Remarks Concerning the Evaluation of Conceptual Means Cover Image

Pastabos Apie Konceptualinių Priemonių Vertinimą
Remarks Concerning the Evaluation of Conceptual Means

Author(s): Edmundas Adomonis
Subject(s): Epistemology, Lexis, Pragmatics, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Language
Published by: Visuomeninė organizacija »LOGOS«
Keywords: conceptual means; conceptual innovations;

Summary/Abstract: This paper offers additional thoughts concerning the evaluation of conceptual means and is related to my previous articles on conceptual change in science. Sceptical attempts to relativize knowledge, including those based on Whorfian ideas about radically different languages and those of Rorty appealing to the invention of vocabularies as wholes, are not correct. Different grammatical structures, mathematical means and ways of classification do not imply no representing of real aspects of the world. Everything is crucially dependent on our aims - one of them being the scientific aim to search for regularities. Even within ordinary language, there is a rich qualitative variety of conceptual tools. Rorty’s vocabularies as wholes are altogether a fiction. While learning and solving problems, we constantly introduce (or are introduced to) new conceptual means, adjust or discard some of them. The evaluation of conceptual means is an evaluation of particular conceptual means in terms of what we can do with them. It is also noted that general criteria of evaluation as simplicity and exactness in science should not be overestimated. After all, the wildest speculations can be very simple and can make use of mathematical means.

  • Issue Year: 2008
  • Issue No: 56
  • Page Range: 29-38
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: Lithuanian