On Davidson’s idea of a conceptual scheme

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.