CONCEPTUAL RELATIVITY, CONTEXTUALIZATION, AND ONTOLOGICAL COMMITMENTS
CONCEPTUAL RELATIVITY, CONTEXTUALIZATION, AND ONTOLOGICAL COMMITMENTS

Summary/Abstract: This paper re-examines the issue of conceptual relativity and conceptual schemes, which became a major topic in (post) analytic philosophy through Donald Davidson’s and Hilary Putnam’s influential writings in the 1970s and 1980s. It is argued, consistently with Putnam’s more recent pragmatist turn, that discussions of this issue should be contextualized by focusing, instead of abstract philosophical thought-experiments, on real-life examples drawn from vital human affairs, e. g., the conflict between scientific and religious perspectives on reality (or, on the meta-level, between perspectives that construe the relation between science and religion as a conflict and ones that do not), or the conflict between objectivity and relativism and ethical and interpretive issues.

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