Abstract
This article argues that the concept of incommensurability (of conceptual frameworks) is not as incoherent as has been sometimes argued, and that it is possible to formulate this notion in such a way that it can be meaningful. The article suggests that it is worthwhile to salvage the concept of incommensurability because it is a very useful concept, almost indispensable in explaining certain situations.
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Notes
The reference here is to the concept made famous by the historian of science Thomas Kuhn, who in his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, argued that contrary to received opinion, the progress of scientific knowledge is not a linear, cumulative process. It represents a more complex form of evolution in which normal scientific enquiry is conducted in a series of broad meta-theoretical frameworks of fundamental ontological and epistemological assumptions, which he calls ‘paradigms’. According to Kuhn, after a point a paradigm exhausts its explanatory potential and is no longer capable of not only explaining, but even coherently articulating new phenomena and delineating new problem situations. At that point, says Kuhn, the prevalent paradigm is replaced by a new paradigm more adequate to the task of engaging with emerging problem situations. According to Kuhn, the successive paradigms are radically different from each other to such an extent that there is no theoretical or even cognitive commonality between them. The cognitive, theoretical divide, Kuhn says, is so radical that they are ‘incommensurable’, obviating the possibility of establishing correspondence or equivalence at the conceptual level. There is no logical bridge between the successive paradigms, and the move from one paradigm to another is not a rational shift, but is more akin to a gestalt switch or a religious conversion from one worldview to another. My point here is that incommensurability as understood in this sense is not confined to the history of science, but in its generic form is much more common than is assumed. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1997 third ed.), Chicago University Press.
This parenthetical allusion may give the impression that I regard Feyerabend’s contribution to the notion of incommensurability as marginal or derivative. Feyerabend’s version of this notion was distinctive, and in fact, in terms of extending the applicability of this notion beyond the history of science, I would be inclined to follow his lead rather than Kuhn’s. The only reason for my apparent priority to Kuhn is that most discussants of the incommensurability thesis have engaged with Kuhn’s version of it and therefore any defence of this notion must deal with those critiques.
Davidson, D. (1974). ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’, In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (2001 ed.), Oxford University Press.
Many of us, I am sure, can recall occasions when we encountered a peculiarly basic sort of difficulty in making one particular discourse intelligible in terms of another discourse—the discourses could have been religious beliefs, cultural practices or theoretical traditions. And most of us can also recall feeling that the difficulty is, if at all, only partly psychological, that it has something to do with the concepts involved, even if we could not pinpoint the exact nature of that conceptual difficulty. What Kuhn did was to articulate this difficulty in a fairly clear and plausible manner and apply it to the history of science. In fact, as many perceptive observers have pointed out, the reason why Kuhn’s version of the notion became so popular and why so many people without any interest in the history or philosophy of science were attracted by his thesis was precisely because they recognised in this concept something they had sensed in their experience of interaction between two referentially competing discursive domains.
I can imagine the reader beginning to feel considerable uneasiness with the cavalier way in which I have delineated the structure of paradigms in terms of simple to complex and concrete to abstract, etc. However, I do not feel particularly on the defensive about this since what matters here is not how precisely a paradigm is structured, but how different two paradigms are in the mode of their conceptual organization.
There are a number of terms that have been substituted for ‘paradigm’ with how much semantic implication it is not always clear. Kuhn himself at various points used such terms as ‘exemplar’, ‘disciplinary matrix’, ‘lexicon’, ‘lexical structure’ and ‘taxonomy’. For our purpose, however, I don’t think their equivalence or absence of it presents a problem. I shall therefore treat all these terms rather indiscriminately as synonymous.
Frege, G. (1892). ‘On Sense and Reference’. In A. W. Moore (Ed.), Meaning and Reference (1993 ed.). Oxford University Press.
Kripke, S. (1980). Naming and Necessity (revised ed.). Blackwell, Oxford.
Putnam, H. (1975). Mind, Language and Reality.
– Philosophical Papers, volume 2. Cambridge University Press.
I came across a rather nice example from within ‘Western Culture’ (that is to say, without invoking the ‘Orient’ or ‘other cultures’) that serves well to illustrate this point. Edith Hamilton in her book Mythology mentions the classical Greek word ‘aidos’. ‘Aidos’ along with ‘nemesis’ represents a personification of emotions held in the highest esteem by ancient Greeks. Nemesis is usually (apparently unproblematically) translated as ‘Righteous Anger’ and in less rigorous allusions stands for justified retribution. But the word ‘aidos’ though in common use among the Greeks, that is to say not at all an esoteric word, is amenable to translation only in the most elusive and allusive fashion imaginable. In Edith Hamilton’s words, ‘It means reverence and the shame that holds men back from wrongdoing, but it also means the feeling a prosperous man should have in the presence of the unfortunate—not compassion, but a sense that the difference between him and these poor wretches is not deserved’ (Warner Books, 1969, p. 38). It is no exaggeration to say that to get a sense of this word is to internalize a great deal of classical Greek culture and way of life.
W. V. Quine, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jan., 1951), pp. 20–43.
This is, strictly speaking, not correct. Quine talks, not in terms of concepts, but propositions. I will return to this point later. At this point, I am attributing this view to Quine on the assumption that Quine need not reject the extension of his claims about propositions to concepts.
Davidson, Donald, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 168.
This is a view Davidson shares with Quine. As I mentioned earlier, the latter’s notion of conceptual scheme as a field assumes it to be a set of propositions that are true relative to that field. His rejection of the absoluteness of the analytic–synthetic distinction retains this assumption, while relativising the distinction by suggesting that the propositions at the periphery are synthetic and those relatively closer to the centre are analytic.
With the important proviso that we are looking at the defining or paradigmatic assertions. If we extend it to all uses of propositions by the speakers of a language, we would be entering into the domain of unwarranted charity by assuming that every time they make an assertion about the world, they are speaking the truth.
Davidson quotes Benjamin Whorf about linguistic relativity and comments that according to this theory ‘the failure of inter-translatability is the necessary condition for difference of conceptual schemes’. This is puzzling since one would be inclined to assume that failure of inter-translatability is a consequence of conceptual difference.
P.M.S. Hacker, ‘On Davidson’s Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’, Philosophical Quarterly 46 (1996), pp. 289–307.
Ian Hacking, ‘Language, Truth and Reason’, in Rationality and Relativism, ed., Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1982.
Though, if truth be told, it happens often enough. Most of the glamorous innovations in philosophy or for that matter in the entire field of humanities owe their attractive novelty to wilful exaggerations and distortions of perfectly ordinary doctrines, which are first presented with a breath-taking flamboyance and later tactically withdrawn into more sober versions by which time the sheer preposterousness of the new creed has won enough acolytes to constitute a fashionable movement.
There are several sophisticated theories other than correspondence and coherence, but I think they all amount to refined versions of either of these two theoretical perspectives.
I think Heidegger’s conception of truth can be best understood this way.
This actually amounts to blindness to the existence of ‘discourse’. This, however, is a different, though enormously important, aspect of the issue.
Somewhat along the lines of Lévi-Strauss who in his early work, inspired by the ideas of Marcel Mauss, used this idea of language as arising from the drive for classification and, consequently, as being governed by it as a constitutive principle.
Ibid., 137.
Charles Taylor, ‘Language and Human Nature’, in Interpreting Politics, ed. Michael T. Gibbons, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1987.
Those familiar with Derrida’s work will recall his engagement with this issue in the context of Husserl’s use of the expression–indication dichotomy and can see how a major part of his work is concerned with deconstructing such dichotomies.
. Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1988.
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Sayeed, S. Salvaging Incommensurability. J. Indian Counc. Philos. Res. 36, 97–124 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-018-0156-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40961-018-0156-8