely, the snow's whiteness.



In your view, is it accurate to say the T-sentence reflects the form (or formulatability) of truth, without actually saying a thing about what is true?


(After saying - "The snow is white" is true iff the snow is white - we still don't know whether it's true that the snow is white. We do, however, know that if the snow is white, it follows that "the snow is white" is true...)

Quoting Banno

Thus falls the Churchland's attempt to eliminate folk psychology.

Curious about what this means.

Quoting Banno

I do not think that conceptual schemes inhere in the mind without or prior to language. To quite the contrary...
— creativesoul

Glad to hear it. But sometimes.

Sometimes... I'm either not clear enough, or you misunderstand. As you well know, my own position regarding thought, belief, and meaning is unique.

What do you make of Davidson's take on the need for a workable theory of meaning and an acceptable theory of belief?

From the top of page 18...

I suggest, following Quine, that we may without circularity or unwarranted assumptions accept certain very general attitudes towards sentences as the basic evidence for a theory of radical interpretation. For the sake of the present discussion at least we may depend on the attitude of accepting as true, directed at sentences, as the crucial notion. (A more full-blooded theory would look to other attitudes towards sentences as well, such as wishing true, wondering whether true, intending to make true, and so on). Attitudes are indeed involved here, but the fact that the main issue is not begged can be seen from this: if we merely know that someone holds a certain sentence to be true, we know neither what he means by the sentence nor what belief his holding it true represents. His holding the sentence true is thus the vector of two forces: the problem of interpretation is to abstract from the evidence a workable theory of meaning and an acceptable theory of belief.

"The crucial notion"...

Belief.

This is my third attempt at a reply to your post...

There is considerable background here that I was taking for granted, but it seems would be fair to point out.

Quoting Moliere

I'm not grasping coming from the generalized form that Davidson cites

"S is true iff P"

to the conclusion that we could not make sense of a simultaneously true and untranslatable "x"

SO let's unpack this:

We recognize sentences like" 'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white" to be trivially true.Yet the totality of such English sentences uniquely determines the extension of the concept of truth for English.

You will already understand that extension is a technical term, opposed to intension, and referring to the very things that a term picks out as opposed to the criteria use to do that picking. What Davidson seeks to do is to bypass talk of the criteria we use to assign "...is true" to sentences, sweeping aside all that messy stuff about correspondence and coherence and so on. So the extension of the concept of truth in English is just the true English sentences.

So here we have the whole of the truth, set out as T-sentences.

I hope that's clear, but just in case we can approach the issue in another way. Tarski had sort to define "...is true" by playing with meaning. Davidson realised that we could flip this, take "...is true" as fundamental and use T-sentences to set out meaning.

"Schnee ist weiß" is true IFF snow is white. If, for every possible German sentence, we had a true T-sentence with the German quoted on the left and the English used on the right, we would be able to look up any German sentence and find an English equivalent.

We would have used "...is true" to provide a complete translation of German into English. And it would be purely extensional.

If someone were to ask what some given German sentence means, we could look up our database of T-sentences and find the equivalent English sentence. That is, Davidson shows how to replace talk of meaning with talk of truth and translation.
_________________________

So we have a triumvirate of meaning, truth and translation.

Any given conceptual scheme must be both true and meaningful - if not to us, then to those who understand it. Consider someone who has found an incommensurable conceptual scheme. They must be in a position to say "here is a conceptual scheme that is true and meaningful to those who adhere to it, and yet is not translatable into our conceptual scheme".

Now, how could they recognise it as meaningful and true, and yet not have some translation of it?

That is, if there were incommensurable conceptual schemes, we could not recognise them as such.

Hence consideration of incommensurable conceptual schemes makes no sense - literally, is meaningless.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm

Eliminative materialism

Quoting Banno

Now, how could they recognise it as meaningful and true, and yet not have some translation of it?

Do they have to recognize it as being meaningful and true, or merely recognize that it could be meaningful and true for all they know?

Reply to Banno Quoting Banno

Eliminative materialism

I'm familiar with this idea - there's a lot of it around the forums - and a lot of different varieties - but I'm not sure which type you mean to underscore or how it connects to Davidson.

Quoting Banno

Any given conceptual scheme must be both true and meaningful - if not to us, then to those who understand it. Consider someone who has found an incommensurable conceptual scheme. They must be in a position to say "here is a conceptual scheme that is true and meaningful to those who adhere to it, and yet is not translatable into our conceptual scheme".

Now, how could they recognise it as meaningful and true, and yet not have some translation of it?

That is, if there were incommensurable conceptual schemes, we could not recognise them as such.

Hence consideration of incommensurable conceptual schemes makes no sense - literally, is meaningless.

This is the part that I completely agreed with earlier...

The only sticking point to me is the criterion of being both true and meaningful. I'm not sure why a conceptual scheme must be true, unless being true is equivalent to being coherent, consistent, lacking self-contradiction. If that's the case, then I've no issue. Re-reading you, that seems to be your take, but I didn't note Davidson saying as much when reading the paper. Did he? Is it irrelevant to the main thrust?

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm Yep; with certain reservations about "...to put it to use we need a fact...".

Those reservations are to do with there not being any facts of the mater, apart from that snow is white...

That is, we should avoid the reification of facts into something that sits between the statement "snow is white" and the white snow, making it true. That's the "unmediated touch"between statements and stuff.

Reply to creativesoul See here.

Meaning, truth and belief are interlocked.

Or better, the meaning of our various statements is in some part the attitude we adopt towards them.

Belief as a propositional attitude; something perhaps you cannot accept.

The T-sentence is trivially true. It's not a theory and it explains nothing. Deflationary truth is compatible with any kind of ontology.

Quoting Janus

Do they have to recognize it as being meaningful and true, or merely recognize that it could be meaningful and true for all they know?

See the discussion of dolphins, earlier in this thread.

Quoting Banno

Those reservations are to do with there not being any facts of the mater, apart from that snow is white...

This is a bad example since snow is always white. (Unless someone adds something, like pee, to it.)

Let's say:

1) "The sun is setting" is true iff the sun is setting.

How can we put this sentence to use without "pointing to" or "attaching it to" or "corresponding it to" a fact? (Not wanting to quibble over the phraseology.)

Without connecting 1) to some fact, how can it be put to use? It's fine as a formula. But we still don't know whether "the sun is setting" is true.

If T-sentences have no use - if they're just a satisfying, deflationary (setting the extensionality of truth) formula - I don't see an issue. But if T-sentences have a use, it seems they can only be put to use when some person links them to some fact (in this case a setting sun).

I have no issue with the T-sentence formula, but in connection to truth, and the desire to make truthful statements - especially on subjects more complex than snow and the sun - I don't see a way to put it to use.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm I think Davidson's example of the Minister of Scientific Language eliminates eliminative materialism.

Quoting Banno

I think Davidson's example of the Minister of Scientific Language eliminates eliminative materialism.

Ah, okay.

Quoting creativesoul

Did he?

He did.

The point is that for a theory to fit or face up to the totality of possible sensory evidence is for that theory to be true.

and thereabouts.

Quoting frank

The T-sentence is trivially true. It's not a theory and it explains nothing. Deflationary truth is compatible with everybody's ontology.

So what?

Reply to Banno It's a lot to read through. Can't you just answer my question according to your own understanding, or at least link a specific post or posts that you think will answer it?

Quoting Janus

It's a lot to read through.

OK.

Quoting Janus

Do they have to recognize it as being meaningful and true, or merely recognize that it could be meaningful and true for all they know?

A fart could be meaningful and true, for all we know. Do you want to start a discussion on farts?

Go ahead; I'm not interested.

Quoting Banno

I think Davidson's example of the Minister of Scientific Language eliminates eliminative materialism.

In other words: The eliminative materialist - "for all [we] know" (this phrase strikes me as significant to any assessment of the Ministry's old and new dialects) - while using the new dialect may well be referring to the old "mental riff and raff."

Quoting Banno

I'm not interested.

Right, you're not interested in being challenged: I understand.

Quoting Banno

Belief as a propositional attitude; something perhaps you cannot accept.

Yep. That's a sticking point for me... as a general criterion. However, in this context, I can happily accept it, for it is imperative - I think - to grasping the totality of the denial, which I completely agree with. Pre language thought and belief are irrelevant here, for they cannot count as conceptual scheme. Although, they are a part of the world prior to sentences, that may not be a problem.

Quoting Janus

Right, you're not interested in being challenged: I understand.

I agree there's something important in this phrase: "For all I know." (As connected to the Ministry-of-Scientific-Language parable.)

Read the thread and set it out for us. Everybody has to read the thread. Yep, it's a lot to read through.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm Yeah.

I'm with Austin: the language we use every day has evolved over tens of thousands of years; what we have is what has survived generation after generation of elimination of weak expression. It'sour best bet.

Quoting Janus

you're not interested in being challenged:

Quoting Janus

It's a lot to read through.

Not by someone who is too lazy to engage with the challenge, no. I have enough to be getting on with.

Reply to Banno

Was it Davidson who claimed that if we know what it takes for a statement to be true, then we know what the statement means?

Is convention T showing this?

Quoting Banno

I'm with Austin: the language we use every day has evolved over tens of thousands of years; what we have is what has survived generation after generation of elimination of weak expression. It'sour best bet.

So you agree that the phrase "for all I know" is an important part of the parable?

I think the point about the ministry was that a change in terminological use alone does not always guarantee talking about the same things(referents). Hence, for all I know... the person could be using new phrases as names for the same old notions.

Quoting creativesoul

I think the point about the ministry was that a change in terminological use alone does not always guarantee talking about the same things(referents).

Right. The new dialect may or may not be referring to the old referents. It's unknown.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm

That's why Davidson moved on from such an approach, right?

Quoting creativesoul

if we know what it takes for a statement to be true, then we know what the statement means?

Well, what else is there?

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm Yep.

Reply to BannoQuoting creativesoul

That's why Davidson moved on from such an approach, right?

Sure.

But it wouldn't eliminate eliminative materialism, as Banno suggested. It would throw the entire set of referents into question. It would create mystery as to the referents of the new dialect. The old dialect would be thrown into confusion as well, as the influence of the new dialect increased.

Reply to Banno Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

To deepen my understanding...

Take the sentence: "The snow is white" is true iff the snow is white.

I take this formula to be the linguistic form the truth must take; but it's a formula without the ability to make a truth-claim. Nothing in this formula is claiming that it's true that the snow is white. The entire thing is a conditional.

So we have a formula, but to put it to use we need a fact: Namely, the snow's whiteness.



In your view, is it accurate to say the T-sentence reflects the form (or formulatability) of truth, without actually saying a thing about what is true?


(After saying - "The snow is white" is true iff the snow is white - we still don't know whether it's true that the snow is white. We do, however, know that if the snow is white, it follows that "the snow is white" is true...)

Just to be clear, did you say "yep" to all of this?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Read the thread and set it out for us. Everybody has to read the thread. Yep, it's a lot to read through.

I have read through the thread, but I don't remember the specific parts about the dolphins well enough to see how they might answer my question and I think it's not too much to ask someone to link to particular posts if they are citing them rather than expecting me to look back through the thread to try to find which posts might be the ones being referred to.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm Yep.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

This is a bad example since snow is always white. (Unless someone adds something, like pee, to it.)

Let's say:

1) "The sun is setting" is true iff the sun is setting.

How can we put this sentence to use without "pointing to" or "attaching it to" or "corresponding it to" a fact? (Not wanting to quibble over the phraseology.)

Without connecting 1) to some fact, how can it be put to use? It's fine as a formula. But we still don't know whether "the sun is setting" is true.

If T-sentences have no use - if they're just a satisfying, deflationary (setting the extensionality of truth) formula - I don't see an issue. But if T-sentences have a use, it seems they can only be put to use when some person links them to some fact (in this case a setting sun).

I have no issue with the T-sentence formula, but in connection to truth, and the desire to make truthful statements - especially on subjects more complex than snow and the sun - I don't see a way to put it to use.

Reply to Banno

Shit. I meant this one. Did you say "yep" to this?

Reply to Janus

It's not too much to ask. But saying "it's a lot to read through" can be a turn-off.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

It would throw the entire set of referents into question. It would create mystery as to the referents of the new dialect.

Same as usual, then... :razz:

That's the point; the new Scientific Language makes no difference. Eliminative materialism fails to eliminate what it set out to eliminate, and hence should be eliminated.

Reply to Banno

I'm not in disagreement. Uncharacteristic of me... sure. Nonetheless, sometimes convention agrees and/or supports my own position. Davidson has influenced me... through you.

:wink:

From long ago... that very notion... still underlies much of my own approach to thought, belief, and statements thereof.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

But it wouldn't eliminate eliminative materialism, as Banno suggested.

I cannot speak to that.

I am of the view that there is one world, and it includes us. I am further of the view that there are two major categories of things. That which existed in it's entirety prior to language and that which did not. The overlap is the interesting bit here at least. It includes all naming and descriptive practices that are already in use prior to any individual user.

Reply to Banno Davidson closes by saying: In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with...objects...

You mentioned this as a kind of joke. I had been thinking of it as the point of the entire essay. Do you agree - do you think it's important - that Davidson is saying "we reestablish ummediated touch with...objects..."?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

It's not too much to ask. But saying "it's a lot to read through" can be a turn-off.

OK, well what I am questioning is relative to this from the paper:

The key phrase is: for all I know. What is clear is that retention of some or all of the old vocabulary in itself provides no basis for judging the new scheme to be the same as, or different from, the old. So what sounded at first like a thrilling discovery - that truth is relative to a conceptual scheme - has not so far been shown to be anything more than the pedestrian and familiar fact that the truth of a sentence is relative to (among other things) the language to which it belongs. Instead of living in different worlds, Kuhn's scientists may, like those who need Webster's dictionary, be only words apart.

There seems to be an equivocation going on between equating conceptual schemes with whole languages and considering different conceptual schemes within a language.

So, Chinese medicine would seem to be a conceptual scheme, as would Western medicine. Both are understandable in the Chinese languages and in English. Are the two schemes translatable into each other? If you want to say they are not, which I would agree with, then does it follow that one of the schemes must fail to be "true and meaningful"?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

But we still don't know whether "the sun is setting" is true.

Yeah, we do. We know "the sun is setting" is true if the sun is setting. SO if the sun is setting, then "the sun is setting" is true.

What more do you want?

Quoting creativesoul

I am further of the view that there are two major categories of things. That which existed in it's entirety prior to language and that which did not.

Isn't that the distinction Davidson rejects as the third dogma of empiricism?

Quoting Banno

Yeah, we do. We know "the sun is setting" is true if the sun is setting. SO if the sun is setting, then "the sun is setting" is true.

Unless the sun doesn't set, but rather only appears to do so. Then it's not true on a literal reading of the statement, which people used to believe.

There are many such statements in ordinary language which aren't strictly true. And people may or may not believe them. "My heart longs for you my darling!" But no, it doesn't really. It just pumps blood.

Quoting Banno

Yeah, we do. We know "the sun is setting" is true if the sun is setting. SO if the sun is setting, then "the sun is setting" is true.

What more do you want?

But there seems to be a fact in the mix: a setting sun.

Davidson says the sentence doesn't make reference to a fact. "The sun is setting" is true iff the sun is setting - this sentence doesn't refer to a fact; true enough; the fact is obscured by the conditionality. But we need the fact of a setting sun to put the sentence to use. We need the fact of the setting sun to know whether "the sun is setting" is true.

I don't see how this can work without the fact of a setting sun. Can you explain? Or is there a paper on the subject I could take a look at?

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm It's an important joke.

The mediation being rejected here is the baggage of theories of reference, meaning, truth, and so on.

Why do we need them? Folk seem to just get on with using language without the help of epistemologists. Why shouldn't it just be that we use words to talk to each other, and that's it?

Reply to Janus Yeah. I think I have answered that.

Quoting Banno

Why do we need them? Folk seem to just get on with using language without the help of epistemologists. Why shouldn't it just be that we use words to talk to each other, and that's it?

Because maybe as Socrates demonstrated, people don't really know what they're talking about.

Quoting Banno

Why do we need them? Folk seem to just get on with using language without the help of epistemologists. Why shouldn't it just be that we use words to talk to each other, and that's it?

Sure, that sounds great. It seems to be a kind of eliminative skepticism vis-a-vis certain kinds of epistemology, metaphysics, and the rest of it. Is that how you see it?

Quoting Banno

Yeah. I think I have answered that.

Where?

Reply to Marchesk See A nice Derangement of Epitaphs.

Quoting Banno

Isn't that the distinction Davidson rejects as the third dogma of empiricism?

Yes, he rejects the conceptual scheme/ empirical content dualism, and with that rejection I agree.

Quoting Janus

There seems to be an equivocation going on between equating conceptual schemes with whole languages and considering different conceptual schemes within a language.

Can you give us some direct quotations from the paper where you see this happening?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Davidson says the sentence doesn't make reference to a fact. "The sun is setting" is true iff the sun is setting - this sentence doesn't refer to a fact; true enough. But we need the fact of a setting sun to put the sentence to use. We need the fact of the setting sun to know whether "the sun is setting" is true.

There's good reason to suppose that thinking in terms of "referring to a fact" is... problematic. A simple bit of logical substitution will show how this leads to there being only one fact...

See Truth and Meaning

We can reach Quoting Moliere

"The snow is white" is true iff Der Ozean ist Wasser.

quite quickly in this way.

Quoting Banno

See Truth and Meaning

Thanks. I'll take a look.

Reply to Banno Who said we don't have unmediated connection to the objects we think of as real?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

I don't see how this can work without the fact of a setting sun. Can you explain?

So... how does the fact of the setting sun differ from the setting sun?

Is the idea that somehow "the fact of the setting sun" intercedes between the statement "the sun is setting" and the setting sun?

Davidson is rejection that, restoring unmediated touch between "The sun is setting" and the setting sun.

I don't see how to put it more clearly than that. Philosophers have taught themselves to talk in terms of facts, and elevated them to the status of explanations. But they are not needed.

Quoting Banno

I am further of the view that there are two major categories of things. That which existed in it's entirety prior to language and that which did not.
— creativesoul

Isn't that the distinction Davidson rejects as the third dogma of empiricism?

That's an interesting take. The words aren't the same. Are the referents?

I've got a half-dozen browser windows open with a different sub-thread on each. Just going to close down for a bit and let it settle.

Quoting Banno

So... how does the fact of the setting sun differ from the setting sun?

It's fine to eliminate the idea of a fact. But then we have an object (the sun) allowing us to put the sentence to use. Davidson says "nothing, no thing..."

Quoting Janus

Isn't that the distinction Davidson rejects as the third dogma of empiricism?
— Banno

Yes, he rejects the conceptual scheme/ empirical content dualism, and with that rejection I agree.

That's not the distinction I've raised though. I reject both rationalism and empiricism on the same ground.

So, given that Banno was drawing an equivalence between what Davidson called the "third dogma" and what I wrote, then the answer is "No, Davidson did not reject that distinction as the third dogma of empiricism".

The astute listener/reader could then also add, "He did reject the conceptual scheme/empirical content dualism, though. I agree with that rejection."

:wink:

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm But it it not the sun - that very thing, considered apart from all else - that makes "the sun is setting" true.

SO the sun is not the thing that makes "the sun is setting" true...

Quoting Banno

SO the sun is not the thing that makes "the sun is setting" true...

Particularly since it's not true that the sun does set when speaking of the actual sun.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

But then we have an object (the sun) allowing us to put the sentence to use. Davidson says "nothing, no thing..."

We have an appearance of a setting sun. The actual fact of the matter is the Earth's rotation.

Why is being pedantic about this important? Because we're talking about truth.

Consider saying, "The stick is bent when in water". That would be false. Same thing here.

Quoting Marchesk

SO the sun is not the thing that makes "the sun is setting" true...
— Banno

Particularly since it's not true that the sun does set when speaking of the actual sun.

Don't bite Banno.

It's too easy, and the interesting stuff we're heading towards has yet to have come...

Quoting Banno

But it it not the sun - that very thing, considered apart from all else - that makes "the sun is setting" true.

SO the sun is not the thing that makes "the sun is setting" true...

So it's more the history of language use - the linguistic-holism-thing somebody mentioned earlier - that makes the sentence true?

Quoting Marchesk

Particularly since it's not true that the sun does set when speaking of the actual sun.

Hu? So when you say that the sun is setting, you are never talking about the actual sun?

Quoting Marchesk

We have an appearance of a setting sun.

Nuh. That's off-track.

Quoting creativesoul

Don't bite Banno.

Damn. You are right. End of that discussion, March.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm

Davidson rejects truth makers...

Quoting Marchesk

We have an appearance of a setting sun. The actual fact of the matter is the Earth's rotation.

Of course. It's just an example sentence. Let's stay on track.

Quoting creativesoul

Davidson rejects truth makers...

Is there a paper on this? Preferably by Davidson.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

So it's more the history of language use - the linguistic-holism-thing somebody mentioned earlier - that makes the sentence true?

Yes - but no - nothing makes the sentence true.

Quoting Banno

Hu? So when you say that the sun is setting, you are never talking about the actual sun?

It's a fact that the sun does not set. The reason we have that as part of our language is because of an outdated astronomy where the word usage originated.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm

See Banno's verbatim report of Davidson's own words... the paper we're discussing... in the beginning if memory serves me.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Of course. It's just an example sentence. Let's stay on track.

But I think it illustrates why the truth of a statement is not quite so simple.

Quoting Banno

Yes - but no - nothing makes the sentence true.

Is there a Davidson essay that expands on this?

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm

Relevance?

Quoting Marchesk

But I think it illustrates why truth is not quite so simple.

I agree with that: Truth is a funhouse, evil clowns and warped mirrors and all. But Davidson is interesting too.

A parallel argument is found in Kripke, as he dismisses the theory that a proper name refers in virtue of an associated description.

Proper names just refer directly to the thing named; nothing, and certainly no description, mediates that reference.

And "the sun is setting" is true only if the sun is setting. No fact is needed to mediates that truth.

Quoting Marchesk

But I think it illustrates why truth is not quite so simple.

Being true is Davidson's focus.

Quoting creativesoul

Relevance?

Well...Davidson says he defends his "Nothing, no thing" notions in True to the Facts. I'll take a look at that one next.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm

Davidson also rejects talk of the facts, if for no other reason than such talk is somehow inadequate for translatability.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm True to the Facts - which I think we have already mentioned.

Althogh it is important to note that, so far as that essay implies a form of correspondence theory of truth similar to Austin's, Davidson later rejects any notion of correspondence making sentences true - in the article that this thread is about, as it turns out.

Quoting creativesoul

Being true is Davidson's focus.

And what does it mean for a statement to be true? Is it enough to say, yep looks like the sun is setting!

Quoting creativesoul

Davidson also rejects talk of the facts, if for no other reason than such talk is somehow inadequate for translatability.

If you have a minute to explain that further, I'm interested.

Quoting Banno

Althogh it is improtant to note that, so far as that essay implies a form of correspondence theory of truth similar to Austin's, Davidson later rejects any notion of correspondence making sentences true - in the article that this thread is about, as it turns out.

And yet, we all know that correspondence must be adequately accounted for... it is after-all the default position of unquestioned naive realism that we all have in common.

Quoting Banno

Althogh it is improtant to note that, so far as that essay implies a form of correspondence theory of truth similar to Austin's, Davidson later rejects any notion of correspondence making sentences true - in the article that this thread is about, as it turns out.

Footnote 13 at the bottom of the "Nothing...no thing..." paragraph refers the reader to "True to the Facts" for a defense of that paragraph.

Is there another essay, to your knowledge, where he takes up the subject again?

Quoting Marchesk

Being true is Davidson's focus.
— creativesoul

And what does it mean for a statement to be true? Is it enough to say, yep looks like the sun is setting!

"Being true" is Davidson's focus. Davidson kicks out correspondence. His doing so leveled the playing field by requiring only coherence. In this way they are all equal. All coherent views are meaningful to the the agent. So, translatability involves precisely that.

Reply to Banno

Why do we need them? Folk seem to just get on with using language without the help of epistemologists. Why shouldn't it just be that we use words to talk to each other, and that's it?
— Banno

Sure, that sounds great. It seems to be a kind of eliminative skepticism vis-a-vis certain kinds of epistemology, metaphysics, and the rest of it. Is that how you see it?


Still interested to get your take on the above. Are we looking at a kind of skepticism?

Reply to creativesoul So he means coherence among existing beliefs? A web of belief kind of view of truth? The sun's setting is coherent if it adheres with other beliefs about the world?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Davidson also rejects talk of the facts, if for no other reason than such talk is somehow inadequate for translatability.
— creativesoul

If you have a minute to explain that further, I'm interested.

See my exchange with Marchesky...

Quoting creativesoul

See my exchange with Marchesky...

Will do.

Do you see all of this as a kind of skepticism?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Sure, that sounds great. It seems to be a kind of eliminative skepticism vis-a-vis certain kinds of epistemology, metaphysics, and the rest of it. Is that how you see it?

Pretty much

Suits me, since my Wittgenstein -inspire prejudices tell me that philosophy amounts to nothing.

Quoting Banno

Why shouldn't it just be that we use words to talk to each other, and that's it?

Because although it works in everyday life, it doesn't survive philosophical scrutiny. In this case, what does it mean for a statement to be true?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Is there another essay, to your knowledge, where he takes up the subject again?

Hmm. see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/davidson/#TrutPredRealReal

A secondary source, but I was privileged to study with Malpas many years ago.

Quoting Banno

Suits me, since my Wittgenstein -inspire prejudices tell me that philosophy amounts to nothing.

I agree it amounts to nothing. But, like we have to do our bench-presses, we have to do our brain-presses, if we want to stay fit.

Quoting Banno

Hmm. see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/davidson/#TrutPredRealReal

A secondary source, but I was privileged to study with Malpas many years ago

Good. Thanks.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm There's also A coherence theory of truth and knowledge, an article which I have not studied in any detail.


Must get a round tuit.

Quoting Marchesk

l So he means coherence among existing beliefs? A web of belief kind of view of truth? The sun's setting is coherent if it adheres with other beliefs about the world?

Keep in mind his aim. He is proposing a method of approach to the very idea of conceptual schemes. He grants them all coherence and meaningfulness and in doing so eliminates all questions involving what makes belief true.

Do you understand this?

Quoting creativesoul

Do you understand this?

Yeah, he's arguing against incommensurability and that people can have these fundamentally different conceptual schemas that can't be translated. Which basically amounts to abolishing he notion of conceptual schemas. We all live in the same world. I more or less agree with that.

So what was the statements being true and rising suns of the last couple pages all about?

Quoting Marchesk

Which basically amounts to abolishing he notion of conceptual schemas...

Some. Not all.

Quoting creativesoul

Some. Not all.

Which world(s) do the others live in? Is that a support for conceptual schemas?

Quoting Marchesk

So what was the statements being true and rising suns of the last couple pages all about?

Take these two paragraphs:


[i]Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true:
not experience, not surface irritations, not the world, can make a
sentence true. That experience takes a certain course, that our
skin is warmed or punctured, that the universe is finite, these
facts, if we like to talk that way, make sentences and theories true.
But this point is put better without mention of facts. The sentence
"My skin is warm" is true if and only if my skin is warm. Here
there is no reference to a fact, a world, an experience, or a piece of
evidence.



In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted
reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth quite the contrary. Given the dogma of a dualism of scheme and reality, we get conceptual relativity, and truth relative to a scheme. Without the dogma, this kind of relativity goes by the board. Of course truth
of sentences remains relative to language, but that is as objective as can be. In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with thefamiliar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false.[/i]


Davidson has (in his eyes) eliminated "truth relative to a scheme." Beyond that he wants to eliminate truth relative to a fact and truth relative to an object.

That leaves us with the T-sentence, and nothing else.

So me and Banno were talking about how a T-sentence can be used without reference to a fact or an object.

I'm not convinced, but I'm new to Davidson, so I'll charitably continue reading him.

Quoting Marchesk

Some. Not all.
— creativesoul

Which world(s) do the others live in? Is that a support for conceptual schemas?

Davidson draw a distinction between kinds of possible worlds. He focuses upon the second in which there is one world and all the different views, because that is the kind underlying the belief that there are incommensurate schemes.

I'm hesitant to agree with the idea that convention T offers an adequate means for translation. I think Davidson needs that to be the case to make his own.

Reply to creativesoul Exactly.

Quoting creativesoul

I'm hesitant to agree with the idea that convention T offers an adequate means for translation.

Perhaps its more of a minimal translation.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm

1."It is sometimes thought that translatability into a familiar lan- guage, say English, cannot be a criterion of languagehood on the grounds that the relation of translatability is not transitive."

2."According to Kuhn, scientists operating in different scientific traditions (within different "paradigms") "live in different worlds."

In the first he seems to be addressing the issue of translatability from one language into another; as though the whole of a language can be considered to be a conceptual scheme.

In the second he is considering conceptual schemes as different "paradigms" within a language in the Kuhnian sense.

So, re the example I gave of Chinese and Western medicine; of course they can both be expressed in Chinese or English or presumably many other (but not all?) languages. What then does it mean to say that one conceptual scheme must be translatable into the terms of another or else one (or both?) of the conceptual schemes cannot be "true and meaningful"? So, I ask you, what does that mean to you, since Banno apparently won't say what it means to him?

From the linked SEP entry:

Nevertheless, Davidson is not a coherentist, in any standard sense, about either truth or knowledge. Nor, for all that he adopts a Tarskian approach to meaning, does he espouse a correspondence theory of truth (in fact, he denies that a Tarskian truth theory is a correspondence theory in any conventional sense).

On a different tangent, does anyone know what Davidson's argument is for denying that Tarski's account is of the same logic as the correspondence account?

Quoting Banno

?creativesoul Exactly.

Now, if I can just stay on track!

:wink:

I think Banno is quite right in connecting this paper to Kripke's.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Do you see all of this as a kind of skepticism?

I see it as an outright rejection of the idea that there can be such things as schemes about the world that are not translatable one into the other.

Quoting Janus

So, re the example I gave of Chinese and Western medicine; of course they can both be expressed in Chinese or English or presumably many other (but not all?) languages. What then does it mean to say that one conceptual scheme must be translatable into the terms of another or else one (or both?) of the conceptual schemes cannot be "true and meaningful"? So, I ask you, what does that mean to you, since Banno apparently won't say what it means to him?

I'm hesitant to take a stab at it until I've processed tonight's exchange so far and have taken another glance at the essay. This is Banno's and creative's bag. I'm just trying to understand this whole fact-less, objectless T-sentence thing.

But I think your example is troublesome. It might be better to look at how the language of solipsism can be translated into the language of direct realism. Grand-scale schemes.

Reply to Janus I'd say that comes from page 2 of the essay:

What we need, it seems to me, is some idea of the considerations that set the limits to conceptual contrast. There are extreme suppositions that founder on paradox or contradiction; there are modest examples we have no trouble understanding. What determines where we cross from the merely strange or novel to the absurd'?

We may accept the doctrine that associates having a language with having a conceptual scheme. The relation may be supposed to be this: if conceptual schemes differ, so do languages. But speakers of different languages may share a conceptual scheme provided there is a way of translating one language into the other. Studying the criteria of translation is therefore a way of focussing on criteria of identity for conceptual schemes.

And so on. He briefly touches on beliefs where language and conceptual schemes are not related in this way, but he's focusing in where they are believed to relate this way with the intent of coming up with some clear-cut way of determining what counts as a conceptual scheme in the first place.

Quoting Banno

I'm hesitant to agree with the idea that convention T offers an adequate means for translation.
— creativesoul

Perhaps its more of a minimal translation.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true:
not experience, not surface irritations, not the world, can make a
sentence true. That experience takes a certain course, that our
skin is warmed or punctured, that the universe is finite, these
facts, if we like to talk that way, make sentences and theories true.
But this point is put better without mention of facts. The sentence
"My skin is warm" is true if and only if my skin is warm. Here
there is no reference to a fact, a world, an experience, or a piece of
evidence.



In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted
reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth quite the contrary. Given the dogma of a dualism of scheme and reality, we get conceptual relativity, and truth relative to a scheme. Without the dogma, this kind of relativity goes by the board. Of course truth
of sentences remains relative to language, but that is as objective as can be. In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with thefamiliar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false.


Davidson has (in his eyes) eliminated "truth relative to a scheme." Beyond that he wants to eliminate truth relative to a fact and truth relative to an object.

That leaves us with the T-sentence, and nothing else.

So me and Banno were talking about how a T-sentence can be used without reference to a fact or an object.

What has happened, and/or is happening...

My skin being warm... etc.

He then hesitantly refers to the actual events, the case at hand, what's happened as 'facts', and further shows his displeasure with the term by qualifying it with "if we must talk like that", or words to that effect/affect.

I do not think that he eliminated truth as relative to a scheme so much as granted them all... assuming coherency.

Reply to Banno Quoting creativesoul

I do not think that he eliminated truth as relative to a scheme so much as granted them all... assuming coherency.

Hmmm... I wonder if Banno would agree with that.

Quoting creativesoul

I do not think that he eliminated truth as relative to a scheme so much as granted them all... assuming coherency.

But if truth is only relative to language and we've established unmediated touch with objects haven't we eliminated schemes and thereby truth relative to schemes?

By stipulating all schemes as coherent, we're granting as well as also demanding consistent terminological use. It side steps the issues. I suppose it could be said that it eliminates them as well.

Reply to Banno This helps, thanks.

I'm ruminating. Plus about to get ready and have a good old boardgame night with friends. :D But thanks for working on the reply.

Quoting Janus

So, re the example I gave of Chinese and Western medicine; of course they can both be expressed in Chinese or English or presumably many other (but not all?) languages. What then does it mean to say that one conceptual scheme must be translatable into the terms of another or else one (or both?) of the conceptual schemes cannot be "true and meaningful"?

Might want to ask the person who said such a thing.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

But if truth is only relative to language

Davidson doesn't make this claim though...

He clearly talks about his skin being warm...

Quoting Janus

On a different tangent, does anyone know what Davidson's argument is for denying that Tarski's account is of the same logic as the correspondence account?

It's pretty clearly not correspondence theory. It's just sentences spoken in two different formal languages.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

But if truth is only relative to language

Quoting creativesoul

Davidson doesn't make this claim though...

He clearly talks about his skin being warm...

Davidson from the final paragraph:



"Of course truth of sentences remains relative to language..."

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

But if truth is only relative to language

Quoting creativesoul

Davidson doesn't make this claim though...

He clearly talks about his skin being warm...

That would make truth relative to language and experience et al. But still deflationary in Banno's sense - when Banno says we already understand what truth is?

Reply to creativesoul Truth remains relative to language, experiences (my skin being warm) objects, etc. But none of these things make sentences true?

I think that Davidson hold sfirm to the notion that truth of sentences is inseparable from language and thus translation. I suspect, even if it's not expounded upon, that Davidson does not believe that the truth of sentences is all there is to truth. Rather, I think he's argues that it's all that's needed here as a means to assess the translatability of one scheme into the other.

Our attempt to characterize languages or conceptual schemes
in terms of the notion of fitting some entity has come down, then,
to the simple thought that something is an acceptable conceptual
scheme or theory if it is true. Perhaps we better say largely true in
order to allow sharers of a scheme to differ on details. And the
criterion of a conceptual scheme different from our own now be-
comes: largely true but not translatable. The question whether
this is a useful criterion is just the question how well we under-
stand the notion of truth, as applied to language, independent of
the notion of translation. The answer is, I think, that we do not
understand it independently at all...

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Truth remains relative to language, experiences (my skin being warm) objects, etc. But none of these things make sentences true?

I think Davidson is opposed to calling events and happenings "things". He says no thing make a sentence true. An event is comprised of a group of things. My skin being warm is not a thing.

Reply to creativesoul It's not much trouble to pull that word out:

Truth remains relative to language, experiences (my skin being warm) objects, etc. But none of these make sentences true?

Quoting creativesoul

Rather, I think he's argues that it's all that's needed here as a means to assess the translatability of one scheme into the other.

Okay, good, that's clear, thanks.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Truth remains relative to language, experiences (my skin being warm) objects, etc. But none of these make sentences true?

On my view, no. My skin being warm is not adequate. It is but one aspect necessary for "my skin is warm" to be so.

Reply to creativesoul

Quoting creativesoul

My skin being warm is not adequate. It is but one aspect necessary for "my skin is warm" to be so.

By "so" do you mean "true"?

Reply to creativesoul

Do you agree that Banno's interpretation of Davidson is more deflationary than your own?

Quoting frank

It's pretty clearly not correspondence theory. It's just sentences spoken in two different formal languages.

What leads you to say that?

In it's familiar formulation 'Snow is white' is true iff snow is white.."'Snow is white'" refers to the sentence or proposition 'snow is white' and "snow is white" refers to the actuality or state of affairs of snow being white. So, it says the truth of the proposition depends on the actuality: if and only if snow is white then the sentence "snow is white" is true.

Can you explain why you think the logic here is any different than the logic of the correspondence account, which is that the truth of a proposition consists in its correspondence to actuality?

Quoting Janus

it's familiar formulation 'Snow is white' is true iff snow is white.."'Snow is white'" refers to the sentence or proposition 'snow is white' and "snow is white" refers to the actuality or state of affairs of snow being white. So, it says the truth of the proposition depends on the actuality: if and only if snow is white then the sentence "snow is white" is true.

I'm curious about how you got this impression.

Reply to Moliere If a system of knowledge can be set out in any language, which my examples of Chinese and Western medicine perhaps can (could they, for example be set out in some Australian aboriginal language?) does it qualify as a conceptual scheme?

The point about translatability of conceptual schemes seems to be more saliently concerned about whether a conceptual scheme in a particular language could be translated into the terms of another conceptual scheme in the same language, than it does about merely whether a conceptual scheme in one language could be translated into another language. This seems to be in line with what Kuhn means by "paradigms".

Reply to frank So, what are you disagreeing with precisely, and why?

Quoting Janus

, what are you disagreeing with precisely, and why?

There's no actuality in the T-sentence rule. Read about it.

Quoting Banno

There's also A coherence theory of truth and knowledge, an article which I have not studied in any detail.


Must get a round tuit.

I was looking for it online but couldn't find a freebie. Any ideas?

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm I couldn't see it either. I have it in a collection; it's more recent, and has a few replies to critics stuck on the end.

Quoting Banno

I couldn't see it either. I have it in a collection; it's more recent, and has a few replies to critics stuck on the end.

I might have to go to an actual library and make actual photocopies, like last century.

@Janus's comments might best be dealt with by continuing the exegesis of the article - since we are up to partial cases. His example of Western medicine vs Chines medicine might serve us here.

And that's a conversation about disagreement.

We need to leave room here for stuff that might be seen as culturally insensitive. When Chinese medicine claims that pangolin scales cure cancer, it's just plain wrong. And it's not just wrong for western medicine; pangolins, scales and curing cancer are the same in Germany as in China.

Bullshit is bullshit.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm Nuh. Get The Essential Davidson on Kindle...

Quoting Banno

Nuh. Get The Essential Davidson on Kindle...

Sweet.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Do you agree that Banno's interpretation of Davidson is more deflationary than your own?

I would. I would also agree that Davidson is more deflationary regarding all talk about what makes sentences true, as well as all the historical baggage accompanying notions of "fact". Thus, he grants(demands) coherence and meaning as the starting point for what counts as an acceptable conceptual scheme. This is exactly what we're talking about. Coherent accounts of this world.

He's delineating the target, and setting the boundaries of the scope of our inquiry... all at the same time.

Reply to Banno Aborigines had no word for the number 114. How do you translate when they dont have the word?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

My skin being warm is not adequate. It is but one aspect necessary for "my skin is warm" to be so.
— creativesoul


By "so" do you mean "true"?

Yes.

Quoting frank

There's no actuality in the T-sentence rule. Read about it.

I have read about it; I studied it as an undergraduate. If there is no actuality referred to in the T-sentence then what do you think 'snow is white' refers to? In my view 'snow' refers to snow, 'is' refers to being and 'white' refers to white. Snow being white is an actuality, no?

Quoting Banno

Bullshit is bullshit.

That there might be erroneous ideas in Chinese medicine, just as there no doubt are in Western medicine, does not entail that the whole scheme is not "true and meaningful". The notion of scientific theories being true is itself far from being uncontroversial within the philosophy of science. Nor is the question of what it is precisely that constitutes science; have you heard of the problem of demarcation within that field?

If all you are saying is that any conceptual scheme which is compatible with Western science is translatable into any other scheme which is also so compatible, then you would not be claiming much, since both would be part of the encompassing conceptual scheme which is the whole of Western science.

Having said that, would you say that biology could be translated into the language of Quantum physics?

...

Quoting Janus

have read about it; I studied it as an undergraduate. If there is no actuality referred to in the T-sentence then what do you think 'snow is white' refers to? In my view 'snow' refers to snow, 'is' refers to being and 'white' refers to white. Snow being white is an actuality, no?

What you've got is the Janus theory of truth and reference. Deflationism is ironically complex and takes some pondering. There's more than one version. PM me and I'll give you the primo reading list.

Quoting Janus

There's no actuality in the T-sentence rule. Read about it.
— frank

I have read about it; I studied it as an undergraduate. If there is no actuality referred to in the T-sentence then what do you think 'snow is white' refers to? In my view 'snow' refers to snow, 'is' refers to being and 'white' refers to white. Snow being white is an actuality, no?

What determines the referent within Davidson's use of 'Snow is white'?

Quoting creativesoul

So, given that Banno was drawing an equivalence between what Davidson called the "third dogma" and what I wrote, then the answer is "No, Davidson did not reject that distinction as the third dogma of empiricism".

Quoting creativesoul

I am further of the view that there are two major categories of things. That which existed in it's entirety prior to language and that which did not.

I read the rejection of the conceptual scheme/ empirical content duality to be a rejection of the idea that there are "two major categories of things"; in other words a rejection of the notion that there is empirical content outside of any conceptual scheme; but I could be misinterpreting Davidson. This idea that there is no pre-conceptual content, is certainly the view of McDowell and Brandom whose ideas I am more familiar with.

Reply to frank Thanks for the offer, but this is not my primary area of interest, and there is never enough time to read even what I want to read. You can try to dismiss what I have been saying by being condescending instead of offering arguments against it. It may be stipulated that the T-sentence refers to no actuality, but that remains a mere stipulation. The fact that it is written in English and that the phrase 'snow is white' unquestionably refers to an actuality is enough for me to refrain from taking any such stipulation seriously.

Reply to creativesoul Ordinary usage of the phrase; what else?

Beginning at the end, so we can see where Davidson is headed. The strategy Davidson takes with partial cases is to show that "we could not be in a position to judge that others had a concepts or beliefs radically different from our own".

Partial differences in conceptual schemes, Davidson argues, would just be differences in belief. It's because he is arguing towards this that he goes off on the apparent tangent of disagreement, and why he brings the principle of charity into the discussion.

Hence my rudeness to Janus' Chinese. Sometimes folk are just wrong.

Quoting frank

PM me and I'll give you the primo reading list.

I'm interested in the primo reading list too.

Quoting frank

Aborigines had no word for the number 114. How do you translate when they dont have the word?

115-1?

113+1?

Quoting creativesoul

I would. I would also agree that Davidson is more deflationary regarding all talk about what makes sentences true, as well as all the historical baggage accompanying notions of "fact". Thus, he grants(demands) coherence and meaning as the starting point for what counts as an acceptable conceptual scheme. This is exactly what we're talking about. Coherent accounts of this world.

He's delineating the target, and setting the boundaries of the scope of our inquiry... all at the same time.

All that makes sense.

Quoting Janus

So, given that Banno was drawing an equivalence between what Davidson called the "third dogma" and what I wrote, then the answer is "No, Davidson did not reject that distinction as the third dogma of empiricism".
— creativesoul

I am further of the view that there are two major categories of things. That which existed in it's entirety prior to language and that which did not.
— creativesoul

I read the rejection of the conceptual scheme/ empirical content duality to be a rejection of the idea that there are "two major categories of things"; in other words a rejection of the notion that there is empirical content outside of any conceptual scheme; but I could be misinterpreting Davidson...

I'm just pointing out that the duality of empirical content and conceptual scheme is not equivalent to the distinction between that which existed in it's entirety prior to language and that which did not.

That's not what Davidson called the "third dogma".

That's all I'm getting at here regarding that bit.

nm

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

I want to urge that this second dualism of scheme and content, of organizing system and something waiting to be organized, cannot be made intelligible and defensible.


You interpret this as...

...the distinction between that which existed in it's entirety prior to language and that which did not.
— creativesoul

...?

No. Clearly not the same distinction. Below shows this well enough...

...what is organized, referred to variously as "experience," "the stream of
sensory experience," and "physical evidence"...

Is it fair to say you you've underscored the temporal aspect of the scheme-content dyad to arrive at the idea of "something waiting"?

No. Although, I do underscore temporality.

Two things - the attribution of beliefs, and the interpretation of sentences - underpin understanding what someone is saying.

When using "beliefs" here I take Davidson as implicitly including other propositional attitudes - knowing, wanting, intending, wondering and so on.


The ketch and yawl example shows that in interpreting someone's utterances, we look to both the translation of the words used - did he use "yawl" incorrectly? - and to the beliefs of the speaker - does he believe the jigger is further back than I do?

We make the best of a rough job. Hence, and here we find my favourite Davidson quote,

We make maximum sense of the word and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way that optimises agreement.

That's the Principle of Charity. It's not something that we do out of the goodness of our nature, but rather is "forced on us... if we want to understand others".

Quoting Janus

I have read about it; I studied it as an undergraduate. If there is no actuality referred to in the T-sentence then what do you think 'snow is white' refers to? In my view 'snow' refers to snow, 'is' refers to being and 'white' refers to white. Snow being white is an actuality, no?

As a newbie to this kind of deflationism, and with a pinch of charity, here's how I see it:

Take the T-sentence: "Snow is white" is true iff snow is white.

Let's break it into two parts

1) "Snow is white"
2) is true iff snow is white.

So...

1) is self-referential. The quotation marks denote self-referentiality. The words refer only to themselves. They make no reference to snow (or facts or experience, etc).

2) is a conditional. If I say "if and only if snow is white" I haven't said anything about snow or a fact or an experience.

Hence no reference to actual snow, or a fact or an experience.

Open to any criticism of the above.

Quoting creativesoul

I want to urge that this second dualism of scheme and content, of organizing system and something waiting to be organized, cannot be made intelligible and defensible.


You interpret this as...

...the distinction between that which existed in it's entirety prior to language and that which did not.
— creativesoul

...?
— ZzzoneiroCosm

No. Clearly not the same distinction. Below shows this well enough...

...what is organized, referred to variously as "experience," "the stream of
sensory experience," and "physical evidence"...



Is it fair to say you you've underscored the temporal aspect of the scheme-content dyad to arrive at the idea of "something waiting"?

No. Although, I do underscore temporality.

Yeah. I deleted that comment. I misread you. No problem.

Davidson's rejection of partially incommensurable conceptual schemes is just the observation that sometimes people have different beliefs to us - that there is no clear way to distinguish an incommensurate conceptual scheme from a differing belief. As he says, there is no way to decide between a difference in beliefs and a difference in conception.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm Looks fine to me.

SO to the conclusion. We can't talk of conceptual schemes that are so different to our own that we could not understand them - because we do not understand them.

So the sorts of conceptual schemes we can talk about are the ones we can understand.

Int he end, it doesn't seem that hard.

But then there are always folk who think they can "eff" the ineffable. I guess those who discuss at length conceptual schemes that they claim cannot be understood are of the same sort.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

2) is a conditional. If I say "If and only if snow is white" I haven't said anything about snow or a fact or an experience.

Hence no reference to actual snow, or a fact or an experience.

Open to any criticism of the above.

I remain convinced that there is a reference there to snow being white. I agree that there is no reference to actual snow (in the sense of any particular drift of snow or whatever) or any particular instance of being white. The reference is general, not specific. Although of course it is more specific than the alternative general formula: "X" is true iff X.

But this is no different than the logic of correspondence, which can be seen in Aristotle's classic formulation: "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true".

There is no reference there to any specific entities or states of affairs either, and yet the sentence embodies the logic of correspondence, just as, for me, the T-sentence does. In fact I would go so far as to say that there is nothing in the T-sentence which is not already in Aristotle's formulation.

Reply to Janus

Is there a reference to snow in the following?

1) snow

2) if snow

3) if and only if snow

4) if and only if snow is white

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm Yes, I would say there is reference to snow in all of them.

Reply to Janus

Do you agree that none of these expressions says anything about snow?

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm if there is no reference to snow, then what does it mean to say snow is white?

Reply to Marchesk

I'm not arguing there's no reference to snow. Just trying to locate Janus philosophically.

Reply to Janus Quoting Marchesk

if there is no reference to snow, then what does it mean to say snow is white?

It might be useful to compare the phrases 1) snow is white and 2) if snow is white.

1) is a statement about snow.
2) isn't.

Quoting Banno

Davidson's rejection of partially incommensurable conceptual schemes is just the observation that sometimes people have different beliefs to us - that there is no clear way to distinguish an incommensurate conceptual scheme from a differing belief. As he says, there is no way to decide between a difference in beliefs and a difference in conception.

Do differing beliefs impede and/or prohibit translation?

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm I agree that no definite statement has been made about snow in "Iff snow is white", but on its own "snow is white" says that snow is white, so it refers to an actuality; namely snow being white. But reference is something else: even in a dictionary 'snow' is defined as referring to snow.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Just trying to locate Janus philosophically.

I'm not sure what this means. To me this is not so much a philosophical matter, but more a matter of simple common sense and usage. I can't imagine why anyone would want to claim that 'snow' does not refer to snow, regardless of their philosophical position; realist, idealist, anti-realist, solipsist or whatever. Likewise i think 'snow is white' refers to the state of affairs of snow being white, and I don't think any amount of stipulation can eliminate that fact from out of Tarski's T-sentence.

Quoting Banno

Two things - the attribution of beliefs, and the interpretation of sentences - underpin understanding what someone is saying.

When using "beliefs" here I take Davidson as implicitly including other propositional attitudes - knowing, wanting, intending, wondering and so on.

Here, if I'm using "A" to pick out an individual entity normally called "B", then understanding me would require knowing that, and knowing that would provide the translation necessary. However, convention T doesn't seem capable of doing this.

Quoting Janus

But this is no different than the logic of correspondence, which can be seen in Aristotle's classic formulation: "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true".

"To say of what is that it is" IFF to say of what is that it is.

Nope.

Not the same.

Quoting creativesoul

"To say of what is that it is" IFF to say of what is that it is.

That's gibberish, and not what I was saying. The logical substance, not the grammatical structure, of both formulations is the same.

If snow is white, then that is "what is", and iff to say what is true in this regard just is to say of snow what it is, namely white, then I can see no logically significant difference between the two formulations. If you think you can point out a logical difference then by all means have at it.

Or try this (it may be clearer): To say of snow that it is white is true if and only if it is white. How would that logically differ from Tarski's sentence?

Quoting Marchesk

Yeah, he's arguing against incommensurability and that people can have these fundamentally different conceptual schemas that can't be translated. Which basically amounts to abolishing he notion of conceptual schemas. We all live in the same world. I more or less agree with that.

So what was the statements being true and rising suns of the last couple pages all about?

What it's about is that 'the sun is setting' can be translated into Earth rotation talk perfectly well, and in fact you yourself have to make that translation in order to claim that it does not set, and so is just as truth-apt as the scientific language you erroneously claim is the only legitimate truth. You are trying to privilege a certain way of talking; don't!

Quoting unenlightened

What it's about is that 'the sun is setting' can be translated into Earth rotation talk perfectly well, and in fact you yourself have to make that translation in order to claim that it does not set, and so is just as truth-apt as the scientific language you erroneously claim is the only legitimate truth. You are trying to privilege a certain way of talking; don't!

Everyone seems to be conflating commensurability with translatability as if the two were equal.

'Sun setting' talk may well be translatable to 'earth rotation' talk, and 'prevailing wind talk' may well be translatable to 'coriolis force' talk, but in one conceptual scheme the two are linked. How do you translate that link without simply changing beliefs?

Quoting Isaac

How do you translate that link without simply changing beliefs?

But nothing has been said about beliefs. I watch the sunset, and I know that the Earth rotates. Just as I can sail into the mouth of a river without believing I am being eaten. No one is so dull as to claim that rivers do not have mouths because they do not eat. But it is almost as dull to suggest that the sun does not set because the Earth rotates.

Reply to unenlightened

The claim being made is that translatability equates to commensurability. I'm completely in agreement that the expressions translate in such a way that to use one or the other is irrelevant. What I disagree with is the idea that because they translate, the conceptual schemes from which they are drawn must be commensurable. In one conceptual scheme there is a link between wind direction and earth rotation, but in the other scheme there is no such link, nothing to translate because there's nothing there, yet something is lost/gained.

One scheme can therefore quite reasonably be considered 'better' than another (more elegant, more useful, more parsimonious...) without it having any bearing at all on the terms used to talk about aspects of that scheme. Words, after all (whole sentences even) can easily come to mean something completely different among a different group of language users.

Quoting Isaac

One scheme can therefore quite reasonably be considered 'better' than another (more elegant, more useful, more parsimonious...)

Sure, but which one? You may favour one and I may favour another for our different purposes. I'll see you down the pub when the rotation of the Earth reaches the point where this locality is such that the sun lies on a tangent to it, and we can discuss it.

Quoting unenlightened

But it is almost as dull to suggest that the sun does not set because the Earth rotates.

However, that was the astronomical view at one time, and there other things in ordinary language that people do believe which are scientifically incorrect.

Quoting unenlightened

Sure, but which one? You may favour one and I may favour another for our different purposes.

The one that's true.

Quoting unenlightened

Sure, but which one? You may favour one and I may favour another for our different purposes. I'll see you down the pub when the rotation of the Earth reaches the point where this locality is such that the sun lies on a tangent to it, and we can discuss it.

Absolutely. It's horses for courses with your chosen scheme (although I don't think we have so much free choice over them as we'd like to think). I'm mainly concerned with maintaining their unique existence in the face of Davidson's march to homogeneity, rather than promoting any particular one.

Quoting Marchesk

The one that's true.

Truth is a property of propositions, not conceptual schemes, and in propositions, the translatability then becomes relevant again.

Quoting Marchesk

Sure, but which one? You may favour one and I may favour another for our different purposes.
— unenlightened

The one that's true.

The very idea!

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Is there a reference to snow in the following?

1) snow

2) if snow

3) if and only if snow

4) if and only if snow is white

Glad we are back to inscrutability of reference, where we belong.

Quoting unenlightened

The very idea!

Well, the truth of propositions got brought up in this discussion. So, if we're talking about truth, then pragmatic everyday talk isn't good enough.

Quoting Marchesk

Well, the truth of propositions got brought up in this discussion. So, if we're talking about truth, then pragmatic everyday talk isn't good enough.

"The very idea" has been brought up in this discussion too. In real terms at the end of the day, the sun sets. You are confusing truth with a theory of everything which in our case we do not have. Does this mean that no one speaks the truth?

Quoting Isaac

Truth is a property of propositions, not conceptual schemes, and in propositions, the translatability then becomes relevant again.

Okay, so Norse conceptual schema: The stars are heaven's light peaking through the head of giant's skull.

So if a Norseman made some statement about the North Star, with that being translatable to a correct modern statement about the North Star, would both of them be true, since the North's belief about stars being radically different than ours?

Quoting unenlightened

In real terms at the end of the day, the sun sets.

it doesn't though, it only appears to. Just like the Earth appears to be stationary, and to some deluded or ignorant folk, flat.

Quoting unenlightened

ou are confusing truth with a theory of everything which in our case we do not have. Does this mean that no one speaks the truth?

We don't need a theory of everything to understand the truth that the Earth rotates, creating the appearance of a rising and setting sun. That's a fact.

Quoting Marchesk

it doesn't though, it only appears to. Just like the Earth appears to be stationary, and to some deluded or ignorant folk, flat.

You appear not to understand English, but I'm sure you do really. 'Stationary' as you should know is a relative term and has been since Newton. In the frame of reference of the Earth, the Earth is indeed stationary and when the Earth moves, buildings fall down. I have recourse to this obviously pedantic foolishness to address your obviously pedantic foolishness in your own terms.

Quoting Marchesk

We don't need a theory of everything to understand the truth that the Earth rotates, creating the appearance of a rising and setting sun. That's a fact.

So the sun appears to set and it appears to get dark? But really it is not dark? Do you not see the nonsense you are talking? I give up.

Reply to unenlightened I guess I don't understand what role truth is playing in Davidson's argument. We can be pragmatic and agree that snow is white and the sun sets. But truth can also mean what really is the case, particularly in a philosophical discussion when correspondence, coherence and deflationary theories are brought out.

Quoting Janus

Or try this (it may be clearer): To say of snow that it is white is true if and only if it is white. How would that logically differ from Tarski's sentence?

The number of terms... but I see what you're getting at. It is quite similar in semantics.

Quoting Marchesk

I guess I don't understand

Do you understand that weather forecasters and all sorts of quite sensible people talk about sunrise and sunset and make accurate predictions about the occurrence of the phenomena these terms refer to? That these predictions are scientific and reliable? Do you understand that these people are not geocentric flat Earthers, or even artists? I guess I don't understand what role 'truth' plays in a philosophy that declares that the sun does not rise, and that this is some deep understanding.

Quoting fdrake

Conceptual schemes, we are told, are ways of organizing experience; they are systems of categories that give form to the data of sensation; they are points of view from which
individuals, cultures, or periods survey the passing scene.

What distinctive properties are relevant to the paper?

There may be no translating from one scheme to another, in which case the beliefs, desires, hopes and bits of knowledge that characterize one person have no true counterparts for the subscriber to another scheme. Reality itself is relative to a scheme: what counts as real in one system may not in another.

So he cares about, given two conceptual schemes C and D, whether and how it is possible to "translate" elements of C to elements of D in a manner that produces counterparts of C in D and counterparts of D in C. Davidson wishes to question the claim that it is impossible in principle to translate from C to D. Say that C and D are commensurable if some counterpart mapping/translation can occur between them. He wants to doubt whether it is impossible in principle that C and D are commensurable. How? What's his motivating suspicion?

If a conceptual scheme includes cultures and periods, which are an amalgam of individuals' conceptual schemes, then by definition individual conceptual schemes contain counterparts that are not just translatable, but similar, or how else could you say that a culture or a period has a point of view? What would that mean? How do schemes evolve and change if there aren't translatable counterparts - like one counterpart being a more evolved version of some previous one because we all undergo a similar process called learning?

Evolutionary psychology implies that we have similar schemes because natural selection filters behaviors and functions and our behaviors and functions are dictated by our conceptual schemes. We share fundamental conceptual schemes thanks to how those schemes were useful in the past and passed down via inheritance. The variability between cultures and periods typically have to do with a the variability between a select few determining the conceptual scheme for everyone else in one culture vs another, and what new knowledge we've gathered from new observations of nature when it comes to the variation between periods (what we've learned - we are specially created by god, or evolved from other animals).

Quoting Harry Hindu

a conceptual scheme includes cultures and periods, which are an amalgam of individuals' conceptual schemes, then by definition individual conceptual schemes contain counterparts that are not just translatable, but similar, or how else could you say that a culture or a period has a point of view? What would that mean? How do schemes evolve and change if there aren't translatable counterparts - like one counterpart being a more evolved version of some previous one because we all undergo a similar process called learning?

:up:

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Aborigines had no word for the number 114. How do you translate when they dont have the word?
— frank

115-1?

They didn't have 115 either. They were missing some concepts.

Reply to unenlightened The distinction between appearance and reality is important to the notion of truth. So while it's true that the sun appears to set in the sky, and it's true that we can all agree on that, it's not true that the sun actually moves across the sky of a stationary Earth, which is what it appears to do, and it's what people in the past believed based on that appearance, which is where the term originated.

So while this is annoyingly pedantic to point out, it matters (or so I suspect) when it comes to deflating truth to ordinary statements. What does it mean for a statement to be true? Well, it can't simply mean what appears to be the case, since appearances can be misleading. And if we're talking about what the statement refers to, then we need to know whether it'a referring to an appearance of a moving sun, or the astronomical fact of the rotating Earth.

The being true part is kind of important when distinguishing between different theories of truth.

Quoting frank

They didn't have 115 either. They were missing some concepts.

So if we were to translate 115 into their language, would we have to teach them the missing numeric concept first?

Quoting Marchesk

So if we were to translate 115 into their language, would we have to teach them the missing numeric concept first?

Yep.

Quoting Marchesk

if a Norseman made some statement about the North Star, with that being translatable to a correct modern statement about the North Star, would both of them be true

Their truth would be dependent on what was said no less than in any other scheme. The point is simply that it would be relative to what the terms refer to in the scheme, truth being a property of propositions and propositions always being in some language or other.

I'm a Ramseyan about truth, so I don't share Davidson's wholly linguistic approach, though I have a lot of sympathy for it, but talk about the truth of beliefs (as opposed to the truth of statements) cannot be encompassed in prosentential theories, which is why I don't think Davidson does away with conceptual schemes simply by declaring them necessarily translatable...but that argument seems to be falling on deaf ears, so I suspect perhaps I'm wasting my time...

Quoting Isaac

Their truth would be dependent on what was said no less than in any other scheme. The point is simply that it would be relative to what the terms refer to in the scheme, truth being a property of propositions and propositions always being in some language or other.

Okay, but what if the terms of that schema are wrong (flawed, misleading, contradictory, etc)? Are they still referring to a translatable true statement in our schema?

Quoting Isaac

I don't think Davidson does away with conceptual schemes simply by declaring them necessarily translatable...but that argument seems to be falling on deaf ears, so I suspect perhaps I'm wasting my time...

I don't think he does away with them either. But I'm new to Davidson so I'm willing to listen.

Quoting Marchesk

Okay, but what if the terms of that schema are wrong? Are they still referring to a translatable true statement in our schema?

Not sure what the terms of the schema being 'wrong' would mean here. Do you mean that they fail to refer, or that they refer, but in a contradictory manner, or some other class of failure?

Reply to Isaac If we took the statement "The sun is setting" from some ancient cosmology made at the right time of day, would it still be true when translated to modern cosmology? Or is that statement only an ordinary language one that people from any culture or time period would agree on?

And here it seems that the intent of the speaker matters. Maybe an ancient Hebrew making the statement simply means the time of day when they look up at the sky, which we could all agree on for that date. But maybe they mean to say something about reality, which was also done, since they did have their own cosmology and beliefs about the heavens, and what it meant for the sun to set.

In which case the statement being true when translated to our modern cosmology would depend on what the speaker meant.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

I don't think he does away with them either. But I'm new to Davidson so I'm willing to listen.

I don't have a lot of knowledge about Davidson either. I mainly object to being told that Davidson has "killed off", or, "done away with" anything. Not because I know any better but because perfectly intelligent people possessed of all the same facts nonetheless disagree.

My own personal disagreement is laid out way back on page 5, but I still don't know if it's flawed, or misunderstands Davidson completely because, as I said, I'm no expert myself.

Quoting Isaac

Not because I know any better but because perfectly intelligent people possessed of all the same facts nonetheless disagree.

Right. Take "The snow is white", for example. So we can all agree it's true in one sense when looking at a patch of white snow. But then turn it into a debate between a color realist and a scientific one, and there's no longer agreement. The statement is no longer trivially true, because we move beyond an agreement on how snow appears to human eyes to one over what properties snow actually has.

Quoting Marchesk

And here it seems that the intent of the speaker matters.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to say. The proposition "The sun is settling" is true if the sun is setting. It's entirely linguistic and to say "it is true that the sun is setting" is prosentential (not that that makes it useless, we could still say "that last statement was true" and the term serves some purpose). But...

To ask if John's belief that the sun is setting is true... That requires that we consider the success of John's actions in respect to that belief.

Quoting Isaac

My own personal disagreement is laid out way back on page 5, but I still don't know if it's flawed, or misunderstands Davidson completely because, as I said, I'm no expert myself.

My own objections - that without a some way to verify access to the "content" portion of the scheme-content dyad there's no basis for claiming the absence of a conceptual scheme - haven't been addressed either. Davidson claims to have "reestablished unmediated touch with objects." I don't see any basis for this claim.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Davidson claims to have "reestablished unmediated touch with objects." I don't see any basis for this claim.

That sure would make deflation easier.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

My own objections - that without a some way to verify access to the "content" portion of the scheme-content dyad there's no basis for claiming the absence of a conceptual scheme - haven't been addressed either.

The claim that there are no conceptual schemes would have to come from a transcendent vantage point. That would also represent the beginnings of a philosophical project of the sort that's anathema to analytical philosophy.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Davidson claims to have "reestablished unmediated touch with objects." I don't see any basis for this claim.

Davidson didn't reestablish anything. He just pointed out a flaw in the idea of conceptual schemes. Although for reasons Harry pointed out, the very idea of conceptual schemes is still useful, if problematic in some respects.

Quoting frank

Davidson didn't reestablish anything. He just pointed out a flaw in the idea of conceptual schemes

I'm curious about this because the quote is taken directly from the closing paragraph: "reestablished unmediated touch with... objects.."

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm So he's opened the doors of his time machine and invited us to return to the way things were before Descartes speculated that nerves are like strings that the world plucks (which is an amazingly good guess, actually).

To travel this distance, we have to get super deflationary about truth, meaning, reference, concepts, etc. And then yes, we find ourselves back where it all began.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon:
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -- [b]Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed out-worn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.[/b]

--Wordsworth, quoted by Nietzsche at the beginning of On Truth and LIes in a Nonmoral sense

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

My own objections - that without a some way to verify access to the "content" portion of the scheme-content dyad there's no basis for claiming the absence of a conceptual scheme - haven't been addressed either.

Some approaches here are more exegetical than discursive. They can still be quite interesting but, often not being clearly labelled as such, one can often expend a bit of time and effort finding out which it is. Your objection seems not far from mine - that Davidson has merely assumed a commensurability of experience.

Quoting Isaac

Everyone seems to be conflating commensurability with translatability as if the two were equal.

'Sun setting' talk may well be translatable to 'earth rotation' talk, and 'prevailing wind talk' may well be translatable to 'coriolis force' talk, but in one conceptual scheme the two are linked. How do you translate that link without simply changing beliefs?

Suppose we have two conceptual schemes, such that some things are accounted true in one, but not in the other - the idea being that what is to count as true depends on what scheme one is using.

And yet already we have translation - because we have talked about the very same thing being true in one, but not in the other...

What could the claim that two conceptual schemes are incommensurable amount to, if not that there are things that can be true in one, but not in the other? What sort of things are true, if not statements?

What could the claim that two conceptual schemes are incommensurable amount to, if not that there are things that can be said in one, but not in the other?

Quoting frank

The claim that there are no conceptual schemes would have to come from a transcendent vantage point.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Davidson claims to have "reestablished unmediated touch with objects." I don't see any basis for this claim.

Fucksake. As if the article, and this thread, didn't happen. I'm nonplussed. At least for now.

Quoting Banno

Suppose we have two conceptual schemes, such that some things are accounted true in one, but not in the other - the idea being that what is to count as true depends on what scheme one is using.

I'll see where this goes, but want to get in here that I don't see something being 'true' in one scheme but not 'true' in another as necessarily the distinction between schemes that I would personally make. Notwithstanding...

Quoting Banno

And yet already we have translation - because we have talked about the very same thing being true in one, but not in the other...

Yes, we have translated the objects of one to the objects of another. Have we translated their relations?

Quoting Banno

What could the claim that two conceptual schemes are incommensurable amount to, if not that there are things that can be true in one, but not in the other? What sort of things are true, if not statements?

As Ramsey argues, beliefs can be considered 'true' too. One can say another's belief that the pub is at the end of the road is 'true' if, when wishing to visit the pub, and walking to the end of the road, one finds there what services as a pub. A belief can be true if it functions.

Quoting Banno

What could the claim that two conceptual schemes are incommensurable amount to, if not that there are things that can be said in one, but not in the other?

That there are beliefs which function in one which would not function in another.

That there are relations in one which do not exist in another.

That some behaviour resultant from one cannot be produced by any stimuli through another.

Quoting Banno

As if the article, and this thread, didn't happen. I'm nonplussed. At least for now.

The exegesis was interesting and I understand the translatability and T-sentence bit. But the question of the possibility of a single, or no, scheme isn't something you or Davidson have spent time on.

Also you said it's a joke but you didn't expand.

And you didn't address my objection directly.

Quoting Banno

As if the article, and this thread, didn't happen. I'm nonplussed. At least for now.

You suggested it could be a play on "basis" but you didn't expand. Interested to hear a direct response to my objection.

Quoting Banno

As if the article, and this thread, didn't happen. I'm nonplussed. At least for now.

If your response to my objection is something like: All that business deflates to T-sentences and T-sentences are all we have and all we should want... then I understand your position and your nonplussedness...

Quoting frank

he's opened the doors of his time machine and invited us to return to the way things were before Descartes speculated that nerves are like strings that the world plucks (which is an amazingly good guess, actually).

To travel this distance, we have to get super deflationary about truth, meaning, reference, concepts, etc. And then yes, we find ourselves back where it all began

I get the deflation thing. It's almost a kind of anti-philosophy.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

I get the deflation thing. It's almost a kind of anti-philosophy.

Banno stated in this thread he's convinced philosophy is bunk, so the goal would be to deflate/dissolve philosophical discourse.

Quoting Marchesk

Banno stated in this thread he's convinced philosophy is bunk, so the goal would be to deflate/dissolve philosophical discourse.

It takes a lot of philosophical discourse to dissolve philosophical discourse. Reminds me of Samuel Beckett's wordy obsession with going silent.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

I get the deflation thing. It's almost a kind of anti-philosophy.

It appears that truth is a concept too basic to analyze. We just know what it is.

Some people see the T-sentence as saying that the truth predicate is redundant. Just assert your proposition and we know you're telling us it's true. So it's just an aspect of human behavior.

There are other views.

Quoting Banno

As if the article, and this thread, didn't happen. I'm nonplussed.

Really? Sounds a little naive. Since when has one article and a few laconic remarks ever acted as some philosophical fait accompli?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

It takes a lot of philosophical discourse to dissolve philosophical discourse.

Yeah, I don't know. An interesting question that comes to mind is to ask whether it's true that philosophy is bunk, and how we would know that to be case.

Maybe i'm just biased toward wanting to think philosophical problems are legitimate.

Quoting Marchesk

Yeah, I don't know. An interesting question that comes to mind is to ask whether it's true that philosophy is bunk, and how we would know that to be case.

I don't expect big answers from philosophy. (I used to.) Just interesting tidbits and brain-aerobics. The word "a-telical" comes to mind. Not to diminish its value: Philosophy, in its capacity to create psychological potence, is as valuable as psychological potence.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

I don't expect big answers from philosophy. (I

i don't expect answers, but I do expect big questions.

Quoting Marchesk

An interesting question that comes to mind is to ask whether it's true that philosophy is bunk, and how we would know that to be case.

Yeah, that's an interesting one.

1)?
2)?
3) Therefore, philosophy is bunk.

Using philosophy to prove philosophy is bunk proves philosophy isn't bunk.

Reply to Banno Quoting Marchesk

bunk

Just to be precise: What Banno said to me was: Philosophy amounts to nothing.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Using philosophy to prove philosophy is bunk proves philosophy isn't bunk.

Its philosophical bunk all the way down.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Just to be precise: What Banno said to me was: Philosophy amounts to nothing.

Right, I take it by that he means there's nothing meaningful to philosophy that can't be addressed by either science or ordinary language use, with the possible exception of ethics, and maybe aesthetics, but here I'm reaching.

And I don't know whether that's true or not. But I want it not to be. It offends my need to scratch the itch.

Reply to Banno So I set out to try and do as you did and summarize the argument Davidson is making into as brief a post as possible. Just to make sure I'm tracking.

He opens with some examples of the phenomena under consideration, and accepts the doctrine that languages differ -- ala Whorf -- with conceptual schemes, or having a conceptual scheme is the same as having a language with the exception that speakers of different languages could share a conceptual scheme provided we are able to translate from one language to another.

He briefly rejects mental phenomena sans language to get underway with what he's interested in focusing on -- translation between conceptual schemes. He also briefly denies the possibility that a person could shed their point-of-view in order to compare conceptual schemes. Kind of interesting there. In short these aren't argued for as much as they are setting out the landscape of interest for Davidson, with particular names that he's targetting: Kuhn, Quine, Whorf, and Bergson being the named culprits at this point.

Then the part where he begins to talk of total failure of translation and in reading closely felt like this was a doozy of a sentence.

: nothing, it may be said, 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.

Philosophers, if nothing else, are demons of theses.

Attempting a bit of an untangle:

In indicating (through evidence) an activity is interpretable into English we also indicate, every time, that this same activity is speech behavior.

What a tongue twister! But what Davidson says is he does not wish to take this line, though he believes it to be true, but wants an argument for it.

In effect it seems that Davidson is trying to find a way of identifying what counts as a language at all, and does not want to simply assert that translation into English is the criterion of language-hood because he thinks that simply asserting it somehow compromises his argument, or at least is unsatisfactory as fiat and needs an argument.

The next paragraph reads like a digression to me where he talks about the closeness of translatability to being able to understand another person's beliefs, like a person who believes that perseverance keeps honor bright -- up to a point that there cannot be doubt, so Davidson says, that translating someone else's language is a very close relation to attributing complex attitudes like this to someone else. But he admits this is just to improve the plausiblity of the position he wants to argue for first rather than just take as true, and that he needs to specify more closely what this relationship is before making a case against untranslatable languages.

So he takes on a counter-argument to the notion that translatability cannot count as a criteria of languagehood -- that language translation is not transitive, at least in a hypothetical telephone-game sort of way. He states this is not a good argument because we would be unable to tell if the Saturnian was translating Plutonian when we ourselves could not translate Plutonian (harks back to the part of the essay where Davidson says we cannot relieve ourselves of our point of view) -- that we need not even have a chain of hypothetical languages, but rather that the problem is introduces in the very first case where there is not a transitive relation between two languages. If we speak English, and Whorf speaks German, and the Hopi speak Hopi, then how are we to know that Whorf is translating Hopi into German when we only speak English? How is it that Whorf is able to speak all three and we are not?


And then the gear change.


I have to say, up to this point I've sort of wondered what all this is for really. It's a bit messy and all over the place upon a closer reading. But there has been some term-setting, some brief mentions of different approaches that Davidson thinks problematic but not being focused on at this time, and some clarification of his own intentions.

I think we can summarize by saying that there are some adherents to conceptual schemes that Davidson wants to address, that he wants to address these adherents through the lens of translation and intertranslatability of languages, and that this naturally raises to the question of what counts as a language at all, and why translation should be seen as important for a criteria of language-hood in spite of arguments otherwise.


I think I'll save the gear change for my next post. But tell me if you think I'm totally off please.

Quoting Isaac

...talk about the truth of beliefs (as opposed to the truth of statements) cannot be encompassed in prosentential theories, which is why I don't think Davidson does away with conceptual schemes simply by declaring them necessarily translatable...but that argument seems to be falling on deaf ears, so I suspect perhaps I'm wasting my time...

Depends upon who you talk to about it. I see I'm not the only one who agrees with you here. :wink:

I also do not think that Davidson is doing away with conceptual schemes. Rather, it seems he's rejecting the idea that two schemes talking about the same world are not translatable one to another.

Philosophy isnt bunk. Philosophy is a science. The conclusions reached in one domain of investigation shouldn't contradict those in another.

A new culprit emerges in the next paragraph -- Strawson. This by way of introducing two different sorts of conceptual schemes, the contrast point being Kuhn, so Davidson may focus on Kuhn's conceptual schemes.


The difference, as Davidson sees it, is in the kind of dualism proposed by the conceptual scheme. Strawson's is one between concept and content within language, where some statements are true by virtue of their meanings, and some are true because of the way of the world -- and that the synthetic statements are the one's of interest in talking about possible worlds, ala Strawson's take that we are imagining possibilities.

Kuhn's is one between language and uninterpretted content -- and is an approach that Davidson describes as giving up the analytic/synthetic distinction which Strawson's relies upon. And he lays out how an adherent to Kuhn might attack Strawson in order to introduce a way of telling when a new conceptual scheme comes about -- or for generating new conceptual schemes.

We get a new out of an old scheme when the speakers of a language come to accept as true an important range of sentences they previously took to be false (and, of course, vice versa) . . . A change has come over the meaning of the sentence because it now belongs to a new language.

Which is Davidson's parsing of Feyerabend's argument against meaning-invariance, the attack against what Davidson characterizes as Strawson's conceptual scheme.

What we get in the argument for the ministry echoes the argument against transitivity. How would we know that our New Man spoke with the new words of materialism but did not speak with the old meanings of mental furniture? We wouldn't. Speaking some words does not give us evidence of this cleaning up, of coming to a new conceptual scheme from our point of view as ministers -- again restating a theme about how we cannot come to some position outside our own in judging what others mean. So this other approach does not provide us with a means for determining a difference in conceptual schemes, either, though it does give up the analytic/synthetic divide.

This bit is weird to me:

So what sounded at first like a thrilling discovery - that
truth is relative to a conceptual scheme - has not so far been
shown to be anything more than the pedestrian and familiar fact
that the truth of a sentence is relative to (among other things) the
language to which it belongs. Instead of living in different worlds,
Kuhn's scientists may, like those who need Webster's dictionary,
be only words apart.

But, at the level of essay at least, it at least explains what Davidson believes and provides a bridge to his next point: introducing the third dogma of empiricism, the dualism between conceptual scheme and empirical content.

And here, I think, we can say Davidson changes gears again.

In summary what Davidson was doing here is quoting some of the culprits of conceptual schemes, and leading them down his line of thinking for why it is they are not adequate to the task of delineating conceptual schemes one from another. And the conclusion to this bit is that in the background there is a third dogma of empiricism, which he wishes to demonstrate as having the dual properties where it must either be intelligible or defensible, but cannot be both of these at once -- and so should be rejected.



So we move onto characterizing this dualism of scheme-content. In the next post. Might call it a night here? Starting to get tired.

Reply to Moliere

Well done.

:clap:

So what sounded at first like a thrilling discovery - that
truth is relative to a conceptual scheme - has not so far been
shown to be anything more than the pedestrian and familiar fact
that the truth of a sentence is relative to (among other things) the
language to which it belongs.

The above is important to understand. Davidson's not wholly agreeing with the claim "truth is relative to a conceptual scheme". Rather, Davidson is clearly explaining it's inherent inadequacy for taking proper account of truth. He's saying that the truth of a sentence is relative to more than just a conceptual scheme.

He does grant the truth of all coherent ones as a means to show that they can be translated one into the other. His method is important to note here...

Towards the bottom of page 17, Davidson wrote:

I turn now to the more modest approach: the idea of partial rather than total failure of translation. This introduces the possibility of making changes and contrasts in conceptual schemes intelligible by reference to the common part. What we need is a theory of translation or interpretation that makes no assumptions about shared meanings, concepts or beliefs. The interdependence of belief and meaning springs from the interdependence of two aspects of the interpretation of speech behavior: the attribution of beliefs and the interpretation of sen-
tences...

The emphasized portion MATTERS!!!

Reply to Banno

Just wanted to mention that - after some much more careful and slow re-reading - I've come to realize that Davidson may be correctly interpreted as rejecting the distinction between that which existed in it's entirety prior to language, and that which did not, by virtue of rejecting an uninterpreted world. If he wholly rejects the very idea of an uninterpreted world, then it would be both quite difficult and quite necessary for him to make sense of the common part of conceptual schemes when comparing different native tongues when that common referent clearly existed in it's entirety prior to our naming it.

What we need is a theory of translation or interpretation that makes no assumptions about shared meanings, concepts, or beliefs.

I wonder if valid argument to arrive at all of those things is acceptable?

I agree with Davidson's conclusion, I just arrived at it by virtue of taking another path. Shared meaning happens long before we become aware of it. Shared meaning is what makes language possible. Leaving it out renders any subsequent reporting unacceptable.

Assuming that those things are unnecessary for translation is not just a garden variety assumption, but it is an assumption none the less, and one that needs argued for.

Here it is... the shared referent of two different languages. It's always something other than both. There is the opening back to the actual world...

Read the end again...

Davidson could've used some prior focus upon shared meaning, although I understand he wants to avoid an uninterpreted world, it seems to me that clearly establishing a world including shared meaning would pick out individuals to the exclusion of all others. Hence, my earlier pleasure with Banno when he mentioned Kripke...

Convention T does not offer a method of translation described by Davidson(common referents) so much as a method of drawing an equivalence between two schemas talking about the same thing.

I'm not sure the worth of such an equivalence. The translation occurred prior to it's being used to fill out convention T.

By Davidson's method, convention T is capable of accounting for two languages picking out the same entity to the exclusion of all else. Davidson seems to want to be able to say that that re-attaches us to the unmediated world, and I would agree for it demands our focus upon directly perceptible things. Things that can be picked out to the exclusion of all else by a plurality of names. Common referents are key.

Snow is directly perceptible.

Quoting creativesoul

Snow is directly perceptible.

What do you mean by 'directly' perceptible? As opposed to what 'indirect' perception?

Quoting Isaac

What do you mean by 'directly' perceptible? As opposed to what 'indirect' perception?

Physiological sensory perception that is unmediated by language use.

Quoting creativesoul

Physiological sensory perception that is unmediated by language use.

In opposition to what? It sounds like you've just stated the equivalent of "perception is unaffected by the price of bread", no one ever thought it was. I'm missing something here. Do you mean to argue that interpretation of perception is unmediated by language use? That's something people have suggested. Or that perception is unaffected by conceptual schemes (related to languages)? That too is a claim that's been made here.

What no one has claimed (thankfully for our collective sanity) is that the physiological process of perception is affected by the act of making vocal sounds with a view to communicating with others - which is what you have literally opposed.

Quoting Isaac

Physiological sensory perception that is unmediated by language use.
— creativesoul

In opposition to what?

Being unmediated by language use is not so much in opposition to anything... aside from being informed by language, and thus being existentially dependent upon language. Such things cannot be sensibly called "unmediated by language use". It's a comparative device/measure. Not all comparisons involve two opposing things.

Translation between different schema about the same world is Davidson's aim. Different names for the same referent can be demonstrated best by focusing upon directly perceptible things. That's all I'm doing, per Davidson's suggested method.

Quoting Isaac

It sounds like you've just stated the equivalent of "perception is unaffected by the price of bread", no one ever thought it was.

If you believe this, then I have to question your sincerity here. What I wrote sounds nothing like what you wrote. Read them aloud and see for yourself. Red herring. Non sequitur. Invalid objection. Unacceptable.

You'll have to do better than this.

Quoting creativesoul

What I wrote sounds nothing like what you wrote.

If you believe this, then I have to question your sincerity here. Read them aloud and see for yourself. Red herring. Non sequitur. Invalid objection. Unacceptable.

You'll have to do better than this.

Come on, a little charity! I already stated that because it sounded that way to me, I must be missing something. I then asked you what I was missing.

Quoting creativesoul

Being unmediated by language use is not so much in opposition to anything... aside from being informed by language, and thus being existentially dependent upon language.

... Still not helping I'm afraid. You're talking about 'perception' - the processing of visual stimuli, right? And language - the method of communication by written or spoken word, right? I'm failing to see why anyone would think the physiology of one was mediated by the other in the first place (hence my analogy of 'the price of bread', something which people also would not think connected to physiology of perception in the first place). I mean what could the process even be by which such a thing would be possible? Co-evolution perhaps?

If all you're saying is that the physiology of perception is unaffected by our method of communicating using words then we agree, but why mention such an obvious and trivially true point? Hence me thinking I'm missing something.

Quoting Isaac

Come on, a little charity!

I'll return it when I see it. I've been plenty charitable in past, and would be glad to continue being so.

Quoting Isaac

ou're talking about 'perception' - the processing of visual stimuli, right?

All physiological sensory perception. "Visual" points to one kind, one system, etc. There are more as you well know.

Quoting creativesoul

All physiological sensory perception. "Visual" points to one kind, one system, etc. There are more as you well know.

OK, so all physiological sensory perception. Who has suggested (or who do you think might suggest and so need correction) that the physiology of these systems might be mediated by language use - the act of communicating with words. I can't see any possible connection at all (which I know is literally what you're saying), but I don't understand why you said it.

Quoting Isaac

Who has suggested (or who do you think might suggest and so need correction) that the physiology of these systems might be mediated by language use - the act of communicating with words.

The physiology wouldn't change, but brain processes that integrate that sensory information into perceptions might, if they're mediated by language. That's what the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests. Looks like Davidson is arguing in contrast that we all actually perceive the same world, we just form different schemas of reference based on those perceptions, which can be translated between one another.

So while Eskimos might have 50 words for snow, and we have one, they could point out how their words point out variations in snow we gloss over in our language. The interesting question there is whether we noticed those differences before becoming aware that you could differentiate snow into fifty different kinds?

There has been discussion on whether the Ancient Greeks saw a blue colored sky or water based on Homer's odd choices of color language.

Reply to Marchesk

Yes, I'd certainly disagree with any notion that we actually perceive the same objects, unaffected by our beliefs and states of mind, I just wasn't at all sure that's what CS was arguing, so didn't want to go responding to the wrong thing.

The evidence that prior belief and emotional state can alter actual perception is overwhelming. This is, I think, what Kuhn is referring to, and I can't find anywhere in the paper where Davidson deals with the possibility of a content-scheme divide where the real/shared world content and the content upon which the scheme is built are one step removed by the model-dependent nature of our perception.

The idea even that we all perceive something as simple as snow the same way is questionable, but when it comes to objects of scientific theory, which was Kuhn's target, I think it very unlikely that we do.

While we're all offering how we prefer to think about it: as any visual artist knows, there's a lot of relativeness to what we sense and experience. Concepts don't stand between the tree and talk about the tree. The tree is a concept clothed in world.

What we see is grey and blue, and dark here and light there. When we say it's a tree, we have pushed the subjectum outward and located it amidst the colors. Heidegger.

People who don't notice this have experiences so dominated by concepts that they're blind to them and so might imagine they aren't there at all.

I think one of the reasons Davidson doesn't have much potency is that he wants us to think in terms of truth, but then wants us to understand truth as:

"P" is true IFF P (is true)

If you don't say "No shit." when you consider the T-sentence, you didn't get it. It's not an informative sentence. Triviality in, triviality out.

There are a lot of things we can get hung up about here.

One is whether conceptual schemes only cash out in effects on language use. This is a red herring, all that matters for Davidson's argument is whether incommensurable differences in conceptual schemes necessitate irreconcilable differences in language use. Absence of necessary evidence implies evidence of absence.

We could look at different procedures that generate conceptual schemes; maybe they are discursive like in Sapir-Whorf, maybe they are only partially linguistically mediated like in @Isaac and @creativesoul's proposals, maybe the differences in are in pre-conceptual styles of embodiment like in @frank's recent post. Of any such account; we can ask if the differences implied between incommensurable conceptual schemes entail irreconcilable differences in language use; we can re-ask the central framing device of the paper.

Another thing we can get hung up on is the role of the theory-ladened-ness of experience plays in establishing differences in conceptual schemes; people bring different theories to their experiences and act accordingly. Davidson acknowledges the theory-ladened-ness of experience and still attacks the notion of a conceptual scheme. He is writing to an audience of enlightened empiricists who no longer believe in the first two dogmas of empiricism; reductionism (brute facts and rules of composition thereof; anti-theory ladened accounts) and the analytic-synthetic distinction.

The new dualism is the foundation of an empiricism shorn of the untenable dogmas of the analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism shorn, that is, of the unworkable idea that we can uniquely allocate empirical content sentence by sentence.

If we're still thinking about how our perceptions are model influenced - theory ladened, then we're actually in agreement with Davidson here! He still wants to rebuke the idea of conceptual schemes while admitting that experience is theory ladened.

Another thing we can get hung up about is the distinction between a conception and a conceptual scheme. Do people have differences in conception of the same phenomena? Yes. Are these differences in conception sometimes very hard to spell out, analyse, or even notice? Yes. In practice, will we be able to come to accord with someone who has a radically different conception every time? No. These are also red herrings, for the purpose of the paper's argument anyway. We need to focus on the modality associated with translation and with being incommensurable in the paper.

The translation procedure conceived of in the paper is not a literal act of translation or explication, it's an abstraction of translation that exists when and only when two conceptual schemes are (at least partially) commensurable. The context of translation is always aligned with what is possible, not what is probable actually. Incommensurability, then, is the absence of this abstract link; when it is impossible in principle to translate some language use from one user of a conceptual scheme to another holding a different scheme.

Even if they inhabit the same world or share in the same forms of life. Even if they use language in similar ways, and are partially understood by each other, an incommensurable kernel may persist. Under these circumstances; shared lives, worlds, languages; what device ensures the distinction between commensurable periphery and incommensurable centre of two schemes with partial overlap?

The scheme-content distinction.

Meanings gave us a way to talk about categories, the organizing structure of language, and so on; but it is possible, as we have seen, to give up meanings and analyticity while retaining the idea of language as embodying a conceptual scheme. Thus in place of the dualism of the analytic-synthetic we get the dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content. The new dualism is the foundation of an empiricism shorn of the untenable dogmas of the analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism shorn, that is, of the unworkable idea that we can uniquely allocate empirical content sentence by sentence

Shared lives, worlds, languages, experiences are mere content that is apportioned by and partakes in a conceptual scheme. They are in the relation of conditioned data (content) and conditioning fact (scheme).

If we take a sentence like; "The cat is on the mat" -if it was true, would it be true without the conditioning of a conceptual scheme? Davidson would like to say yes!

Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not surface irritations, not the world, can make a sentence true. That experience takes a certain course, that our skin is warmed or punctured, that the universe is finite, these facts, if we like to talk that way, make sentences and theories true.

Our experiences don't make the world a certain way; they give us evidence. The world will be as it is irrespective of the contours of our conceptions of it, and we don't need to add anything to a statement in order for it to be true. This is to say, the conditioning operation of a conceptual scheme upon its content adds nothing to the truth or falsity of its associated propositions.

If you had a supplementary theory that tied truth conditions of propositions to their meaning, like Davidson does, this would go a long way in undermining the scheme-content distinction; as the conditioning operation envisaged by the scheme upon the empirical data does absolutely nothing; and an operation that does nothing is irrelevant.

Quoting fdrake

all that matters for Davidson's argument is whether incommensurable differences in conceptual schemes necessitate irreconcilable differences in language use.

If scheme A and B are incommensurable, then an A-person 1) won't understand a B-person, and 2) couldn't possibly know that this understanding is missing.

Look back at Moliere's posts. He did an excellent job of explaining the role of vantage point in Davidson's argument. A person who claims incommensurable conceptual schemes is assuming a vantage point she couldn't possibly have.

Quoting frank

Look back at Moliere's posts. He did an excellent job of explaining the role of vantage point in Davidson's argument. A person who claims incommensurable conceptual schemes is assuming a vantage point she couldn't possibly have.

That's part of it, yeah. Didn't see @Moliere's equally excellent second one. Were you informing me of Moliere's excellent posts because you wanted to criticise something in my posts or because you thought they were worth a read more generally?

Quoting fdrake

Were you informing me of Moliere's excellent posts because you wanted to criticise something in my posts

I guess I didn't understand why you said this:

Quoting fdrake

Of any such account; we can ask if the differences implied between incommensurable conceptual schemes entail irreconcilable differences in language use; we can re-ask the central framing device of the paper.

Are you saying that if one brings a counter to Davidson's article, one should ask whether the counter is a strawman?

Quoting frank

I guess I didn't understand why you said this:

Oh, that post was motivated to get the discussion back on what I see as the central issue. The scheme-content distinction. The "red herrings" I highlighted are only of importance because they show up in the thread, and aren't really addressing what I see as the central issue in the paper.

Reply to fdrake

Conceptual schemes arise from organising content (phenomena). It doesn't matter how the content is obtained.

Incommensurable schemes are nonetheless translatable, they must be for us to even know they are a scheme, and to know they are incommensurable.

Truth is a property of propositions, which by necessity are expressed in a language.

The truth of any scheme can therefore be expressed because it is a matter of language and we've just established that all schemes are translatable.

If we can express the truth of any scheme in common language then they are not truly incommensurable.

If they're not truly incommensurable, they might as well not exist. (bonus - if they don't exist then there's no scheme/content divide).

___

Any of that anywhere near?

Quoting fdrake

Oh, that post was motivated to get the discussion back on what I see as the central issue. The scheme-content distinction. The "red herrings" I highlighted are only of importance because they show up in the thread, and aren't really addressing what I see as the central issue in the paper.

I see. You were being a good moderator.

I think we nailed the basic ideas. We had sort of moved on to the provocative final sentences in the article, which could boringly be seen through the lens of the time it was written. More fun is to address those words in a larger arena that includes now.

Quoting Isaac

Incommensurable schemes are nonetheless translatable, they must be for us to even know they are a scheme, and to know they are incommensurable.

Ok, not everybody understood the article.

Reply to frank

The failure of intertranslatability is a necessary condition for difference of conceptual schemes;

nothing, it may be said, 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.

My strategy will be to argue that we cannot make sense of total failure [of translatability]

Struggling to see how those two propositions don't add up to exactly the idea that we cannot have differing conceptual schemes because that would require a failure of translatability and such failure is incoherent. Perhaps you could help?

Reply to Isaac Intranslatability isn't incoherent. "The mechanics of time travel were beyond the abilities of the human intellect, so the aliens couldn't translate the instructions." Totally coherent, but it requires a transcendent vantage point.

To posit intranslatability without access to transcendence produces an incoherent picture. How could human Jim know the instructions were impossible to translate? If he couldn't know that, he shouldn't be insisting that there is incommensurability.

Quoting frank

To posit intranslatability without access to transcendence produces an incoherent picture. How could human Jim know the instructions were impossible to translate? If he couldn't know that, he shouldn't be insisting that there is incommensurability.

If we were to detect an alien signal, but were unable to decode it despite our best efforts, wouldn't that imply incommensurability? Or just really strong encryption?

Quoting Isaac

Conceptual schemes arise from organising content (phenomena). It doesn't matter how the content is obtained.

I think that's about right, at least on how Davidson's using "conceptual scheme". It might also be that a conceptual scheme is implicated in how content is obtained (like the paradigm shift example).

Quoting Isaac

The truth of any scheme can therefore be expressed because it is a matter of language and we've just established that all schemes are translatable.

I'm not certain that a conceptual scheme can be true or false, for the purposes of the article, in terms of sentences it's part of their assignment of meaning to sentences (the form the content inhabits) rather than how sentences are true or false given a meaning assignment.

The stuff with T-sentences undermines this wedge between meaning assignment and how sentences are true and false.

Quoting Isaac

Yes, we have translated the objects of one to the objects of another. Have we translated their relations?

We have translated proper names? And nothing else?

Beliefs can be stated. Not all of them are stated, of course; but if something is a belief then it can be placed into a statement of the form "A believes p". I would have thought that obvious. The thing is, beliefs can also be false. It can be true that A believes that p, and p is indeed true. It can be true that A believes p, and yet p is false.

Quoting Isaac

That there are beliefs which function in one which would not function in another.

"Function"? What is it for a belief to function, as against it's being true?

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

Also you said it's a joke but you didn't expand.

Well, I meant to address your concern, and wrote stuff about it - around page seven. Perhaps I expected too much.

And later some more about the last few paragraphs in which Davidson points to the problem of having only one conceptual scheme.

Maybe I should put it this way: How would one make sense of translation, if there were only one conceptual scheme? What could translation be doing here? How would Davidson answer this question?

Quoting Marchesk

Banno stated in this thread he's convinced philosophy is bunk,

Not so much. The view I have expressed many times and over several years is that philosophical issues in the main are conceptual knots that can be smoothed out with suitable analysis - philosophy as therapy.

The dogma of conceptual schemes is a fog that prevents us talking about what is actually going on. See as an extreme my mooted Chinese herbalist insisting that pangolin scales cure cancer - and the philosopher who defends him by claiming that "it is true for Chinese medicine, but not for Western Medicine - they are different paradigms".

Quoting Marchesk

If we were to detect an alien signal, but were unable to decode it despite our best efforts, wouldn't that imply incommensurability? Or just really strong encryption?

Somebody would be considering incommensurability from the get-go, but there would be no way to confirm that. If human evolution was triggered by the contact and we gained the capacity for new concepts in the process, then we could look back and see that there had been no translatability. By then, we'd have the vantage point necessary to know that.

Quoting Banno

See as an extreme my mooted Chinese herbalist insisting that pangolin scales cure cancer - and the philosopher who defends him by claiming that "it is true for Chinese medicine, but not for Western Medicine - they are different paradigms".

Was there a philosopher who looked at things this way?

Reply to Banno That makes sense.

Quoting Isaac

Really? Sounds a little naive. Since when has one article and a few laconic remarks ever acted as some philosophical fait accompli?

I'm not overly happy with this comment. It leads me to think that the effort I put into the exegesis has not been matched by a careful reading of my comments and the article. Would that you expanded on the views of Ramsey, which might take this thread in a far more interesting direction.

Reply to Marchesk :smile: Don't sound so surprised...

Reply to Moliere THis is excellent. Please continue - I'd love to see where we agree and were we differ.

So far, we seem to be reading the same paper...

Quoting creativesoul

I also do not think that Davidson is doing away with conceptual schemes. Rather, it seems he's rejecting the idea that two schemes talking about the same world are not translatable one to another.

Clearly, in the last few paragraphs, he rejects the notion of conceptual schemes altogether.

Quoting Moliere

What we get in the argument for the ministry echoes the argument against transitivity.

I hadn't noticed that - you are right.

Quoting frank

Was there a philosopher who looked at things this way?

Richard Rorty might be an example. Certainly relativism has been around since ancient philosophy. I believe the Sophists made arguments that truth was relative.

Quoting Moliere

This bit is weird to me:

I read it as Davidson pointing out again that it is statements that are true or false; and since statements are part of language, their truth is relative to that language. So "il pleut" is not true in English, even if it is raining.

In the wider discussion of Radical Interpretation he makes it clear that the circumstances of an utterance need to be added to the left-hand side of the T-sentence if it is to be accurate. So we would have something like: "il pleut" as uttered by Pierre last Tuesday at 3:00pm in Paris is true IFF it was raining last Tuesday at 3:00pm in Paris...

Quoting creativesoul

Davidson's not wholly agreeing with the claim "truth is relative to a conceptual scheme".

He is wholly rejecting that claim

You seem to have lost track, Creative.

Quoting creativesoul

If he wholly rejects the very idea of an uninterpreted world...

Edit: Ah. After reading a bit further ahead, I see where you are going. Sure.

Quoting Marchesk

Was there a philosopher who looked at things this way?
— frank

Richard Rorty might be an example. Certainly relativism has been around since ancient philosophy. I believe the Sophists made arguments that truth was relative.

It's usually more like: for the Pharisees, morality dictated washing up to the elbow before eating.

Nobody but a few wackos would think, "Yea, but they were wrong!!!"

Reply to frank Or it's like, Western science is inherently imperialistic and sexist, so we should reject it's truth claims in favor of culturally appropriate ones.

Reply to frank Feyerabend, Kuhn... @Janus, although they might not admit it; this is where their story ends.

Quoting Banno

I'm not overly happy with this comment. It leads me to think that the effort I put into the exegesis has not been matched by a careful reading of my comments and the article. Would that you expanded on the views of Ramsey, which might take this thread in a far more interesting direction.

Ah, yes. My comment was directed specifically at your response to critiques/misunderstandings, not your prior exegesis which, I think I had already commented, was exemplary. I'm sorry for any confusion, I hadn't intended to offend (well, not in that context anyway).

I haven't got time tonight to get into the rest of the issues, but I wanted to say at least this.

Reply to fdrake It seems you have understood the article. Cool. Excellent post.

Quoting Marchesk

If we were to detect an alien signal, but were unable to decode it despite our best efforts, wouldn't that imply incommensurability? Or just really strong encryption?

If we couldn't translate it, how could we know it was an alien signal?

Quoting Banno

How would one make sense of translation, if there were only one conceptual scheme? What could translation be doing here? How would Davidson answer this question?

I'll read through the paper and thread again and get back to you.

Quoting Banno

If we couldn't translate it, how could we know it was an alien signal?

I believe it's possible to know that a radio source is non-natural without being able to decode the message. Or at least that's what I've heard from SETI talks. The first goal is detection, and then after that would be decoding it. You can't decode before you detect an artificial signal.

Reply to Marchesk Fine; so I'll get pedantic and say that what can be concluded is that the signal might be a message, not that it is a message.

So one way forward would be to apply information theory to translation.

Reply to Banno Sure, it might be message.

But let's say the signal is in a pattern of prime numbers like with the book and movie Contact, so we would know for sure it was artificial. But let's say the aliens, for unknown alien reasons, decided to send us the works of some arcane philosophy in the writing style of someone like Derrida without any additional guide to their language or culture. That might be untranslatable to us.

Reply to Marchesk So what we would see is a series of prime numbers and - random noise?

Hence my asking about information theory. Recognising that a signal contains a message seems to me to imply some level of understanding of the message.

Does Shannon entropy show us that there is a message without telling us what the message is?

Quoting Banno

Hence my asking about information theory. Recognising that a signal contains a message seems to me to imply some level of understanding of the message.

Probably so. I was more focused on whether we could understand the concepts if either the aliens sent us something difficult, or they thought a lot differently, without trying to provide a simpler cipher to help us along.

In Contact, the aliens had included a decoding schema starting with basic arithmetic and chemistry, but the goal was to provide plans for building a machine, which is a little different than sending a cultural text. What was also discussed was the alien's intentions in doing so, which could have been nefarious. It wasn't included in the message, so there was no way to know their intent until operating the machine.

Reply to Banno Say we've been chatting along fine, we're pretty sure the aliens said they came to serve man.

How would you eliminate doubt that their language is totally translatable?

Quoting Banno

Feyerabend, Kuhn... Janus, although they might not admit it; this is where their story ends.

Taking Chinese medicine as a whole, it is undoubtedly a conceptual scheme. It relies on notions of the five elements, chi, meridians, yin and yang and so on in the context of a vitalistic, holistic conception of the body. These are all concepts and they are incorporated into the overall schema which is Chinese Medicine.

Now you might say that none of these ideas can be empirically verified or falsified. I think that is true, which means that Chinese medicine is not exactly a scientific system or set of theories as we understand Western medicine to be.

The issue I see as a difficulty in Davidson's account is the claim that, since neither Chinese nor Western medicine are translatable into the terms of the other, then one or both of them must fail to be true and meaningful. Does this entail that one or the other must be false and meaningless, and if so what would that mean precisely, and what would be a set of criteria, which does not beg the question, for determining that?

Further to that what does it mean to say that any scientific theory is true and meaningful? If we say that there is a strict demarcation between science and pseudoscience, then we are committed to saying that all worldviews prior to our current scientific worldview are false and meaningless. To say that would look like a prime example of cultural chauvinism and the modernist myth of progress.

Quoting frank

How would you eliminate doubt that there is some aspect of their language that is untranslatable?

And how would I eliminate the doubt - should I have it - that there is some aspect of your use of English that is untranslatable?

The problem remains ill-defined. But my suspicion is that even were it well-defined, it would drop out of the discussion in much the same way as a boxed beetle. Indeed, wouldn't a part of your language that was untranslatable into any shared language be a private language in Wittgenstein's sense?

Quoting Banno

And how would I eliminate the doubt - should I have it - that there is some aspect of your use of English that is untranslatable?

I was talking about the alien language. How would you prove that it's entirely translatable once you're fairly certain that at least part of it is?

Quoting Banno

Indeed, wouldn't a part of your language that was untranslatable into any shared language be a private language in Wittgenstein's sense?

We share the same language, but you can't verify that I'm using the same linguistic rules you are. But that's a rule dust-up. It has nothing to do with concepts.

Quoting Janus

...neither Chinese nor Western medicine are translatable into the terms of the other,

But that's just not true. If the tumour goes away, the tumour goes away, regardless of what you call the tumour.

And that's the point. This notion of one paradigm not being translatable into the other fails, because overwhelmingly we share the same beliefs.

Reply to Banno

I retired last night, when I realized how close I was to veering too far off Davidson. I'm thinking I'll re-read the paper again tonight prior to adding anything more. Moliere and fdrake have reset the focus... and rightly so. The paper is heavily laden with unspoken background. Easy to get sidetracked if we do not know what Davidson holds as well as what he rejects.

I know that he's visiting different popular ideas for good reason. I haven't tied it all together yet. Temporarily setting aside the difference between our views requires reminding myself to not object!

:razz:

I want to study it a bit more, as I said...

Quoting Banno

But that's just not true. If the tumour goes away, the tumour goes away, regardless of what you call the tumour.

Yes. The tumour is the common referent.

Quoting Janus

If we say that there is a strict demarcation between science and pseudoscience, then we are committed to saying that all worldviews prior to our current scientific worldview are false and meaningless. To say that would look like a prime example of cultural chauvinism and the modernist myth of progress.

But there is clear progress, at least in terms of science and technology.

Reply to Banno Cool. Will do, though I'm chunking it because, hey, I still gotta work and I get tired too :). It's helping me too just to directly write out the argument.

Onto Scheme-Content and the third dogma of empiricism.

The paragraph I stopped at works as a closer for the previous discussion, by summarazing the difference between the two kinds of conceptual schemes, and introduces the second kind -- where empirical content is retained without an analytic/synthetic divide -- as a way to segue into the third dogma of empiricism.

Here Davidson takes some representatives of the view he wishes to criticize -- Whorf, Kuhn and Feyerabend, and Quine. He begins with Whorf but then provides us his distillation of the elements of these views right after he quotes Whorf:

Here we have all the required elements: language as the organizing force, not to be distinguished clearly from science; what is organized, referred to variously as "experience," "the stream of sensory experience," and "physical evidence"; and finally, the failure of intertranslatability ("calibration").

Here Davidson points out that there must be some neutral-something, something which conceptual schemes are about in order for the claim about conceptual schemes to make sense at all. In Whorf's quote we have the stream of sensory experience, and as Davidson interprets Kuhn at least in Kuhn it is nature, for Feyerabend it is human experience that's an actually existing process, and in Quine it is simply "experience". He also notes, through Quine, that the test of difference is a failure or difficulty in translation.

This is all of what we may call the historical-empirical material from which Davidson is drawing both his generalzations and also characterizing his target more in-depth. He sums up before giving us some more specific categories:

The idea is then that something is a language, and associated with a conceptual scheme, whether we can translate it or not, if it stands in a certain relation (predicting, organizing, facing or fitting) to experience (nature, reality, sensory promptings).

There exists an x which counts as a language. And said x is associated (related?) to a conceptual scheme IF it stands in a certain relation to experience.


So we get our categories for these sorts of conceptual schemes -- this by way of making conceptual schemes more intelligible to show how they are not defensible -- and conceptual schemes either organize or they fit.


A table of terms that are associated with both organize and fit (because I found the wording confusing):

Organize | Fit
systematize | predict
divide up | account for
| face (the tribunal of experience


And the entities, broadly, that are organized/fit are two categories as well -- either reality or experience.



****


The next two paragraphs are an argument against conceptual schemes which organize reality. I had to read it a couple of times but I believe the argument is best understood starting with the conclusion -- conceptual schemes which are claimed to organize reality are not adequate to the task of total untranslatability, as is the focus right now. If we are to organize reality, then we might organize a closet, say, and put the shoes here and the ties there. But what we cannot do is organize the closet without organizing all the objects within the closet -- we cannot organize the closet itself. There's a multiplicity of objects. Similarly so with predicates in a language -- we cannot organize a language itself without also organizing the predicates (say in relation to each other or their truth-values in some set of sample sentences). There are points within a pair of languages where the predicates differ, but there's enough similitude in our beliefs that we are able to point out these differences and know them rather than have them stand as alien artifacts, incomprehensible.

Davidson moves onto conceptual schemes which organize experience, and claims that this problem of plurality haunts these as well -- in fact points out that the language which we are familiar with seems to do exactly this! But then such a conceptual scheme would not supply us with the criteria we are looking for: a criteria of language-hood that does not depend upon (entail) translation into a familiar idiom.

He also moves on to point out that conceptual schemes which organize experience make an additional trouble for the search for this criteria: if it only organizes experience, then it does not organize knives and other familiar objects which are also in need of organizing.

Then Davidson segue's into the other pair of categories: conceptual schemes which fit (or, in the segue's word-choice, "cope") -- though having talked about the difficulties with conceptual schemes that (organize/fit) reality or experience he doesn't break out these sorts of conceptual schemes into their pairs this time -- he just focuses on conceptual schemes that fit, rather than organize.

Here he marks another difference between the two categories of conceptual schemes -- whereas the former looked at, in his words, the referential apparatus of language the latter takes on whole sentences.

Davidson mentions some particular views that we may have in mind, but wants to clarify and name the general target of his argument:

The general position is that sensory experience provides all the evidence for the acceptance of sentences (where sentences may include whole theories)

and then after some explication, the counter-argument:

The trouble is that the notion of fitting the totality of experience, like the notions of fitting the facts, or being true to the facts, adds nothing intelligible to the simple concept of being true. To
speak of sensory experience rather than the evidence, or just the facts, expresses a view about the source or nature of evidence, but it does not add a new entity to the universe against which to test
conceptual schemes

which is, after all, what Davidson is after. There's more here about truth, and a reference to another paper by Davidson. But let's just take him at his word and maybe save that paper for another time to at least understand the argument we're dealing with here. At least, for now. I'd like to finish this closer reading sometime :D.


This isn't to downplay the importance of that paragraph though because it's what carries us to Davidson's conclusion about conceptual schemes, the target of this paper.

Our attempt to characterize languages or conceptual schemes
in terms of the notion of fitting some entity has come down, then,
to the simple thought that something is an acceptable conceptual
scheme or theory if it is true. Perhaps we better say largely true in
order to allow sharers of a scheme to differ on details. And the
criterion of a conceptual scheme different from our own now becomes: largely true but not translatable

Some quote-dumping, but I actually found Davidson very clear at these parts so I thought it better to just put up his words. Mostly I'm just talking out some of my markings to see how the paper fits together as an essay and understand the argument better.

But here we change gears again. I think this section largely covers Davidson's characterization of the third dogma of empiricism, at least through the lens of conceptual schemes -- which is the target that brings out this third dogma in the first place.

Quoting Marchesk

But there is clear progress, at least in terms of science and technology.

Sure there is, but if progress is measured in terms of science and technology then that begs the question, no?

Quoting Banno

But that's just not true. If the tumour goes away, the tumour goes away, regardless of what you call the tumour.

I don't find this response to be adequate or even relevant, so I won't respond to it further.

Quoting Banno

This notion of one paradigm not being translatable into the other fails, because overwhelmingly we share the same beliefs.

All paradigms may be translatable into common languages, but that is not the same as to say that they are translatable into the terms of other paradigms. That is to say that the beliefs that constitute one paradigm may not be translatable into the beliefs that constitute another, and as I see it that is the salient point Kuhn was getting at. In other words to hold a paradigmatic set of beliefs commits you to a certain worldview, and not all worldviews are based on science as we understand it.

A familiar example would be that the beliefs associated with Christianity are not translatable into the terms of the physical sciences or even into general empirical terms. To say that the beliefs of the former are false and meaningless would be to beg the question, since you would be saying that on the basis of the empirical standpoint. This would be to valorize a form of chauvinistic positivism.

Quoting Janus

But that's just not true. If the tumour goes away, the tumour goes away, regardless of what you call the tumour.
— Banno

I don't find this response to be adequate or even relevant, so I won't respond to it further.

Odd, because it is a specific and cutting criticism of your suggestion. Regardless of whether the talk is about Chi, yin, yang, radiation therapy or chemo, if the patient dies, the treatment failed.

Claiming that Chinese medicine cannot be understood in western terms is intellectual smog.

Quoting Janus

the beliefs associated with Christianity are not translatable into the terms of the physical sciences or even into general empirical terms.

The stuff in the cup is wine. Those who say it is blood are doing no more than playing word games.

Quoting Banno

Claiming that Chinese medicine cannot be understood in western terms is intellectual smog.

I'm assuming you understand that I am not talking about the outcomes of Chinese medicine, but about its conceptual underpinnings. Negative outcomes, as well as positive, are a feature of both Chinese and Western medicine, of course; but that is irrelevant.

Quoting Banno

If the tumour goes away, the tumour goes away, regardless of what you call the tumour.

Quoting Janus

I'm assuming you understand that I am not talking about the outcomes of Chinese medicine, but about its conceptual underpinnings. Negative outcomes, as well as positive, are a feature of both Chinese and Western medicine, of course; but that is irrelevant.

re the yawl and the ketch


Davidson says:

Such examples emphasize the interpretation of anomalous details against a background of common beliefs and a going method of translation. But the principles involved must be the same in less trivial cases.



As the triviality of the case decreases the background of common beliefs decreases.

Accepting that some degree of translation is possible, the background of common beliefs will never decrease to 0%. In cases of increasing nontriviality, though the background of common beliefs may dwindle, it will never decrease to 0%. The limit-case-percentage is unknown.

In the example of Chinese and Western medicine, as Banno describes it, the background of common beliefs may be as limited as a belief in tumors and the will to rid the body of them.

Within the two conceptual schemes there may exist two distinct conceptions of the body, two distinct conceptions of the mind-body relationship and of the magical potencies of matter and of metaphysics in general. This is exemplary of a nontrivial case. But there is agreement within the framework of both schemes that tumors are bad and should go away and agreement that they sometimes do go away.

Quoting Janus

A familiar example would be that the beliefs associated with Christianity are not translatable into the terms of the physical sciences or even into general empirical terms.

Quoting Banno

The stuff in the cup is wine. Those who say it is blood are doing no more than playing word games.

Within the conceptual scheme of a few Christians (very few, the fantast zealots) there is no question the goblet is filled with blood. A nontrivial case - in the sense that a foundational belief - the ascendency of matter over the imagination - is thrown into question. To the zealous, the imagination-centered scheme ("blood") is a deeper reflection of reality than the matter-centered scheme ("wine"). So things are topsy-turvy. But there is still a background of common beliefs - for example a belief in the existence of the red liquid.

Reply to frank

That's just your own conclusion about the same subject matter. You implied I hadn't actually understood the article, so I was asking where I'd gone wrong in that respect, not where the the statements I drew from the article were wrong, in your opinion.

As Is evident, I don't think I agree with the conclusions in the article either, but I'm trying to ensure I've understood it properly first, so if you have some cause to think the article itself says something other than I've paraphrased, I'd be really grateful if you could explain those, in preference to your own conclusions, just initially.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

A nontrivial case - in the sense that a foundational belief - the ascendency of matter over the imagination - is thrown into question. To the zealous, the imagination-centered scheme ("blood") is a deeper reflection of reality than the matter-centered scheme ("wine"). So things are topsy-turvy. But there is still a background of common beliefs - for example a belief in the existence of the red liquid.

Well said.

Quoting fdrake

I'm not certain that a conceptual scheme can be true or false, for the purposes of the article

Davidson says "...something is an acceptable conceptual scheme or theory if it is true" I thought it a simplification to allow a wider view, but since it is one the author uses too, that seems a reasonable endorsement to use it, no?

Presuming the rest is OK, I'll try again to outline my issues with it. I've written much of this already, but it remains unaddressed.

Experience of reality is the result of, not the content of, conceptual schemes. This is the main conclusion of the work on perceptual schemes all the way back to Heimholtz, it's been a standard view in neuroscience for at least a decade. This is the main problem with Davidson's argument as I see it.

His approach is to lay out the four different things a conceptual scheme could be, demonstrate that failure of translatability in each does not make sense, and thereby, he claims, there can be no such discernible thing as a conceptual scheme. His four types are made up fo the Reality/Experience divide with regards to content, and the Organise/Fit divide with regards to purpose. I'm concerned primarily with the Fit-Reality combination.

I don't think Davidson really covers this option very comprehensively at all, he kind of glosses over it, but to the extent it is covered, the argument seems to go...

Alternative conceptual schemes in this case would have to be largely true but not translatable. Truth and translatable are the same (or rather truth does not add anything to merely the statement in that language - Tarski) so this can't be made sense of.

But fitting reality is different from being true. Something can be 'true' if the scheme's predictions match the phenomenal experience. But As I said right at the start, we are fairly sure that one's phenomenal experience is heavily the result of one's conceptual scheme, so different conceptual schemes will generate different phenomenal experiences which will be 'true' to the bearers of that conceptual scheme, but nonetheless different when compared to the hidden states of the real world.

Schemes are different if they work on different phenomena. Note, this does not necessarily make different schemes untranslatable. Here we get into Ramsey's notions of truth and behaviour. If we identify the truth of a belief as being the satisfactory completion of some task based on it (my belief that the pub is at the end of the road is 'true' if, when wanting to visit the pub, I walk to the end of the road and find it something which carries out the function I expect a pub to). Which leads to...

Quoting Banno

Yes, we have translated the objects of one to the objects of another. Have we translated their relations? — Isaac


We have translated proper names? And nothing else?

Objects are their functions and their functions are not necessarily translated into any language. So to say 'knife' in English is 'couteau' in French si to translate the object, but if French people only used such a thing for fighting, and English only used such a thing for peeling potatoes, we have not translated that information by translating the referring term for the object. Now, you could say we translate all the verbs which describe what they do with the objects, and then we'll have a complete picture, but don't we then end up with Wittgenstein's problem of having to know the rules by which a word means what it does prior to knowing the word. The words themselves do not tell us what the rules are, we cannot ever tell if anyone has 'grasped the rule'. As such, no amount of translation of words is going to yield up the behaviours, the rules, for which those words are used.

What we can do, though, is observe behaviour - we can watch a toddler fail the theory of mind test, we can deduce that, for that toddler, another mind is not what another mind is to us (because if it was she would have behaved differently). We can deduce that the toddler has a different conceptual scheme, all without the toddler even having the word for mind.

Quoting Banno

That there are beliefs which function in one which would not function in another. — Isaac


"Function"? What is it for a belief to function, as against it's being true?

This just relates to Tarski's idea of 'true' which is what Davidson is co-opting. If a belief functions (works as expected) then we could say it was 'true', indeed, that's how I prefer to use the term. That's how Ramsey uses it. But crucially, that's not how Tarski uses it, and it's Tarski's 'true which is being used to measure Davidson's stipulation that alternative conceptual schemes in this case would have to be largely true but not translatable (a standard he says they fail).

Quoting Banno

But that's just not true. If the tumour goes away, the tumour goes away, regardless of what you call the tumour.

That's as may be, but all that shows is some translatability, not the complete absence of genuine difference. The fact that you can translate the outcome does not in any way infer that you can translate 'yin'.

Quoting Banno

This notion of one paradigm not being translatable into the other fails, because overwhelmingly we share the same beliefs.

How? A baby is not born with a full set of beliefs. Beliefs are stored in the brain, yes? So if beliefs are acquired from the environment (which varies radically for different children), and those acquisitions are stored in the brain (whose structure can differ radically between individuals), what is the mechanism you propose which 'levels out' all of those differences to yield the same fundamental beliefs?

Work by Eric Corchesne on 6 month old babies has strongly indicated they may not even have a concept of distinct objects at that age, object permanence is certainly questionable, the idea of other minds is not demonstrable until 3 or 4 (much later in autistic children), consistency of time as a concept has been seriously questioned in under fives... I could go on.

Basically, almost every belief we have seems to be the result of some prediction-testing approach, crucially, the prediction comes first, and is only rejected when the test fails (and fails beyond what the body can do to make it right).

Without an idea of conceptual schemes, models, predictions, expectations... We simply would have to discard the last two decades of cognitive science. That's quite an ask on the say so of one article.

Reply to Isaac Excellent posts, Isaac.

My reaction is that perhaps the conceptual schemes Davidson is dealing with differ in some important way from the models that you are discussing here.

To do your posts justice I will need to go back over your articles again.

Thanks!

Quoting Isaac

Davidson says "...something is an acceptable conceptual scheme or theory if it is true" I thought it a simplification to allow a wider view, but since it is one the author uses too, that seems a reasonable endorsement to use it, no?

Aye. I saw that in the paper. I couldn't really tease out how a conceptual scheme could be "in the large part, true" other than thinking of it has an interpretation of sentences, where the interpretations happened to be true in most cases. It confused me because I don't know how to flesh out the distinction between a conceptual scheme assigning theory-ladened empirical content on a sentential level (which Davidson rejects) and whatever Davidson's attacking. (will find the quote later, have work now)

Quoting Isaac

Without an idea of conceptual schemes, models, predictions, expectations... We simply would have to discard the last two decades of cognitive science.

This is how I'm thinking about it.

For the purposes of the paper, one of these things is not like the others. Models/predictions/expectations are components of non-reductive empiricism (something Davidson expects to be true); we have different processes of interpretation based on our histories. Imagine these processes of interpretation as ways of interacting with the world (active model dependent perception). These ways of interacting with the world have propositions associated with them or generated in accord with them.

I think the crucial distinguishing feature for the purposes of the paper is that different processes of interpretation don't decide whether a given interpretation of a string is true or false.

"I spoke to Jule last Thursday" is true. There was an event that happened. I was there. If for some reason I did not believe it or forgot it; if I interpreted the world in a way where "I believe "I spoke to Jule last Thursday" is false" applied to me, that belief would be false. Why? Is it because I interpreted the world differently that the statement is false? No, it's because I really did speak to Jule last Thursday!

The operation of a conceptual scheme is contrary to this, I think Davidson construes them as working like:

""I spoke to Jule last Thursday" is true" depends partially upon the operation of the conceptual scheme in play. It makes what happened depend upon the perspective it is viewed from. The following would be the case if I judged that I did not speak to Jule last Thursday. "I think I did not speak to Jule last Thursday" where "think" ranges over conceptions generated in accord with whatever active perception<-> conception account you like. It could be the case that I indeed did speak with Jule last Thursday and did not think I did.

It's a tight needle to thread, but I think it's worth threading. We can have theory-ladened perceptions without conceptual relativism (due to conceptual scheme differences); at least, we should be suspicious of going from one to the other.

Quoting Banno

My reaction is that perhaps the conceptual schemes Davidson is dealing with differ in some important way from the models that you are discussing here.

This is very much the conclusion I'm coming to as well. The only exception to that is Kuhn. The article specifically 'attacks' Kuhn and yet it feels like Kuhn is talking about the sorts of models I'm discussing (or there's some overlap, might be more accurate).

I'm no expert on Kuhn though, beyond his contribution to constructivism in social sciences, so I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable might point out the differences. Maybe there's some aspect of Kuhn that fits the kind of schemes Davidson wants to do away with, but which does not entirely encompass Kuhn's whole project? Or maybe I've just got Kuhn wrong.

I agree with your earlier fears about where relativism can lead and I think, possibly, avoiding those ends is best achieved by limiting the scope of what we're prepared to accept as a different conceptual scheme (rather than removing them altogether). No one thinks the liquid in the cup really is the blood of christ, and pangolin scales definitely do not cure cancer. I don't think these are matters of different conceptual schemes (of the sort I'm talking about) they're just matters of lying or misunderstanding.

So maybe different conceptual schemes can be considered as acting on models (rather than models themselves). This would create the distinction you're looking for and enable Davidson to do away with them as sentential truths, but would allow model-dependant ideas of fundamental perception?

Reply to fdrake

Wierd timing. I think that's more or less what I just suggested to Banno, whilst you must have been writing your post. Let me know if I've missed the mark, but if not I think we're on the same page here.

@Isaac - I cant see the link you provided earlier; can you put it up again?

Quoting Banno

I cant see the link you provided earlier; can you put it up again?

Can't remember what I linked to, possibly the Friston paper, on the way expectation models affect perception? If that's not it, come back to me, I'll try again.

Quoting Isaac

This is very much the conclusion I'm coming to as well. The only exception to that is Kuhn. The article specifically 'attacks' Kuhn and yet it feels like Kuhn is talking about the sorts of models I'm discussing (or there's some overlap, might be more accurate).

I got that feeling, too -- or, at least, that my reading of Kuhn/Feyerabend differed enough from Davidson to make me want to make some kind of distinction. Even in the quotes Davidson provides I sort of raised an eyebrow of their translation into Davidson's idiom. But I'll admit that I don't know the papers he's citing, either.

Also Kuhn, at least, is just like that in general -- he's easy to get different impressions from. Like Rousseau: you read him because he says interesting things worth pondering, not because he said them precisely.

Off to work now but will finish the paper tonight.

Reply to Isaac That's it.

Reply to Moliere

Yes. I'm particularly concerned with the way Davidson says that

"Incommensurable" is, of course, Kuhn and Feyerabend's word for "not intertranslatable.

I'm not sure it is, but I too will have to go back to Kuhn to see if my feeling is right.

Quoting Banno

That's it.

Cool. Also, as a companion, if you have access to any academic journals you could tack down the snappily titled "Children's Understanding of Representational Change and Its Relation to the Understanding of False Belief and the Appearance-Reality Distinction" by Alison Gopnik. It's an introduction to the stuff I mentioned about how children's minds develop and adjust their models. The article is more readable than the title!

Obviously, don't feel obliged. I love this stuff at the interface between philosophy, psychology and cognitive science, but it's not everyone's cup of tea so I won't be offended by "no thanks, not interested"

So... something about neural structures of various scales adapting so as to maximise entropy? Talk of representation rather than conceptual schemes... but the representations appear to be bayesian, not conceptual...

So I can't say I followed the article, and I certainly can't see how it relates to conceptual schema.

I'm going to need help to follow your argument.

@Isaac Any tertiary sources?

@Banno

Even those thinkers who are certain there is only one conceptual scheme are in the sway of the scheme concept; even monotheists have religion.

But this (as the implied alternative to polytheism) leaves out ecumenism/pluralism, which I think characterises most of the philosophical "persuasions" to which Davidson might be referring, e.g. those countenancing,

• conceptual schemes (by that name, but equally...)
• paradigms
• social constructs
• mental models
• forms of life
• language in use
• semiotics
• world-making

I would guess that it's only a minority of sects that have believed in a clear separation of one deity (e.g. scheme) from another, let alone their mutual incommensurability. Much more usual has been to see them as big spongy things: networks, always evolving, by reconnecting and interconnecting. Not sealed off from each other.

Which is fragile enough as a positive creed, since conceived as the large-scale composition of myriad occasions of reference with no factual basis. So a reification of hot air (and ink). And seldom explicitly espoused, even by believers in the various big spongy things. (But go Quine!)

As a believer (in Quine's web for example), I should like to read Davidson as just saying to the extremists, the incommensurabilists: look, accept that if two links in 'separate' referential webs are in some undeniable way equivalent, then the webs can't be as separate as you thought.

But I have to admit he ends up happy to seem atheist about the "very idea". Is he? Does he mock the faithful?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quoting Moliere

A table of terms that are associated with both organize and fit

I read it as pretty much Piaget's contrast of assimilate and accommodate.

Reply to Banno

OK, I'll try again.

One of Davidson's conceptual scheme possibilities is the Fit-Reality combination, right? He argues that alternative conceptual schemes in this case would have to be largely 'true' but not translatable. He then argues that 'true' and translatable are the same, the truth of some statement in the language of one scheme is simply it's translation into another - because both schemes are talking about the same beliefs, if they weren't we'd simply better presume we got the translation wrong.

But in this particular arrangement of a conceptual scheme, we're not talking about fitting experience (that would be another of the four), we're talking about fitting reality.

Nothing problematic for Davidson so far, because fitting reality is no different from being true. Being true doesn't add anything to the expression of what is.

This is where the paper comes in. Something can be 'true' if the scheme's predictions match the phenomenal experience, but the phenomenal experience is mediated by the scheme - we see what we want/expect to see, we literally make it true (now in the Ramseyan sense - which is the only way we can use 'true' here because Tarski doesn't apply). So for Davidson's fourth possible idea of what a conceptual scheme could be (Fit-Reality) the truth-theory of the language that conceptual scheme has isn't enough to say that no two schemes are 'true' and yet not translatable.

One person's scheme might include relations between objects which entirely match their phenomenal experience, precisely because they're altering their phenomenal experience to make it match the relations they're expecting to experience. Those relations would be 'true' for them, entirely translatable as relations to us, yet not 'true' for us who have different phenomenal experiences because we're not expecting them to be 'true', because of our model which does not allow for them.

The thing is, all this happens at the level of perception, sensory input in general, which is where I think we need to accept the idea of different, possibly incommensurable, ones existing. It's very possible that Davidson would like to say that conceptual schemes are something different, but in allowing for a Fit-Reality option in his definition, he's opened up this possibility.

Quoting Banno

Any tertiary sources?

I think Wikipedia's article is basically OK, but I'm no expert on this, so I couldn't vet it.

TL;DR - applying Tarski to conceptual schemes assumes underlying beliefs are the same, the article demonstrates they're probably not.

@Banno

I should add, just to be clear - I'm not 100% sure that Davidson even does use Tarski to dispose of the Fit-Reality option. He definitely does with the Fit-Experience option, but one of my issues with the paper is that I can't really see where he deals with the Fit-Reality option at all. So this may well be where I've gone wrong - I'm attacking the wrong argument because I haven't seen/understood the argument Davidson actually makes against Fit-reality types.

Reply to Banno

I wrote a synopsis of Friston's general approach outlined in the linked paper here. In terms of how they relate to external events/the environmental stimulus, a rough picture is:

The external stimulus behaves in way [math]\gamma[/math] (say light frequencies reflecting off an object) which impress upon us in ways [math]\theta[/math] (say light frequencies and intensities we're visually sensitive to in the context of the environment). We have a causal model of our environment (broadly, "this (situation) comes from that (expectation of action effects)") that relates our actions [math]\alpha[/math] and these impressions [math]\theta[/math] into the total causal model [math]f(\alpha,\gamma)[/math]. This represents how we interpret and act in an environment.

In terms of how we use this information, we map [math]\gamma[/math] to [math]\theta[/math] through bodily constraints. [math]\theta[/math] is what our mind/body uses as distinct information sources in our environment; they are environmental parameters (where stuff is, luminescence, light frequencies, item topographies for touch, heat sensitivity, bodily proprioception etc) as they impress upon us perceptually; as we perceive them. They filter our environment and condense information in it into actionable perceptual chunks.

We then map [math]\theta[/math] to environmental/action/self model samples that represent all possible information about [math]\theta[/math]; this represents what perceptual features arise in our experience that are consistent with (and most probable in) our model of what our experience should be.

There are different "models" here, and the term is used loosely in the discussion so far. The relevant distinction I believe is one between [math]\gamma[/math] and [math]f(\alpha,\gamma)[/math], which is roughly [math]\gamma[/math] being "the causal structure of reality operating in our environment right now" to [math]f(\alpha,\gamma)[/math] being "our bodily capacities for being influenced by it insofar as they are perceptible" (consider that we react to alpha radiation on a cellular level, but can't sense its presence unaided).

Personally, I think that "The cat is on the mat" is indeed true when the cat is on the mat, and the model we have is an interaction with our environment that reveals some of its structure; in particular it can reveal that the cat is on the mat. It doesn't just reveal that "I perceived that the cat is on the mat", or that "The cat is on the mat with respect to my model" in usual circumstances our causal model of our environment is informative about how it works, it establishes all three (when in a context that perception is sufficiently reliable). The cat really is on the mat, it's also modelled as being on the mat, it's also perceived as being on the mat. It being modelled as being on the mat or perceived as being on the mat is not sufficient for "the cat is on the mat" being true. The only thing which is both necessary and sufficient for "the cat is on the mat" being true is for the cat to be on the mat.

In terms of the models, any individual's perceptions and actions are not causally separated from their environment; the way we parse an environment's causal structure has bodily constraints, and it need not faithfully represent any particular aspect of the environment's causal structure. We generally perceive environments in ways related to our concerns. We learn to see; so our perception is historically structured as well as bodily constrained as well as contextually informed.

In terms of "The cat is on the mat", I could say that after perceiving that the cat is on the mat. In terms of my perception, "The cat" is a perceptual feature; but perceptual features in usual circumstances are informative relations between environmental stimuli and action-perception chains (expectations and memories, protentions and retentions if you're feeling phenomenological about it); the perceptual feature is had by the perceiver, but it is nevertheless a relationship between perceiver and perceived. The presence of "the cat on the mat" as a perceptual feature is strong evidence (in usual circumstances) that there is indeed a cat on the mat, but the presence of the perceptual feature's evidentiary status with respect to the claim "the cat is on the mat" does not imply that "the cat is on the mat" is true if the perceiver sees it there. It's true only when there is a cat on the mat.

The models Friston talks about are like evidence accumulation machines given a particular set of expectations of how stuff works and what we can do; we perceive and act in order to minimise the difference between what we expect to happen and what is happening. Action tries to normalise the environment given a perception of its structure (in terms of perceptual features), perception tries to normalise proposed actions given expectations of environmental development (in terms of self modelling internal states, sensations etc). We store and are influenced by previous states on all levels; past actions influence future ones. Altogether, this paints a picture of us as a process of coming into environmental and bodily accord given goals and an environment and a body which we have partial access to and represent those accessed parts with some errors.

On my reading, this requires a distinction between what we expect to happen and what is happening, even if that distinction itself is something the model has purchase on; we adapt to minimise to these discrepancies. The discrepancies don't just come from our models, they come from our environments not being in accord with our models insofar as we are sensitive to the environment and our body.

One way this might interface with the current debate is that the model we have adds nothing to the truth conditions of "the cat is on the mat", Friston's account is a highly sophisticated rendering of what it means for perception to be embodied and active and model based and how this might operate neurally; that is, Friston's account spells out a scientific theory of how our perceptions and actions are theory ladened (even down to the level of perceptual features). I don't think it problematise the notion of the truth conditions of statements at all.

@Isaac and I had a similar "realist vs anti-realist" (though I think we're both different flavours of realist, really. I suspect Isaac of some kind of hidden anti realism, Isaac suspects me of some kind of hidden naive realism, was my take) discussion regarding Friston's work in that thread.

Quoting Isaac

That's just your own conclusion about the same subject matter.

You're right. I shouldn't have said anything.

Quoting Banno

We saw that any conceptual scheme worthy of the title must be true.

Rereading Davidson and the thread.

Can you connect this statement to a quote in Davidson? Where does Davidson measure the titular "worthiness" of conceptual schemes?

Quoting Banno

Davidson argues that to fit is to be true.

Quoting Banno

I see the argument here as a rejection of defining truth in terms of fit.

A contradiction here vis-a-vis truth in connection to fit. Can you parse this or connect it to some quotes?

Quoting Banno

I see the argument here as a rejection of defining truth in terms of fit. Davidson takes truth as fundamental.

Davidson presents a compelling argument that if a scheme fits the totality of sensory evidence it can be said to be true.

So this is one way to arrive at the truth of a scheme.

But he immediately rejects the notion of fitting. He says fitting adds nothing to the notion of being true.

Okay. Maybe it adds nothing. But "fitting" wasn't playing the role of "adding something to being true." It was playing the role of allowing language to say such and such a scheme is true. Indeed without the fitting there is no "being-true" to add something to.

A would call this moment in the essay (and in your exegesis) a "deflationary leap."

Can you explain this a little better?

@banno

The above is why I can agree the T-sentence makes no reference to a fact, but have to insist that without a fact the T-sentence can't be put to use to ferret out truth. It's just a nice formula with no content.

Quoting Banno

T-sentences

Next: "all the sensory evidence qua facts" is what makes a scheme true. Here Davidson assumes the sensory evidence qua facts can be accessed directly without the mediation of a scheme. Another assumption (no scheme mediates) and another deflation (from "fitting" to "facts").

Next: a deflation excising the notion of a fact. So the totality of sensory evidence provides us with the facts. But it's better not to think of facts. Just think of T-sentences.

So: from a scheme fitting the sensory evidence (facts) to a schemeless access to facts to the excisement of the word "fact" in favor of T-sentences.

Quoting Banno

T-sentences

The deflation makes sense if it can be established that conceptual schemes share translatable content to a large (almost total) extent. Which raises the question of triviality and non-triviality in the distinction between conceptual schemes. (I mentioned this above.) The proportion of translatability to untranslatability has to be ascertained in order to justify Davidson's deflations, especially the deflation from a scheme fitting the totality of sensory evidence to (let's say) trans-schemic access to sensory evidence.

Can you explain this further?

Quoting fdrake

The only thing which is both necessary and sufficient for "the cat is on the mat" being true is for the cat to be on the mat.

Can you explain how this differs from the correspondence account (if you think it does) ?

Quoting Banno

... any conceptual scheme worthy of consideration will be true.

So those conceptual schemes deemed unworthy of the title will be those that fail to fit "the totality of sensory evidence" or those that contain some proportion or preponderance of untranslatability?

How do we access "the totality of sensory evidence"?

A digression, perhaps...

For Davidson, beliefs are caused.

Quoting Isaac

...we literally make it true (now in the Ramseyan sense...)

Ramsey's analysis of truth strikes me as very similar to T-sentences - instead of the simple T-sentence Ramsey had a process of translation from English to English* - an English without the predict "...is true".

As if "s is true IFF p" had English on the left and English* on the right.

So are you here talking about the Ramseyen sense of truth, or of belief...?

Because I suspect that if you were to replace truth by belief, modify this:
Quoting Isaac

Something can be 'true' if the scheme's predictions match the phenomenal experience, but the phenomenal experience is mediated by the scheme - we see what we want/expect to see, we literally make it true

to this:

Quoting Isaac

Something can be believed if the predictions it implies match the phenomenal experience, but the phenomenal experience is mediated by the predictions - we see what we want/expect to see...

you would have something not at all unlike Davidson's somewhat fuzzy notion of beliefs being caused.

So you may be explaining in detail much the same sort of notion of belief that Davidson espoused.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

As the triviality of the case decreases the background of common beliefs decreases.

Accepting that some degree of translation is possible, the background of common beliefs will never decrease to 0%. In cases of increasing nontriviality, though the background of common beliefs may dwindle, it will never decrease to 0%. The limit-case-percentage is unknown.

In the example of Chinese and Western medicine, as Banno describes it, the background of common beliefs may be as limited as a belief in tumors and the will to rid the body of them.

Within the two conceptual schemes there may exist two distinct conceptions of the body, two distinct conceptions of the mind-body relationship and of the magical potencies of matter and of metaphysics in general. This is exemplary of a nontrivial case. But there is agreement within the framework of both schemes that tumors are bad and should go away and agreement that they sometimes do go away.

The distinction between trivial and non-trivial ideas within conceptual schemas is a nice insight and a most salient point to make. The agreement about the undesirability of tumours though, I would say is not really a feature of the conceptual schemas themselves, but a "meta" feature, which is due to the threat to well-being and even life that tumours present; a threat which is felt by all who wish to live without suffering. Of course healing schemas in general are designed to serve this basic human desire to be free from illness.

Quoting bongo fury

Does he mock the faithful?

I was going to write that I think he does -

Quoting bongo fury

, I should like to read Davidson as just saying to the extremists, the incommensurabilists: look, accept that if two links in 'separate' referential webs are in some undeniable way equivalent, then the webs can't be as separate as you thought.

But that's not a bad summation.

Quoting Banno

But that's not a bad summation.

"Not as separate as you thought" is a far cry from "killing relativism."

@fdrake, @Isaac

Drop the neuroscience for a bit. Lets' look at an analogous situation. Suppose that one made a Bayesian representation of the economy, such that one could predict economic futures with some degree of success.

Should we consider Davidson's article to apply to this model?

I think we would do so only if someone were to claim that we talk about was this model only; that talk of any other economic models was incommensurate with this model, and that we can never just talk about the economy, only economic models...

The sin Davidson is castigating is that of thinking we can not talk about dollars, but only about economic models of dollars.

Reply to ZzzoneiroCosm Honey, vinegar and flies.

Quoting Banno

Honey, vinegar and flies.

Always the politician.

In-group and out-group rigidity. Rigid exclusivity of the "view-from-everywhere"; something I anticipated and Cassandraed about somewhere above.

Vinegar, in this case, is the insistence on an objection.

Quoting ZzzoneiroCosm

We saw that any conceptual scheme worthy of the title must be true.
— Banno

Rereading Davidson and the thread.

Can you connect this statement to a quote in Davidson? Where does Davidson measure the titular "worthiness" of conceptual schemes?

Our attempt to characterize languages or conceptual schemes in terms of the notion of fitting some entity has come down, then, to the simple thought that something is an acceptable conceptual scheme or theory if it is true.