The abstract for ‘On Conceptual Schemes: a Davidsonian Prolegomena for Future Work on the Embodied/Embedded Mind’

This paper is primarily a Davidsonian position on conceptual schemes; though it also shows and accounts for some of the problems with his stance. The paper is Davidsonian chiefly because it too rejects the ‘very idea of a conceptual scheme’. That is, Davidson does not accept the reality of conceptual schemes as defended and described by conceptual-scheme relativists. On the other hand, he ostensibly accepts the pluralist’s position on conceptual schemes, but does not actually think it refers to genuine schemes vis-à-vis those described by relativists. In other words, he would happily accept, I would guess, Nelson Goodman’s ‘world-versions’ and ‘world-makings’.

However, Davidson does not think that relativists offer us genuine alternative or contradictory conceptual schemes because there is only one such thing – ours, but because there are no such things. Goodman, again, didn’t accept the relativist account in that he too did not think conceptual schemes were genuine alternatives or genuine contradictions of his own or anyone else’s.

Part of the argument for all this requires the rejection not only of relativism, but, of course, of the scheme/content distinction that must be upheld by relativists, metaphysical realists, representationalists, phenomenalists, etc. – even by the Quinians who make much of Quine’s ‘sense-events’ or ‘sensory stimulations’.

Another part of the rejection of conceptual-scheme relativism and the scheme/content distinction also brings along with it the rejection of the idea of ‘inferring’ or ‘positing’ objects, events, etc. from sense-data, sensory stimulations, etc. The world, instead, comes directly to us in the guise of objects, events and so on. This is automatically the case when we reject representations of all kinds and therefore any indirect inference or positing from them. This kind of position was advanced by Strawson in 1959. However, none of his arguments are the same as the ones advanced in this paper.

As for the title’s reference to the embodied/embedded mind, I do not rely on Davidson at all here (though this does not automatically mean he hasn’t advanced similar arguments). Less time is spent on this aspect of the paper. Nevertheless, it is a consequence of my position on conceptual schemes. And this paper is, after all, a prolegomena for work on the embodied/embedded mind. That is, from the positions advanced on the impossibility of conceptual schemes and the consequent rejection of the scheme/content distinction, we can derive positions and arguments which I think could backup work in the philosophy of the embodied/embedded mind. It is, then, one possible candidate for a ‘groundwork’ for such theories.

These later arguments are implied, if not entailed, by all the previous arguments on conceptual schemes and the scheme/content distinction. Primarily they follow from the Strawsonian and Davidsonian idea that we must confront objects, events, etc. directly, or ‘as they are’. But such direct contact with the world could only come about, the argument is, if the mind were also embedded in the world and embodied in the body/brain – i.e., only if the mind is taken as a natural phenomenon. In addition, the embodied mind implies the embedded mind, and vice versa. Only such a naturalisation of the mind could justify this paper’s prior positions on conceptual schemes and the concept/scheme distinction. Similarly, the whole representationalist project, from Descartes to the phenomenalists and on to contemporary cognitive scientists and so on, brings along with it the separation of mind from the world. It therefore problematices the mind’s naturalisation as well as mind-world interactions precisely because if the mind is embodied/embedded, or taken in that way, it could not rely on the non-natural traditional representations that connect us to it. This may also be true of representations as conceived in our own day (e.g., by cognitive scientists, upholders of the Language of Thought, other computationalists and so on.) As an alternative, the position adopted in this paper is closer to the positions advanced by, amongst others, Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Sellars, Goodman, Burge, Brandom, and also, ironically, all physicalists and logical empiricists like Quine (i.e., despite the earlier reference to Quine’s ‘sensory stimulations’). Even Kant is more of a help to this project than all the representationalists mentioned earlier.

On Conceptual Schemes: a Davidsonian Prolegomena for Later Work on the Embodied/Embedded Mind

If there were alternative conceptual schemes then certain cultures, or perhaps alien cultures, would have different ‘world-versions’ (Goodman, 1978). However, take Goodman. He was a conceptual scheme pluralist, not a conceptual scheme relativist. A CSR, for example, believes that certain possible alternative or contradictory CSs literally cognise a different world – they don’t just offer their own interpretation or ‘version’ of one and the same world. Davidson’s general position, therefore, is aimed at the notion of CSs offered by CSRs, not by CS pluralists. Indeed, he interprets the notion of a conceptual scheme so strongly that he believes that the term is only applicable in the relativist’s sense.

It follows, therefore, that we could not understand what the members of different CSs are saying – i.e., in our attempts to interpret or translate them. By definition, alien CS members could not understand us either; and for exactly the same reasons. Davidson’s prime reason for such a radical rejection of CSs is that we cannot distinguish our experiences from theirs – i.e., from the CS we are supposed to apply to them. In other words, there is no ‘Given’ in the traditional epistemologist’s sense of the term. There are no sense-data or Kantian ‘intuitions’ that we can effectively distinguish or disentangle from the conceptual scaffolding we are supposed to, according to CSRs, give to the Given (or, for that matter, to Quine’s ‘sensory stimulations’ or Carnap’s ‘cross-sections of experience’, etc).

This position has an important impact on one’s philosophy of mind and one’s epistemology because it effectively means that our cognitions of the world are immediate and not indirect. In phenomenalist terms, we do not ‘infer’ the nature of objects, events, etc., from our sense-data (Ayer 1936/1956). We could also say that (contrary to Quine and others): neither do we ‘posit’ such things in any real or quasi-scientific sense.

In one sense, this position could be deemed a sophisticated version of naïve realism in that if we get the world straight, as it were, then we must also see things directly – ‘as they are’. However, Davidson does not go that far because we could indeed get the world wrong in the metaphysical realist’s sense. It is just the case that if we cannot split scheme and content in the first place, then we can’t do anything about this ostensible misinterpretation of the world. And if Davidson is correct, then the metaphysical realist’s ‘reality’ has no philosophical purchase – it is like Wittgenstein’s peripheral wheel or Russell’s floating teapot a billion light years away. So this denial of the ‘very idea’ of a CS (Davidson, 1984) would provide no succour to metaphysical realists; no less than the CSR does. The idea, though, that we can’t literally have objects in our minds; just as Frege said against J.S. Mill. It follows, then, that Davidson’s position could be seen as mid-way between metaphysical realism and the extreme liberalism of CSR. What would maintain objectivity and truth for Davidson would not be ‘true representations’, in the representationalist’s and metaphysical realist’s sense, or the literal containment of objects in the mind/statements in the naïve realist’s or 19^th century denotationalist’s sense. Instead, objectivity is secured because there are no such things as conceptual schemes. Therefore massive disagreement between persons and cultures would not be possible. And if that is the case, we do not need ‘true representations’ either, just as Rorty keeps on telling us (Rorty, 1991). In addition, as is well known, Davidson’s position also rules out massive falsity too (Davidson, 1984), as we shall see later. So metaphysical realism does not supply us with ‘reality’. And neither does CSR.

Davidson could also be taken to be simply offering his own version of the Given, despite his protestations. This means that instead of, say, sense-data becoming the pure, conceptually un-polluted starting point of all our reasonings, in Davidson’s view objects, events, etc. (see Strawson, 1959) do that job instead. Instead of inferring or positing from sense-data or sensory stimulations, we do so from the given objects, events, etc. However, this would be the wrong conclusion to make about Davidson’s position primarily because although he denies the existence of CSs, evidently he does not do the same in the case of concepts.

CSs and concepts are very different creatures, despite the obvious fact that CSs must be made up of atomic concepts, as it were. The distinction is that CSs are package-deals, whereas single concepts need not belong to specific and determinate package-deals, at least not ones as big or radically different as alternative or contradictory CSs (i.e., we could still accept molecularism for concepts).

Another way of making these points is that although we do not apply a CS to the given world, in the CSR’s sense, the world is still, nevertheless, conceptually structured and determined. The point is, however, that when the world is first given to us, we do not apply concepts to it – it comes conceptually determined and structured. This position, understandably, sounds very Kantian in nature. And, of course, Davidson has a lot of respect for Kant’s work (see his 1980). However, Davidson’s position is non-Kantian in three senses:

#) The world itself is causally responsible for our conceptual determinations and structures.

##) Any concepts we do apply in acts of organisation, may well be of a contingent and a posteriori kind.

###) Even the world as it is given is still determined by contingent and even a posteriori concepts in the sense that the world’s own determinations and structures causally determines them. Concepts are only a priori when they are not consciously or cognitively applied to the world.

Davidson is neither a metaphysical realist nor an idealist (not even a transcendental one). Instead, he could be taken as taking the mid-ground between two. Davidson accepts that the world as given is already structured and determined. Nevertheless, the world as given is not conceptually organised by the cognitive acts of persons. We can give up our world-concepts, but the world must still always come to us conceptually structured and determined – and always will do. The metaphysical realist, on the other hand, believes that we can take off our concepts as if they were mere spectacles. Yet how it is un-conceptualised is something we can never know. Despite that, all persons have causal contact with the world. The world is not ‘well lost’ (Rorty, 1982). But neither can we ever bring about our own ‘view from nowhere’ (Nagel, 1986). Concept-transcendence is impossible. As I have said, objectivity is secured by denying the possibility of CSs altogether, not by endorsing metaphysical realism in any of its forms. If objectivity about the world is only secured by metaphysical realism, then it is not the kind of objectivity that Davidson would accept. CSR, on the other hand, throws out the worldly baby with the conceptual bath water. And metaphysical realism drowns the conceptual baby in the worldly bath water.

Davidson believes that we ‘touch’ the world directly. There are no ‘intermediaries’ (Davidson, 1989) between minds and world. We do not need or have sensory Givens. Nor do we need Kantian a priori categories/concepts to determine and structure the world. This is the case because Davidson would reject Kant’s distinction between his ‘intuitions’ and categories; just as he rejects the CSR’s own scheme/content duality. Instead, the world arrives on our doorsteps already determined and structured. Concepts are never suspended or ‘bracketed’ (Husserl, 1913), as with various kinds of realist, nor should they be over-emphasised, as with CSRs. And we can indeed change our concepts and adopt new ones. However, the world is still given to us conceptually from the very beginning. Very young children and animals, of course, may not have the world given to them in any way, but that is only because to them there is no ‘world’. That is, they have no experience of the world or its objects in the Kantian conceptual sense. However, Davidson partly accepts Kant’s position: experience, by his definition, is conceptual experience. Any other mental states or events very young children - or even adults - have, cannot be deemed experience. There are mental events, states, etc., but they are not of the world (see Peacocke, 1983 and M. Davies, 1996).

One of the reasons why people may believe in the existence of untranslatable CSs is the belief that we must always apply concepts to the world: the world does not come to us already conceptualised. Instead it comes to us like an Airfix aeroplane. Take the world as the parts of an Airfix plane. And take our concepts as the glue and instructions we use to fix the plane together. If that is an analogical scenario, then we could factor out either the plane’s parts or, alternatively, the glue and the instructions. We can make a conceptual and a literal distinction between the world (or, say, its sense-data), and the concepts we apply to it. But what if that can’t be done? What if our plane came already fixed? In other words, what if we can’t factor out world/sense-data (etc.) from our concepts (or vice versa)? Concepts and world/sense-data may always come to us as a two-part package-deal when it comes to experience and our cognitions of the world. And if the world is given to us already conceptually structured and determined, then there cannot be genuine conceptual schemes. Instead, we are given the world.

And our minds must also be part of that world. Idealists, CSRs, representationalists and metaphysical realists, however, split us asunder from the world by the very act of believing that concepts and world, or representations/‘ideas’ (etc.) and the world, can not only be distinguished, but quite literally taken in complete separation from one other. And if we don’t impose concepts on a naked reality, but instead touch the world that is always clothed in concepts, then our minds must surely belong to that world. They are embedded. The world is always experienced as the world. We always experience the ‘worldhood of the world’ (Heidegger, 1927). And if that separation between concepts and world can never be brought about, then the separation of mind and world may not be brought about either. In consequence, mind must therefore be both embodied and embedded in the world. Mind and world are both parts of the same scheme. And even if hugely different in degree (in terms of properties), which they are, they are still not different in kind.

If all that is the case, then all other minds must also be embedded in the world. As a consequence of this, Davidson would argue that no mind could belong to a genuinely alternative conceptual scheme (or vice versa). And even a translated/interpreted alien must belong to the world - or at least to the known universe. It must interact with objects, events, etc. that are spatiotemporal and causal kinds of things.

If we use the term ‘conceptual scheme’ loosely, then of course there are not only different conceptual schemes, but also alternative or contradictory ones: e.g., Marxism/fascism, Christianity/atheism, Quinian scientific schemes/scientific schemes that assume conceptual uniformity. However, none of these contingent distinctions and differences are enough to constitute alternative, contradictory or untranslatable CSs. Even two-headed and three-legged aliens who believe that stars are animals and that they can travel faster than light would not have an alternative CS – that is, if these aliens had genuine minds (functionally speaking). The aliens would still be embodied and embedded in the world or our universe; and would still be victims of causal interaction with spatiotemporal objects, events, etc. On the other hand, we could still say that if they genuinely had minds and also another genuine CS, then we could never make sense of their utterances - either by Quinian radical translation or Davidsonian radical interpretation.

We must not, however, fall into the trap of thinking that Davidson believes that there is only one CS – the one that human beings use here on earth; or even the one only used by professors in English and American universities. Some philosophers have come close to thinking that, if only tacitly. For example, it could be argued that Strawson (1959) and Susan Haak (1998 ) have come very close to not only defining CSs in a Davidsonian sense, but also believing that there is only one – theirs. Or, at least, that disparate cultures basically share their own broader conceptual scheme. But Davidson does not believe that at all. He denies the existence of genuinely rival conceptual schemes because he denies the ‘very idea of a conceptual scheme’. It is not the case that there are no rival CSs because there is only one – ours. No; he denies them because there are no genuine CSs. So it follows that Davidson would have no problem with the fact that Eskimos have names for 50 types of snow; that cannibals have different table manners to Europeans; or that Creationists believe that the universe was created 4,600 years and ten months ago. And in terms of aliens, they too would not have genuinely alternative CSs that we couldn’t translate or interpret. In the case of the alien, it would be a case of ontological combinitorialism (D.M. Armstrong, 1986). And also the case that they could never have access to, say, colours, objects, etc. that are not instantiable in principle here on earth (D. Lewis, 1983). Indeed, even genuinely alien colours, objects, etc. may not be enough to help foster a genuinely untranslatable or un-interpretable CS. If they were still of our universe and not at another possible world that doesn’t instantiate our own physical laws, then they would still be causally interacting with spatiotemporal objects, events, etc.  Nonetheless, even if a possible world’s physics were genuinely different to ours, its inhabitants, if they had minds, could still have their own quasi-conceptual schemes but ones still grounded on similar (sometimes identical) fundamental logical and mathematic laws, rules, truths, etc. as our own. That is, if they still upheld the same foundational or basic mathematical and logical necessities, laws and truths (taken conventionally or non-conventionally, etc.). On the other hand, perhaps we could still not translate or interpret the inhabitants of possible worlds with similar or the same fundamental logical laws but a different physics, unlike the aliens of our world (i.e., universe). Aliens could have non-causal and non-Einsteinian/non-quantum realities and therefore they would have a completely different worlds and even, as a consequence, completely different bodies. Also, perhaps they could not be embedded and embodied, in our sense, in these possible worlds. Therefore this would make their inhabitants’ utterances un-translatable or un-interpretable. And if that could be the case at a possible world, how could we call their utterances ‘utterances’ at all? I have, of course, conveniently forgot that none of this may really matter because we could never have causal contact with such possible worlds to carry out our translations/interpretations! Nonetheless, I hope my points still hold.

References and Further Reading

Armstrong, D.M. ‘The Nature of Possibility’ (1986), in Canadian Journal Of Philosophy 16

Ayer, A.J. Language, Truth and Logic (1936/1946)

               - The Problems of Knowledge (1956)

Carnap, R. Logical Constructions of the World (1928), tr. R.A. George (1967)

Davidson, D. ‘On the very idea of a conceptual scheme’ (1984), in Proceedings and Addresses of the     

                        American Philosophical Association, 47

                   -      Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (1984)

-          ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge’ (1989), in Epistemology: An Anthology (2000), eds. E. Sosa and J. Kim

Davies, M. ‘Externalism and Experience’ (1996), in The Nature of Consciousness (1998), eds. N.

                    Block, O. Flanagan.

Gelder. T. V. ‘What Might Cognition Be, If Not Computation?’ (1995), in Mind and Cognition: An  

                        Anthology (1999), ed. W.G. Lycan

Goodman, N. Ways of Worldmaking (1978)

Haak, S. ‘Descriptive and Revisionary Metaphysics’, in Metaphysics, ed. by S. Laurence, C.

                Macdonald (1998)

Heidegger, M. Being and Time (1927), tr. Oxford (1962)

Husserl, E. Ideas (1913)

Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason (1787), tr. N. Kemp-Smith (1918)

Kripke, S. ‘Identity and Necessity’ (1971), in Metaphysics: An Anthology (1999)

Lepore, E. (ed.) Truth and Interpretation: perspectives on the philosophy of Davidson (1986)

Lewis, D. ‘New Work on a Theory of Universals’ (1983), in Australian Journal of Philosophy

Moser, P. ‘Justification, Meta-Epistemology and Meaning’ (1993), in Epistemology: An Anthology   

                 (2000)

Nagel, T. The View from Nowhere (1986)

Peacocke, C. ‘Sensation and the Content of Experience: A Distinction’, in his Sense and Content

                       (1983)

Quine, W.V.O. From a Logical Point of View (1953)

-          Word and Object (1960)

-          Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (1969) 

Ryle. G. The Concept of Mind (1949)

Rorty, R. ‘Pragmatism, Davidson and truth’, ‘Representation, social Practise and truth’, in Objectivity,

                 Relativism and Truth (1991)

Strawson, P.F. Individuals (1959)

Wittgenstein, L. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), tr. London (1961)

                       - Philosophical Investigations (1953) tr. Oxford (1958)