Radical
Interpretation and Alternative Conceptual Schemes
This
handout presents an argument against the possibility of alternative conceptual
schemes that is strongly suggested by Donald Davidson. It relies on his concept
of a radical interpreter and a thesis about the nature of linguistic meaning.
What is a radical interpreter? A radical interpreter is a person who meets the
following description: they know a language; they interpret the linguistic
behaviour of speakers of a certain other language, without prior knowledge of
that language, without dictionaries to help them and without being taught the
other language; they are able to detect assent to sentences and dissent from
them; on the basis of this evidence, they assign meanings to sentences in the
other language; they assign meanings rationally.
What is the thesis about meaning? The thesis is that the meaning of a sentence is the
meaning which would be assigned to it by a radical interpreter.
Consider
the possibility of me uttering a sentence and using a familiar word in that
sentence but intending to use it in an unfamiliar sense. Does the word, when I
use it, mean whatever I intend it to mean? According to the thesis, it is possible that the word does
not mean what I intend it to mean (see Talmage 1996).
For if a radical interpreter who is aware of all the relevant behavioural
evidence would not interpret the sentence in a way that reflects this intended
meaning, then the word does not have this intended
meaning. Note: it is
possible that a radical interpreter would assign more than one meaning to it,
in which case it is ambiguous.
Why endorse this thesis? The reason
for endorsing it is as follows:
the meaning of a sentence that someone utters is publicly accessible, rather
than something only they can possibly know; the meaning of a sentence is not a
mysterious phenomenon, within a worldview that does not feature supernatural
things; if one is committed to these two ideas, then one should think that a
person who does not know anything about another language can, if they have all
the relevant behavioural evidence and proceed rationally from that evidence,
correctly identify the meanings of sentences in that language.
What is the argument against
alternative conceptual schemes? In
‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’, Davidson associates having a
conceptual scheme with having a language. If others
have an alternative conceptual scheme to ours, the sentences of theirs which
they assent to express radically different beliefs to our beliefs. The
argument from radical interpretation begins with the principle that the
meanings of these sentences are the meanings which would be assigned to them by
a radical interpreter. The argument is that a radical interpreter who speaks
our language could never interpret their sentences as expressing radically
different beliefs to our beliefs, hence others cannot
have an alternative scheme. (I will remark on this inference towards the end of
the handout.)
Why would the radical interpreter
assign familiar beliefs? The answer I shall present to this question is a simplified version of
Davidson’s thinking. The radical interpreter observes others assenting
to certain sentences in certain conditions. (The sentences they initially focus
on are ones which readily command assent.) The only rational way in which they
can begin assigning meanings to these sentences is by assuming that others are
expressing beliefs that correspond to the interpreter’s beliefs in those
conditions. For example, if a sentence is asserted when and only when there is
a rabbit, the radical interpreter who speaks our language will take the
sentence to mean the same as our sentence, ‘There is a rabbit.’ But this
approach leads to a picture of others as expressing familiar beliefs, hence not
having an alternative scheme.
This explanation does not properly
state the principle of charity, which is a principle that the radical
interpreter must rely on in order to rationally achieve the goal of
understanding the language being learnt, according to Davidson. The principle
of charity is that one should interpret others as expressing beliefs that one
regards as true whenever it is plausible to do so. I have also not fully
explained why the radical interpreter must rely on this principle, omitting
holism of belief considerations.
Won’t assigning familiar beliefs lead
the radical interpreter to miss differences in belief? In ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’, and
elsewhere, Davidson responds to this worry by appealing to his view that in
order to make sense of others as disagreeing with us over some matter or other,
we must attribute to them many common beliefs. A disagreement depends on a
foundation of agreement. For example, if two people disagree over the colour of
a coat, one saying that the coat is brown and the other
saying that the coat is grey, they agree that there is a coat, that
it not transparent, that it is of one colour, etc.
One concern about Davidson’s response is that some
of the differences which interest advocates of alternative schemes are not
obviously disagreements. If one group and another have different concepts for
dividing up the colour spectrum, this is not obviously a disagreement. There
are other concerns about the radical interpretation argument against
alternative schemes, but in this handout I shall present only one more.
Is
the inference valid?
Even if a radical interpreter who speaks our language – English, let us suppose
– could never interpret the sentences of others as expressing radically different
beliefs to ours, is there a valid path from this claim to the conclusion that
others cannot possibly have an alternative conceptual scheme? Even if we grant
the thesis about meaning identified above, could there not be a radical
interpreter whose native language is significantly different and who assigns
different meanings to the same sentences being radically interpreted, such that
the sentences on their interpretation express radically different beliefs to
our beliefs? If so, the inference from what our radical interpreter cannot do
to the impossibility of others having an alternative scheme is invalid. But
perhaps it will be said that the public nature of meaning entails that all
radical interpreters arrive at the same meaning assignments.
References
Davidson, D. 1984. On
the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme. In Inquiries into Truth and
Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Talmage, C. 1996. Davidson
and Humpty Dumpty. Noûs 30: 537-544.