© Michael Lacewing

Conceptual schemes

Michael Lacewing

An anthropological idea

• Different cultures and languages have different sets of concepts - different conceptual schemes

• One suggestion: the senses let in information, which is then interpreted, using the conceptual scheme– We don’t form ideas directly from sense experience

• Whorf: – We are inclined to think of language simply as a

technique of expression, and not to realize that language first of all is a classification and arrangement of the stream of sensory experience which results in a certain world-order

Conceptual relativism

• The claim that we cannot translate from one conceptual scheme to another, so that different schemes embed different representations of reality– Whorf: all observers are not led by

the same physical evidence [i.e. stream of sensory experience] to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.

• However, if we can translate between schemes, there is no conceptual relativism.

Relativism and reality

• Some people wrongly say that people with different conceptual schemes inhabit different realities.– This supposes that language creates reality - but the

world would exist even if no one spoke language.– Relativism is defended by presupposing that something is the ‘same’, but interpreted differently.

• Relativism rephrased: A proposition may be true in one conceptual scheme without being able to be expressed in another scheme. Therefore, no scheme can express all true propositions.

Discussion

• Parts of another conceptual scheme may be untranslatable - but we can use the parts we can translate to understand these, and thereby expand our conceptual scheme

• One conceptual scheme can express all truths, as long as it is expanded

• Objection: can we always combine different conceptual schemes?– E.g. blue v. green v. blue-green

Discussion

• If we can’t combine conceptual schemes, then different schemes can express different truths.

• However, we cannot argue that what is true in one conceptual scheme is false in another.

• Conclusion: in order to be able to state a truth, you must be able to state it!

Objection

• Empirical: how far can we translate between conceptual schemes?

• Philosophical: the relation between language and conceptual schemes that relativism presupposes is incoherent– If the conceptual scheme ‘organizes’ our

experience, then ‘experience’ must be made up of ‘experiences’

– We can only identify our experiences the familiar way, using language (e.g. seeing a rose)

– Any conceptual scheme that starts from these experiences will be similar to ours