13 On the Very Idea of a

Conceptual Scheme

Philosophers'of many persuasions are prone to talk of conceptual

schemes. Conceptual schemes, we are told, are ways of organizing
experience;. they are systems of categories that give form to the data
of sensation; they are points of view from which individuals,
'cultures, or periods survey the passing scene. There may be no
.translating from one scheme to another, in which case the beliefs,
desires, hopes, and bits of knowledge that characterize one person
have no true counterparts for the subscriber to another scheme.
Reality itself is relative to a scheme: what counts' as real in one
"
system may not in another.
. Even those thinkers who are certain there is only one conceptual
scheme are in the sway of the scheme concept; even monotheists
have religion. And when someone sets out to describe 'our
conceptual scheme', his homey task assumes, if we take him literally,
that there might be rival systems.
Conceptual relativism is a heady and exotic doctrine, or would be
if we could make good sense of it. The trouble is, as so often in
philosophy, it is hard to improve intelligibility while retaining the
excitement. At any rate that is what I shall argue.
We are encouraged to imagine we understand massive conceptual
change or profound contrasts by legitimate examples of a familiar
sort. Sometimes an idea, like that of simultaneity as defined. in
relativity theory, is so important that with its addition a whole
department of science takes on a new look. Sometimes revisions in
the list of sentences held true in a discipline are. so central that we
i.
., ~aY...f~el that the terms involved have changed their meanings.
Languages that bave evolved in distant times or places may differ
extensively in their resources for dealing.witli one or another range
184 Language and Reality On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme 185
of phenomena. What comes easily in one language may come hard Alternatively, there is the idea that any language distorts reality,
in another, and this difference may echo significant dissimilarities in which implies that it is only wordlessly if at all that the mind comes
style and value. to grips with things as they really are. This is to conceive language as
But examples like these, impressive as they occasionally are, are not an inert (though necessarily distorting) medium independent of the
so extreme but that the changes and the contrasts can be explained human agencies that employ it; a view of language that surely
and described using the equipment of a single language. Whorf, cannot be maintained. Yet if the mind can grapple without
wanting to demonstrate that Hopi incorporates a metaphysics so distortion with the real, the mind itself must be without categories
alien to ours that Hopi and English cannot, as he puts it, 'be and concepts. This featureless self is familiar from theories in quite
calibrated', uses English to convey the contents of sample Hopi different parts of the philosophical landscape. There are, for
sentences. 1 Kuhn is brilliant at saying what things were like before example, theories that make freedom consist in decisions taken
the revolution using-what else?-our post-revolutionary idiom.2 apart. from .all desires, habits, and dispositions of the agent; and
Quine gives us a feel for the 'pre-individuative phase in the evolution theones of knowledge that suggest .that the mind can observe the
of our conceptual scheme', 3 while Bergson tells us where we can go totality of its own perceptions and ideas. In each case, the mind is
to get a view of a mountain undistorted by one or another provincial divorced from the traits that constitute it; an inescapable conclusion
perspective. from certain lines of reasoning, as I said, but one that should always
. The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing persuade us to reject the premisses.
points of view, seems to betray. an underlying paradox. Different \ We may identify conceptual schemes with languages, then, or
points of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate better, allowing for the possibility that more than one language may
I system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system express the same scheme, sets of intertranslatable languages.
belies the claim of dramatic incomparability. What we need, it seems Languages we will not think of as separable from souls; speaking a.
to me, is some idea of the considerations! that set the limits to language is not a trait a man can lose while retaining the power
conceptual contrast. There are extreme suppositions that founder on of thought. So there is no chance that someone can take up a
paradox or contradiction; there'are modest examples we have no vantage point for comparing conceptual schemes by temporarily
trouble understanding. What determines where we cross from the shedding his own. Can 'we then say that two people have different
merely strange or novel to the absurd? conceptual schemes if they speak languages that fail of intertrans-
We may accept the doctrine that associates having a language ! latability?
~.
!,.
with having a conceptual scheme. The relation may be supposed to j, In what follows I consider two kinds of case that might be
be this: where conceptual schemes differ, so do languages. But expected to arise: complete, and partial, failures of translatability.
speakers of different languages may share .a. conceptual scheme
I!. There would be complete failure if no significant range of sentences
provided there is a way of translating one language into the other. in one language could be translated into the other; there would be
Studying the criteria of. translation is.therefore a.way of focusing on partial failure if some range could be translated and some range
criteria of, identity ,for conceptual, schemes; If conceptual schemes could not (I shall neglect possible asymmetries.) My strategy will be
aren't associated with languages in this way, the original problem is to argue that we cannot make sense of total failure, and then to
needlessly doubled, for then we would have to imagine the mind, ,., examine more briefly cases of partial failure.
with its ordinary categories, operating with a, language with its
j First, then, the purported cases of complete failure. It is tempting
organizing structure. Under the circumstan~es we would certainly II. to take a very short line indeed: nothing, it may be said, could count
want to ask who is to be master. as evidence that some form of activity could not be interpreted in
I
.
B. L. Whorf, 'The Punctual and Segment~tive AspeCi~'~f Verbs in Hopi'.
!
our language that was not at the same time evidence that that form
Z T. S:Kuhn. The Structure if Scientific Revolutions. of activity was n,ot speech behaviour. If this were right, we probably
3 W. V. Quine, 'Speaking of Objects', 24. ought to hold that a form of activity that cannot be interpreted as
186 Language and Reality ,
On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme 187
f'
language in our language.is not speech behaviour. Putting matters V.
J' traditions (within different 'paradigms') 'work in different worlds'.4
this way is unsatisfactory, however, for it comes to little more than r Strawson's The Bounds of Sense begins with the remark that 'It is
making translatability into a familiar tongue a criterion oflanguage- i possible to imagine kinds of worlds very different from the world as
hood. As fiat, the thesis lacks the appeal of self-evidence; if it is a ~ S
. we know it'. Since there is at most one world, these pluralities are
t
'

truth, as I think it is, it should emerge as the conclusion of an , ,,' '

.
metaphorical or merely imagined. The metaphors are, however, not
argument. at all the same. Strawson invites us to imagine possible non-actuaJ
L.
The credibility of the position is improved by reflection on the
I'. worlds, worlds that might be described, using our present language,
close relations between language and the attribution of attitude,s by redistributing truth values over sentences in various systematic
such as belief, desire, and intention. On the one hand, it is clear t~at t' ,

~ays. The clarity of the contrasts between worlds in this case

speech requires a. ml,dtitude of finely discriminated intentions and ~ "
",

,: dep~nds on supposing our scheme of concepts, our descriptive

beliefs. A person who asserts that perseverance keeps honour bright ) resources, to remain fixed. Kuhn, on the otherihand, wants us to
i
must, for example, represent himself as believing that perseverance '
think of different observers of the same world who come to it with
keeps,honour bright, and he must intend to represent himself as incommensurable ,systems of concepts. Strawson's many imagined
believing it. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that we can
~"
!. wprlds are seen or heard or described from the same point of view;
intelligibly attribute attitudes as .;;omplex as these to a speaker unless Kuhn's one world is seen from different points of view. It is the
we can translate his words into ours. There can be no doubt that the seco~ metaphor we want to work on.
relation betwe~n being able to translate someone's langua.ge and The first metaphor requires a distinction within language of
being able to descr~be his attitudes is very close. Still, until we can, , concept ~nd content: using a fixed system of concepts (words with
saymo,re about what this relation is, the case against untranslatabl!~. fixe,dmeani!1gs)we describe alternative universes. Some sentences
languages remains obscure.,. r I:
,~; " will ,be true simply because of the concepts or meanings involved,
l~ is sometim.es thought that ~fa~slatability into a familia~;i' ' others because of the way of the world. In describing possible
language,say Epghsh, cannot be a cntenon of languagehood on the,'~ 1 f. world~, we play with sentences of the second kind only.
$rounds tha t the rela~jonof translatability is not transitive. The idea' 1

is. that some language, say Saturnian, may, be translatable into

,
~ J ,Thedifferentsecond
~.
metaphor suggests instead a dualism of quite a
'sort, a dualism of total scheme (or language) and
English, and some further language, like Plutonian, may be III
uninterpretedc,ontent. Adherence to the second dualism, while not
translatableinto Saturnian, whilePlutonianis not translatableinto inconsistent with adherence to the first, may be encouraged by
English. Enou.ghtranslatable differences,may add up to an un- b[' attacks on the first. Here iS,howit may work.
t,ranslatable one. By imagining a sequence.of languages, each close
enough to the.one before to be acceptably translated into it, we ca~ .i'
~I
To give up the analytic-synthetic distinction as basic to the
.distingui,sh
unde(stan,ding of language is to give up the idea that we,can clearly
imagine,a language so different from English as to resist totally I' ,betw~entheory and language. Meaning, as we might
translation into it. Corresponding to this distant language would be loosely;us~ t~e word, is contaminated by theory, by what is held to
.F
ai,system of concepts aJtog~ther alien..to us. be tr,ue. Fey~rabend puts it this way:
(
f1 I!
. This exercise does not, I think, introduce any new element into the" 1;. Our argument against meaning invariance is simple and clear. It proceeds
di~ussion. For we should have to ask howiwe recognized that wha~
ij from the fact that usually some of the principles involved in the determi-
the Saturnian was doing was translating Plutonian (or anythiqg "!,

f.' t
,
"nal,ions of the meanings of older theories or points of viewsare inconsistent
else). The Saturnian ,speaker might tell us ,that that was what he was\ , with,the new... theories. It points out that it is natural to resolvethis
dojng or rather we might for a moment assume that that was wha,t I contradiction by eliminating the troublesome. . . older principles. and to
'r{, L
,

he was telling us. But then it would occur to us to wonder whether

I
' replace them' by principles.or theorems. of a new ... theory.And it
our translatipns of Saturnian were correct; 4
'
T. S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 134.
According to Kuhn, scientists operating in different scientific
P. Sirawson.Tlrl.'BoundsolSen.vl.'.IS.
 188 Language and Rea/ity On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme 189
concludes by showing that such a procedure will also lead to the elimination. '.i For all I know, the shiny new phrases, though stolen from the old
of the old meanings.6 , , .
language in which they refer to physiological stirrings, may in his
We may now seem to have a formula for generating distinct' 'mouth play the role of the messy old mental concepts.
,conceptual schemes. We get a new out of an old scheme when the' The key phrase is: for aliI know. What is clear is that retention of
speakers of a language come to accept as true an important range of some or all of the old vocabulary in itself provides no basis for
sentences they previously took to be false '(aitd, of course, vice judging the new scheme to be the same as, 9r different from, the old.
versa). We must not describe this change simply as a matter of their So what sounded at first-like a thrilling discovery-that truth is
coming to view old falsehoods as truths, for a truth is a proposition, ' relative to a conceptual scheme-has not so far been shown to be
and what they come to accept, in accepting a sentence as true is not anything more than the pedestrian and familiar fact that the truth of
the same thing that they rejected when formerly they h~ld the a sentence is relative to (among Clther things) the language to which
sentence to be false. A change has come over the meaning of the it belongs. Instead of living in different worlds, 'Kuhn's scientists
sentence because it now belongs to a new language. may, like those who need Webster's dictionary, be only words apart.
This picture of how new (perhaps better) schemes result from new I Givirlg up the analytic-synthetic distinction has not proven a help
~nd better science is very much the picture philosophers of science, in making sense of conceptual rerativism. The analytic-synthetic
hke Putnam and Feyerabend, and historians of science like Kuhn distinction is' however explained in terms of something that may
have painted for us. A related idea emerges in the sugges~ion ofsom; ,I serve to buttress conceptual relativism., namely the idea of empirical
other philosophers, that we could improve our'conceptuallot if we, content: The dualism of the synthetic and the analytic is a dualism of
were to tune our language to an improved science. Thus both Quine sentences some of which are true (or false) both'because of what they
and Smart, in somewhat different' ways, regretfu\1y admit that ou'r j' mean and because of their empirical content, while others are true,
present ways of talking make a i serious science of behaviour (or false) by virtue of meaning alone, having no empirical content. If
impossible. (Wittgenstein and Ryle have said similar things without we give'up the dualism, we abandon the conception of meaning that
regret.) The cure, Quine' and Smart think, is to change how we taik. goes with it, but we do not have to abandon the idea of empirical
Smart advocates (and predicts) the change in order to put us on the content: we can hold, if we want, that all sentences have empirical
scientifica\1y straight path of materialism: Quine is more concerned content. Empirical content is in turn explained by reference to the
'to clear the way for a purely extensional language: '(Perhaps I should facts, the world, experience, sensation, the totality of sensory
add that I think our actual scheme and language are best understood stimuli, or something similar. Meanings gave us a way to talk about
as extensional and materialist.) categories, the organizing structure of language, and so on; but it is
If we were to follow this advice, I do' not myself think science or 'possible, as we have seen, to give up meanings and analyticity while
understanding would be advanced, though possibly morals would.
,
retaining the idea of language as embodying a conceptual scheme.
But,the present question is only whether, 'if such changes were to Thus in place of the dualism of the analytic-synthetic we get the
take place, we should be justifietl in calling them alterations in the dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content. The new
basic con~eptual apparatus. The difficulty in so calling them is easy dualism is the' foundation of an empiricism shorn' of the untenable
to appreciate. Suppose that in my office of Minister of Scientific dogmas of the analytic-synthetic distinction and reductionism-
Lang~age I w~nt the new man to S!Opusing words that refer, say, to shorn, that is, of the unworkable idea that we can'uniquely a\1ocate
,emotions, feehngs, thoughts, and'lOtentions, and to talk instead of empirical content sentence by sentence.
the physiological states and happenings that'are assumed to be more I want to urge that this second dualism of scheme and content, of
or less identical with the mental riff andraff. How do I tell whether organizing system and something waiting to be organized, cannot be
my advice has been heeded if the new man speaks a new language? made intelligible and defensible. It is itself a dogma of empiricism,
the third dogma. The third, and perhaps the last, for if we give it up
6
P. Feyerabend, 'Explanation, Reduction, and Empiricism', 82. j'" it is not clear that there is anything distinctive left to call empiricism.
 190 Language and Reality
On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme
. 191
The scheme-content dualism has been formulated in many ways.
Feyerabend himself suggests that we 'may compare contrasting
Here are some examples. The first comes from Whorf, elaborating
schemes by 'choosing a point of view outside the system or the
on a theme of Sapir's. Whorf says that: language'. He hopes we can do this because 'there is still human
. . . language produces an organization of experience. We are inclined to experience as an actually existing process'9 independent of all
think of language simply as a technique of expression, and not to realize that schemes.
language first of all is a classification and arrangement of the stream of
sensory experience which results in a certain world-order. . . In other words, The same, or similar, thoughts are expressed by Quine in many
language does in a cruder but also in a broader and more.versatile way the passages: 'The totality, of our so-called knowledge or beliefs . . . is
same thing that science does. . . We are thus introduced to a new principle a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the
of.relativity, which holds that al\ observers are not led by the same physical edges. , .';10 '. . . total science is like a field offorce whose boundary
eVidence.to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic conditions are experience';" 'As an empiricist I . . . think of the
backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated.7
conceptual scheme of science as a tool ... for predicting future
Here we have all the required elements: language as the organizing experience in the light of past experience.' 12 And again:
force, not to be distinguished clearly from science; what is
We persist in breaking reality down somehow into a multiplicity of
organized, referred to variously as 'experience', 'the stream of identifiable and discriminable objects. . . We talk so inveterately of objects
sensory experience', and 'physical evidence'; and finally, the failure that to say we do so seems almost to say nothing at all; for how else is there
of intertranslatability ('calibration'). The failure of intertranslat- to talk? It is hard to say how else there is to talk, not because our
ability is a necessary condition for difference of conceptual schemes; objectifying pattern is an invariable trait of human nature, but because we
the common relation to experience or the evidence is what is are bound to adapt any alien pattern to our own in the very process of
understanding or translating the alien sentences.13
supposed to help us make sense of the claim that it is languages or
schemes that are under consideration when translation fails. It is The test of difference remains failure or difficulty of translation: '. . .
essential to this idea that there be something neutral and common to speak of that remote medium as radically different from ours is to
that lies outside all schemes. This common something cannot, of say no more than that the translations do not come smoothly.'14 yet
course, be the subject matter of contrasting languages, or trans- the roughness may be so great that the alien has an 'as yet
lation would be possible. Thus Kuhn has recently written: unimagined pattern beyond individuation'. IS
Philosophers have now abandoned hope of finding a pure sense-datum The idea is then that som'ething is a language, and associated with
language. . . but many of them continue to assume that theories can be a conceptual scheme, whether we can translate it or not, if it stands
compared by recourse to a basic vocabulary consisting entirely of words in a certain relation (predicting, organizing, facing, or fitting)
which are attached to nature in ways that are unproblematic and, to the experience (nature, reality, sensory promptings). The problem is to
extent necessary, independent of theory. . . Feyerabend and I have argued t~

i say what the relation is, and to be clearer about the entities related.
at length that no such vocabulary is available. In the transition from one I
theory to the next words change their meanings or conditions of applica- I. The images and metaphors fall into two main groups: conceptual
bility in subtle ways. Though most of the same signs are used before and schemes (languages) either organize something, or they fit it (as in 'he
after a revolution--e.g. force, mass, element, compound, cell-the way in warps his scientific heritage to fit his. . . sensory promptings'16). The
which some of them attach to nature has somehow changed. Successive first group contains also systematize, divide up (the stream of
theories are thus, we say, incommensurable.8 experience); further examples of the second group are predict,
'Incommensurable' is, of course, Kuhn and Feyerabend's word for account for,face (the tribunal of experience). As for the entities that
'not intertranslatable'. The neutral content waiting to be organized
is supplied by natur~. 9
P. Feyerabend, 'Problems of Empiricism', 214.
10 W. V. Quine. 'Two Dogmas of Empiricis'm', 42.
.: ..\
II 12
7
B. L. Whorf, 'The Punctual and Segmentative Aspects of Verbs in Hopi', 55. Ibid. Ibid., 44.
e T. S. Kuhn, 'Reflections on my Critics', 266, 267.
13 W. V. Quine, 'Speaking of Objects', I. 14Ibid., 25.
15 Ibid., 24. Ib W. V. Quine, 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism', 46.
 192 Language alld Reality
On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme 193
get organized, or which the scheme must fit, I think again we may
sensory experience; and I agree that it is. But what was under
detect two main ideas: either it is reality (the universe, the world,
consideration was the idea of organizing experience, not the idea of
nature), or it is experience (the passing show, surface irritations,
coping with (or fitting or facing) experience. The reply was apropos
sensory promptings, sense-data, the given).
of the former, not the latter, concept. So now let's see whether we
We cannot attach' a clear meaning to the notion of organizing a
can do better with the second idea.
single object (the world, nature etc.) unless that object is understood
When we turn from talk of organization to talk of fitting we turn
to contain or consist in other objects. Someone who sets out to
our attention from the referential apparatus of language-.
organize a closet arranges the things in it. If you are told not to
predicates, quantifiers, variables, and singular terms-to whole
organize the shoes and shirts, but the closet itself, you would be
sentences. It is sentences that predict (or are used to predict),
bewildered. How would you organize the Pacific Ocean? Straighten
sentences that cope or deal with things, that fit our sensory
out its shores, perhaps, or relocate its islands, or destroy its fish.
promptings, that can be compared or confronted with the evidence.
A language may contain simple predicates whose extensions are
It is sentences also that face the tribunal of experience, though of
matched by no simple predicates, or even by any predicates at all, in
course they must face it together.
some other language. What enables us to make this point in
The proposal is not that experiences, sense-data, surface irri-
particular cases is an ontology common to the two languages, with
tations, or sensory promptings are the sole subject matter of
concepts that individuate the same objects. We can be clear about
language. There is, it is true, the theory that talk about brick houses
breakdowns in translation when they are local enough, for a
on Elm Street is ultimately to be construed as being about sense data
background of generally successful translation provides what is
needed to make the failures intelligible. But we were after larger or perceptions, but such reductionistic views are only extreme, and
game: we wanted to make sense of there being a language we could implausible, versions of the general position we are considering. The
general position is that sensory experience provides all the evidence
not translate at all. Or, to put the point differently, we were looking
for a criterion of languagehood that did not depend on, or entail, for the acceptance of sentences (where sentences may include whole
theories). A sentence or theory fits our sensory promptings,
translatability into a familiar idiom. I suggest that the image of
organizing the closet of nature will not supply such a criterion. successfully faces the tribunal of experience, predicts future ex-
perience, or copes with the pattern of our surface irritations,
How about the other kind of object, experience? Can we think of
provided it is borne out by the evidence.
a language organizing it? Much the same difficulties recur. The
In the common course of affairs, a theory may be borne out by the
notion of organization applies only to pluralities. But whatever
plurality we take experience to consist in--events like losing a available evidence and yet be false. But what is in view here is not
just actually available evidence; it is the totality of possible sensory
button or stubbing a toe, having a sensation of warmth or hearing
an oboe-we will have to individuate according to familiar prin- evidence past, present, and future. We do not need to pause to
ciples. A language that organizes such entities must be a language very contemplate what this might mean. The point is that for a theory to
like our own. fit or face up to the totality of possible sensory evidence is for that
theory to be true. If a theory quantifies over physical objects,
Experience (and its classmates like surface irritations, sensations,
numbers, or sets, what it says about these entities is true provided
and sense-data) also makes another and more obvious trouble for
the organizing idea. For how could something count as a language the theory as a whole fits the sensory evidence. One can see how,
that organized only experiences, sensations, surface irritations, or from this point of view, such entities might be called posits. It is
i reasonable to call something a posit if it can be contrasted with
sense-data? Surely knives and forks, railroads and mountains, t
II something that is not. Here the something that is not i~ ~sensory
cabbages and kingdoms also need organizing. ~.
This last remark will no doubt sound inappropriate as a response experience-at least that is the idea. .

to the claim that a conceptual scheme is a way of coping with The trouble is that the notion of fitting the totality of experience,
like the notion of fitting the facts, or of being true to the facts, adds
194 Language and Reality On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme 195
nothing intelligible to the simple concept of being true. To speak of common to all the specialized concepts of truth. It succeeds in doing
sensory experience rather than the evidence, or just the facts, this by making essential use of the notion of translation into a
expresses a view about the source or nature of evidence, but it does language we know. Since Convention T embodies our best intuition
not add a new entity to the universe against which to test conceptual as to how the concept of truth is used, there does not seem to be
schemes. The totality of sensory evidence is what we want provided much hope for a test that a conceptual scheme is radically different
it is all the evidence there is; and all the evidence there is is just what from ours if that test depends on the assumption that we can divorce
it takes to make our sentences or theories true. Nothing, however, the notion of truth from that of translation.
no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not Neither a fixed stock of meanings, nor a theory-neutral reality,
surface irritations, not the world, can make a sentence true. That can provide, then, a ground for comparison of conceptual schemes.
experience takes a certain course, that our skin is warmed or It would be a mistake to look further for such a ground if by that we
punctured, that the universe is finite, these facts, if we like to talk mean something conceived as common to incommensurable
that way, make sent~nces and theories true. But this point is put schemes. In abandoning this search, we abandon the attempt to
better without mention of facts. The sentence 'My skin is warm' is make sense of the metaphor of a single space within which each
true if and only if my skin is warm. Here there is no reference to a scheme has a position and provides a point of view.
fact, a world, an experience, or a piece of evidence. 17 I turn now to the more modest approach: the idea of partial
Our attempt to characterize languages or conceptual schemes in rather than total failure of translation. This introduces the possi-
terms of the notion of fitting some entity has come down, then, to bility of making changes and contrasts in conceptual schemes
the simple thought that something is an acceptable conceptual intelligible by reference to the common part. What we need is a
scheme or theory if it is true. Perhaps we better say largely true in theory of translation or interpretation that makes no assumptions
order to allow sharers of a scheme to differ on details. And the about shared meanings, concepts, or beliefs.
criterion of a conceptual scheme different from our own now The interdependence of belief and meaning springs from the
becomes: largely true but not translatable. The question whether interdependence of two aspects of the interpretation of speech
this is a useful criterion is just the question how well we understand behaviour: the attribution of beliefs and the interpretation of
the notion of truth, as applied to language, independent of the sentences. We remarked before that we can afford to associate
notion of translation. The answer is, I think, that we do not conceptual schemes with la'nguages because of these dependencies.
understand it independently at all. Now we can put the point in a somewhat sharper way. Allow that a
We recognize sentences like' "Snow is white" is true if and only if man's speech cannot be interpreted except by someone who knows a
snow is white' to be trivially true. Yet the totality of such English good deal about what the speaker believes (and intends and wants),
sentences uniquely determines the extension of the concept of truth and that fine distinctions between beliefs are impossible without
for English. Tarski generalized this observation and made it a test of understood speech; how then are we to interpret speech or
theories of truth: according to Tarski's Convention T, a satisfactory intelligibly to attribute beliefs and other attitudes? Clearly we must
theory of truth for a language L must entail, for every sentence s of have a theory that simultaneously accounts for attitudes and
L, a theorem of the form's is true if and only if p' where 's' is interprets speech, and which assumes neither.
replaced by a description of sand 'p' by s itself if L is English, and by I suggest, following Quine, that we may without circularity or
a translation of s into English if L is not English.18 This isn't, of unwarranted assumptions accept certain very general attitudes
course, a definition of truth, and it doesn't hint that there is a single towards sentences as the basic evidence for a theory of radical
definition or theory that applies to languages generally. Nevertheless, interpretation. For the sake of the present discussion at least we may
Convention T suggests, though it cannot state, an important feature depend on the attitude of accepting as true, directed to sentences, as
17 See Essay 3. the crucial notion. (A more full-blooded theory would look to other
I.A. Tarski. 'The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages', attitudes towards sentences as well, such as wishing true, wondering
 196 Language and Reality On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme 197
whether true, intending to make true, and so on.) Attitudes are depends entirely on a foundation-some foundation-in agreement.
indeed involved here, but the fact that the main issue is not begged The agreement may take the form of widespread sharing of
can be seen from this: if we merely know that someone holds a sentences held true by speakers of 'the same language', or agreement
certain sentence to be true, we know neither what he means by the in the large mediated by a theory of truth contrived by an interpreter
sentence nor what belief his holding it true represents. His holding for speakers of another language.
the sentence true is thus the vector of two forces: the problem of Since charity is not an option, but a condition of having a
interpretation is to abstract from the evidence a workable theory of workable theory, it is meaningless to suggest that we might fall into
meaning and an acceptable theory of belief. massive error by endorsing it. Until we have successfully established
The way this problem is solved is best appreciated from un- a systematic correlation of sentences held true with sentences held
dramatic examples. If you see a ketch sailing by and your true, there are no mistakes to mak~. Charity is forced on us; whether
companion says, 'Look at that handsome yawl', you may be faced we like it or not, if we want to understand others, we must count
with a problem of interpretation. One natural possibility is that your them right in most matters. If we can produce a theory that reconciles
friend has mistaken a ketch for a yawl, and has formed a false belief. charity and the formal conditions for a theory, we have done all that
But if his vision is good and his line of sight favourable it is even could be done to ensure communication. Nothing more is possible,
more plausible that he does not use the word 'yawl' quite as you do, and nothing more is needed.
and has made no mistake at all about the position of the jigger on We make maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others
the passing yacht. We do this sort of off the cuff interpretation all when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement (this includes
the time, deciding in favour of reinterpretation of words in order to room, as we said, for explicable error, i.e. differences of opinion).
preserve a reasonable theory of belief. As philosophers we are Where does this leave the case for conceptual relativism? The answer
peculiarly tolerant of systematic malapropism, and practised at is, I think, that we must say much the same thing about differences in
interpreting the result. The process is that of constructing a viable conceptual scheme as we say about differences in belief: we improve
theory of belief and meaning from sentences held true. the clarity and bite of declarations of difference, whether of scheme
Such examples emphasize the interpretation of anomalous details or opinion, by enlarging the basis of shared (translatable) language
against a backgro!lnd of common beliefs and a going method of or of shared opinion. Indeed, no clear line between the cases can be
translation. But the principles involved must be the same in less made out. If we choose to translate some alien sentence rejected by
trivial cases. What matters is this: if all we know is what sentences a its speakers by a sentence to which we are strongly attached on a
speaker holds true, and we cannot assume that his language is our community basis, we may be tempted to call this a difference in
own, then we cannot take even a first step towards interpretation schemes; if we decide to accommodate the evidence in other ways, it
without knowing or assuming a great deal about the speaker's may be more natural to speak of a difference of opinion. But when
beliefs. Since knowledge of beliefs comes only with the ability to others think differently from us, no general principle, or appeal to
interpret words, the only possibility at the start is to assume general evidence, can force us to decide that the difference lies in our beliefs
agreement on beliefs. We get a first approximation to a finished rather than in our concepts.
theory by assigning to sentences of a speaker conditions of truth that We must conclude, I think, that the attempt to give a solid
actually obtain (in our own opinion) just 'Yhen the speaker holds meaning to the idea of conceptual relativism, and hence to the idea
those sentences true. The guiding policy is to do this as far as of a conceptual scheme, fares no better when based on partial failure
possible, subject to considerations of simplicity, hunches about the of translation than when based on total failure. Given the under-
effects of social conditioning, and of course our common-sense, or lying methodology of interpretation, we could not be in a position to
scientific, knowledge of explicable error. judge that others had concepts or beliefs radically different from our
The method is not designed to eliminate disagreement, nor can it; own.
its purpose is to make meaningful disagreement possible, and this It would be wrong to, summarize by saying we have shown how
198 Language and Reality
communication is possible between people who have different
schemes, a way that works without need of what there cannot be,
14 TIle Method of Truth
namely a neutral ground, or a common co-ordinate system. For we ill Metaphysics
have found no intelligible basis on which it can be said that schemes
are different. It would be equally wrong to announce the glorious
news that all mankind-all speakers of language, at least-share a
common scheme and ontology. For if we cannot intelligibly say that
schemes are different, neither can we intelligibly say that they are
one.
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 In sharing a language, in whatever sense this is required for
relativity, and truth relative to a scheme. Without the dogma, this communication, we share a picture of the world that must, in its
kind of relativity goes by the board. Of course truth of sentences large features, be true. It follows that in making manifest the large
remains relative to language, but that is as objective as can be. In features of our language, we make manifest the large features of
giving up the dualism of scheme and world, we do not give up the
reality. One way of pursuing metaphysics is therefore to study the
world, but re-establish unmediated touch with the familiar objects general structure of our language. This is not, Of course, the sole true
whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false. method of metaphysics; there is no such. But it is one method, and it
has becn practised by philosophers as widely separated by time or
doctrine as Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Russell, Frege,
Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, and Strawson. These philosophers
have not, it goes without saying, agreed on what the large features
of language are, or on how they may best be studied and described;
the metaphysical conclusions have in consequence been various.
The method I will describe and recommend is not new; every
important feature of the method can be found in one philosopher or
another, and the leading idea is implicit in much of the best work in
philosophy of language. What is new is the explicit formulation of
the approach, and the argument for its philosophical importance. I
begin with the argument; then comes a description of the method;
finally, some applications are sketcfll~ci.

J.
I
Why must our language-any language-incorporate or depend
upon a largely correct, shared, view of how things are? First
i consider why those who can understand one another's speech must
r share a view of the world, whether or not that view is correct. The
I