ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book provides additional underpinning for the referential approach to content comparison. It discusses the problems receive trenchant expression in the objections of Putnam and Donald Davidson that the very idea of such translation failure. The deflationary import of the approach developed is further apparent from its implications with regard to the issues of rationality and progress in science. In particular, incommensurability no longer poses a serious threat to rational theory choice given that the content of conceptually disparate theories may be compared and that there may be communication between the advocates of such theories. The various referential overlap relations which may obtain between theories ensure that appropriately related statements from such theories may be compared with respect to agreement and disagreement; so that empirical evidence may support one while disconfirming the other.
