Davidson attacks the intelligibility of conceptual relativism, i.e. of truth relative to a conceptual scheme. He defines the notion of a conceptual scheme as something ordering, organizing, and rendering intelligible empirical content, and calls the position that employs both notions scheme-content dualism. He argues that such dualism is untenable since: not only can we not parcel out empirical content sentence per sentence but also the notion of uninterpreted content to which several schemes are relative, and the related notion of a (...) theory ”fitting the evidence’, can be shown to lack intelligibility too. Davidson argues further that belief in incommensurable schemes or non-intertranslatable languages is possible only on violating a correct understanding of interpretability : if we succeed in interpreting someone else then we have shown there is no need to speak of two conceptual schemes, while if we fail ”there is no ground for speaking of two.’. (shrink)

FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE says that a word is composed of two parts, a sound-image and a concept: "The linguistic sign unites not a thing and a name, but a concept and an acoustic image." The sound-image signifies the concept: the sound-image is the signifier, the concept is the signified. De Saussure is only one of a large company of thinkers who describe words in this way. Most philosophical and semiotic analyses of words claim that words have two components, a dimension (...) of sounds and a dimension of concepts. (shrink)

This essay situates itself on the ground of a very powerful but as yet unanswered critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality and language proposed by Ernst Tugendhat. After suggesting the necessity of a dialogue between linguistic analysis and phenomenology, Tugendhat turns a critical eye toward Husserl. In the first section we reproduce his attack. Then in the second section we attempt to give a response to his critique from within the boundaries he has superimposed upon the discussion. In the third (...) and fourth sections, however, we attempt to enliven the problem by introducing several historical considerations which have been overlooked by Tugendhat and by taking the first steps toward reclaiming the productivity of language for genetic analysis. It is only when one makes this turn that Husserl’s notion of intentionality finds its solvency. (shrink)