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Kibitzing with Frank Michelman on how to best read the Constitutional Court 399
3.2 ‘On the very idea of a conceptual scheme’
Philosophers of many persuasions are prone to talk of conceptual
schemes. Conceptual schemes, we are told, are ways of organising
experience: they are systems of categories that give form to the data of
sensation; they are points of view from which individuals, cultures or
periods survey the passing scene. There may be no translating from one
scheme to another, in which case the beliefs, desires, hopes, and bits of
knowledge that characterise one person have no true counterparts with
respect to the subscriber to another scheme. Reality is relative to a scheme:
what counts as real in one system may not in another. 20
Davidson goes on to write: ‘Conceptual relativism is a heady and
exotic doctrine, or would be if we could make sense of it. The trouble is, as
so often in philosophy, it is hard to improve intelligibility while retaining the
excitement.’ 21 One of Professor Michelman’s truly extraordinary
(Davidsonian) gifts is to be able to show how writers making apparently
disparate claims are actually singing off the same hymn sheet. Ought he and
I to be understood to be singing off the same hymn sheet? Or is one of us
tone deaf to what the Court has actually said in NM and Masiya in a manner
that might have closed down the area of disagreement or at least
demonstrated, more convincingly, where the real problem lies?
(Naturally, upon reflection, I incline towards the former position – while
leaving space for minor, but still meaningful disagreement.)
So let us return again to Davidson, and understand why Professor
Michelman turned to him in the first place. Davidson writes about the
principle of charity as follows:
Since knowledge of beliefs comes only with the ability to interpret words, the
only possibility at the start is to assume general agreement on beliefs. We get a
first approximation to a finished theory by assigning to sentences of a
speaker conditions of truth that actually obtain (in our opinion) just when the
speaker holds those sentences true. The guiding policy is to do this as far as
possible ... The method is not designed to eliminate disagreement, nor can it;
its purpose is to make meaningful disagreement possible, and this depends
entirely on a foundation – some foundation – in agreement ... Since charity is not
an option, but a condition of having a workable theory, it is meaningless to
suggest that we might fall into error by endorsing it. Until we have successfully
established a systematic correlation of sentences held true with sentences held
true, there are no mistakes to make. Charity is forced upon us; whether we like
it or not, if we want to understand others, we must count them right in most
matters. If we can produce a theory that reconciles charity and the formal
conditions for a theory, we have done all that can be done ... We make
maximum sense of the words and thoughts of others when we interpret in a way
that optimises agreement ... Where does that leave the case for conceptual
20
Davidson (n 4 above) 183.
21 As above.