Publication details
Nesouměřitelnost pojmových schémat
| Title in English | Incommensurability of Conceptual Schemes |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | All thinking takes place in concepts. We unwittingly cast the net of these concepts on the perceived world that we so categorize and “create”. But if there are more nets - or conceptual schemes - and if they are incommensurable with each other, the question naturally arises whether speakers are always able to understand each other and whether they live in the same world. At the end of the last century, the American philosopher Donald Davidson, in his famous article On the Very Idea of Conceptual Schemes, seemed to end the debate on such questions, concluding that the very idea of different schemes was questionable and that therefore all language-gifted beings must see the world in a similar way. Unfortunately for philosophy, a significant part of thinkers did not accept his conclusion and presented many objections and arguments supporting the opposite view. In the contribution, after the introductory presentation of the issue, I will focus on Davidson’s approach in order to then lay out its limits and, in the end, present alternative viable theories that are not injured by Davidson’s argument. The outcome of this process can be briefly summed up - as one of Davidson’s opponents humorously declared - as the finding that the article On the Very Idea of Conceptual Schemes, more than the idea itself, speaks only of an idea, one of many. |
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