Conceptual Schemes
Does the mind shape the world?
20th September 2013 P2
AS (Yr 12)
Jez Echevarría
Objectives
1) To continue to consider the idea of
Conceptual Schemes as an alternative to
Empiricism, and Rationalism
2) To gain an understanding of the advantages
and problems associated with the idea of
Conceptual Schemes
3) To draw together the Philsophy of Mind topic
in readiness for attempting a past
examination question

The way our mind shapes the world and
organises what we see is known as a
conceptual scheme.

But the question remains, are these
conceptual schemes (if they exist) a priori
or a posteriori? Are they present from birth
or influenced by the culture in which we
live?
Linguistic Relativism

This is supported by Sapir, Whorf and
Wittgenstein.

If language dictates the way we think, then
our conceptual schemes are a posteriori, not
a priori.
“The limits of my
language are the limits of
my world.”
Hopi Indians and Time

Whorf studied a Hopi Indian living in New
York, and concluded that because they do
not use tenses in their language (past,
present, future) that they must have a
different sense of time to other cultures.
 This research has since been questioned.

But how could we ever understand people
from different cultures if the way we
experience the world is so culturally
relative?

Many philosophers and psychologists
believe that our language may reflect what
is important in our culture (such Americans
having many words for cars) but that we
can understand each other with a little
explanation.

Kant, Popper, and many others believe that
we are not a blank slate, but actively organise
what we experience.

But are these conceptual schemes a priori, so
we all see time and space, etc. in the same
way, or are they culturally relative, and a
posteriori, influenced by language?
Some Key terms
Kant
Noumenom: reality as it is “in itself”
before the structuring process of human
intellect which produces empirical evidence
 Phenomenom: Kantian expression for
empirical evidence once it has been
structured by the human intellect


According to Kant though, all humanity
structures experience in essentially the same
way (using his categories).
 In contrast other scholars like Whorf and
Sapir suggest that each language-sharing
community employs a different schema,
according to the culture and language habits
of that specific community - almost
becomes empiricist as each cultural schema
is also learnt, but it is due to the exposure to
the host community.

According to Whorf, the fact that different
people will employ a different schema to
make sense of the world means that even
modern science cannot claim absolute
impartiality as “no individual is free to
describe nature with absolute impartiality but
is constrained by certain modes of
interpretation even while he thinks himself
mostly free”
(Whorf, 1956, Language Thought and Reality)

Another implication of this is that we can never
judge how well a specific scheme fits the real
world, or even what is called “The Given” (the
raw, unstructured, unconceptualised content of
experience which empiricist like Locke and
Hume would say provides the foundation for all
our knowledge).
 Different camera lenses are used, there is no
better or worse lens that produces the most
accurate picture of the given, only one that
produces the most useful result which enables
us to communicate and predict.#
Sellars - “the logical space for reasons”
 It is the conceptual apparatus, whether
innate or learned, that characterises the
experience (as opposed to the experience
characterising the idea as Hume and Locke
would have)
 We are placing the situation in the “logical
space for reasons”
 Not a vertical relationship of language and
the world, but a horizontal relationships
where we share reasons with each other.

Summary
 Empiricism
of Hume and Locke
 Rationalism of Descartes and
Leibniz
 Conceptual schemes of Kant,
Witgenstein, Whorf, et al.
Homework - Past Question
June 2011

A) Illustrating your answer, explain the
difference between analytic and synthetic
 propositions.
(15 marks)

B) Assess the claim that all knowledge and
ideas derive from sense experience.
(30 marks)