ABSTRACT

The radical cultural incommensurability adopts the physicalist-functionalist account of intentionality, action and interpretation, outlined the possibility-defining theory of things. The dialectic at work in the radical cultural incommensurability thesis reflects the two aspects of concept acquisition mentioned in the degree of conceptual difference obtaining at the commencement of the interpretive encounter and the epistemic conditions obtaining over the course of that encounter. The concept acquisition clause of the formulation of the radical cultural incommensurability is logically redundant. Neither the assertion of radical conceptual difference nor that of any radical concept-acquisitive incapacity is plausible from the physicalist-functionalist point of view. The radical cultural incommensurability provides us with a sense of where the limits of conceptual difference between judges and culturally different agents might be set.