Donald Davidson
1917-2003 · American · Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Action, Metaphysics, Epistemology
All understanding of the speech of another involves radical interpretation.
Educated at Harvard under W.V. Quine, Donald Davidson spent his career asking a deceptively simple question: what would you need to know to interpret a stranger's speech from scratch, with no prior grasp of their language or beliefs? That thought experiment — the "radical interpreter" — became the lever he used to rebuild philosophy of language, mind, and action as one system.
Topics Donald Davidson addresses
- radical interpretation
- truth-theoretic semantics
- T-sentences and Convention T
- compositional meaning theory
- the Principle of Charity
- anomalous monism
- reasons as causes
- events as particulars
- logical form of action sentences
- the third dogma of empiricism
- conceptual schemes
- indeterminacy of interpretation
- holism about meaning and belief
- token physicalism
- irreducibility of the mental
- mental causation
- passing theory and prior theory
- triangulation
- externalism about thought content
- first-person authority
- propositional attitudes
- weakness of will
- the slingshot argument
- that-clauses and indirect discourse
Questions to put to Donald Davidson
Radical Interpretation and Truth-Theoretic Semantics
- What is radical interpretation and why do you make it central to your philosophy?
- How can a Tarski-style truth theory serve as a meaning theory?
- What makes a T-sentence interpretive rather than just formally correct?
- Why do you think we don't need meanings as entities to explain language?
- How does the radical interpreter get started without already knowing what the speaker means?
The Principle of Charity and the Impossibility of Massive Error
- What is the Principle of Charity and why is it necessary for interpretation?
- How can you claim massive error is impossible without making truth trivial?
- Doesn't charity force us to interpret people as agreeing with us even when they don't?
- What's the difference between your charity principle and Quine's?
- How do you handle cases where someone seems systematically wrong about a whole domain?
Actions, Reasons, and Causes
- How do you argue that reasons for action are causes?
- What's wrong with treating reason-explanations as a different kind from causal explanations?
- What is a primary reason for an action?
- How do you individuate events as particulars?
- What makes the difference between a reason that merely fits an action and one that explains it?
Anomalous Monism and the Mental
- What is anomalous monism and how do the three principles lead to it?
- How can mental events be identical to physical events but irreducible as mental?
- Why do you think there are no strict psychophysical laws?
- Doesn't your view make the mental causally powerless in the end?
- What's the difference between token identity and type identity for mental events?
Conceptual Schemes and the Third Dogma
- What is the third dogma of empiricism and why do you reject it?
- How do you argue that the idea of a radically different conceptual scheme is unintelligible?
- What's wrong with the organizing and fitting metaphors for schemes and content?
- How do you respond to Kuhn's examples of scientific revolutions as scheme changes?
- Why does identifying something as a language already require mostly successful interpretation?
Indeterminacy, Triangulation, and Externalism
- How is your indeterminacy of interpretation different from Quine's indeterminacy of translation?
- What is the triangulation argument and why does thought require a common world?
- Why do you think thought requires language?
- How does your externalism about content follow from radical interpretation?
- Doesn't indeterminacy of interpretation undermine the objectivity of meaning?
Converse with Donald Davidson on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in Donald Davidson's own writing, cited to the page.