Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science

"Semantic incommensurability", i.e., non-translatabilityofconcepts taken from different theories, is at the focus of the argument. 1 attempt to give a rational reconstruction of the notion underlying the writings of Feyerabend and the later Kuhn. 1 claim that such a coherent notion can be identified and that relevant instances exist. Incommensurability is brought about by theoretical incompatibility. The translation failure between incommensurable concepts arises from the impossibility ofjointly fulfilling two conditions of adequacy that the context theory of meaning places an translations. Potential conceptual analogs either fail to preserve the conditions ofapplication or to reproduce the relevant inferential relations. This feature turns out tobe correlated with a cross-classification ofthe pertinent scientific kinds. These relations between incommensurable concepts are sufficient tot making an empirical comparison ofthe claims couched in these

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