In 1971, Donald Davidson provided a powerful argument against an idea that was (and still is) very popular in many intellectual circles. The idea is quite basic: that we can speak or think meaningfully about "conceptual schemes", which are ways of seeing, interpreting or organizing the world. At the time, Kuhn's insistence that scientists working in different paradigms "live in different worlds" was making waves all over the place. Kuhn insisted that during scientific revolutions the very fabric of experience and linguistic meaning changed, such that an old paradigm was basically incomprehensible by the lights of a newer one.
Davidson calmly and quietly pointed out that the whole idea appeared to be bollocks. At one level, his argument was complex, but at another it was quite simple: what gives someone like Kuhn the right to talk about older paradigms at all? If a conceptual scheme is what provides our very bedrock categories of experience, then other schemes will be utterly incomprehensible to us. To say that we know anything whatsoever about other paradigms/conceptual schemes is to presume that we share something with those schemes, some common language with which to express that knowledge. But then, as Davidson says, we do not live in different worlds at all.
And that, as Douglas Adams might have said, pretty much wraps it up for Kuhn.
Less ambitious than Kuhn were neo-Kantian metaphysicians like Peter Strawson. Strawson saw himself as trying to delineate "our" conceptual scheme, that is, the scheme shared by all human beings. Strawson (Individuals, 1950, The Bounds of Sense, 1962) thought that our scheme was comprised of two "basic types of particulars", those categories which allow us to identify and describe all other kinds of particulars. Material bodies and persons were, for Strawson, this bedrock of all experience.
Let's set aside the category of "persons" for now. Material bodies, existing (and persisting) in 4-dimensional spacetime were the sorts of things that we just couldn't possibly get by without, cognitively and perceptually speaking. Our conceptual system presupposes this "framework" of objects in space and time, objects which (crucially) we must be able to re-identify at various times even if we lose sight of them for stretches of time.
Davidson is not impressed: "if only one conceptual scheme, then none at all". He means that there is something very odd in claiming that we have a single conceptual scheme and in presenting arguments designed to tell us what it's like. We can begin to appreciate this line of criticism when we think about a simple descriptive term like "red". Now, would it make sense to say that anything is "red" if we didn't have some idea of colours other than red? Obviously not. As Davidson might say, if everything is red, then nothing is red.
(note: here, things get a little technical, thought the main point has been made. read on for elaboration.)
What right, then, does Strawson have to describe our conceptual scheme, a scheme he repeatedly admits we cannot transcend? Let's take a look at page 35 of Individuals, where this problem begins to haunt Strawson. He is trying to answer the Humean skeptic who argues that in the case of non-continuous observation (that is, when we see a thing, stop seeing it and then think we see it again) we have no conclusive rational grounds for inferring numerical identity, the judgment that the two qualitatively identical objects are in fact the same object.
In other words, the ascription of numerical identity (NI) is a necessary condition for having our conceptual scheme (CS). How does he prove this?
There is a very simple Davidsonian argument against this entire procedure. It runs as follows. If Strawson is right and NI is a necessary condition for CS, then logically CS is a sufficient condition for NI. That means that our conceptual scheme forces NI upon us: we have no choice but to ascribe numerical identity to qualitatively identical objects at least some of the time.
But if this is so, what possible sense can there be in asking a reader to imagine ~NI? This is tantamount to asking a reader to step outside his own conceptual scheme and see what follows from doing so. But, as Davidson has shown in the case of Kuhn, the idea of stepping outside a conceptual scheme is incoherent: if you can step outside of it, it's not your conceptual scheme. Strawson therefore faces a dilemma. If his thought-experiment is posssible for us, then NI is not a necessary feature of our conceptual scheme. If it is not possible for us, then he cannot prove that NI is true via the thought-experiment, for the very possibility of the experiment undermines what is being proved.
So it is with many attempts to describe a "conceptual scheme". Kant is the grandfather of all such attempts, and one of the strongest early criticisms of his account was that it includes the problematic "noumenal realm", the land of things-in-themselves to which we are not supposed to have any access at all. By what right, asked Schelling and Hegel, did Kant posit entities that were unknowable yet somehow known (by Kant) to be the cause or ground of our experience?
Davidson, in his own way, is merely continuing this tradition. He wants people like Strawson to stop talking about "our conceptual scheme" and simply admit that they are describing reality. If we have discovered that space, time and material bodies really are, in Strawson's words, "basic particulars", then we haven't discovered anything about a "scheme". We've discovered that space, time and material bodies exist!
As some recent commenters have noted, Davidson is something of a Trojan Horse in analytic philosophy. Gliding into the field under the auspices of linguistic philosophy and firmly in agreement with Quine's critiques of empiricism, his own substantive contributions have quietly paved the way for the return of old-school Platonic or Hegelian metaphysics. It will be interesting to see who eventually wins the day, Quine, or Davidson.
Davidson calmly and quietly pointed out that the whole idea appeared to be bollocks. At one level, his argument was complex, but at another it was quite simple: what gives someone like Kuhn the right to talk about older paradigms at all? If a conceptual scheme is what provides our very bedrock categories of experience, then other schemes will be utterly incomprehensible to us. To say that we know anything whatsoever about other paradigms/conceptual schemes is to presume that we share something with those schemes, some common language with which to express that knowledge. But then, as Davidson says, we do not live in different worlds at all.
And that, as Douglas Adams might have said, pretty much wraps it up for Kuhn.
Less ambitious than Kuhn were neo-Kantian metaphysicians like Peter Strawson. Strawson saw himself as trying to delineate "our" conceptual scheme, that is, the scheme shared by all human beings. Strawson (Individuals, 1950, The Bounds of Sense, 1962) thought that our scheme was comprised of two "basic types of particulars", those categories which allow us to identify and describe all other kinds of particulars. Material bodies and persons were, for Strawson, this bedrock of all experience.
Let's set aside the category of "persons" for now. Material bodies, existing (and persisting) in 4-dimensional spacetime were the sorts of things that we just couldn't possibly get by without, cognitively and perceptually speaking. Our conceptual system presupposes this "framework" of objects in space and time, objects which (crucially) we must be able to re-identify at various times even if we lose sight of them for stretches of time.
Davidson is not impressed: "if only one conceptual scheme, then none at all". He means that there is something very odd in claiming that we have a single conceptual scheme and in presenting arguments designed to tell us what it's like. We can begin to appreciate this line of criticism when we think about a simple descriptive term like "red". Now, would it make sense to say that anything is "red" if we didn't have some idea of colours other than red? Obviously not. As Davidson might say, if everything is red, then nothing is red.
(note: here, things get a little technical, thought the main point has been made. read on for elaboration.)
What right, then, does Strawson have to describe our conceptual scheme, a scheme he repeatedly admits we cannot transcend? Let's take a look at page 35 of Individuals, where this problem begins to haunt Strawson. He is trying to answer the Humean skeptic who argues that in the case of non-continuous observation (that is, when we see a thing, stop seeing it and then think we see it again) we have no conclusive rational grounds for inferring numerical identity, the judgment that the two qualitatively identical objects are in fact the same object.
Now... there is no doubt that we have the idea of a single sptio-temporal system of material things; the idea of every material thing being spatially related, in various ways at various times, to every other at every time. There is no doubt at all that this is our conceptual scheme.Strawson is affirming that this is how we think: this is the character of our conceptual scheme.
Now I say that a condition of our having this conceptual scheme is the unquestioning acceptance of particular-identity in at least some cases of non-continuous obvervation.
In other words, the ascription of numerical identity (NI) is a necessary condition for having our conceptual scheme (CS). How does he prove this?
Let us suppose for a moment that we were never willing to ascribe particular-identity in such cases. Then we should, as it were, have the idea of a new, a different spatial system for each new continuous stretch of observation. Most of the common concepts of material things that we have would not exist...Strawson goes on to argue against the skeptic, but the foundation of his anti-skeptical argument lies in this reductio: assume ~NI and see what you get.
There is a very simple Davidsonian argument against this entire procedure. It runs as follows. If Strawson is right and NI is a necessary condition for CS, then logically CS is a sufficient condition for NI. That means that our conceptual scheme forces NI upon us: we have no choice but to ascribe numerical identity to qualitatively identical objects at least some of the time.
But if this is so, what possible sense can there be in asking a reader to imagine ~NI? This is tantamount to asking a reader to step outside his own conceptual scheme and see what follows from doing so. But, as Davidson has shown in the case of Kuhn, the idea of stepping outside a conceptual scheme is incoherent: if you can step outside of it, it's not your conceptual scheme. Strawson therefore faces a dilemma. If his thought-experiment is posssible for us, then NI is not a necessary feature of our conceptual scheme. If it is not possible for us, then he cannot prove that NI is true via the thought-experiment, for the very possibility of the experiment undermines what is being proved.
So it is with many attempts to describe a "conceptual scheme". Kant is the grandfather of all such attempts, and one of the strongest early criticisms of his account was that it includes the problematic "noumenal realm", the land of things-in-themselves to which we are not supposed to have any access at all. By what right, asked Schelling and Hegel, did Kant posit entities that were unknowable yet somehow known (by Kant) to be the cause or ground of our experience?
Davidson, in his own way, is merely continuing this tradition. He wants people like Strawson to stop talking about "our conceptual scheme" and simply admit that they are describing reality. If we have discovered that space, time and material bodies really are, in Strawson's words, "basic particulars", then we haven't discovered anything about a "scheme". We've discovered that space, time and material bodies exist!
As some recent commenters have noted, Davidson is something of a Trojan Horse in analytic philosophy. Gliding into the field under the auspices of linguistic philosophy and firmly in agreement with Quine's critiques of empiricism, his own substantive contributions have quietly paved the way for the return of old-school Platonic or Hegelian metaphysics. It will be interesting to see who eventually wins the day, Quine, or Davidson.
4 comments:
It seems to me that Davidson ignores two different ways one can try to "step out of" a conceptual scheme. The first kind is like trying to step outside a visual illusion. You can't turn off those mechanisms in your brain. They run automatically and are not influenced by consciousness. The second kind of "stepping out" involves explicitly and reflectively considering different perspectives or conceptual schemas. Evolutionism and creationism are two examples of competing conceptual schemes. They both attempt to explain the same data. But clearly one could step in and out of each scheme, and interpret empirical findings differently in accordance with the frame you are considering. But imagine a person who has grown up all his life under the creationist influence, never having learned anything about evolutionism except that it's dead wrong. This might be closer to the case of the visual illusions than the weighing of evidence between two views. There is a real sense here where it is impossible for the creationist to comprehend the evolutionist's perspective. But it's possible in principle for the creationist to abandon his conceptual schema (I am living proof of this). So I think we can imagine different ways in which a conceptual scheme is impossible or difficult to escape out of (e.g. visual illusions, the dogmatic creationist) without thereby committing ourselves to the rejection of the possibility of "stepping back" rationally and explicitly holding different perspectives. On this view, Davidson is wrong to think that conceptual schemas have to be the "bedrock categories" of experience. There can be different kinds of schemes, some more inescapable than others, depending on how they are learned, either from nature or nurture.
Hi Gary,
Davidson's targets don't share your idea of what a conceptual scheme is. He actually agrees with you: the only meaningful way of talking about schemes is not as mysterious, a priori, "organizing" categories, but in the much more modest "perspectives" or "sets of beliefs". You're absolutely right, we CAN step outside of these standpoints and evaluate them according to various methods. Davidson actually agrees with you, there. His targets are conceptual relativists like Kuhn who think that people in different schemes literally "live in different worlds" or "speak differentlanguages".
Is Strawson trying to prove that NI is true? Surely the whole point about conceptual schemes is that truth and falsity exist within them, but they themselves are just there?
I've always felt the arguments goes:
Davidson: Look, bodies exist. They're real. End of.
Strawson: Certainly they're real. For us.
Davidson: No, no, no! Not for US! They're REAL.
Strawson: You think you're saying something about the world, but you're just emphasising the fundamental nature of this part of the conceptual scheme - fundamental to us.
[Davidson punches Strawson in the mouth.]
I think I've stated before how much I love Davidson, for all the reasons you've stated here (including the Trojan Horse bit).
Davidson's genius is getting us to focus on the world we actually live in instead of trying to imagining some outside position to judge it from. He does this by pointing out that the everyday world -- with cars and persons and murders and love -- is just what we mean by "reality." Until someone can actually make good sense of a reality more real than this (e.g. until we actually wake up from the Matrix), philosophers who try to doubt the reality of reality are actually committing the contradiction they look like they're committing.
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