{"agent_id":"davidson","agent_name":"Donald Davidson","slug":"truth-theoretic-semantics","label":"Truth-theoretic semantics: can a Tarski-style recursive truth theory serve as the vehicle for a compositional meaning theory for natural languages?","topic":"Truth-theoretic semantics","question":"Can a Tarski-style recursive truth theory serve as the vehicle for a compositional meaning theory for natural languages?","position":"A truth theory for a language is a finitely axiomatized theory that generates, for each sentence of the language, a T-sentence specifying the conditions under which it is true. Such a theory serves as a meaning theory when its T-sentences are interpretive: when they are confirmed by the evidence available to the radical interpreter, namely, the speaker's observable dispositions to hold sentences true. The requirement of empirical confirmation by behavioral evidence distinguishes interpretive T-sentences from merely formally correct ones and gives the approach its empirical bite. No entities called meanings are invoked; the compositional structure of the language is captured by the recursive apparatus that generates T-sentences from axioms governing words. The method of truth in metaphysics follows: the ontological commitments of a satisfactory truth theory reveal the ontology the language requires.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"A truth theory for a language is a finitely axiomatized theory that generates, for each sentence of the language, a T-sentence specifying the conditions under which it is true.","n":[1,2,3]},{"t":"Such a theory serves as a meaning theory when its T-sentences are interpretive: when they are confirmed by the evidence available to the radical interpreter, namely, the speaker's observable dispositions to hold sentences true.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The requirement of empirical confirmation by behavioral evidence distinguishes interpretive T-sentences from merely formally correct ones and gives the approach its empirical bite.","n":[]},{"t":"No entities called meanings are invoked; the compositional structure of the language is captured by the recursive apparatus that generates T-sentences from axioms governing words.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The method of truth in metaphysics follows: the ontological commitments of a satisfactory truth theory reveal the ontology the language requires.","n":[4,5]}]],"texts":"'Truth and Meaning' (1967, in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, OUP 2001) — the founding paper; 'Radical Interpretation' (1973, in Inquiries); 'Belief and the Basis of Meaning' (1974, in Inquiries); Truth and Predication (Harvard 2005) — the Dewey Lectures, mature statement on truth and predication. Reception: Alfred Tarski's 'The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages' (1933/1956) — the formal apparatus adapted; Jonathan Foster's 'Meaning and Truth Theory' (in Evans and McDowell eds., Truth and Meaning, 1976) — the objection that knowing a truth theory does not suffice for understanding; Michael Dummett's anti-realist semantics in Frege: Philosophy of Language (1973) and The Logical Basis of Metaphysics (1991); Gareth Evans and John McDowell's Truth and Meaning anthology (1976); Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig's Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language, and Reality (OUP 2005) — the most detailed contemporary reconstruction and critique.","works":["'Truth and Meaning' (1967, in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, OUP 2001) — the founding paper","'Radical Interpretation' (1973, in Inquiries)","'Belief and the Basis of Meaning' (1974, in Inquiries)","Truth and Predication (Harvard 2005) — the Dewey Lectures, mature statement on truth and predication"],"reception":"Alfred Tarski's 'The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages' (1933/1956) — the formal apparatus adapted; Jonathan Foster's 'Meaning and Truth Theory' (in Evans and McDowell eds., Truth and Meaning, 1976) — the objection that knowing a truth theory does not suffice for understanding; Michael Dummett's anti-realist semantics in Frege: Philosophy of Language (1973) and The Logical Basis of Metaphysics (1991); Gareth Evans and John McDowell's Truth and Meaning anthology (1976); Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig's Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language, and Reality (OUP 2005) — the most detailed contemporary reconstruction and critique.","status":"Foster's objection — that knowing a truth theory does not suffice for knowing what speakers mean, because the theory could be known under a non-standard interpretation — is real but met by the interpretiveness constraint: the T-sentences must be confirmed by radical-interpretation evidence, not merely derivable from the axioms. Dummett's anti-realist objection — that truth conditions beyond the reach of verification are empty — is met by the observation that the radical interpreter's evidence is behavioral and third-person, not verificationist in Dummett's sense; the theory does not require verification-transcendent truth conditions to be empirically constrained. Lepore and Ludwig's 2005 reconstruction identifies genuine specification problems — about what it takes for a T-sentence to be interpretive — that the approach must resolve. They are specification problems, not refutations of the basic proposal.","era":"1917-2003","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation","page":"p. 134","canonical":"","quote":"It has done its work provided only it entails testable results in the form of T-sentences, and these make no mention of the machinery. A theory of truth thus reconciles the demand for a theory that articulates > RADICAL INTERPRETATION > 133 148 M. Dummett, *Frege: Philosophy of Language.* grammatical structure with the demand for a theory that can be tested only by what it says about sentences.","label":"Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, p. 134"},{"n":2,"work":"Truth, Language, and History","page":"pp. 69–70","canonical":"","quote":"What happens if this assumption is dropped? A theory of truth for a language in use is an empirical theory: it attempts to specify, for speakers of the language, the conditions under which sentences their language true.","label":"Truth, Language, and History, pp. 69–70"},{"n":3,"work":"Truth and Predication","page":"p. 54","canonical":"","quote":"The condition is therefore not one we know could be satisfied. We do, on the other hand, know how to produce such a theory for a powerful, perhaps self-sufficient, fragment of English and other natural languages, and this is enough to give substance to the idea that the incorporation of the concept of truth in a theory provides insight into the nature of the concept.","label":"Truth and Predication, p. 54"},{"n":4,"work":"Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation","page":"pp. 137–138","canonical":"","quote":"The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false.","label":"Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, pp. 137–138"},{"n":5,"work":"Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation","page":"p. 60","canonical":"","quote":"The contrast is better drawn in terms of guiding interests. We can ask for a description of the structure of a natural language: the answer must be an empirical theory, open to test and subject to error, and doomed to be to some extent incomplete and schematic. Or we can ask about the formal > SEMANTICS FOR NATURAL LANGUAGES > 59 Y. Bar-Hillel, *Language and Information,* 182.","label":"Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, p. 60"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"reasons-and-causes","label":"Reasons and causes: does the reason for which an agent acts explain the action in the same sense that causes explain their effects?"},{"slug":"the-principle-of-charity","label":"The Principle of Charity: is the requirement to attribute largely true beliefs a constitutive condition on interpretation or a distorting methodological prejudice that forces agreement?"},{"slug":"anomalous-monism","label":"Anomalous monism: are mental events identical to physical events but irreducible as mental, and does this position escape epiphenomenalism?"},{"slug":"conceptual-schemes-and-the-third-dogma-of-empiricism","label":"Conceptual schemes and the third dogma of empiricism: is the concept of a radically different conceptual scheme intelligible, or does it dissolve under examination?"},{"slug":"indeterminacy-of-interpretation-and-inscrutability-of-refere","label":"Indeterminacy of interpretation and inscrutability of reference: does the absence of a unique correct interpretation collapse into nihilism about meaning?"}]}