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? — Marchesk
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! — unenlightened
How do you translate that link without simply changing beliefs? — Isaac
One scheme can therefore quite reasonably be considered 'better' than another (more elegant, more useful, more parsimonious...) — Isaac
But it is almost as dull to suggest that the sun does not set because the Earth rotates. — unenlightened
Sure, but which one? You may favour one and I may favour another for our different purposes. — 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. — unenlightened
Sure, but which one? You may favour one and I may favour another for our different purposes.
— unenlightened
The one that's true. — Marchesk
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 — ZzzoneiroCosm
The very idea! — unenlightened
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. — Marchesk
Truth is a property of propositions, not conceptual schemes, and in propositions, the translatability then becomes relevant again. — Isaac
In real terms at the end of the day, the sun sets. — 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? — unenlightened
it doesn't though, it only appears to. Just like the Earth appears to be stationary, and to some deluded or ignorant folk, flat. — 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. — Marchesk
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? — Janus
I guess I don't understand — Marchesk
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? — fdrake
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? — Harry Hindu
Aborigines had no word for the number 114. How do you translate when they dont have the word?
— frank
115-1? — ZzzoneiroCosm
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 — Marchesk
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. — 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... — Isaac
Okay, but what if the terms of that schema are wrong? Are they still referring to a translatable true statement in our schema? — Marchesk
I don't think he does away with them either. But I'm new to Davidson so I'm willing to listen. — ZzzoneiroCosm
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