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?

Feyerabend, Kuhn... Janus, although they might not admit it; this is where their story ends. — Banno

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.

How would you eliminate doubt that there is some aspect of their language that is untranslatable? — frank

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?

And how would I eliminate the doubt - should I have it - that there is some aspect of your use of English that is untranslatable? — Banno

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?

Indeed, wouldn't a part of your language that was untranslatable into any shared language be a private language in Wittgenstein's sense? — Banno

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.

...neither Chinese nor Western medicine are translatable into the terms of the other, — Janus

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.

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...

But that's just not true. If the tumour goes away, the tumour goes away, regardless of what you call the tumour. — Banno

Yes. The tumour is the common referent.

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. — Janus

But there is clear progress, at least in terms of science and technology.

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.

But there is clear progress, at least in terms of science and technology. — Marchesk

Sure there is, but if progress is measured in terms of science and technology then that begs the question, no?

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.

This notion of one paradigm not being translatable into the other fails, because overwhelmingly we share the same beliefs. — Banno

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.

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. — Janus

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.

the beliefs associated with Christianity are not translatable into the terms of the physical sciences or even into general empirical terms. — Janus

The stuff in the cup is wine. Those who say it is blood are doing no more than playing word games.

Claiming that Chinese medicine cannot be understood in western terms is intellectual smog. — Banno

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.

If the tumour goes away, the tumour goes away, regardless of what you call the tumour. — Banno

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. — Janus

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.

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. — Janus

The stuff in the cup is wine. Those who say it is blood are doing no more than playing word games. — Banno

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.

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.

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. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Well said.

I'm not certain that a conceptual scheme can be true or false, for the purposes of the article — fdrake

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...

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? — Banno

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.

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? — Banno

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).

But that's just not true. If the tumour goes away, the tumour goes away, regardless of what you call the tumour. — Banno

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'.

This notion of one paradigm not being translatable into the other fails, because overwhelmingly we share the same beliefs. — Banno

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.

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!

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? — Isaac

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)

Without an idea of conceptual schemes, models, predictions, expectations... We simply would have to discard the last two decades of cognitive science. — Isaac

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.

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. — Banno

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?

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?

I cant see the link you provided earlier; can you put it up again? — Banno

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.

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). — Isaac

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.

That's it.

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.

That's it. — Banno

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.