Are There Alternative Conceptual Frameworks?

Abstract

Richard Rorty and Donald Davidson have offered separate but related arguments against the intelligibility of the that there are alternative conceptual frameworks, and of the conceptual framework itself. Rorty concludes his argument with the claim that the notion of alternative conceptual frameworks . . . contains the seeds of doubt about the root of 'conceptual framework', and so of its own destruction. He bases this conclusion on an earlier argument against the Kantian of the faculty of receptivity: the possibility of alternative conceptual frameworks would serve to show that Kantian intuitions and faculties are incapable of determining the content of experience. Consequently, such postulates are of little value as explanatory tools and can safely be eliminated. As Rorty puts it: