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Abstract

This article introduces a dilemma regarding conceptual schemes and suggests a solution. The dilemma is about whether there are conceptual schemes or not. There are good reasons for maintaining either position. There must be conceptual schemes because theory is underdetermined by evidence. And there cannot be conceptual schemes because Davidson has given an almost unassailable argument against it. I resolve the dilemma by arguing that Davidson’s argument is based on a false dilemma generated by too strong a principle of charity. This makes space for conceptual schemes without sacrificing the intelligibility of any.

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Notes

  1. It is interesting to note that while unobservable entities are a matter of considerable debate between realists and anti-realists in the philosophy of science, a similar debate does not take place over linguistic unobservables in the philosophy of language. However, the matter of unobservables in linguistics should be dealt with either by philosophy of science or the philosophy of linguistics, since they will involve similar considerations to the debates in philosophy in science over unobservables. The fact that such debates have not taken place with equal intensity may be due to excessive skepticism regarding the claims of linguistics among philosophers.

  2. My use of the word “alien” only signifies a different language user from that of the one who is carrying out the translation. It carries no implication of the alien being in some way unusual or different from us. The word “alien” and “native” do have certain odd and unfortunate cultural implications, which are not intended here.

  3. The five formulations are “(i) an interpreter maximizes agreement on beliefs between her alien and herself as far as possible; (ii) an interpreter as far as possible takes an alien to have beliefs true by her interpreter's lights; (iii) an interpreter optimizes agreement between the alien and herself (= an interpreter takes an alien and herself to agree on as many beliefs as possible); (iv) an interpreter takes most of an alien's beliefs to be true by her interpreter's lights; and (v) there is a presumption in the favour of an alien's beliefs being true by an interpreter's lights.” (Goldberg 2004: 677–678).

  4. Davidson (1999, 2004) thought that a thinking creature must crucially have the ability to entertain the notion that it got some proposition wrong that it has entertained a false belief. Davidson’s notion is that a thinking creature must have the idea that the world is independent of what it believes. I agree, I am stressing more on the apparatus necessary for a thinking creature.

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Acknowledgements

I thank audiences at Department of Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Department of Philosophy, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions and doubts which have gone a long way in improving this paper.

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Correspondence to Nilanjan Bhowmick.

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Bhowmick, N. Organizing, Fitting, Predicting. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 38, 39–52 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-020-00229-z

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