Can There Be Incompatible Truths within the Same Conceptual Scheme?

Lynch in Truth in Context argues for pluralism with respect to truth on the basis of the
idea that there can be no absolutism regarding the ways in which entities, ideas, concepts,
states of affairs or the world in general are described, understood, interpreted: In its most
general form, pluralism is the idea that there can be more than one true story of the world;
there can be incompatible, but equally acceptable, accounts of some subject matter.1

When we are talking about there being many possible truths regarding the same
subject matter, we are talking, in the context of Lynchs argument, truth being relative to
conceptual schemes. Thus one of the main tenets of pluralism is the acknowledgement of
different conceptual schemes which yield different descriptions or inferences irreducible to
one another about the same subject matter. The condition of irreducibility, or distinctness in
Lynchs terms, would be, then, failure to express the different propositions in question within
one conceptual scheme.

As it will be clear along the discussion, incompatibility is another crucial element for a
defence of pluralism. One who rejects pluralism would deny that irreducible, or distinct,
propositions can be actually incompatible. It must theoretically be possible, (s)he would
argue, to render such propositions compatible with one another by reconciling the
vocabularies, concepts or expressions employed through some revisions, changes,
reformulations, explications. Thus if one proposition is true, the other possible propositions
about the same subject matter can be made true as well. The pluralist, on the other hand,
would argue that incompatible propositions about the same subject matter can be true in
different conceptual schemes, but the truth of one within a conceptual scheme implies the
falsity of others.

Compatibility or incompatibility makes sense only if we are able to single out a

common subject matter which all different propositions are about. Thus, in some sense, we
should be able to talk about different perspectives into one world: there can be no
incompatibility between completely different worlds since there can be no compatibility
between them either. The criterion of being about the same subject matter, or world, would be
to have some sort or extent of commonality between the terms employedwhich enables one
also to talk about sameness of reference. The commonality in question is for Lynch that the

1 Lynch (1998, p.1).

different propositions, thus the conceptual schemes from within which the propositions are
uttered share some content.

The premises of Lynchs pluralism, which I have briefly mentioned, are as such: About
the same subject matter different propositions can be uttered which are (i) distinct from each
other, (ii) incompatible with one another, (iii) true and (iv) employing concepts that are not
completely different.2

The argument I try to develop within this paper goes, to a large extent, along the lines
of Lynchs defence of metaphysical pluralism. But my conclusion will be clearly different
from, even contrary to Lynchs: I will argue that there can be incompatible truths without
there being a metaphysical pluralism, thus within the same conceptual scheme.

Lynchs pluralism hangs on grounding the logical consistency of there being

incompatible truths, and his strategy for doing this is to argue for the multiplicity of
conceptual schemes sharing some content. It is logically consistent that incompatible true
propositions are relative to different conceptual schemes; since what would yield
inconsistency would be to state that incompatible propositions can both be true relative to the
same conceptual scheme. Thus he needs different conceptual schemes within one world to
argue for incompatible truths; but he does not argue for the absoluteness of this one world:
there can be theoretically infinitely many worlds. To state that there are two consistent but
incompatible propositions is to state that in every possible world where these two
propositions are relative to the same scheme, only one is true.3

What does it mean that a proposition can be relative to more than one scheme? For
Lynch it basically means that (i) the content of that proposition may be shared by more than
one scheme, and (ii) there is no absolute proposition: truth conditions of propositions are
relative to different schemes, but not independent of all schemes.4 The latter indicates that
there is no absolute concept or an absolute proposition; because no proposition or concept
makes sense independently of any scheme: Content relativity demands that a proposition is
determinate only within a particular conceptual scheme.5 The former is more crucial for my
purposes, so I will examine it in more detail.

2 Lynch (1998, p. 92).

3 Lynch (1998, p. 93).
4 Lynch (1998, p. 94).
5 Lynch (1998, p. 93).
 In what sense can we talk about shared content? Lynchs terminology of minimal and
robust concepts is a very useful one in this context. Lynch builds upon Wittgensteins notion
of family-resemblance concepts to provide an account of what he calls conceptual fluidity, in
difference to with ambiguity or equivocation.6 Many concepts are fluid in the sense that one
can be said to use a concept univocally even when there is no specifically determinable
element of content common to all usages. In what, then, can the shared content consist in?
Lynchs notion of minimal concept denotes what is common to all cases of family
resemblance; not in the sense of having a determinate content shared by all cases that the
concept covers, but of what makes all usages the univocal employment of one concept. Since
he is arguing for metaphysical pluralism, he defines the notion of minimal concept in a way
that would serve the purpose: A minimal concept of F is a concept whose ordinary use
floats free of metaphysical questions (or most metaphysical questions) surrounding Fs.7
The notion of robust concept would thus be defined, in contrast to the minimal concept, as a
concept whose ordinary use consists of a commitment to some particular ontological view of
Fs.8

The notions of minimal and robust concepts are employed to argue for the possibility
of consistent but incompatible propositions. While the minimal concepts are what provides
the univocality that is required for the possibility of talking about
compatibility/incompatibilitya condition which was mentioned above, robust concepts are
what creates relativity; thus incompatibility. Minimal concepts can be extended, or filled in
with content, in incompatible ways.

Since the purpose of Lynch is to argue for a metaphysical pluralism, he provides

definitions for the notions of minimal and robust concepts in terms of metaphysical
commitments. Yet, these notions can be further developed in a way that covers a much wider
usage and gives them explanatory power for illuminating possible, no less crucial, non-
metaphysical incompatibilities. Although rejecting absolutism with respect to basic
ontological takes on the world has genuinely significant implications, pluralism with respect
to truth can be a crucial and interesting issue within the same world as well. We do not have to
resort to thought experiments, imaginary situations or historical conjectures to be able to talk
about incompatible truths; in some marginal cases such truths can inhabit the same context.

6 Lynch (1998, p. 66).

7 Lynch (1998, p. 68).
8 Ibid.
 Let us consider this example. The indigenous people of Melanesia, who have never
established a connection with the other parts of the world, have been incessantly practicing,
since the end of the WW2, various sets of rituals within rather esoteric communities, which
are called by the Western world by the generic name Cargo Cult. The term has gained,
through time, a quite frequent metaphorical usage in various disciplines ranging from
sociology to even history of economics.

For the present purposes I will focus on one particular case in which the people of
Tannaone of the main islands where these cults are presentare, on a strictly regular basis,
looking after an abandoned airstrip first erected by the British during the war as a refuelling
spot for their aircrafts and cargo jets. Carrying out the maintenance of the airstrip is not the
only practice these people perform; they also mimic the behaviours, in perfect similarity, the
British workers at the airstrip once performed to assist the jets in landing, parking and taking
off. Apart from the traditional outfits there is no sign by which one can distinguish the scene
from an ordinary scene in a regular landing field. Yet the background of the situation, as it has
been illuminated through various studies, is quite different.

The people are performing these acts as a religious ceremony which they hope will
bring in unending prosperity and peace through the grace of their god with his never-
diminishing gifts, whose humble signs were once seen when flying messengers of god
brought them foods, cloths, utensils they have never seen before.

The questions that concern us with respect to this phenomenon are: (i) Can the people
of Tanna and the ordinary English speaker refer to the same object when they use the words
plane and the corresponding word in the local language? (ii) Can the translation of a
proposition like the plane has landed into the local language be true when truth conditions of
for the proposition in English are satisfied?

I take for granted that the local language is to a sufficient extent translatable into
English. I do so without any discussion since so far many researchers have been able to
communicate with the local people and to figure out the background of their religious
ceremonies. Thus the criterion of inter-translatability that Davidson9 puts forward for testing
whether the speakers share one conceptual scheme is satisfied. Moreover, as it appears from
the statements of the people, the basic ontological take on the world of these people are the
same with the western world with which they have hardly interacted. So when a local utters

9 Davidson (1984).
the word that corresponds to the word plane in English, he is not talking about undetached
plane parts or a temporal segment of a plane.10

Passing this step, we can venture into investigating the crucial points that require
explication if we are to give some answers to the questions stated above. Let us start with the
issue of reference. In Brains in a Vat, Putnam puts forward an elaborate argumentation
regarding the necessary conditions for successfully referring to objects with our utterances in
terms of (i) some causal connection of the speaker with the object to which reference is to be
made, and (ii) some capacity to have a representation of the actual object. He concludes that
even a large system of representations...still does not have an intrinsic, built-in, magical
connection with what it representsa connection independent of how it was caused and what
the dispositions of the speaker or thinker are.11

The criterion of causal connection is not satisfied by merely accidental occurrences

that might establish an indirect link between the object to be represented and the speaker, but
requires that the object is in a way a part of the world of the speaker in the sense that (s)he
has verbal and non-verbal interactions with it; that (s)he has the capacity to be disposed
towards it in various ways within some possible contexts. The criterion of having a
representation of the object depends on this former condition. To explicate what would count
as a proper representation, he asserts that it must be accompanied by a concept regarding the
nature and function of the object.

Regarding the nature of concepts, Putnam states that they are not mental
representations that intrinsically refer to external objects for the very decisive reason that they
are not mental representations.12 His criterion for having a full-blown concept is having the
capacity not only to use in all potential meaningful sentences in which it can occur, but also to
have an understanding of it sufficient to enable usage of such sentences in acting
situationally appropriate ways.13 He denies the fruitfulness of a phenomenological
investigation of thought and reference for the reason that their nature lies not in the inner
expressions but in understanding, which is not an occurrence but an ability.14

10 See Quine (1960).

11 Putnam (1981, p. 5).
12 Putnam (1981, p. 18).
13 Putnam (1981, p. 19).
14 Putnam (1981, p. 20).
 In Two Philosophical Perspectives, he develops and extends his perspective to the
issue of truth and conceptual schemes. According to the internalism of Putnam, it would be
futile to advocate that our concepts or propositions can correspond, in the traditional sense of
the correspondence theory of truth, to some reality uncontaminated by theory, since truths
are made within conceptual schemes; yet, truth is not independent from all justification15
and it is not the case that each and any conceptual system has absolutely the same rights on
truth.16 Putnam will add to this that the apparent pluralities within a single conceptual scheme
would, at least theoretically, eventually boil down to singular truths as the means and
conditions of justification develop asymptotically to an ideal state. When it comes to
incompatible claims to truth coming from different conceptual schemes, Putnam would reject
a total relativism and absolute absence of means to solve the incompatibility in favour of one
of the competing claims.

Notwithstanding, we do not have to maintain that conceptual schemes, if there is a

plurality of them, are either completely overlapping or mutually exclusive. Especially in the
practical domain, but also in the domain of empirical science and even in metaphysics,
different schemes can have conceptual, historical, observational, discursive, cultural ties to the
extent that they begin to differ in interpretation only after some point in extending their
concepts. If we add to this picture the Wittgensteinian perspective that meaning, reference and
truth are not to be sought in an internal, secluded realm of thought, intentionality and
experience but in the practical realm; we can say that the overlappings, or intersection sets of
conceptual schemes, language games or forms of life would be some shared practices, rules
which can be extended in different and incompatible ways. The holistic perspective would
demand that the meaning of a word is the totality of the roles it plays in all the sentences
within which it occurs, where sentences cannot be thought independently of the possible
contexts in which they can be uttered appropriately.

It would be worthwhile to reintroduce Lynchs notion of minimal concept at this point.

The minimal concept can be reformulated, in this context, as the intersection set of different
totalities of practices within which a concept can play a role, where these totalities give
different possible directions in which the concept can be extended. Languages have many
notions common with one another, and thus directly translatable. Since languages differ from
one another more radically as the cultural, historical, geographical connections between them

15 Putnam (1981, p. 56).

16 Putnam (1981, p. 54).
gets closer to none. Most commonly, if two languages are quite distant but not totally
disconnected, as it is extremely rarely the case in actuality, there would be some inter-
translatable words whose meanings partially overlap on the basis of the shared minimal
concepts but otherwise significantly diverge.

Let us return to our first question and try to see how these notions can contribute to
provide an answer. The question is Can the people of Tanna and the ordinary English speaker
refer to the same object when they use the words plane and the respective word in the local
language? It is already clear that extensionally the words would pick the same object; what
we inquire into is the intensional dimension. Let us begin by applying Putnams criteria. He
would have to say that the requirement of causal connection with the object is satisfied. Plane
is definitely a part of the world of the people of Tanna; its representation was first formed
through an actual encounter with the object in a way that enabled them to have an idea of its
function and various properties, hence form a concept of it. They know how to handle it, deal
with it, use it as much as an average layman does: it flies in the air with great speed, some
people and goods can be put inside and transported with it, it is noisy, it has to land in and
take off from wide, plain surfaces decorated with appropriate lines and marks and so on. They
know even more ways to deal with it than our layman does since they also know in great
detail how to assist to its landing, its parking in the airdrome, taking off from the strip, or how
much cargo it can take. As far as this much is concerned, there is no way to determine the
representation of a plane belonging to a member of the cult from that of someone who is
familiar with planes by most ordinary means. If we would put the two together to a test like
the Turing test of representation which Putnam proposes a way to distinguish between AI
and a speaker of a natural language, their interpretations would not differ within the scope of
the test since what such a test can scan would be those levels or areas of the semantic and
practical network which are covered by the minimal concept. The point of divergence in
interpretation that would manifest itself as the concepts are extended in different directions,
lies beyond the area the test is concerned with. The question as to whether they can refer at all
demands nothing more than this, since no one has to have a robust concept in order to be able
to refer to an object.

Let us pass, then, to the second and trickier question: Can the translation of a
proposition like the plane has landed into the local language be true when truth conditions of
the proposition in English are satisfied? Initially it seems that the actual arrival of a plane on
the designated area would make the proposition true in both languages. But which one indeed
would be true, if a plane had landed on the abandoned airstrip again: that a mechanical device
made of iron, titanium, lead and so on according to such and such plans of such and such
model by experts and technicians for the sole purpose of transporting people and goods from
one place to another has descended on ground; or that god finally decided to send the
promised gifts of eternal prosperity to convey the message that eternal peace began? It makes
a crucial difference which one has happened: if the former is the case, then it would yield
drastic frustration for the cult members and probably detrimental consequences for their
society. The latter would have drastic consequences as well.

It would be objected that states of affairs can be interpreted in infinitely many ways
and people may believe in all sorts of things; so how come truth has something to do with
this? There are two core issues here. One pertains to the difference I made between minimal
and robust reference, and the other pertains to justification.

If we can say that the cult members and the rest of the world minimally refer to the
same object, we can say that they can at least be considered as taking the same states of affairs
as truth makers of their respective propositions. But this can only be the case in the minimal
sense: the states of affairs which they can commonly take as making their propositions true is
doing so only for the common and minimal part of their respective interpretations of the states
of affairs; that is, that a flying object carrying some entities has descended on the ground. But
when we take their respective robust concepts and, in this sense, robust interpretations of the
state of affairs into account, it may be claimed that they are not referring to the same states of
affairs. But robust concepts have nothing more to do with reference than minimal concepts do.
Because at the level of interpretation that robust concepts pertain, we cannot even talk about
some sort of correspondence: what they have more is a matter of conceptual, cultural, social
construction. The robust interpretation of a mechanical engineer, for example, would involve
all sorts of elements from explications in terms of gravitation to application of aerodynamic
principles, from description of supra-molecular properties of various metals to providing
aspects of aircraft design. The intelligibility of all this, in turn, would be embedded in
universal laws of thermodynamics, mechanics and ultimately in the scientific paradigm and in
a world-view surrounding and underlying all these; which totality permeates even the most
particular daily practices.

Thus truth cannot be considered minimally: a proposition is not made true in isolation
by some states of affairs; as Putnam states, truth is made within a system. Yet reference, as I
have argued, should be considered minimally; otherwise it would either be non-sensical or
would yield the absurd conclusion that all of us physically inhabit the same world but
conceptually each lives in ones own, without being able to communicate with another in the
way we would like to be communicating, thus talk past one another.

Since they share the relevant minimal concepts, a cult member and any other person
can refer to same objects and states of affairs when it comes to planes, airstrips, cargos,
landing, parking and so on. Since their ways of organizing sense data, the formal aspects of
their experience, the basic practices that facilitate and enable their use of language, their
fundamental ontological take on the world are the same, and their languages are largely
translatable into one another; they can be said to share the same conceptual scheme on many
accounts, including Lynchs metaphysical pluralism, Wittgensteins forms of life, Davidsons
criterion of inter-translatability and Kants classical transcendental structures. But the
respective cultural contexts, belief-systems, practices, norms and ultimately world-views are
so different that any interpretation of states of affairs would be dramatically divergent. Within
shared cultural and conceptual contexts, interpretations do not differ in absolutely
incompatible ways. The case in question constitutes a marginal situation in which a set of
objects and practices ripped off from their original context are implanted within an alien
context, whereby two almost isolated cultural spheres come to intersect.

To contexts thus alien to each other, we cannot impose the same criteria of
justification. Putnam, although he acknowledges that truths are made only within systems,
advocates a notion of justification in terms of ideal epistemic conditions that would be
inapplicable and out of place in our example. It is not clear whether for the people of Tanna
justification is a matter of epistemic warrant. But even if we grant the universality of this to
Putnam, the notion of ideal conditions creates a bigger problem which would require a
monolithic conception of justification and the assumption that even if those conditions are
conjectural and we can only talk about approximating to them, the direction in which that
approximation would proceed is already settled on the basis of the epistemic and scientific
structure that holds the current body of knowledgethere will not be any rupture or leap
in intellectual history thus the world of the people of Tanna will be assimilated to
civilized world, or we allow that each such context would have its own understanding and
criteria of justification.
 Putnams general position that truth is thoroughly discursive does not imply or require
the notion of ideal epistemic conditions. When we reject such an understanding of
justification, we should say that in this context there are indeed incompatible truths within a
common conceptual scheme. The proposition plane has landed is perfectly translatable into
the local language in Tanna, together with many other propositions. Thus speakers of two
languages would be in a position, if the state of affairs obtained, where they can understand
each other but do not agree, and also be able to communicate as to why they do not agree.
Both would state that the two cases cannot both be true, and that the truth of theirs eliminates
the possibility of the other.

Bibliography

Davidson, Donald. (1984) Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford, New York: Oxford

University Press.

Lynch, Michael P. (1998) Truth in Context: An Essay on Pluralism and Objectivity.

 Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Putnam, Hillary. (1981) Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge University Press.

Quine, Willard Van Orman. (1960) Word and Object. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.