Why do we need them? Folk seem to just get on with using language without the help of epistemologists. Why shouldn't it just be that we use words to talk to each other, and that's it?
— Banno

Sure, that sounds great. It seems to be a kind of eliminative skepticism vis-a-vis certain kinds of epistemology, metaphysics, and the rest of it. Is that how you see it?


Still interested to get your take on the above. Are we looking at a kind of skepticism?

So he means coherence among existing beliefs? A web of belief kind of view of truth? The sun's setting is coherent if it adheres with other beliefs about the world?

Davidson also rejects talk of the facts, if for no other reason than such talk is somehow inadequate for translatability.
— creativesoul

If you have a minute to explain that further, I'm interested. — ZzzoneiroCosm

See my exchange with Marchesky...

See my exchange with Marchesky... — creativesoul

Will do.

Do you see all of this as a kind of skepticism?

Sure, that sounds great. It seems to be a kind of eliminative skepticism vis-a-vis certain kinds of epistemology, metaphysics, and the rest of it. Is that how you see it? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Pretty much

Suits me, since my Wittgenstein -inspire prejudices tell me that philosophy amounts to nothing.

Why shouldn't it just be that we use words to talk to each other, and that's it? — Banno

Because although it works in everyday life, it doesn't survive philosophical scrutiny. In this case, what does it mean for a statement to be true?

Is there another essay, to your knowledge, where he takes up the subject again? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Hmm. see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/davidson/#TrutPredRealReal

A secondary source, but I was privileged to study with Malpas many years ago.

Suits me, since my Wittgenstein -inspire prejudices tell me that philosophy amounts to nothing. — Banno

I agree it amounts to nothing. But, like we have to do our bench-presses, we have to do our brain-presses, if we want to stay fit.

Hmm. see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/davidson/#TrutPredRealReal

A secondary source, but I was privileged to study with Malpas many years ago — Banno

Good. Thanks.

There's also A coherence theory of truth and knowledge, an article which I have not studied in any detail.


Must get a round tuit.

l So he means coherence among existing beliefs? A web of belief kind of view of truth? The sun's setting is coherent if it adheres with other beliefs about the world? — Marchesk

Keep in mind his aim. He is proposing a method of approach to the very idea of conceptual schemes. He grants them all coherence and meaningfulness and in doing so eliminates all questions involving what makes belief true.

Do you understand this?

Do you understand this? — creativesoul

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?

Which basically amounts to abolishing he notion of conceptual schemas... — Marchesk

Some. Not all.

Some. Not all. — creativesoul

Which world(s) do the others live in? Is that a support for conceptual schemas?

So what was the statements being true and rising suns of the last couple pages all about? — Marchesk

Take these two paragraphs:


Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true:
not experience, not surface irritations, not the world, can make a
sentence true. That experience takes a certain course, that our
skin is warmed or punctured, that the universe is finite, these
facts, if we like to talk that way, make sentences and theories true.
But this point is put better without mention of facts. The sentence
"My skin is warm" is true if and only if my skin is warm. Here
there is no reference to a fact, a world, an experience, or a piece of
evidence.



In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted
reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth quite the contrary. Given the dogma of a dualism of scheme and reality, we get conceptual relativity, and truth relative to a scheme. Without the dogma, this kind of relativity goes by the board. Of course truth
of sentences remains relative to language, but that is as objective as can be. In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with thefamiliar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false.


Davidson has (in his eyes) eliminated "truth relative to a scheme." Beyond that he wants to eliminate truth relative to a fact and truth relative to an object.

That leaves us with the T-sentence, and nothing else.

So me and Banno were talking about how a T-sentence can be used without reference to a fact or an object.

I'm not convinced, but I'm new to Davidson, so I'll charitably continue reading him.

Some. Not all.
— creativesoul

Which world(s) do the others live in? Is that a support for conceptual schemas? — Marchesk

Davidson draw a distinction between kinds of possible worlds. He focuses upon the second in which there is one world and all the different views, because that is the kind underlying the belief that there are incommensurate schemes.

I'm hesitant to agree with the idea that convention T offers an adequate means for translation. I think Davidson needs that to be the case to make his own.

Exactly.

I'm hesitant to agree with the idea that convention T offers an adequate means for translation. — creativesoul

Perhaps its more of a minimal translation.

1."It is sometimes thought that translatability into a familiar lan- guage, say English, cannot be a criterion of languagehood on the grounds that the relation of translatability is not transitive."

2."According to Kuhn, scientists operating in different scientific traditions (within different "paradigms") "live in different worlds."

In the first he seems to be addressing the issue of translatability from one language into another; as though the whole of a language can be considered to be a conceptual scheme.

In the second he is considering conceptual schemes as different "paradigms" within a language in the Kuhnian sense.

So, re the example I gave of Chinese and Western medicine; of course they can both be expressed in Chinese or English or presumably many other (but not all?) languages. What then does it mean to say that one conceptual scheme must be translatable into the terms of another or else one (or both?) of the conceptual schemes cannot be "true and meaningful"? So, I ask you, what does that mean to you, since Banno apparently won't say what it means to him?

From the linked SEP entry:

Nevertheless, Davidson is not a coherentist, in any standard sense, about either truth or knowledge. Nor, for all that he adopts a Tarskian approach to meaning, does he espouse a correspondence theory of truth (in fact, he denies that a Tarskian truth theory is a correspondence theory in any conventional sense).

On a different tangent, does anyone know what Davidson's argument is for denying that Tarski's account is of the same logic as the correspondence account?

↪creativesoul Exactly. — Banno

Now, if I can just stay on track!

:wink:

I think Banno is quite right in connecting this paper to Kripke's.

Do you see all of this as a kind of skepticism? — ZzzoneiroCosm

I see it as an outright rejection of the idea that there can be such things as schemes about the world that are not translatable one into the other.

So, re the example I gave of Chinese and Western medicine; of course they can both be expressed in Chinese or English or presumably many other (but not all?) languages. What then does it mean to say that one conceptual scheme must be translatable into the terms of another or else one (or both?) of the conceptual schemes cannot be "true and meaningful"? So, I ask you, what does that mean to you, since Banno apparently won't say what it means to him? — Janus

I'm hesitant to take a stab at it until I've processed tonight's exchange so far and have taken another glance at the essay. This is Banno's and creative's bag. I'm just trying to understand this whole fact-less, objectless T-sentence thing.

But I think your example is troublesome. It might be better to look at how the language of solipsism can be translated into the language of direct realism. Grand-scale schemes.

I'd say that comes from page 2 of the essay:

What we need, it seems to me, is some idea of the considerations that set the limits to conceptual contrast. There are extreme suppositions that founder on paradox or contradiction; there are modest examples we have no trouble understanding. What determines where we cross from the merely strange or novel to the absurd'?

We may accept the doctrine that associates having a language with having a conceptual scheme. The relation may be supposed to be this: if conceptual schemes differ, so do languages. But speakers of different languages may share a conceptual scheme provided there is a way of translating one language into the other. Studying the criteria of translation is therefore a way of focussing on criteria of identity for conceptual schemes.

And so on. He briefly touches on beliefs where language and conceptual schemes are not related in this way, but he's focusing in where they are believed to relate this way with the intent of coming up with some clear-cut way of determining what counts as a conceptual scheme in the first place.

I'm hesitant to agree with the idea that convention T offers an adequate means for translation.
— creativesoul

Perhaps its more of a minimal translation. — Banno

Nothing, however, no thing, makes sentences and theories true:
not experience, not surface irritations, not the world, can make a
sentence true. That experience takes a certain course, that our
skin is warmed or punctured, that the universe is finite, these
facts, if we like to talk that way, make sentences and theories true.
But this point is put better without mention of facts. The sentence
"My skin is warm" is true if and only if my skin is warm. Here
there is no reference to a fact, a world, an experience, or a piece of
evidence.



In giving up dependence on the concept of an uninterpreted
reality, something outside all schemes and science, we do not relinquish the notion of objective truth quite the contrary. Given the dogma of a dualism of scheme and reality, we get conceptual relativity, and truth relative to a scheme. Without the dogma, this kind of relativity goes by the board. Of course truth
of sentences remains relative to language, but that is as objective as can be. In giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the world, but reestablish unmediated touch with thefamiliar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false.


Davidson has (in his eyes) eliminated "truth relative to a scheme." Beyond that he wants to eliminate truth relative to a fact and truth relative to an object.

That leaves us with the T-sentence, and nothing else.

So me and Banno were talking about how a T-sentence can be used without reference to a fact or an object. — ZzzoneiroCosm

What has happened, and/or is happening...

My skin being warm... etc.

He then hesitantly refers to the actual events, the case at hand, what's happened as 'facts', and further shows his displeasure with the term by qualifying it with "if we must talk like that", or words to that effect/affect.

I do not think that he eliminated truth as relative to a scheme so much as granted them all... assuming coherency.

I do not think that he eliminated truth as relative to a scheme so much as granted them all... assuming coherency. — creativesoul

Hmmm... I wonder if Banno would agree with that.

I do not think that he eliminated truth as relative to a scheme so much as granted them all... assuming coherency. — creativesoul

But if truth is only relative to language and we've established unmediated touch with objects haven't we eliminated schemes and thereby truth relative to schemes?

By stipulating all schemes as coherent, we're granting as well as also demanding consistent terminological use. It side steps the issues. I suppose it could be said that it eliminates them as well.