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What is the empirical content of a theory? If a theory is identified with one of its linguistic formulations, the only available answers allow for no non‐trivial distinction between empirical and non‐empirical content. The restriction of such a formulated theory to a narrow ‘observational’ vocabulary is not a description of the observable part of the world but a hobbled and hamstrung description of its entire domain, still with non‐empirical implications. Viewing a theory as identified through the family of its models––the structures it makes available for modelling the phenomena––yields a new approach. The distinctions so made are illustrated with Newton's physics, absolute versus relative motion, nineteenth‐ century ether theory of electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics. A hermeneutic circle in the interpretation is noted, and the theory‐independence of the observable/unobservable distinction maintained.

Davidson attacks the intelligibility of conceptual relativism, i.e. of truth relative to a conceptual scheme. He defines the notion of a conceptual scheme as something ordering, organizing, and rendering intelligible empirical content, and calls the position that employs both notions scheme‐content dualism. He argues that such dualism (the ‘third, and perhaps, last dogma of empiricism’) is untenable since: (1) not only can we not parcel out empirical content sentence per sentence (as Quine's rejection of the analytic‐synthetic distinction had shown) but also (2) the notion of uninterpreted content to which several schemes are relative, and the related notion of a theory ‘fitting the evidence’, can be shown to lack intelligibility too. Davidson argues further that belief in incommensurable schemes or non‐intertranslatable languages is possible only on violating a correct understanding of interpretability (developed in Essays 9 and 10): if we succeed in interpreting someone else then we have shown there is no need to speak of two conceptual schemes, while if we fail ‘there is no ground for speaking of two.’

Explores Schlick's and Neurath's dispute over the foundations of empirical knowledge, and thereby equips ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge’ with commentary and historical background. Davidson works out the difficulties involved in drawing epistemological conclusions from a verificationist theory of meaning and argues that there are promising hints of a better theory, akin to Davidson's coherence theory of truth and knowledge, in the logical positivists’ writings.

Chapter Five defends Empirical Dualism against its severest challenge, ironically from Donald Davidson himself. After reaffirming Davidson’s Kantian credentials recognized in Chapter Four, Chapter Five explains that Davidson’s arguments against what he calls the “dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content” (or “scheme/content dualism”) nevertheless amount to arguments against Empirical Dualism. It then shows that the first half of Davidson’s argument against the very idea of a conceptual scheme fails. Next it shows that, for its second half to succeed, Davidson’s argument against the very idea of empirical content must itself succeed. Afterward it shows that Davidson’s argument against the very idea of empirical content itself fails. Finally the chapter shows that Davidson’s arguments in fact support Empirical Dualism in a logocentric scope.

This chapter explores three versions of bracketed empiricism. The first involves the idea of a constructed world (as in Carnap’s Aufbau). The second involves the idea that there is a dichotomy between sensation-words (used to describe sensations) and posit-words (used for posits in a theory that adequately captures ones sensations). The third involves the loose idea of a notional world. All three positions hold that empirical content is given solely in terms of bracketed experience. Consequently, all three positions effectively erect a veil of sensations between the subject and the world. All three must therefore accept that, by their own lights, any statement with empirical content is just more theory and so fails to constrain reference.

Since Putnam wants to undercut the entire picture of external realism, he cannot present piecemeal attacks on various attempts to constrain reference. Instead, he presents a completely general manoeuvre for dismissing all interpretative constraints: his just-more-theory manoeuvre. Putnam is often accused of question-begging, but he is best understood as raising a dilemma against the external realist’s attempts to constraint reference. On the one hand, if their ‘constraints’ have empirical content, then they are indeed just-more-theory. In that case, they cannot constrain reference after all. On the other hand, if they are supposed to constrain reference, then they will be bereft of empirical content.

Chapter 5 raised problems for external realists who accepted a bracketed empiricist theory of empirical content. Many external realists do, indeed, accept such a theory of empirical content. But in fact, no matter how the external realist explains her Cartesianism Principle, similar problems arise. In addition to the veil of sensations, it is possible to consider: a veil of Fregean senses that prevents access to ordinary objects; a veil of phenomena that prevents access to the noumena; a veil of observables that prevents access to unobservables; and a veil of flux that prevents access to the Forms. All external realists must accept that, by their own lights, any statement with empirical content is just more theory and so fails to constrain reference.