Language and Conceptual Schemes

Conceptual schemes are often identified with sets of inter-translatable languages. According to Donald Davidson we would be unable to interpret speech from a different conceptual scheme as even meaningful. Thus conceptual schemes that are different in a radical way from each other correspond to languages that are not inter-translatable but, in a Davidsonian view, a total failure of inter-translatability among languages is impossible. In this paper a comparison is made for the first time between Davidson and Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, in whose works the expression \u201cconceptual apparatus\u201d replaces \u201cconceptual scheme\u201d. We mean to point out that conceptual schemes provide us with means for thinking about a reality which includes ourselves. They are essentially operational perspectives on the world, and to deny that different conceptual schemes exist is absurd