Not agreement but understanding. Davidson, Viveiros de Castro, and the lived experience view on cross-linguistic disagreement

Abstract

In this article, I discuss two perspectives on cross-linguistic disagreement and propose a third. Specifically, I examine Davidson’s rejection of the possibility of incommensurability of conceptual schemes and Viveiros de Castro’s anthropological perspective that highlights radical differences, seeing translation as a form of equivocation. I motivate this interdisciplinary pairing of thinkers with the importance of philosophical discourse’s engagement in the empirically informed debates on interpretative pluralism, in line with Viveiros de Castro’s ontological anthropology. Through a critical analysis, I scrutinize Davidson’s theory’s trouble with accounting for interpretative asymmetry and Viveiros de Castro’s stance for promoting the representational view on interpretation. As a central outcome of this examination, I synthesize these critiques to propose an alternative approach rooted in the phenomenological account of language and pragmatism. This perspective upholds interpretative pluralism, while rejecting the notions of strong incommensurability and relativism, thereby preserving the potential for meaningful cross-linguistic dialogue.