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Nilanjan Bhowmick introduces a dilemma regarding conceptual schemes and suggests a solution.

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This video discusses Donald Davidson's philosophical arguments from his 1974 paper "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," which challenges the notion that different cultures can have entirely distinct conceptual schemes that are unintelligible to one another. Davidson argues that while people may organize their understanding of the world differently, these differences do not prevent mutual translation and understanding because they ultimately share beliefs and communicative capacities.

The speaker reflects on Davidson's analysis and presents their own perspective, suggesting that while conceptual schemes exist, they do not have to lead to unintelligible communication. The speaker posits that even though people may have diverse conceptual frameworks, these frameworks can be intelligible and allow for translation through shared references, predicates, and notions of truth.

The speaker builds upon Davidson's ideas by introducing the notion of "meager input and torrential output," meaning that humans derive limited sensory information but generate extensive interpretations and understandings. The main argument is that all thinking creatures, regardless of their conceptual differences, must be able to refer, predicate, and employ some notion of truth, which facilitates a foundational level of understanding across cultures and time periods.

Ultimately, the speaker asserts that while full translation may not always be possible, basic intelligibility and communication can occur, encouraging a more charitable approach to understanding different conceptual schemes without conflating them with complete unintelligibility.

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Here are some articles and works that explore similar themes to the video regarding Donald Davidson's philosophical arguments and the nature of conceptual schemes, communication, and understanding across cultures:

1. **"Truth and Meaning" by Donald Davidson (1967)**: In this foundational paper, Davidson elaborates on his theories of meaning and interpretation, emphasizing the role of shared language and beliefs in understanding different perspectives.

2. **"Radical Interpretation" by Donald Davidson**: Davidson discusses how we can interpret the speech of someone from a different culture, asserting that mutual intelligibility is possible despite differing conceptual frameworks.

3. **"Intersubjective Understanding: A Philosophical Exploration" by John Searle**: Searle examines the nature of understanding between individuals with different backgrounds, which may echo the ideas of shared communicative capacities central to Davidson's work.

4. **"The Semantic Web: A Philosophical Perspective" by Peter van Inwagen**: This article addresses the challenges and possibilities of communication across diverse conceptual systems, touching upon the themes of interpretation and translation.

5. **"Conceptual Schemes and Cultural Convideos" by Hilary Kornblith**: Kornblith explores how different conceptual schemes can coexist within cultures, challenging the idea of complete unintelligibility.

6. **"Cognitive Linguistics and Cross-Cultural Communication" by Gudrun Held**: This work discusses how cognitive linguistics provides insight into communication across different conceptual systems, emphasizing understanding and shared references.

7. **"The Challenge of Cultural Relativism" by Thomas Nagel**: Nagel reflects on the limits and possibilities of understanding across different cultural frameworks, offering a perspective that complements Davidson's arguments.

8. **"Language and Realism" by Michael Dummett**: This book discusses the relationship between language, meaning, and the nature of reality, similar to the discussions around conceptual schemes and mutual understanding.

These articles and works should provide a deeper insight into the philosophical discourse surrounding conceptual schemes, understanding, and communication across cultural boundaries, paralleling the themes discussed in the video about Davidson's arguments.

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The context of the work is a very famous paper written by,

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Donald Davidson, an American philosopher.

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Uh, he wrote a paper called, on the Very Idea

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of a Conceptual Scheme.

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Uh, I think this was published in 1974.

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Uh, this paper, basically argues that there is a whole,

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tradition that was building up that, you know,

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other people can have other human beings.

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Basically, you can have all different societies can have

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very different conceptual schemes

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that they employ in living.

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And so there can be a situation

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where the conceptual scheme is so different

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that we can't even understand them.

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So the pressure that came basically came from science.

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So people had at one time, let's say tomic theory,

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and then it was replaced by the theory.

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Today we have an einsteinian sort of world that we live in.

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There's some quantum mechanics

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that nobody really understands.

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So there's this kind of, difficult situation

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that prevails in science where we keep moving

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from one theory to another.

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And Thomas Boon had very famously argued that,

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there are these problems of inter translatability

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between these three, these paradigms.

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And so other arguments came from, I guess, anthropologists

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and, people who look at other societies.

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So there's a very famous study in war hypothesis.

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And so the idea is this,

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that when you look at other societies

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or look at a tribal society

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or something like that, you find concepts that are a

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so rich, or you find concepts that are so strange

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or alien that you can't even translate them back into your

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own home idea.

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And so that creates, this impression

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that we can have very different conceptual schemes,

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and that seems very natural as well.

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So, I mean, there is a sense in, it just seems very natural

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that yeah, of course, different human beings can employ

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different conceptual schemes,

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but Davidson argue that this is what odd,

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because a different conceptual scheme just means a scheme

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that you can't translate back into your home medium.

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That's all. And so if he says that,

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if you wanna make some sense of the notion of translation,

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you will realize that whatever people say, what,

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how does home really explain that?

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Uh, we find this, we find it so difficult

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to understand somebody else's universe, say 1500 years ago

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or 500 years ago, some other scientists universe, well,

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he explains it in his own, own home, medium of English.

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How do they explain what, say hope Indians are thinking?

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They explain it in their own English.

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And so he says that this idea

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that all these people are living words apart is really just

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a simple question of the people living

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words apart, nothing else.

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They're just employing different words for the same ideas.

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And it's not like people are living in different words

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altogether so that they can't even understand each other.

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That was Davidson's point.

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Uh, I have been, I have been thinking about this

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for a long time, and I realized that, look,

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there's a countervailing pressure.

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It's not so easy to dismiss conceptual schemes.

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I mean, the idea is that we have this,

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very strong notion that there is under determination

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of evidence regarding, the theories that we possess.

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What this means is that our

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evidence is never really complete.

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It can never be, I mean, we are

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Finite human beings.

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So whatever theory we possess, by theory, by the way,

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this is a kind of odd sort of thing

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that we have in philosophy.

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That, the American philosopher wine, for instance,

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he said that even common sense, the fact that I see you,

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that I see you as a person, you are in London.

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There is a particular different time that you have.

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All these things are common sensical things

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that we construct.

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And so, but that also for wine is a theory.

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So it's not like, quantum mechanics is a theory

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and you know, Weinstein and stuff is a theory.

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He thinks even common sense is a theory.

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And so now that's interesting

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because wine thinks that all this stuff that we build up,

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that were a person, that there's some computer there in

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front of you, there's a camera, whatever.

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All this stuff that we build up really comes from our

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sensory promptings, nothing else.

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We have sensors. We get information from the sensors,

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and then we construct a word from

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the, from that information.

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This information is very small in size here,

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a great phrase for this.

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And he said that there is meager input

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and torrential output.

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So that creates an interesting problem,

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because if there is meager input

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and torrential output, then we have got this situation

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where it is very obvious that we are bound

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to employ a conceptual scheme.

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Because the torrential output is essentially the conceptual

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scheme that we employ to handle the world.

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That's why my paper is called organizing Fitting,

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predicting these three words are

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stolen from Davidson's paper.

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So, Davidson also says this, that what do people do

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with, what do they mean by a conceptual scheme?

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He says that conceptual scheme just means people

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who organize a world.

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That's what it means. The way we organize a world.

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We say, this is a rock, that's a table, this is a chair,

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that's a cup, that's a, that's a person.

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This is a frog, and so on and so forth.

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So he says, this is the way, the way we organize a world is

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what is for the conceptual scheme.

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But if we are organizing a world from meager input

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and we get torrential output,

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that torrential output would differ from creator

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to creator to creator.

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That seems very obvious.

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And even if you go back to can't,

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let's say a German philosopher back in 1788,

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he was writing these big books, which were kind

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of unintelligible, but whatever.

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I mean, the idea is that now

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that we understand him a little bit better, we seem

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to think that well can't just says that, look, our not

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of sensibility, our nots

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of understanding need not be shared with anybody else.

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So if there is some other intelligent creature, somebody,

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you know, in some other galaxy,

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they're also doing whatever they're doing,

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they need not share our sense of space, our sense of time,

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our concepts of categories.

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They need not have those categories at all.

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And so they would've a different conceptual scheme.

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Now, Davidson's denying this.

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He's saying that, look, this is all ridiculous.

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They, I mean, to have a different conceptual scheme

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that you just can't translate the those guys.

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But that he says that this idea is something

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that is unintelligible to us.

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We have to translate those people. Why?

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So, because when you translate people, when you try

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to understand somebody else, you gotta think about the fact

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that that person shares your beliefs.

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Otherwise, no translation's ever gonna begin.

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So that's what is what the principle

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of charity that Davidson has.

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So he employs a full principle of

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Charity. When I have

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to understand you, let's say I, I speak Hindi,

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you speak English, I don't understand you at all.

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So let's say I don't know English at all.

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Well, how do I understand you?

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Well, I have to construct a theory.

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How do we construct a theory of English?

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Uh, how am I supposed to do this?

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Well, I'm supposed to see, okay,

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when you see a rabbit scattering into the bush, then I kind

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of think, okay, this man is saying something in English

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that the rabbit is scattering scampering into the bush.

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Okay? I try to figure out, I also believe this,

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but I believe it in Hindi, you believe it in English.

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So I kind of compare these two beliefs,

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and that's how, a translation sort of begins.

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I say, okay, he uses the word rabbit.

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Maybe that's what it means.

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My word of rabbit for Hindi,

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these two words shouldn't be the same, really.

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And so that's how translation begins.

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Now, if you can't do that, even then,

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you can't be translating anything.

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This is what I said was a bit, too much.

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I think in the paper that I wrote, I said, look,

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we don't need that.

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We don't need to go that far in translating.

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We don't have to match belief for belief,

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for belief, truth, for truth, for truth.

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All that we have to do is to think, what does it take

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for another person to be a thinking creature?

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All that it needs is that that person needs to have,

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or whatever creature needs to have, needs

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to be referring to the world needs to be predicating,

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certain qualities to those,

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things that they're referring to.

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And, they have to employ some concept of truth.

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Now, of course, I have had some doubts about my own ideas,

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but, it seems to me that this is enough for us

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to have different conceptual schemes without having

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unintelligible ones.

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We can understand an alien civilization. Why?

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Because they too would be thinking it's just not possible

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for anybody to do science

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or be an advanced civilization without thought.

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That's just not possible.

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It doesn't seem possible to me and least.

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So if they're thinking they must be having some i parameters

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by which they refer to the world,

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they must be having some way in which they are predicating

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qualities to what they're referring to.

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When I say my cup is yellow, I'm referring to my cup,

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and I'm saying, I'm predicating a quality.

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I say, yellow nest belongs

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to my cup, or something like that.

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Something like this must exist in their system.

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They, they may have a very different notion of a cup,

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a very different notion of yellow or whatever.

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But somehow or other, we should be able to understand

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that we may not understand them fully ever,

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but we can have enough understanding for, some kind

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of conversation to take place.

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So that's the idea that we don't have to go, we don't have

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to match belief by belief, truth by truth.

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And we don't have to think that everybody shares our beliefs

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about the world that we live in.

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So, what we have to do is simply think that,

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other creatures are just like us in the sense

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that we are thinking creatures.

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They are thinking creatures, as long

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as they're using some kind of communication system maybe.

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And so, if they're thinking creatures,

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they must be employing, referring predicating

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and some notion of truth.

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And so, that should be enough for us

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to latch onto their communication system

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and make some sense of

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Doing.

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That was the basic context

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of the paper Davidson's argument against conceptual schemes,

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my own hazy intuitions regarding the fact

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that somehow I felt unhappy.

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I mean, one does. I mean,

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there's this very powerful intuition that we have,

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that conceptual schemes are, you know,

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somehow they must be there.

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So how can Davidson possibly deny them?

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The resolution that I presented was that look,

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the dilemma exists

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because we are thinking in terms of the fact

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that Davidson is saying unintelligible conceptual schemes

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would be allowed if you allow conceptual schemes to exist

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under determination, on the other hand, forces us to believe

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that there should be conceptual schemes.

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So the dilemma is there either there are no conceptual

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schemes or there are conceptual schemes.

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Uh, so what are we supposed to do?

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I have tried to figure out that I think

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that there should be conceptual schemes

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because there's no doubt that there is meager input

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and torrential output, and the torrential output can

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differ from people to people.

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Now, this can be challenged, of course,

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but still it does seem to be

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that it's very difficult to challenge this idea.

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We know a lot of data from linguistics suggests

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that there is very good, reason to believe

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that language is not like languages,

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but the faculty of language is e to us.

10:10.615 --> 10:14.195
But anyway, so my idea, my resolution was to suggest

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that look, as we can allow conceptual schemes to exist,

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if we don't have to match belief by belief

10:20.835 --> 10:23.555
and truth by truths, Davidson wants, if you do that,

10:23.555 --> 10:25.395
then no further conceptual schemes can exist,

10:25.395 --> 10:27.875
because then every person who is a Hindi speaker

10:27.895 --> 10:30.475
or a Navajo speaker or a Mohawk speaker

10:30.495 --> 10:33.315
or something like that, all these people would've the same

10:33.315 --> 10:37.195
belief as I do, because I translate from Hindi or English.

10:37.835 --> 10:39.755
I translate their language into my language.

10:39.975 --> 10:43.595
And so it is simply, gathering their resources

10:43.595 --> 10:44.835
and just simply fitting them into

10:44.835 --> 10:46.275
my category, the end of story.

10:46.275 --> 10:48.155
There's really nothing else that I'm supposed that I can,

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I could possibly, I could ever do

10:50.475 --> 10:51.595
anything else be beyond this.

10:52.015 --> 10:55.275
But I'm saying that we need to be a bit more charitable

10:55.295 --> 10:58.835
to the, guy who, the person we are translating.

10:59.255 --> 11:01.555
We need to think that yes, he's a thinker.

11:01.555 --> 11:03.835
They can have different concepts than us.

11:04.495 --> 11:06.395
So there has to be some slippage between

11:06.395 --> 11:07.715
what we think and they think.

11:08.215 --> 11:10.715
So translation would be a much more slower exercise.

11:10.715 --> 11:12.555
We have to figure out what their beliefs are.

11:12.625 --> 11:14.795
They, they could be very different from our beliefs.

11:15.095 --> 11:17.315
And we do find this, sometimes we do find

11:17.315 --> 11:18.515
that other cultures tend

11:18.515 --> 11:20.115
to be quite different from our own culture,

11:20.615 --> 11:22.155
and we kinda struggle sometimes.

11:22.295 --> 11:24.275
And I think anthrop, anthropological use this phrase

11:24.275 --> 11:26.315
that you gotta have some immersion into the culture.

11:26.625 --> 11:28.755
Without that you can't really understand their culture.

11:28.755 --> 11:30.155
It's not just their language, it's also,

11:30.425 --> 11:32.355
it's also their cultural activities and whatever.

11:33.015 --> 11:36.315
So, my resolution was to simply say, look,

11:36.315 --> 11:37.555
just take them as thinkers.

11:37.705 --> 11:39.435
Take them as people with the paradise

11:39.435 --> 11:40.835
of reference, predication and truth.

11:41.095 --> 11:42.115
And that is enough.

11:42.195 --> 11:43.675
You don't have to match belief by belief

11:43.675 --> 11:45.315
and truth by truth that you don't have to do.

11:45.965 --> 11:47.595
There are other problems that have been raised

11:47.615 --> 11:49.515
by different philosophers regarding Davidson,

11:49.515 --> 11:51.075
the whole notions of belief and truth saying

11:51.075 --> 11:52.795
that these are not enough to start

11:52.795 --> 11:53.965
Off the program of saying

11:53.965 --> 11:55.645
that consultants from simply can't exist.

11:56.385 --> 11:58.925
So, that problem is there,

11:59.065 --> 12:01.405
but, even if you disregard those problems,

12:01.645 --> 12:03.965
I think the countervailing pressure coming from under

12:04.245 --> 12:06.685
determination and from the fact that we have mer input,

12:06.925 --> 12:08.405
original output should suggest to us

12:08.405 --> 12:09.925
that consultants scheme should exist.

12:10.345 --> 12:13.805
How can they exist? If we can withdraw Davidson's idea,

12:13.945 --> 12:15.085
we can just weaken it.

12:15.745 --> 12:18.645
So for, Davidson translation means that you need

12:18.645 --> 12:20.645
to have full, not full maybe,

12:20.665 --> 12:23.645
but what he calls optimized, agreement

12:23.645 --> 12:26.645
between beliefs of your and my, language.

12:27.105 --> 12:30.245
And so, what I'm saying is I just take you

12:30.245 --> 12:32.325
to be a referring and a predicating

12:32.345 --> 12:34.045
and a creator who has some sense of truth,

12:34.465 --> 12:35.685
and that is enough, really,

12:35.975 --> 12:37.565
after that, I let do the hard work

12:37.565 --> 12:38.765
of figuring out whether your beliefs

12:38.765 --> 12:40.285
and my beliefs match, and they may not match.

12:40.785 --> 12:42.205
So it's going to be tough to do that.

12:42.585 --> 12:43.645
And so that's all right.

12:43.725 --> 12:45.965
I mean, it's not like, we can translate every bit

12:45.965 --> 12:48.205
of your thought into every bit of my thought, Adam,

12:48.345 --> 12:49.485
by we can't do this,

12:49.545 --> 12:52.045
but maybe a whole, in a,

12:52.045 --> 12:53.645
in a very broad sense, we can do this.

12:54.425 --> 12:56.445
Uh, the implications are a,

12:56.445 --> 12:58.125
that there can be conceptual schemes.

12:59.105 --> 13:03.485
The takeaway is that I am not ready to concede the idea

13:03.595 --> 13:06.445
that there can be unintelligible conceptual schemes.

13:06.445 --> 13:08.845
So I'm also against them just as Davidson is against them.

13:08.875 --> 13:10.805
It's just that I think that just

13:10.805 --> 13:12.565
because you are against them doesn't mean

13:12.565 --> 13:15.285
that we shouldn't allow intelligible conceptual schemes

13:15.535 --> 13:17.525
which are reasonably different from ours.

13:17.695 --> 13:20.685
Maybe hard to translate, sometimes difficult to translate.

13:21.185 --> 13:23.965
Uh, we should allow other conceptual schemes.

13:25.335 --> 13:27.935
Davidson thinks that if you allow other conceptual schemes,

13:27.935 --> 13:30.775
you must allow something which is unintelligible so clearly

13:30.925 --> 13:32.455
that you simply can't translate it.

13:32.915 --> 13:35.335
I'm, what I'm trying to say is that nobody can translate,

13:35.595 --> 13:38.815
to some extent, but not to an entire extent.

13:38.815 --> 13:40.495
Davidson says that he wouldn't really understand the motion

13:40.495 --> 13:42.215
of a partial failure of translation.

13:42.595 --> 13:44.175
He says that that's also unintelligible,

13:44.355 --> 13:45.535
but I don't think so.

13:45.955 --> 13:47.975
The trouble spot in my argument

13:47.975 --> 13:50.735
where further research is actually necessary is

13:50.735 --> 13:54.415
that when I made these somewhat, controversial claims

13:54.415 --> 13:56.975
that, you know, a thinking greater needs to be referring

13:56.975 --> 13:58.975
and predicating and have the notion of a truth

13:59.995 --> 14:02.655
can be a bit troublesome,

14:02.975 --> 14:05.535
a thinking creator need not be a creator

14:05.755 --> 14:07.215
who makes judgments.

14:07.515 --> 14:08.935
Uh, now there's an interesting issue

14:08.935 --> 14:10.895
regarding the word judgment in philosophy.

14:11.075 --> 14:14.295
So, fragger, the German philosopher made a distinction

14:14.295 --> 14:15.415
between thought and judgment.

14:15.515 --> 14:17.335
So he said that, we can just, when you're,

14:17.335 --> 14:18.775
when I'm reading, let's say Sherlock Holmes,

14:19.755 --> 14:22.295
I'm enjoying the thoughts that are being expressed.

14:23.015 --> 14:24.055
I don't make any judgment

14:24.055 --> 14:26.975
because I I'm sure that I, I know that,

14:26.975 --> 14:29.175
there is no real person like Sherlocks out there.

14:29.355 --> 14:31.175
So Fragas idea of judgment is

14:31.175 --> 14:35.055
that on the judgment is only there when I think that what I,

14:35.205 --> 14:37.335
what I'm reading or what I'm thinking is true.

14:39.535 --> 14:43.075
So for all that, we can think

14:43.075 --> 14:44.755
of in regers terms, it seems

14:44.755 --> 14:47.675
that we can have thoughts without the of truth at all.

14:48.865 --> 14:50.635
It's possible that that's the case,

14:51.155 --> 14:53.085
Because Fraga tends to make a distinction

14:53.085 --> 14:54.245
between judgment and truth.

14:54.535 --> 14:56.365
These things are really hard to test,

14:56.385 --> 14:58.485
but there's no doubt that this intuition is correct,

14:58.485 --> 15:01.045
that we cannot have thoughts, but they need not be true.

15:01.205 --> 15:04.685
I could, I mean, most of my beliefs would easily be false.

15:05.585 --> 15:07.205
So it be practically all

15:07.205 --> 15:08.645
of my beliefs would easily be false once

15:08.645 --> 15:09.685
I start expressing them.

15:09.785 --> 15:10.925
And I once tried to do this,

15:10.925 --> 15:12.565
and it turned out, my God, it's like, it's,

15:12.565 --> 15:13.685
it's a pretty bad situation.

15:13.685 --> 15:15.925
Almost every belief that I have is like really bad.

15:16.705 --> 15:19.365
So, even very ordinary ones really, except

15:19.365 --> 15:21.205
for the simple things that I have a fridge in my own.

15:21.465 --> 15:23.005
Beyond that, it's all very vague.

15:23.665 --> 15:25.765
So, Plager says that,

15:25.905 --> 15:29.125
so if you can be a thinking creature, one of the things

15:29.125 --> 15:31.645
that might drop out of the picture is the notion of truth

15:32.425 --> 15:34.245
that's possibly going to drop out.

15:34.425 --> 15:35.805
If that drops out, well,

15:35.805 --> 15:39.125
it need not drop out completely from, from,

15:39.225 --> 15:41.885
the picture, but it may not belong to language.

15:41.945 --> 15:44.045
As such. The claim I'm making is

15:44.045 --> 15:46.365
that these things are fundamental to language

15:46.365 --> 15:48.125
that reference predication and truth.

15:48.535 --> 15:50.165
These are fundamental language,

15:50.465 --> 15:52.725
but truth could, is could drop out

15:53.805 --> 15:55.615
whether reference drops out.

15:55.635 --> 15:58.375
And I, it seems to me that predications gotta remain.

15:59.015 --> 16:00.975
I think this is a very fundamental intuition

16:00.975 --> 16:03.095
amongst philosophers that look, predication has to remain.

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This is what people in language do.

16:05.915 --> 16:07.975
We take a predicate and stick it to a subject.

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So that's what we really do.

16:10.695 --> 16:11.995
And sometimes we stick,

16:12.055 --> 16:13.395
one predicate to another predicate.

16:13.395 --> 16:15.395
Like you can say, honesty is desirable.

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So I stick the predicate desirability to the stick,

16:18.475 --> 16:20.075
to the predicate, honesty.

16:20.495 --> 16:22.195
So we do these things a lot.

16:22.895 --> 16:25.515
But, so it seems that predication is something that just,

16:25.585 --> 16:28.555
that has to be there, but it's possible that reference

16:28.575 --> 16:31.395
and tools are not necessarily linguistic notions,

16:31.495 --> 16:32.995
but these are all troublesome things

16:32.995 --> 16:35.235
and it's not easy to see how to test them.

16:36.055 --> 16:36.835
So that's there.

00:00 - The context of the work is a very famous paper written by, Donald Davidson, an American philosopher. he wrote a paper called, on the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme. I think this was published in 1974. this paper, basically argues that there is a whole,

00:18 - tradition that was building up that, you know, other people can have other human beings. Basically, you can have all different societies can have very different conceptual schemes that they employ in living. And so there can be a situation where the conceptual scheme is so different that we can't even understand them. So the pressure that came basically came from science. So people had at one time, let's say tomic theory,

00:44 - and then it was replaced by the theory. Today we have an einsteinian sort of world that we live in. There's some quantum mechanics that nobody really understands. So there's this kind of, difficult situation that prevails in science where we keep moving from one theory to another. And Thomas Boon had very famously argued that, there are these problems of inter translatability between these three, these paradigms.

01:06 - And so other arguments came from, I guess, anthropologists and, people who look at other societies. So there's a very famous study in war hypothesis. And so the idea is this, that when you look at other societies or look at a tribal society or something like that, you find concepts that are a so rich, or you find concepts that are so strange or alien that you can't even translate them back into your own home idea.

01:29 - And so that creates, this impression that we can have very different conceptual schemes, and that seems very natural as well. So, I mean, there is a sense in, it just seems very natural that yeah, of course, different human beings can employ different conceptual schemes, but Davidson argue that this is what odd, because a different conceptual scheme just means a scheme that you can't translate back into your home medium. That's all. And so if he says that,

01:54 - if you wanna make some sense of the notion of translation, you will realize that whatever people say, what, how does home really explain that? we find this, we find it so difficult to understand somebody else's universe, say 1500 years ago or 500 years ago, some other scientists universe, well, he explains it in his own, own home, medium of English. How do they explain what, say hope Indians are thinking? They explain it in their own English. And so he says that this idea

02:19 - that all these people are living words apart is really just a simple question of the people living words apart, nothing else. They're just employing different words for the same ideas. And it's not like people are living in different words altogether so that they can't even understand each other. That was Davidson's point. I have been, I have been thinking about this for a long time, and I realized that, look, there's a countervailing pressure.

02:42 - It's not so easy to dismiss conceptual schemes. I mean, the idea is that we have this, very strong notion that there is under determination of evidence regarding, the theories that we possess. What this means is that our evidence is never really complete. It can never be, I mean, we are Finite human beings. So whatever theory we possess, by theory, by the way, this is a kind of odd sort of thing

03:04 - that we have in philosophy. That, the American philosopher wine, for instance, he said that even common sense, the fact that I see you, that I see you as a person, you are in London. There is a particular different time that you have. All these things are common sensical things that we construct. And so, but that also for wine is a theory. So it's not like, quantum mechanics is a theory and you know, Weinstein and stuff is a theory.

03:27 - He thinks even common sense is a theory. And so now that's interesting because wine thinks that all this stuff that we build up, that were a person, that there's some computer there in front of you, there's a camera, whatever. All this stuff that we build up really comes from our sensory promptings, nothing else. We have sensors. We get information from the sensors, and then we construct a word from the, from that information.

03:49 - This information is very small in size here, a great phrase for this. And he said that there is meager input and torrential output. So that creates an interesting problem, because if there is meager input and torrential output, then we have got this situation where it is very obvious that we are bound to employ a conceptual scheme. Because the torrential output is essentially the conceptual

04:11 - scheme that we employ to handle the world. That's why my paper is called organizing Fitting, predicting these three words are stolen from Davidson's paper. So, Davidson also says this, that what do people do with, what do they mean by a conceptual scheme? He says that conceptual scheme just means people who organize a world. That's what it means. The way we organize a world. We say, this is a rock, that's a table, this is a chair,

04:33 - that's a cup, that's a, that's a person. This is a frog, and so on and so forth. So he says, this is the way, the way we organize a world is what is for the conceptual scheme. But if we are organizing a world from meager input and we get torrential output, that torrential output would differ from creator to creator to creator. That seems very obvious. And even if you go back to can't,

04:55 - let's say a German philosopher back in 1788, he was writing these big books, which were kind of unintelligible, but whatever. I mean, the idea is that now that we understand him a little bit better, we seem to think that well can't just says that, look, our not of sensibility, our nots of understanding need not be shared with anybody else. So if there is some other intelligent creature, somebody, you know, in some other galaxy,

05:17 - they're also doing whatever they're doing, they need not share our sense of space, our sense of time, our concepts of categories. They need not have those categories at all. And so they would've a different conceptual scheme. Now, Davidson's denying this. He's saying that, look, this is all ridiculous. They, I mean, to have a different conceptual scheme that you just can't translate the those guys. But that he says that this idea is something

05:39 - that is unintelligible to us. We have to translate those people. Why? So, because when you translate people, when you try to understand somebody else, you gotta think about the fact that that person shares your beliefs. Otherwise, no translation's ever gonna begin. So that's what is what the principle of charity that Davidson has. So he employs a full principle of Charity. When I have

05:57 - to understand you, let's say I, I speak Hindi, you speak English, I don't understand you at all. So let's say I don't know English at all. Well, how do I understand you? Well, I have to construct a theory. How do we construct a theory of English? how am I supposed to do this? Well, I'm supposed to see, okay, when you see a rabbit scattering into the bush, then I kind of think, okay, this man is saying something in English

06:20 - that the rabbit is scattering scampering into the bush. Okay? I try to figure out, I also believe this, but I believe it in Hindi, you believe it in English. So I kind of compare these two beliefs, and that's how, a translation sort of begins. I say, okay, he uses the word rabbit. Maybe that's what it means. My word of rabbit for Hindi, these two words shouldn't be the same, really. And so that's how translation begins.

06:43 - Now, if you can't do that, even then, you can't be translating anything. This is what I said was a bit, too much. I think in the paper that I wrote, I said, look, we don't need that. We don't need to go that far in translating. We don't have to match belief for belief, for belief, truth, for truth, for truth. All that we have to do is to think, what does it take for another person to be a thinking creature?

07:04 - All that it needs is that that person needs to have, or whatever creature needs to have, needs to be referring to the world needs to be predicating, certain qualities to those, things that they're referring to. And, they have to employ some concept of truth. Now, of course, I have had some doubts about my own ideas, but, it seems to me that this is enough for us to have different conceptual schemes without having unintelligible ones.

07:32 - We can understand an alien civilization. Why? Because they too would be thinking it's just not possible for anybody to do science or be an advanced civilization without thought. That's just not possible. It doesn't seem possible to me and least. So if they're thinking they must be having some i parameters by which they refer to the world, they must be having some way in which they are predicating qualities to what they're referring to.

07:55 - When I say my cup is yellow, I'm referring to my cup, and I'm saying, I'm predicating a quality. I say, yellow nest belongs to my cup, or something like that. Something like this must exist in their system. They, they may have a very different notion of a cup, a very different notion of yellow or whatever. But somehow or other, we should be able to understand that we may not understand them fully ever, but we can have enough understanding for, some kind

08:18 - of conversation to take place. So that's the idea that we don't have to go, we don't have to match belief by belief, truth by truth. And we don't have to think that everybody shares our beliefs about the world that we live in. So, what we have to do is simply think that, other creatures are just like us in the sense that we are thinking creatures. They are thinking creatures, as long as they're using some kind of communication system maybe.

08:42 - And so, if they're thinking creatures, they must be employing, referring predicating and some notion of truth. And so, that should be enough for us to latch onto their communication system and make some sense of Doing. That was the basic context of the paper Davidson's argument against conceptual schemes, my own hazy intuitions regarding the fact

09:04 - that somehow I felt unhappy. I mean, one does. I mean, there's this very powerful intuition that we have, that conceptual schemes are, you know, somehow they must be there. So how can Davidson possibly deny them? The resolution that I presented was that look, the dilemma exists because we are thinking in terms of the fact that Davidson is saying unintelligible conceptual schemes

09:27 - would be allowed if you allow conceptual schemes to exist under determination, on the other hand, forces us to believe that there should be conceptual schemes. So the dilemma is there either there are no conceptual schemes or there are conceptual schemes. so what are we supposed to do? I have tried to figure out that I think that there should be conceptual schemes because there's no doubt that there is meager input and torrential output, and the torrential output can

09:54 - differ from people to people. Now, this can be challenged, of course, but still it does seem to be that it's very difficult to challenge this idea. We know a lot of data from linguistics suggests that there is very good, reason to believe that language is not like languages, but the faculty of language is e to us. But anyway, so my idea, my resolution was to suggest that look, as we can allow conceptual schemes to exist,

10:18 - if we don't have to match belief by belief and truth by truths, Davidson wants, if you do that, then no further conceptual schemes can exist, because then every person who is a Hindi speaker or a Navajo speaker or a Mohawk speaker or something like that, all these people would've the same belief as I do, because I translate from Hindi or English. I translate their language into my language. And so it is simply, gathering their resources and just simply fitting them into

10:44 - my category, the end of story. There's really nothing else that I'm supposed that I can, I could possibly, I could ever do anything else be beyond this. But I'm saying that we need to be a bit more charitable to the, guy who, the person we are translating. We need to think that yes, he's a thinker. They can have different concepts than us. So there has to be some slippage between what we think and they think.

11:08 - So translation would be a much more slower exercise. We have to figure out what their beliefs are. They, they could be very different from our beliefs. And we do find this, sometimes we do find that other cultures tend to be quite different from our own culture, and we kinda struggle sometimes. And I think anthrop, anthropological use this phrase that you gotta have some immersion into the culture. Without that you can't really understand their culture.

11:28 - It's not just their language, it's also, it's also their cultural activities and whatever. So, my resolution was to simply say, look, just take them as thinkers. Take them as people with the paradise of reference, predication and truth. And that is enough. You don't have to match belief by belief and truth by truth that you don't have to do. There are other problems that have been raised

11:47 - by different philosophers regarding Davidson, the whole notions of belief and truth saying that these are not enough to start Off the program of saying that consultants from simply can't exist. So, that problem is there, but, even if you disregard those problems, I think the countervailing pressure coming from under determination and from the fact that we have mer input, original output should suggest to us

12:08 - that consultants scheme should exist. How can they exist? If we can withdraw Davidson's idea, we can just weaken it. So for, Davidson translation means that you need to have full, not full maybe, but what he calls optimized, agreement between beliefs of your and my, language. And so, what I'm saying is I just take you to be a referring and a predicating and a creator who has some sense of truth,

12:34 - and that is enough, really, after that, I let do the hard work of figuring out whether your beliefs and my beliefs match, and they may not match. So it's going to be tough to do that. And so that's all right. I mean, it's not like, we can translate every bit of your thought into every bit of my thought, Adam, by we can't do this, but maybe a whole, in a,

12:52 - in a very broad sense, we can do this. the implications are a, that there can be conceptual schemes. The takeaway is that I am not ready to concede the idea that there can be unintelligible conceptual schemes. So I'm also against them just as Davidson is against them. It's just that I think that just because you are against them doesn't mean that we shouldn't allow intelligible conceptual schemes which are reasonably different from ours.

13:17 - Maybe hard to translate, sometimes difficult to translate. we should allow other conceptual schemes. Davidson thinks that if you allow other conceptual schemes, you must allow something which is unintelligible so clearly that you simply can't translate it. I'm, what I'm trying to say is that nobody can translate, to some extent, but not to an entire extent. Davidson says that he wouldn't really understand the motion of a partial failure of translation. He says that that's also unintelligible,

13:44 - but I don't think so. The trouble spot in my argument where further research is actually necessary is that when I made these somewhat, controversial claims that, you know, a thinking greater needs to be referring and predicating and have the notion of a truth can be a bit troublesome, a thinking creator need not be a creator who makes judgments. now there's an interesting issue

14:08 - regarding the word judgment in philosophy. So, fragger, the German philosopher made a distinction between thought and judgment. So he said that, we can just, when you're, when I'm reading, let's say Sherlock Holmes, I'm enjoying the thoughts that are being expressed. I don't make any judgment because I I'm sure that I, I know that, there is no real person like Sherlocks out there. So Fragas idea of judgment is

14:31 - that on the judgment is only there when I think that what I, what I'm reading or what I'm thinking is true. So for all that, we can think of in regers terms, it seems that we can have thoughts without the of truth at all. It's possible that that's the case, Because Fraga tends to make a distinction between judgment and truth. These things are really hard to test, but there's no doubt that this intuition is correct,

14:58 - that we cannot have thoughts, but they need not be true. I could, I mean, most of my beliefs would easily be false. So it be practically all of my beliefs would easily be false once I start expressing them. And I once tried to do this, and it turned out, my God, it's like, it's, it's a pretty bad situation. Almost every belief that I have is like really bad. So, even very ordinary ones really, except

15:19 - for the simple things that I have a fridge in my own. Beyond that, it's all very vague. So, Plager says that, so if you can be a thinking creature, one of the things that might drop out of the picture is the notion of truth that's possibly going to drop out. If that drops out, well, it need not drop out completely from, from, the picture, but it may not belong to language. As such. The claim I'm making is

15:44 - that these things are fundamental to language that reference predication and truth. These are fundamental language, but truth could, is could drop out whether reference drops out. And I, it seems to me that predications gotta remain. I think this is a very fundamental intuition amongst philosophers that look, predication has to remain. This is what people in language do. We take a predicate and stick it to a subject.

16:09 - So that's what we really do. And sometimes we stick, one predicate to another predicate. Like you can say, honesty is desirable. So I stick the predicate desirability to the stick, to the predicate, honesty. So we do these things a lot. But, so it seems that predication is something that just, that has to be there, but it's possible that reference and tools are not necessarily linguistic notions,

16:31 - but these are all troublesome things and it's not easy to see how to test them. So that's there.

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