ABSTRACT
The conceptual relativist thinks of concepts and their content as related only externally, so that the same content can be differently articulated by a variety of concepts. Like the correspondence theorist, the conceptual relativist also holds that reference and meaning have only an external link to each other. Conceptual relativism thus proves to be a kind of metaphysical realism—metaphysical realism about conceptual schemes. In Donald Davidson's view, the only intelligible account of what a conceptual scheme could be is captured by saying that a conceptual scheme is a language, and the only sense to be made of the idea of different, incommensurable conceptual schemes lies in saying that there could be languages that could not be translated. As Richard Rorty notes, the scheme-content dogma that interests Davidson is not just a dogma of empiricism; it has a central role in the Kantian synthesis of intuitions in accord with the pure concepts of understanding.
