On W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. What justifies scientific theory? The classical epistemological project found in figures like Descartes and Locke seeks to find basic, indubitable premises that serve to ground the rest of our theorizing. Quine begins by considering Hume's attempt to do this by claiming that all we ever Continue Reading …
Ep. 191: Conceptual Schemes: Donald Davidson & Rudolf Carnap (Part Two)
Finishing Davidson's "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" (1974) and moving on to Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" (1950). Carnap's paper comes 22 years after his Aufbau project that we covered in ep. 67, and is really a response to Quine's 1948 paper "On What There Is," which we covered in ep. 66. His point is that when we use a certain vocabulary, Continue Reading …
Ep. 191: Conceptual Schemes: Donald Davidson & Rudolf Carnap (Part One)
On Davidson's "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" (1974) and Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" (1950). What does it mean to say that we grasp the world through a conceptual scheme? Are schemes different between cultures or even individuals, such that we can't really understand each other? Davidson thinks that this doesn't make sense: For schemes to be Continue Reading …
Ep. 191: Conceptual Schemes: Donald Davidson & Rudolf Carnap (Citizen Edition)
On Davidson's "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" (1974) and Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" (1950). What does it mean to say that we grasp the world through a conceptual scheme? Are schemes different between cultures or even individuals, such that we can't really understand each other? Davidson thinks that this doesn't make sense: For schemes to be Continue Reading …