On Davidson’s idea of a conceptual scheme
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Date
2009.
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Publisher
Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2009.
Abstract
In his article titled “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”, Donald Davidson argues that the duality of uninterpreted content and conceptual scheme is the “third” dogma of empiricism. According to Davidson, the idea of a conceptual scheme is unintelligible and therefore should be abandoned. The main purpose of the present work is to demonstrate that the notion of a conceptual scheme is defensible, and that it has advantages explaining certain linguistic phenomena. To this end, benefiting from certain themes of the later work of Wittgenstein -especially from the notion of a “form of life”- general outlines of an alternative model for conceptual schemes are put forward.