Conceptual Schemes and their philosophical implica
Humans don’t all have the same concepts
There are two distinguishable elements to our experience: the data of the senses, and how this data is interpreted by our concepts.
By the latter, it implies that different people would impose different conceptual scheme if they have different concepts
Conceptual relativism claims that because our conceptual scheme affects how people experience and understand reality, people with different conceptual schemes have different realities.
1 of 4
An implication: Conceptual relativism
We assume people have different 'realities' because we can’t translate theirs to ours
It assumes language 'constructs' reality to say reality is relative to our conceptual schemes
It would mean that reality is dependent on language, which is not true - we express our realities by language
A proposition in one conceptual scheme can be truewithout needing to be express in another set of scheme
This means that there isn’t one set of schemes with how the world looks.
2 of 4
An implication: Conceptual relativism II
An objection is that people argue that the relation between experience and conceptual schemesdoesn't make sense
Benjamin Whorf says that languages organize our experience of the world.
This is like trying to organise a wardrobe itself and not the clothes in it
If a conceptual schemeorganizes our experience, then our experience must be comprised of individual experiences
Conceptual scheme all has a set of experiences in common
We can pick out individual experiences like smelling a flower, feeling cold, etc.
Any conceptual scheme with these sorts of experiences will end up similar to our own, despite the concepts one holds and their language and so translation between two different conceptual schemes will be possible.
There may be small parts that can’t be translated, but this only leads to very mild form of conceptual relativism
3 of 4
An implication: Conceptual relativism III
We can’t necessarily combine conceptual scheme
An example is that we can have more or less colours in our vocabulary, and so can describe things in a different ways.
The Greeks thought that there was only one colour - bronze, and that everything else was different shades of bronze.
This doesn’t mean they saw everything in what we call 'bronze', it’s just how they describe their experiences
We can therefore only state things depending on the concepts we have.
Comments
No comments have yet been made