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    In the paper “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” Donald Davidson argues that we cannot make sense of the claim that there could be conceptual schemes which are different from our own. He argues that conceptual schemes different to our own must be untranslatable into our own language, and further that the idea of untranslatable languages does not make sense. By considering three variants of conceptual relativism which can be developed using the work of Kant, Quine, and Kuhn I aim to make th…Read more
  •  7
    McDowell's Realism
    Dissertation, University of Otago. 2014.
    John McDowell's work presents stimulating arguments on a broad variety of issues. In this thesis I shall look at three: his response to Dummett's manifestation argument ; his response to Wittgenstein's rule-following problem ; and his argument for moral realism in response to Mackie and Blackburn. In each of these debates I shall focus on McDowell's central papers and the work of the philosophers which he engages with. Because of the dense and elusive nature of much of McDowell's writing I shall…Read more