Conceptual Schemes and External Truth

The Meinongian Jungle of Competing Conceptual Schemes

Tony le Mesma: What we all do, we are all channellers. We channel from within to without.

Alan Partridge: I’m going to pin you down here. Can you be more specific?

Tony le Mesma: I am a man who harnesses the harmony that is within us all.

Alan Partridge: That’s more vague…I want you to be more specific.

Tony le Mesma: We have within us a consciousness which is only partially realised.

Alan Partridge: I think I know what you’re saying. Are you saying that if I, Alan Partridge, harnessed the harmony or spirits within me. And somehow channelled the energy up some kind of conduit of consciousness. A cloud…of…I’m sorry, I’ve absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. I’m completely lost.

(From Knowing Me, Knowing You, with Alan Partridge)

It was the jungle of competing conceptual schemes (CSs) that inspired me to write on the subject.  They are competing if the incommensurability and non-translatability of CSs theses are in fact correct (or partly correct).  However, two competing CSs may still both be true, even if truth is defined internally to each particular CS. This possibility implies that much that is external, in some form, is being applied to CSs and therefore transcends them. 

William P. Alston (1979) said that it may be “a piece of outrageous imperialism” to reject the CSs or Wittgensteinian language-games of “different spheres of discourse”.  It is easy to find  problems with such a tolerant pluralism because it seems to allow anything to be uttered (even things against tolerance and liberalism), as long as it belongs to a particular “discourse”, language-game or CS, and is, presumably, internally coherent.  Wittgenstein himself was particularly keen on religious language-games.  (It is strange that when certain philosophers talk about “relativism”, they have in mind the continental usual suspects but rarely the examples from “religious discourse”.)

There is a problem with religious “discourse” or language-games.  If a religion has its own “discourse”, which may well be self-contained and internally consistent and coherent, does this automatically mean that it does or can utter truths?  Some coherentists will say, “Yes”.  One religion (or quantum physicist!) may say:

                                     Both A and not A.

Or, more likely, what if one religion says "A" and another religion says “Not A”?  (For example, “God is one” and “God is one in three”.)

Interestingly enough Alston gives various – acceptable? - examples of alternative discourses (none of which are “relativist” or continental).  They include: “common sense talk about the physical environment”; “talk about personal agents”; “moral discourse”; “religious discourse”; “scientific theorising”; “experiential reports” etc. The problem is that all the examples above are not of a piece.  Some are mutually contradictory (or potentially so).  Others aren’t necessarily contradictory.  For example, “common sense talk”, “scientific theorising” and “experiential reports” need not contradict one another (they may if you are an elimitivist, but not necessarily if you are simply some kind of reductionist).  Here is Quine squaring two “discourses”:

Here we have two competing conceptual schemes, a phenomenalistic one and a physicalist one.  Which should prevail?  Each has its own advantages…Each, I suggest, deserves to be developed.  Each may be said, indeed, to be more fundamental, though in different senses: the one is epistemologically, the other physically, fundamental.  (1948)

The point is, according to Quine, that the above two CSs don’t – necessarily - contradict each other.  Indeed, we could roughly make Quine’s phenomenalistic CS square with Alston’s “experiential reports” and Quine’s physicalist CS square roughly with Alston’s “scientific theorising”.  But what of “religious discourse”?  Would Quine, for one, be so liberal towards them?  Would talk of an “everlasting life” fit a physicalist or even phenomenalist CS?  There may also be problems, from a Quinian perspective, for Alston’s “moral discourse”.  Indeed, what would Alston have thought about, say, Feyerabend’s position on Voodoo?

It is an extremely tricky problem to determine whether or not alternative CSs contradict one another. Take “common sense talk” and “scientific theorising” (we must remember that the former sometimes includes bits of the latter). This example is indeed problematic. But of course certain examples of “religious discourse” clash violently with “scientific theorising”. Indeed, sometimes, or many times, certain examples of “religious discourse” clash with “common sense talk” too, especially in our increasingly “godless age”. Indeed, quantum physics talk and certain examples of “religious discourse” are of a piece when it comes to “common sense talk”: they both clash with that particular CS.

We can, however, be liberal and tolerant – up to a point. For example, I have no immediate problems with Nelson Goodman’s position in this brilliant passage:

…many different world-versions are of independent interest and importance, without any requirement or presumption of reducibility to a single base. The pluralist, far from being anti-scientific, accepts the sciences at full value. His typical adversary is the monopolistic materialist or physicalist who maintains that one system, physics, is pre-eminent and all-inclusive, such that every other version must eventually be reduced to it or rejected as false or meaningless…The pluralists’ acceptance of versions other than physics implies no relaxation of rigor but a recognition that standards different from yet no less exacting than those plied in science are appropriate for appraising what is conveyed in perceptual or pictorial or literary versions. (1978)

Elsewhere he says that “we should take seriously the metaphors that artists use to restructure our worlds.”

Goodman is not saying that “anything goes”. He was not taking a position like Feyerabend’s. (Did Feyerabend think that anti-anarchist fascism goes?) Goodman was a mitigated pluralist. There are many arguments against eliminativism and certain types of reductionism. Indeed Goodman himself would have accepted reductionism within certain limits. (In any case, who are these extreme philosophical eliminativists and reductionists?)

So artists can be physicalists. And Goodmanian pluralism need not – and did not – countenance Feyerabend’s Voodoo or Alston’s Wittgensteinian position on religion .

There’s a further problem with Wittgensteinian liberalism towards CSs. It means that there can be no scientific criticism (I’ve taken on board Goodman’s animadversions against “monopolistic materialism”) of, for one, the religious language-game (or any language-game for that matter). No philosophical criticism either. Religion, or Voodoo, is let off the hook. The Wittgensteinian view, taken further, perhaps by Winch and Phillips, leaves all language-games beyond criticism not only from science, but logic and philosophy too, because nearly all such criticism will self-evidently be coming from domains outside the religious language game. Surely this is far too convenient. What if truth is truth in all domains and actually transcends them? What if truth doesn’t change its aspect simply because it is internal to different CSs? We could platitudinously say that a cat is a cat in every CS. And if a religious mystic can agree on that, then perhaps he can agree on many other CS-transcendent truths. Can the mystic, therefore, come along and say:

“On my view (derived from Wittgenstein), which is wide, coherent and consistent, cats are made of cheese.”

This is why many people still admire and sympathise with the spirit, though not every letter, of logical positivism (as did Quine).

Again, we can accept different CSs, even competing CSs, as long as we aren’t too liberal and look out for contradictions between them. Putnam writes:

…what is in one sense the ‘same’ world…can be described as consisting of ‘tables and chairs’…in one version and as consisting of space-time regions, particles and fields, etc in other versions. (1987)

 Here’s Goodman again:

Consider…the statement ‘The sun always moves’ and ‘The sun never moves’ which, though equally true, are at odds with each other…Rather, we are inclined to regard the two strings of words not as complete statements with truth-values of their own but as elliptical for some such statements as ‘Under frame of reference A, the sun always moves’ and ‘Under frame of reference B, the sun never moves’ – statements that may both be true of the same world.

…If I ask about the world, you can offer to tell me how it is under one or more frames of reference; but if I insist that you tell me how it is apart from all frames, what can you say?… (1979)

Having sympathised with Nelson Goodman earlier, I’m not altogether happy with his position above. For example, we could simply ask whether we are talking about the sun itself (and its movements) or the “frames of reference”. When we talk about one we are not talking about the other. The sun always moves regardless of frames of reference. However, according to “frame of reference B” it “never moves”. This is not to say that we can escape from “frames of reference” or “modes of presentation” (or even Fregean "senses"), but a distinction can be made nevertheless. However, there are simple cases of mutually supporting “frames of reference” or CSs. For example, with the naked eye we obviously can’t see particles or fields. And with the naked mind we don’t talk about “space-time regions”. That’s one CS. Within another CS we do observe particles with scientific equipment and so too with fields (if they are actually observed and are not "posits"). And with a scientific hat on we talk of “space-time regions”. There’s no problem here, unless one is an elimitivist of some kind.

Alston himself does give an account of what may be incompatible language games or CSs, unlike the examples cited earlier which he thought mutually autonomous:

The ontologies of different language-games do not all fit into any single scheme. There is no place in physical space for minds, sense-data, or God. Agency cannot be located in the interstices of the physiological causal network.” (1979)

So here Alston appears to be saying that some CSs are wrong, or potentially wrong. Contrary to the views of Peter Winch and D. Z. Phillips, these CSs do not –or cannot – exist in splendid isolation. They contradict each other. Eliminative materialists, for example, deny the existence of propositional attitudes. Therefore eliminative materialism is at war with folk psychology. Atheists deny the existence of God. Davidson denied sensory data. Some determinists reject Alston’s “agency”. And so on. Things aren’t, after all, so cosy. Liberalism and pluralism have their limits. But few of us are pure liberals few. Many of us are mitigated liberals or mitigated pluralists.

So whereas Alston showed us his pluralism earlier on, he now shows us the limits of his pluralism and tolerance. So if he can have his limits, other people can have their limits too. And, consequently, the limits of other people may include limits on Alston’s pluralism (e.g. towards “religious discourse”), whereas Alston himself hints at the unacceptability of certain CSs (e.g. determinism, eliminative materialism etc.).With all these limitations, from Alston and from everyone else, why talk about the “outrageous imperialism” of those who have a strong problem with certain CSs? After all, Alston also has a strong problem with certain CSs. And so too, ironically, do, of all people, conceptual relativists. Let's go into a little detail here.

Such people do indeed criticise other CSs. For example, they don’t have much time for what they call “scientism” and “physicalism”. Yet according to their own standards, they are not allowed to criticise alternative CSs. “Scientism” and “materialism” may be examples of CSs according to which the concept of truth is defined internally. They may be self-contained enclosed universes. So how can another CS criticise them if that very CS is committed to the autonomy of even contradictory CSs? The conceptual relativist, or plain relativist, who appears on the surface to be committed to the autonomy of CSs or language-games, must himself transcend his own CS and therefore take a bird’s-eye view of “scientism” etc - and he doesn’t like what he sees. And why should the fictional bogeyman, the Scientistic Philosopher, accept the conceptual relativist’s criticisms if, according to the relativist’s own CS, truth is not external but internal to CSs? We could even say that the conceptual relativist is adopting an almost Nagelian metaphysical realism, without realising that he’s digging his own grave by doing so.

When we push  absolute pluralists towards CSs far enough we always find their limits. And, of course, if we must accept certain logical fundamentals, then what about the things that are derived from such fundamentals? That’s logic. What about scientific fundamentals and what they entail? And so on. Pluralism is either self-defeating or self-contradictory. Just as in politics, pluralists cannot tolerate anti-pluralists and not be tolerant to the intolerant. So we should in philosophy be mitigated pluralists in a manner vaguely analogous to Hume’s mitigated scepticism. Another way of putting this is that pluralism is not, or should not be, an absolute.

The more we analyse the reality of CS pluralism and tolerance the more we see that it doesn’t in fact exist. Therefore tolerance and pluralism may not be the virtues they at first seemed to be. Of course we are not talking politics here. In politics, pluralism and tolerance may indeed be commendable. However, an eliminativist, say, will not use his fists to enforce his CS on those who use, say, “religious discourse”. So the parallel with politics is not valid. Tolerance and pluralism in politics may be virtuous, whereas in philosophy etc. they may be  vices. Therefore talk of “outrageous imperialism”, as I said, may be misplaced outside the domain of politics. It may even be a Rylian “category mistake”.

Conceptual Schemes

The concept of a conceptual scheme is closely related to the Coherence Theory of Truth. This theory of truth, simply put, claims that truth is internally determined by a belief-system. Let’s be explicit here. Certain political theories could be said to determine their own concept of truth and their own truths as applied to particular – or even all – domains. Similarly with religions and certain philosophical systems.

There is, or often is, a choice to adopt such belief-systems or CSs, which, clearly, occurs before any acceptance. Truth, or something, external to the chosen CS must have been relevant to the acceptance and adoption of the CS. Of course, not all CSs are chosen. Some of us are born into them. We can be born into certain religions. We can believe everything we read in the newspapers of our parents’ choice. We can even be born into certain philosophical CSs. Indeed, just as all single objects and events are already conceptualised (though we can apply new concepts to them), so too general experience comes preconceptualised. This time by virtue of linked concepts, that is, conceptual schemes. Just as we learn from schools the basics, so with CSs we learn how to interpret experience. We cannot start from scratch. We cannot start off from the end of a Cartesian reduction, as it were. Cartesian or Husserlian reductions were the privilege of philosophers who already entertained CSs.

Such assumptions about being brought up within CSs is not intellectualist. The CSs we are brought up with are baggage we often don’t question – at least not until later life.

One must have a scheme or schemes of concepts, therefore a CS or CSs, by virtue of the fact that concepts are interdependent. They are entailed and entail one another. They bear deductive and inductive inferential relationships to one another. They share evidence etc. In other words, a scheme is a package-deal. Every logician accepts this within pure logic. However, not just logicians are logicians. We may uphold a consistent, coherent, valid and even sound CS without having heard the terms “inductive inference” or “entailment”. Most people in everyday life are fairly good logicians (or quite rational). However, when it comes to less mundane matters sometimes things aren't quite so clear. However, even if, say, emotion is brought into the picture, people within a particular CS can still work within the frames of acceptable logical procedures. This must be largely true; otherwise there wouldn’t be a general consensus on insanity and irrationality. The problem is, as ever, with the vague boundaries between the logical and the illogical.

As I said, virtually all macro CSs will share logical micro CSs by virtue of the fact that they employ inductive, deductive, abductive inferences and entailment and implication etc., even if members have never heard of or used these terms before. Such things existed before logicians codified them. So there is a sense in which virtually all CSs are logically valid if not sound (true).

Logicians would be the first to tell us that a CS could be internally consistent, coherent and yet false. In the terms of logic, they could be “valid” but not “sound”. Indeed  even lunatics can create belief-systems that are internally consistent and coherent and yet false (that is, valid but not sound). It is probably the case that there are many more CSs that are valid internally than are sound (true). We may even have a firmer grip on coherence than on truth.

There can be a micro CS within a larger macro CS. Take Quine on a very small micro CS:

A question of the form: ‘What is an F?’ can be answered only by recourse to a further term: ‘An F is a G.’ The answer only makes relative sense: sense relative to the uncritical acceptance of ‘G’. (1969)

Of course Quine’s micro CS may become progressively more macro if we go onto ask, “What is a ‘G’?” And so on. However, we could come to, say, “What is a ‘L’?” And the answer could be: “An L is a G.” So here we have a circular micro CS (or a self-referential one). Of course one can guess that “micro” and “macro” are relative terms. They are not hard and fast terms. Some CS could be deemed micro vis-à-vis a certain macro CS, and macro vis-à-vis an even smaller micro CS. This begs the question: How micro can a micro CS be? Can two concepts linked together constitute a micro CS? More to the point, is it possible for two concepts to exist autonomously at all? Of course holistically speaking there may not be such a thing as true indepdendence. Not even for a macro CS vis-à-vis other macro CSs – even other contradictory macro CSs.

There is a micro Kantian CS. That is the a priori concepts and structures that are supposed to determine and shape experience. It is micro because it doesn’t determine all beliefs. Perhaps it is only a building block of experience. Even Kant himself would have said that his ethical system was separate from his a priori concepts or structures. Or, more correctly, he derived his ethics from – elements of – the micro CS. And, of course, other people can accept Kant’s micro CS of a priori concepts etc. and yet be non-Kantian in their macro CSs. For example, you could accept the Kantian micro CS and adopt a materialist macro CS of, amongst other things, ethics and mind (which would encompass the Kantian micro CS). Nothing, say, about a materialist ethics need contradict, in any obvious way at least, the Kantian micro CS. And even if there were contradictions, logical or empirical or otherwise, this wouldn’t stop the micro CS living hand in hand with the macro CS. It would only mean that the overall CS contained contradictions, which is probably true of every macro CS (or true of every macro CS vis-à-vis its micro CSs).

Take the concepts required for any theory of truth. These could make-up a micro CS that may itself belong to a larger macro CS. That is, a theory of truth will do work within a larger framework. Of course, the micro CS may not – or must not – contradict anything within the macro CS. (Or, perhaps, the reverse relationship could be the case.) If the macro CS contradicted anything within the micro CS, it wouldn’t be able to do any work for it. It follows from this that the micro CS generates, in effect, the macro CS (it could, I suppose, be the other way around).

Of course if the theory of truth is a micro CS, the macro CS has not escaped form a notion of truth external to it because the macro CS was itself generated by the work of the theory of truth. (This may not be the case if the micro CS were not a theory of truth.)

All this depends on what one’s theory of truth is. It could be, for instance, that “Truth is anything the Bible says it is”. Or “The only truths I accept are the truths found in the Bible”. Then that macro CS, the Bible, would be determining the truth because one would have needed to have accepted the Bible before accepting the statement that “Truth is anything the Bible says it is” - otherwise why would someone accept that “atomic” statement simply as it stands?

Here we have, however, a kind of hermeneutic circle between the micro CS (i.e. “Truth is what…”) and the macro CS (the Bible) – a question of truth being external (in the micro CS) to the macro CS. A person can’t accept “Truth is what the Bible says it is” (part of the micro CS) as it stands, as I said, unless he has already accepted the Bible (the macro CS) - otherwise why accept the statement “Truth is what the Bible says it is” as it stands? But the only way he can accept the Bible is by accepting that very statement (which claims that the Bible itself determines truth). This, therefore, is a circular relation between a micro CS and a macro CS. And its theory of truth (in the micro CS) is certainly not external to the macro CS.

This seems to imply that either the acceptance of the micro CS, “Truth is what the Bible says t is”, or the macro CS, the Bible, is not itself based on criteria of truth  external to the micro and macro CSs. Something needs to be external to either “Truth is what the Bible says it is” or to the Bible itself. But, in this case, the micro and the macro CSs simply back each other up. If we accept that “Truth is what the Bible says it is”, we must have already accepted the Bible. We must already accept that the Bible generates truth. So this is potentially a hermetic CS. This means that if no external truth leads to it, it must therefore be accepted for, say, psychological/emotional reasons, not for reasons of fact, logic or philosophy. (This is not to say that the Bible’s CS can’t live alongside other macro CSs – even contradictory ones!) However, Wittgenstein said that there are certain givens or presuppositions  that can’t be questioned in order to allow us to get off the ground. Even if we accept that point, I don’t think it’s true of the Bible’s macro CS. It is not rudimentary or fundamental enough to fall under the Wittgensteinian ambit. It is not, for example, like the putatively unquestioned acceptance of the law of identity or of induction. These two laws could make up a micro CS that even the Bible's CS would need to accept.

Take the micro CSs of logicians. A tiny minority share them. However, the majority – or all – of this minority will live within the same macro CSs. So there are elite micro CSs within non-elite macro CSs simply by virtue of the technicality or tight subject-matter of the micro CSs. Nothing in the micro CS, as I said earlier, should contradict anything in the macro CS. It could of course be the case that there is a lack of fit between the micro CS and the macro CS. For example, Catholicism or Druidism could exist within a larger macro CS. However, there may be hidden – or not so hidden – conflicts between the micro CSs and the macro CSs. There could even be macro CSs that are derived from micro CSs, or micro CSs that are derived from macro CSs. For example, an extensional logic micro CS could give rise to a macro CS, say, materialist or physicalist metaphysics.

The idea of being an adherent of a single macro CS, which is applicable to all areas, seems unlikely. However, certain Muslims, or the majority, say that Islam, or the Koran, is applicable to literally everything. On the other hand, there isn’t really, say, a post-structuralist science (though there is a critique of science) or a Catholic theory of sport. Someone, however, may think of himself as being an adherent of a single CS and be quite proud of the fact. However, in reality his CS will not touch upon certain subjects, even indirectly. So he will need to surreptitiously borrow from other CSs. The adherence or proclaimed adherence to a single CS may be more of a psychological fact about this person, rather than a philosophical/logical fact about the unity and coherence of his chosen belief-system. Indeed it would have been the nature of other CSs, or reasons from other CSs, which have lead him to embrace his putative all-embracing CS.

People don’t only have micro and macro CSs that exist together, but they also have or adhere to more than one macro CS. One person may uphold the Islamic CS at the same time as upholding a strictly scientific CS. It may be the case that two CSs contradict each other in some or many ways, though for psychological reasons they may not be noticed or they may be simply ignored. However, Muslims and Christians, or certain philosophical "system-builders", may live within enclosed universes into which the scientific CS cannot penetrate. Of course, such a notion of contradiction between micro and macro CSs presupposes truth that is external to the particular CSs. We could further ask: Does a notion of truth as external to two particular CSs hint at the possibility of truth external to all CSs? Is such a possibility plausible? (See later sections.)

It need not be the case that all the relationships between the micro and macro CSs are logically valid and certainly not sound. There are other forms of relationship. “The moon is made of cheese” could be related to, in some way, a physicalist theory of the world. The connection between “The moon is made of cheese”, which may be part of the micro CS, may generate, non-logically, beliefs which belong to a materialist CS. The moon’s cheesiness may be seen to entail beliefs which themselves entail materialism about the world. For example. The belief that “Every statement is true” could, self-evidently, entail, if there is non-logical entailment, every belief possible.

This itself means that even if we accept the view that certain CSs are self-enclosed, it could not be the case that this was so all along. The CS had to have had a birth. And perhaps micro CSs or even other macro CSs gave birth to it. And, if this was the case, its self-enclosed nature can be questioned.