TITLE:
Incommensurability, Abstraction, and Idealization: A Conceptualist Approach
AUTHORS:
José Luis Rolleri
KEYWORDS:
Idealizational Assumption, Conceptual Incongruency, Divergent World Views, Conceptual Holism, Epistemological Relativism
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Philosophy,
Vol.13 No.3,
July
7,
2023
ABSTRACT: The main purpose of this essay is to explore the relationship between the incommensurability of paradigms or general theories, a thesis due to Kuhn and Feyerabend, and the idealizations and abstractions that permeate concepts and fundamental laws of physical theories. One can find some unrealistic or idealizational suppositions underlying the semantic level of the differences between the conceptual vocabularies of incommensurable theories, on which these theories rest. This kind of suppositions relates to the idealizations and abstractions involved in forming concepts and formulating laws. Generally, the fundamental laws of physical theories have an abstract and idealized character. Physical theories contain conceptual networks of kind concepts and quantitative concepts, which are interconnected by several sorts of relationships. The discrepancies between such conceptual network, and their underlying assumptions, of alternative paradigms or theories make their comparison at a theoretical level, that is, their commensurability implausible. That at once strengthens the incommensurability thesis and further supports it. In addition, it follows that Kuhn’s philosophy of science indeed involves a version of conceptual or epistemological relativism about science.