Cogency v2 n2

COGENCY Vol. 2, N0. 2, Spring 2010
4.2 Disagreement and Understanding
If someone doubted whether the earth had existed
a hundred years ago, I should not understand, for
this reason: I would not know what such a person
would still allow to be counted as evidence and what
not. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, OC § 231)
Suppose, then, that there were two peoples, otherwise alike in practices,
each of whom had the homophonic utterance “blah.” Suppose further that
in one culture utterances of this sort prompted ‘affirming behaviour,’ whatever
that might turn out to be, say, nodding the head and smiling. But in the
other culture, suppose that this same utterance prompted ‘rejecting behaviour,’
say, shaking the head and frowning. (Notice that the very detectability
of any disagreement, deep or otherwise, presupposes some shared practices
including asserting and denying, accepting and rejecting.) What reason
have we for saying that the two peoples disagree about the acceptability
of the same claim, assertion or proposition? First we require some evidence
that the two homophonic utterances have the same meaning in the two
different language games.
Consider now that a variety of other utterances employed by each of the
two peoples were considered in series, yet for each of these there was absolutely
no accord as to whether the newly considered expression was positively
relevant, negatively relevant, or irrelevant to the original target expression.
At some point, we will reach the conclusion not that these peoples
disagree deeply about the acceptability of some claim, but instead that they
mean two completely different things by this homophonic expression. The
very same evidence that points to the conclusion that they disagree deeply
about something, also points to the conclusion that they are doing different
things with that expression.
Considerations such as these might lead one to the Davidsonian ([1974]
2001) conclusion that radically different conceptual schemes are either a
priori impossible (since translatability is a condition of truth specification)
or methodologically precluded (since attempts at understanding demand
hermeneutic charity). Against this, Hacker (1996) claims that pronounced
differences in conceptual schemes are not only conceivable but are distinct
from differences of opinions. A disagreement in concepts, Hacker (pp. 302-
303) writes:
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