Donald Davidson (philosopher)
Encyclopedia
Donald Herbert Davidson (March 6, 1917 – August 30, 2003) was an American philosopher born in Springfield, Massachusetts
, who served as Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley
from 1981 to 2003 after having also held teaching appointments at Stanford University
, Rockefeller University
, Princeton University
, and the University of Chicago
. Davidson was known for his charismatic personality and the depth and difficulty of his thought. His work exerted considerable influence in many areas of philosophy from the 1960s onward, particularly in philosophy of mind
, philosophy of language
, and action theory
. While Davidson is clearly an analytic philosopher
, and most of his influence lies in that tradition, his work has attracted attention in continental philosophy
as well, particularly in literary theory
and related areas.
Although published mostly in the form of short, terse essays which do not explicitly rely on any overriding theory, his work is nonetheless noted for a strongly unified character—the same methods and ideas are brought to bear on a host of apparently unrelated problems—and for synthesizing the work of a great number of other philosophers. He developed an influential truth-conditional semantics
, attacked the idea of mental events as governed by strict psychological laws, and rejected the conception of linguistic understanding as having to do with conventions or rules, concluding famously that "there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with." His philosophical work as a whole is said to be concerned with the way human beings communicate and interact with and understand each other.
on March 6, 1917 to Clarence ("Davie") Herbert Davidson and Grace Cordelia Anthony. The family lived in the Philippines
from shortly after Davidson's birth until he was about four. Then, having lived in Amherst
and Philadelphia, the family finally settled on Staten Island
when Davidson was nine or ten. From this time he began to attend public school, having to begin in first grade with much younger children. He then attended the Staten Island Academy
, starting in fourth grade.
At Harvard University
he switched his major from English
and comparative literature (Theodore Spencer
on Shakespeare
and the Bible
, Harry Levin
on Joyce) to classics
and philosophy.
Davidson was a fine pianist and always had a deep interest in music, later teaching philosophy of music at Stanford. At Harvard, he was in the same class as the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein
, with whom Davidson played piano four hands. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical score for the production which Davidson mounted of Aristophanes' play The Birds in the original Greek. Some of this music was later to be reused in Bernstein's ballet Fancy Free.
After graduation he went to California, where he wrote radio scripts for the private-eye drama Big Town
, starring Edward G. Robinson
. He returned to Harvard on a scholarship in classical philosophy, teaching philosophy and concurrently undergoing the intensive training of Harvard Business School
. Before having the opportunity to graduate from Harvard Business School, Davidson was called up by the Navy, for which he had volunteered. He trained pilots to recognize enemy planes and participated in the invasions of Sicily, Salerno, and Anzio. After three and a half years in the Navy, he tried unsuccessfully to write a novel before returning to his philosophy studies and earning his doctorate in philosophy in 1949. Davidson wrote his dissertation, which he later called curious, on Plato's Philebus
.
Under the influence of W. V. Quine, whom he often credits as his mentor, he began to gradually turn toward the more formal methods and precise problems characteristic of analytic philosophy
.
During the 1950s Davidson worked with Patrick Suppes
on developing an experimental approach to Decision Theory
. They concluded that it was not possible to isolate a subject's beliefs and preferences independently of one another, meaning there would always be multiple ways to analyze a person's actions in terms of what they wanted, or were trying to do, or valued. This result is comparable to Quine's thesis on the indeterminacy of translation
, and figures significantly in much of Davidson's later work on philosophy of mind.
His most noted work (see below) was published in a series of essays from the 1960s onward, moving successively through philosophy of action into philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, and dabbling occasionally in aesthetics, philosophical psychology, and the history of philosophy.
Davidson was widely traveled, and had a great range of interests he pursued with enormous energy. Apart from playing the piano, he had a pilot's license, built radios, and was fond of mountain climbing and surfing. He was married three times (the last time to the philosopher Marcia Cavell). Thomas Nagel
elliptically eulogized him as "deeply erotic".
He served terms as president of both the Eastern and Western Divisions of the American Philosophical Association, and held various professional positions at Queens College (now part of CUNY), Stanford
, Princeton
, Rockefeller University, Harvard
, Oxford, and the University of Chicago
. From 1981 until his death he was at the University of California, Berkeley
, where he was Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor of Philosophy. In 1995 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize
.
but already present in Tolstoy
's "War and Peace
", that an agent's reasons for acting cannot be the causes of his action (Malpas, 2005, §2). Instead, Davidson argued that "rationalization (the providing of reasons to explain an agent's actions) is a species of ordinary causal explanation" (1963, p. 685). In particular, an action A is explained by what Davidson called a primary reason, which involves a pro-attitude (roughly, a desire) toward some goal G and an instrumental belief that performing action A is a means to attaining G. For example, someone's primary reason for taking an umbrella with her outside on a rainy day might be that she wants to stay dry and believes that taking an umbrella is a means to stay dry today.
This view, which largely conforms to common-sense folk psychology, was held in part on the ground that while causal laws must be strict and deterministic, explanation in terms of reasons need not. Davidson argued that the fact that the expression of a reason was not so precise, did not mean that the having of a reason could not itself be a state capable of causally influencing behavior. Several other essays pursue consequences of this view, and elaborate Davidson's theory of actions.
s are identical to token physical events. One previous difficulty with such a view was that it did not seem feasible to provide laws relating mental states—for example, believing that the sky is blue, or wanting a hamburger—to physical states, such as patterns of neural activity in the brain. Davidson argued that such a reduction would not be necessary to a token identity thesis: it is possible that each individual mental event just is the corresponding physical event, without there being laws relating types (as opposed to tokens) of mental events to types of physical events. But, Davidson argued, the fact that we could not have such a reduction does not entail that the mind is anything more than the brain. Hence, Davidson called his position anomalous monism
: monism, because it claims that only one thing is at issue in questions of mental and physical events; anomalous (from a-, "not," and omalos, "regular") because mental and physical event types could not be connected by strict laws (laws without exceptions).
Davidson argued that anomalous monism follows from three plausible theses. First, he assumes the denial of epiphenomenalism
—that is, the denial of the view that mental events do not cause physical events. Second, he assumes a nomological view of causation, according to which one event causes another if (and only if) there is a strict, exceptionless law governing the relation between the events. Third, he assumes the principle of the anomalism of the mental, according to which there are no strict laws that govern the relationship between mental event types and physical event types. By these three theses, Davidson argued, it follows that the causal relations between the mental and the physical hold only between mental event tokens, but that mental events as types are anomalous. This ultimately secures token physicalism and a supervenience
relation between the mental and the physical, while respecting the autonomy of the mental (Malpas, 2005, §2).
. In sum, he proposed that it must be possible to distinguish a finite number of distinct grammatical features of a language, and for each of them explain its workings in such a way as to generate trivial (obviously correct) statements of the truth conditions of all the (infinitely many) sentences making use of that feature. That is, we can give a finite theory of meaning for a natural language; the test of its correctness is that it would generate (if applied to the language in which it was formulated) all the sentences of the form "'p' is true if and only if p" ("'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white"). (These are called T-sentences: Davidson derives the idea from Alfred Tarski
.)
This work was originally delivered in his John Locke Lectures
at Oxford, and launched a large endeavor by many philosophers to develop Davidsonian semantical theories for natural language. Davidson himself contributed many details to such a theory, in essays on quotation, indirect discourse, and descriptions of action.
, Hilary Putnam
, and Keith Donnellan
, all of whom had proposed a number of troubling counter-examples to what can be generally described as "descriptivist" theories of content. These views, which roughly originate in Bertrand Russell
's Theory of Descriptions
(and perhaps in the younger Wittgenstein
's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
) held that the referent of a name—which object or person that name refers to—is determined by the beliefs a person holds about that object. Suppose I believe "Aristotle founded the Lyceum" and "Aristotle taught Alexander the Great." Whom are my beliefs about? Aristotle, obviously. But why? Russell would say that my beliefs are about whatever object makes the greatest number of them true. If two people taught Alexander, but only one founded the Lyceum, then my beliefs are about the one who did both. Kripke et al. argued that this was not a tenable theory, and that in fact whom or what a person's beliefs were about was in large part (or entirely) a matter of how they had acquired those beliefs, and those names, and how if at all the use of those names could be traced "causally" from their original referents to the current speaker.
Davidson picked up this theory, and his work in the 1980s dealt with the problems in relating first-person beliefs to second- and third-person beliefs. It seems that first person beliefs ("I am hungry") are acquired in very different ways from third person beliefs (someone else's belief, of me, that "He is hungry") How can it be that they have the same content?
Davidson approached this question by connecting it with another one: how can two people have beliefs about the same external object? He offers, in answer, a picture of triangulation: Beliefs about oneself, beliefs about other people, and beliefs about the world come into existence jointly.
Many philosophers throughout history had, arguably, been tempted to reduce two of these kinds of belief and knowledge to the other one: Descartes
and Hume
thought that the only knowledge we start with is self-knowledge. Some of the logical positivists
, (and some would say Wittgenstein, or Wilfrid Sellars
), held that we start with beliefs only about the external world. (And arguably Friedrich Schelling and Emmanuel Levinas
held that we start with beliefs only about other people). It is not possible, on Davidson's view, for a person to have only one of these three kinds of mental content; anyone who has beliefs of one of the kinds must have beliefs of the other two kinds.
is a hypothetical standpoint which Davidson regards as basic to the investigation of language, mind, action, and knowledge. Radical interpretation involves imagining that you are placed into a community which speaks a language you do not understand at all. How could you come to understand the language? One suggestion is that you know a theory that generates a theorem of the form 's means that p' for every sentence of the object language (i.e. the language of the community), where s is the name of a sentence in the object language, and p is that sentence, or a translation of it, in the metalanguage in which the theory is expressed. However, Davidson rejects this suggestion on the grounds that the sentential operator 'means that' is sensitive not only to the extensions of the terms that follow it, but also to their intensions. Hence, Davidson replaces 'means that' with a connective that is only sensitive to the extensions of sentences; since the extension of a sentence is its truth value, this is a truth functional connective. Davidson elects the biconditional - if and only if - as the connective needed in a theory of meaning. This is the obvious choice because we are aiming at equivalence of meaning between s and p. But now we have a problem: 's if and only if p' is an ungrammatical sentence because the connective must link two propositions, but s is the name of a proposition, and not a proposition itself. In order to render s a proposition we need to supply it with a predicate. Which predicate is satisfied by s if and only if the sentence named by s, or a translation of it, is the case? In other words, which predicate is satisfied by "bananas are yellow" if and only if bananas are yellow? The answer is the predicate truth. Thus, Davidson is led to the conclusion that a theory of meaning must be such that for each sentence of the object language it generates a theorem of the form 's is true if and only if p'. A theory of truth for a language can serve as a theory of meaning.
The significance of this conclusion is that it allows Davidson to draw on the work of Alfred Tarski
in giving the nature of a theory of meaning. Tarski showed how we can give a compositional theory of truth for artificial languages. Thus, Davidson takes three questions to be central to radical interpretation. Firstly, can a theory of truth be given for a natural language? Secondly, given the evidence plausibly available for the radical interpreter, can they construct and verify a theory of truth for the language they wish to interpret? Thirdly, will having a theory of truth suffice for allowing the radical interpreter to understand the language? Davidson has shown, using the work of Tarski, that the first question can be answered affirmatively.
What evidence is plausibly available to the radical interpreter? Davidson points out that beliefs and meanings are inseparable. A person holds a sentence true based on what he believes and what he takes the sentence to mean. If the interpreter knew what a person believed when that person held a sentence to be true, the meaning of the sentence could then be inferred. Vice versa, if the interpreter knew what a person took a sentence to mean when that person held it to be true, the belief of the speaker could be inferred. So Davidson doesn't allow the interpreter to have access to beliefs as evidence, since the interpreter would then be begging the question. Instead, Davidson allows that the interpreter can reasonably ascertain when a speaker holds a sentence true, without knowing anything about a particular belief or meaning. This will then allow the interpreter to construct hypotheses relating a speaker and an utterance to a particular state of affairs
at a particular time. The example Davidson gives is of a German speaker who utters “Es regnet” when it is raining.
Davidson claims that even though in isolated cases a speaker might be mistaken about the state of objective reality (for example, the German speaker might utter “Es regnet” even though it is not raining), this doesn’t undermine the entire project. This is because a speaker’s beliefs must be mostly correct and coherent. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t even identify the speaker as a speaker. This is Davidson’s famous principle of charity
and it is what enables an interpreter to be confident that the evidence he gathers will allow him to verify a theory of truth for the language.
On first glance, it might seem that a theory of truth is not enough to interpret a language. After all, if truth-conditions are all that matters, then how can anomalous sentences such as ‘“Schnee ist weiß” is true if and only if snow is white and grass is green’ be verified as false? Davidson argues that because the language is compositional, it is also holistic
: sentences are based on the meanings of words, but the meaning of a word depends on the totality of sentences in which it appears. This holistic constraint, along with the requirement that the theory of truth is law-like, suffices to minimize indeterminacy just enough for successful communication to occur.
In summary, then, what radical interpretation highlights is what is necessary and sufficient for communication to occur. These conditions are: that in order to recognize a speaker as a speaker, their beliefs must be mostly coherent and correct; indeterminacy of meaning doesn’t undermine communication, but it must be constrained just enough.
Springfield, Massachusetts
Springfield is the most populous city in Western New England, and the seat of Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers; the western Westfield River, the eastern Chicopee River, and the eastern...
, who served as Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
from 1981 to 2003 after having also held teaching appointments at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, Rockefeller University
Rockefeller University
The Rockefeller University is a private university offering postgraduate and postdoctoral education. It has a strong concentration in the biological sciences. It is also known for producing numerous Nobel laureates...
, Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, and the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
. Davidson was known for his charismatic personality and the depth and difficulty of his thought. His work exerted considerable influence in many areas of philosophy from the 1960s onward, particularly in philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain. The mind-body problem, i.e...
, philosophy of language
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language...
, and action theory
Action theory
Action theory is an area in philosophy concerned with theories about the processes causing willful human bodily movements of more or less complex kind. This area of thought has attracted the strong interest of philosophers ever since Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics...
. While Davidson is clearly an analytic philosopher
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
, and most of his influence lies in that tradition, his work has attracted attention in continental philosophy
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
as well, particularly in literary theory
Literary theory
Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...
and related areas.
Although published mostly in the form of short, terse essays which do not explicitly rely on any overriding theory, his work is nonetheless noted for a strongly unified character—the same methods and ideas are brought to bear on a host of apparently unrelated problems—and for synthesizing the work of a great number of other philosophers. He developed an influential truth-conditional semantics
Truth-conditional semantics
Truth-conditional semantics is an approach to semantics of natural language that sees the meaning of assertions as being the same as, or reducible to, their truth conditions...
, attacked the idea of mental events as governed by strict psychological laws, and rejected the conception of linguistic understanding as having to do with conventions or rules, concluding famously that "there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with." His philosophical work as a whole is said to be concerned with the way human beings communicate and interact with and understand each other.
Life
Davidson was born in Springfield, MassachusettsSpringfield, Massachusetts
Springfield is the most populous city in Western New England, and the seat of Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers; the western Westfield River, the eastern Chicopee River, and the eastern...
on March 6, 1917 to Clarence ("Davie") Herbert Davidson and Grace Cordelia Anthony. The family lived in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
from shortly after Davidson's birth until he was about four. Then, having lived in Amherst
Amherst, Massachusetts
Amherst is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States in the Connecticut River valley. As of the 2010 census, the population was 37,819, making it the largest community in Hampshire County . The town is home to Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts...
and Philadelphia, the family finally settled on Staten Island
Staten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...
when Davidson was nine or ten. From this time he began to attend public school, having to begin in first grade with much younger children. He then attended the Staten Island Academy
Staten Island Academy
Staten Island Academy is a coeducational, college-preparatory day school located on a campus in Staten Island in New York City, USA. Founded in 1884 by Anton Methfessel, it is the oldest private school on Staten Island, and is the only independent school in the borough. It educates students from...
, starting in fourth grade.
At Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
he switched his major from English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and comparative literature (Theodore Spencer
Theodore Spencer
-Life:He graduated from Princeton University in 1923, and a Ph.D from Harvard University in 1928. He then taught there, from 1927 to 1949. He was appointed lecturer in English literature at Cambridge University, England, in 1939. In 1942, Spencer gave the Lowell lectures on Shakespeare, published...
on Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
and the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, Harry Levin
Harry Levin
Harry Tuchman Levin was an American literary critic and scholar of modernism and comparative literature.-Biography:...
on Joyce) to classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
and philosophy.
Davidson was a fine pianist and always had a deep interest in music, later teaching philosophy of music at Stanford. At Harvard, he was in the same class as the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, with whom Davidson played piano four hands. Bernstein wrote and conducted the musical score for the production which Davidson mounted of Aristophanes' play The Birds in the original Greek. Some of this music was later to be reused in Bernstein's ballet Fancy Free.
After graduation he went to California, where he wrote radio scripts for the private-eye drama Big Town
Big Town
Big Town is a popular long-running radio drama series which was later adapted to both film and television and a comic book published by DC Comics.-Radio:...
, starring Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson was a Romanian-born American actor. A popular star during Hollywood's Golden Age, he is best remembered for his roles as gangsters, such as Rico in his star-making film Little Caesar and as Rocco in Key Largo...
. He returned to Harvard on a scholarship in classical philosophy, teaching philosophy and concurrently undergoing the intensive training of Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...
. Before having the opportunity to graduate from Harvard Business School, Davidson was called up by the Navy, for which he had volunteered. He trained pilots to recognize enemy planes and participated in the invasions of Sicily, Salerno, and Anzio. After three and a half years in the Navy, he tried unsuccessfully to write a novel before returning to his philosophy studies and earning his doctorate in philosophy in 1949. Davidson wrote his dissertation, which he later called curious, on Plato's Philebus
Philebus
The Philebus , composed between 360 and 347 BC, is among the last of the late Socratic dialogues of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Socrates is the primary speaker in Philebus, unlike in the other late dialogues...
.
Under the influence of W. V. Quine, whom he often credits as his mentor, he began to gradually turn toward the more formal methods and precise problems characteristic of analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
.
During the 1950s Davidson worked with Patrick Suppes
Patrick Suppes
Patrick Colonel Suppes is an American philosopher who has made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology, and educational technology...
on developing an experimental approach to Decision Theory
Decision theory
Decision theory in economics, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and statistics is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision...
. They concluded that it was not possible to isolate a subject's beliefs and preferences independently of one another, meaning there would always be multiple ways to analyze a person's actions in terms of what they wanted, or were trying to do, or valued. This result is comparable to Quine's thesis on the indeterminacy of translation
Indeterminacy of translation
The indeterminacy of translation is a thesis propounded by 20th century analytic philosopher W. V. Quine. The classic statement of this thesis can be found in his 1960 book Word and Object, which gathered together and refined much of Quine's previous work on subjects other than formal logic and set...
, and figures significantly in much of Davidson's later work on philosophy of mind.
His most noted work (see below) was published in a series of essays from the 1960s onward, moving successively through philosophy of action into philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, and dabbling occasionally in aesthetics, philosophical psychology, and the history of philosophy.
Davidson was widely traveled, and had a great range of interests he pursued with enormous energy. Apart from playing the piano, he had a pilot's license, built radios, and was fond of mountain climbing and surfing. He was married three times (the last time to the philosopher Marcia Cavell). Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics...
elliptically eulogized him as "deeply erotic".
He served terms as president of both the Eastern and Western Divisions of the American Philosophical Association, and held various professional positions at Queens College (now part of CUNY), Stanford
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
, Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, Rockefeller University, Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, Oxford, and the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
. From 1981 until his death he was at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, where he was Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor of Philosophy. In 1995 he was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize
Jean Nicod Prize
The Jean Nicod Prize is awarded annually in Paris to a leading philosopher of mind or philosophically-oriented cognitive scientist. The lectures are organized by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique as part of its effort to promote interdisciplinary research in cognitive science in...
.
Actions, reasons, and causes
Davidson's most noted work began in 1963 with an essay, "Actions, Reasons, and Causes," which attempted to refute the prevailing orthodox view, widely attributed to WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
but already present in Tolstoy
Tolstoy
Tolstoy, or Tolstoi is a prominent family of Russian nobility, descending from Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy who served under Vasily II of Moscow...
's "War and Peace
War and Peace
War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature...
", that an agent's reasons for acting cannot be the causes of his action (Malpas, 2005, §2). Instead, Davidson argued that "rationalization (the providing of reasons to explain an agent's actions) is a species of ordinary causal explanation" (1963, p. 685). In particular, an action A is explained by what Davidson called a primary reason, which involves a pro-attitude (roughly, a desire) toward some goal G and an instrumental belief that performing action A is a means to attaining G. For example, someone's primary reason for taking an umbrella with her outside on a rainy day might be that she wants to stay dry and believes that taking an umbrella is a means to stay dry today.
This view, which largely conforms to common-sense folk psychology, was held in part on the ground that while causal laws must be strict and deterministic, explanation in terms of reasons need not. Davidson argued that the fact that the expression of a reason was not so precise, did not mean that the having of a reason could not itself be a state capable of causally influencing behavior. Several other essays pursue consequences of this view, and elaborate Davidson's theory of actions.
Mental events
In "Mental Events" (1970) Davidson advanced a form of token identity theory about the mind: token mental eventMental event
A mental event is a particular occurrence of something going on in the mind or mind substitute. It can be a thought, a dream, a feeling, a realization, or any other mental activity. Mental events are not limited to human thought but can be associated with animal and artificial intelligence as...
s are identical to token physical events. One previous difficulty with such a view was that it did not seem feasible to provide laws relating mental states—for example, believing that the sky is blue, or wanting a hamburger—to physical states, such as patterns of neural activity in the brain. Davidson argued that such a reduction would not be necessary to a token identity thesis: it is possible that each individual mental event just is the corresponding physical event, without there being laws relating types (as opposed to tokens) of mental events to types of physical events. But, Davidson argued, the fact that we could not have such a reduction does not entail that the mind is anything more than the brain. Hence, Davidson called his position anomalous monism
Anomalous monism
Anomalous monism is a philosophical thesis about the mind-body relationship. It was first proposed by Donald Davidson in his 1970 paper Mental events. The theory is twofold and states that mental events are identical with physical events, and that the mental is anomalous, i.e. under their mental...
: monism, because it claims that only one thing is at issue in questions of mental and physical events; anomalous (from a-, "not," and omalos, "regular") because mental and physical event types could not be connected by strict laws (laws without exceptions).
Davidson argued that anomalous monism follows from three plausible theses. First, he assumes the denial of epiphenomenalism
Epiphenomenalism
In philosophy of mind, epiphenomenalism, also known as Type-E Dualism, is a view that "mental" states do not have any influence on "physical" states.-Background:...
—that is, the denial of the view that mental events do not cause physical events. Second, he assumes a nomological view of causation, according to which one event causes another if (and only if) there is a strict, exceptionless law governing the relation between the events. Third, he assumes the principle of the anomalism of the mental, according to which there are no strict laws that govern the relationship between mental event types and physical event types. By these three theses, Davidson argued, it follows that the causal relations between the mental and the physical hold only between mental event tokens, but that mental events as types are anomalous. This ultimately secures token physicalism and a supervenience
Supervenience
In philosophy, supervenience is a kind of dependency relationship. For example, mental states might depend on physical brain states. This dependency is typically held to obtain between sets of properties. A classic example is that mental states of pain supervene on 'C-fibers firing'...
relation between the mental and the physical, while respecting the autonomy of the mental (Malpas, 2005, §2).
Truth and meaning
In 1967 Davidson published "Truth and Meaning," in which he argued that any learnable language must be statable in a finite form, even if it is capable of a theoretically infinite number of expressions—as we may assume that natural human languages are, at least in principle. If it could not be stated in a finite way then it could not be learned through a finite, empirical method such as the way humans learn their languages. It follows that it must be possible to give a theoretical semantics for any natural language which could give the meanings of an infinite number of sentences on the basis of a finite system of axioms. Following, among others, Rudolf Carnap (Introduction to Semantics, Harvard 1942, 22) Davidson also argued that "giving the meaning of a sentence" was equivalent to stating its truth conditions, so stimulating the modern work on truth-conditional semanticsTruth-conditional semantics
Truth-conditional semantics is an approach to semantics of natural language that sees the meaning of assertions as being the same as, or reducible to, their truth conditions...
. In sum, he proposed that it must be possible to distinguish a finite number of distinct grammatical features of a language, and for each of them explain its workings in such a way as to generate trivial (obviously correct) statements of the truth conditions of all the (infinitely many) sentences making use of that feature. That is, we can give a finite theory of meaning for a natural language; the test of its correctness is that it would generate (if applied to the language in which it was formulated) all the sentences of the form "'p' is true if and only if p" ("'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white"). (These are called T-sentences: Davidson derives the idea from Alfred Tarski
Alfred Tarski
Alfred Tarski was a Polish logician and mathematician. Educated at the University of Warsaw and a member of the Lwow-Warsaw School of Logic and the Warsaw School of Mathematics and philosophy, he emigrated to the USA in 1939, and taught and carried out research in mathematics at the University of...
.)
This work was originally delivered in his John Locke Lectures
John Locke lectures
The John Locke Lectures are a series of annual lectures in philosophy given at the University of Oxford. They are one of the world's most prestigious academic lecture series, comparable to the Gifford Lectures given in Scottish universities...
at Oxford, and launched a large endeavor by many philosophers to develop Davidsonian semantical theories for natural language. Davidson himself contributed many details to such a theory, in essays on quotation, indirect discourse, and descriptions of action.
Knowledge and belief
After the 1970s Davidson's philosophy of mind picked up influences from the work of Saul KripkeSaul Kripke
Saul Aaron Kripke is an American philosopher and logician. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton and teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center...
, Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...
, and Keith Donnellan
Keith Donnellan
Keith Donnellan is a contemporary philosopher and Professor Emeritus of the UCLA department of Philosophy. He has made important contributions to the philosophy of language, most notably to the analysis of proper names and definite descriptions...
, all of whom had proposed a number of troubling counter-examples to what can be generally described as "descriptivist" theories of content. These views, which roughly originate in Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
's Theory of Descriptions
Theory of descriptions
The theory of descriptions is the philosopher Bertrand Russell's most significant contribution to the philosophy of language. It is also known as Russell's Theory of Descriptions...
(and perhaps in the younger Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is the only book-length philosophical work published by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his lifetime. It was an ambitious project: to identify the relationship between language and reality and to define the limits of science...
) held that the referent of a name—which object or person that name refers to—is determined by the beliefs a person holds about that object. Suppose I believe "Aristotle founded the Lyceum" and "Aristotle taught Alexander the Great." Whom are my beliefs about? Aristotle, obviously. But why? Russell would say that my beliefs are about whatever object makes the greatest number of them true. If two people taught Alexander, but only one founded the Lyceum, then my beliefs are about the one who did both. Kripke et al. argued that this was not a tenable theory, and that in fact whom or what a person's beliefs were about was in large part (or entirely) a matter of how they had acquired those beliefs, and those names, and how if at all the use of those names could be traced "causally" from their original referents to the current speaker.
Davidson picked up this theory, and his work in the 1980s dealt with the problems in relating first-person beliefs to second- and third-person beliefs. It seems that first person beliefs ("I am hungry") are acquired in very different ways from third person beliefs (someone else's belief, of me, that "He is hungry") How can it be that they have the same content?
Davidson approached this question by connecting it with another one: how can two people have beliefs about the same external object? He offers, in answer, a picture of triangulation: Beliefs about oneself, beliefs about other people, and beliefs about the world come into existence jointly.
Many philosophers throughout history had, arguably, been tempted to reduce two of these kinds of belief and knowledge to the other one: Descartes
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
and Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
thought that the only knowledge we start with is self-knowledge. Some of the logical positivists
Logical positivism
Logical positivism is a philosophy that combines empiricism—the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge—with a version of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and deductions of epistemology.It may be considered as a type of analytic...
, (and some would say Wittgenstein, or Wilfrid Sellars
Wilfrid Sellars
Wilfrid Stalker Sellars was an American philosopher. His father was the Canadian-American philosopher Roy Wood Sellars, a leading American philosophical naturalist in the first half of the twentieth-century...
), held that we start with beliefs only about the external world. (And arguably Friedrich Schelling and Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Lévinas
Emmanuel Levinas was a Lithuanian-born French Jewish philosopher and Talmudic commentator.-Life:Emanuelis Levinas received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania...
held that we start with beliefs only about other people). It is not possible, on Davidson's view, for a person to have only one of these three kinds of mental content; anyone who has beliefs of one of the kinds must have beliefs of the other two kinds.
Radical interpretation
Davidson's work is well noted for its unity, as he has brought a similar approach to a wide variety of philosophical problems. Radical interpretationRadical interpretation
Radical interpretation is interpretation of a speaker, including attributing beliefs and desires to them and meanings to their words, from scratch—that is, without relying on translators, dictionaries, or specific prior knowledge of their mental states. The term was introduced by American...
is a hypothetical standpoint which Davidson regards as basic to the investigation of language, mind, action, and knowledge. Radical interpretation involves imagining that you are placed into a community which speaks a language you do not understand at all. How could you come to understand the language? One suggestion is that you know a theory that generates a theorem of the form 's means that p' for every sentence of the object language (i.e. the language of the community), where s is the name of a sentence in the object language, and p is that sentence, or a translation of it, in the metalanguage in which the theory is expressed. However, Davidson rejects this suggestion on the grounds that the sentential operator 'means that' is sensitive not only to the extensions of the terms that follow it, but also to their intensions. Hence, Davidson replaces 'means that' with a connective that is only sensitive to the extensions of sentences; since the extension of a sentence is its truth value, this is a truth functional connective. Davidson elects the biconditional - if and only if - as the connective needed in a theory of meaning. This is the obvious choice because we are aiming at equivalence of meaning between s and p. But now we have a problem: 's if and only if p' is an ungrammatical sentence because the connective must link two propositions, but s is the name of a proposition, and not a proposition itself. In order to render s a proposition we need to supply it with a predicate. Which predicate is satisfied by s if and only if the sentence named by s, or a translation of it, is the case? In other words, which predicate is satisfied by "bananas are yellow" if and only if bananas are yellow? The answer is the predicate truth. Thus, Davidson is led to the conclusion that a theory of meaning must be such that for each sentence of the object language it generates a theorem of the form 's is true if and only if p'. A theory of truth for a language can serve as a theory of meaning.
The significance of this conclusion is that it allows Davidson to draw on the work of Alfred Tarski
Alfred Tarski
Alfred Tarski was a Polish logician and mathematician. Educated at the University of Warsaw and a member of the Lwow-Warsaw School of Logic and the Warsaw School of Mathematics and philosophy, he emigrated to the USA in 1939, and taught and carried out research in mathematics at the University of...
in giving the nature of a theory of meaning. Tarski showed how we can give a compositional theory of truth for artificial languages. Thus, Davidson takes three questions to be central to radical interpretation. Firstly, can a theory of truth be given for a natural language? Secondly, given the evidence plausibly available for the radical interpreter, can they construct and verify a theory of truth for the language they wish to interpret? Thirdly, will having a theory of truth suffice for allowing the radical interpreter to understand the language? Davidson has shown, using the work of Tarski, that the first question can be answered affirmatively.
What evidence is plausibly available to the radical interpreter? Davidson points out that beliefs and meanings are inseparable. A person holds a sentence true based on what he believes and what he takes the sentence to mean. If the interpreter knew what a person believed when that person held a sentence to be true, the meaning of the sentence could then be inferred. Vice versa, if the interpreter knew what a person took a sentence to mean when that person held it to be true, the belief of the speaker could be inferred. So Davidson doesn't allow the interpreter to have access to beliefs as evidence, since the interpreter would then be begging the question. Instead, Davidson allows that the interpreter can reasonably ascertain when a speaker holds a sentence true, without knowing anything about a particular belief or meaning. This will then allow the interpreter to construct hypotheses relating a speaker and an utterance to a particular state of affairs
State of affairs
The state of affairs is that combination of circumstances applying within a society or group at a particular time. The current state of affairs may be considered acceptable by many observers, but not necessarily by all. The state of affairs may present a challenge, or be complicated, or contain a...
at a particular time. The example Davidson gives is of a German speaker who utters “Es regnet” when it is raining.
Davidson claims that even though in isolated cases a speaker might be mistaken about the state of objective reality (for example, the German speaker might utter “Es regnet” even though it is not raining), this doesn’t undermine the entire project. This is because a speaker’s beliefs must be mostly correct and coherent. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t even identify the speaker as a speaker. This is Davidson’s famous principle of charity
Principle of charity
In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity requires interpreting a speaker's statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation...
and it is what enables an interpreter to be confident that the evidence he gathers will allow him to verify a theory of truth for the language.
On first glance, it might seem that a theory of truth is not enough to interpret a language. After all, if truth-conditions are all that matters, then how can anomalous sentences such as ‘“Schnee ist weiß” is true if and only if snow is white and grass is green’ be verified as false? Davidson argues that because the language is compositional, it is also holistic
Semantic holism
Semantic holism is a doctrine in the philosophy of language to the effect that a certain part of language, be it a term or a complete sentence, can only be understood through its relations to a larger segment of language. There is substantial controversy, however, as to exactly what the larger...
: sentences are based on the meanings of words, but the meaning of a word depends on the totality of sentences in which it appears. This holistic constraint, along with the requirement that the theory of truth is law-like, suffices to minimize indeterminacy just enough for successful communication to occur.
In summary, then, what radical interpretation highlights is what is necessary and sufficient for communication to occur. These conditions are: that in order to recognize a speaker as a speaker, their beliefs must be mostly coherent and correct; indeterminacy of meaning doesn’t undermine communication, but it must be constrained just enough.
See also
- List of Jean Nicod Prize laureatesJean Nicod PrizeThe Jean Nicod Prize is awarded annually in Paris to a leading philosopher of mind or philosophically-oriented cognitive scientist. The lectures are organized by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique as part of its effort to promote interdisciplinary research in cognitive science in...
- List of American philosophers
- SwampmanSwampmanSwampman is the subject of a philosophical thought experiment introduced by Donald Davidson, in his 1987 paper "Knowing One's Own Mind". The experiment runs as follows:...
Work by Donald Davidson
- Decision-Making: An Experimental Approach, co-authored with Patrick SuppesPatrick SuppesPatrick Colonel Suppes is an American philosopher who has made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology, and educational technology...
and Sidney SiegelSidney SiegelSidney Siegel was an American psychologist who became especially well-known for his work in popularising non-parametric statistics for use in the behavioural sciences. He was a co-developer of the statistical test known as the Siegel–Tukey test.Siegel completed a Ph.D. in Psychology in 1953 at...
. Stanford: Stanford University PressStanford University PressThe Stanford University Press is the publishing house of Stanford University. In 1892, an independent publishing company was established at the university. The first use of the name "Stanford University Press" in a book's imprinting occurred in 1895...
. 1957. - "Actions, Reasons, and Causes," Journal of Philosophy, 60, 1963. (Reprinted in Davidson, 2001a.)
- "Truth and Meaning," Synthese, 17, 1967. (Reprinted in Davidson, 2001b.)
- "Mental Events," in Experience and Theory, Foster and Swanson (eds.). London: Duckworth. 1970. (Reprinted in Davidson, 2001a).
- "Agency," in Agent, Action, and Reason, Binkley, Bronaugh, and Marras (eds.), Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1971. (Reprinted in Davidson, 2001a.)
- "Radical Interpretation," Dialectica, 27, 1973, 313-328. (Reprinted in Davidson, 2001b.)
- Semantics of Natural Languages, Davidson, Donald and Gilbert Harman (eds.), 2nd ed. New York: Springer. 1973.
- Plato's ‘Philebus’, New York: Garland Publishing. 1990.
- Essays on Actions and Events, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
. 2001a. - Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001b.
- Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001c.
- Problems of Rationality, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.
- Truth, Language, and History: Philosophical Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005.
- Truth and Predication. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University PressHarvard University PressHarvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
. 2005. ISBN 978-0-674-01525-8 - The Essential Davidson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2006.
Secondary literature
- Dasenbrock, Reed Way (ed.). Literary Theory After Davidson. University Park: Pennsylvania University Press. 1993.
- Hahn, Lewis Edwin (ed.). The Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Library of Living Philosophers XXVII. Chicago: Open Court. 1999.
- Kotatko, Petr, Peter Pagin and Gabriel Segal (eds.). Interpreting Davidson. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 2001.
- Evnine, Simon. Donald Davidson. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1991.
- Kalugin, Vladimir. "Donald Davidson (1917-2003)," Internet Encyclopedia of PhilosophyInternet Encyclopedia of PhilosophyThe Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a free online encyclopedia on philosophical topics and philosophers founded by James Fieser in 1995. The current general editors are James Fieser and Bradley Dowden...
, 2006. (link) - Lepore, Ernest and Brian McLaughlin (eds.). Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1985.
- Lepore, Ernest (ed.). Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1986.
- Lepore, Ernest and Kirk Ludwig. "Donald Davidson," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, September 2004, vol. 28, pp. 309–333.
- Lepore, Ernest and Kirk Ludwig. Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language and Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005.
- Lepore, Ernest and Kirk Ludwig. Donald Davidson's Truth-Theoretic Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007.
- Ludwig, Kirk (ed.). Donald Davidson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003.
- Ludwig, Kirk. "Donald Davidson: Essays on Actions and Events." In Classics of Western Philosophy: The Twentieth Century: Quine and After, vol. 5., John Shand (ed.), Acumen Press, 2006, pp. 146–165.
- Malpas, Jeffrey. Donald Davidson and the Mirror of Meaning: Holism, Truth, Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1992.
- Malpas, Jeffrey. "Donald Davidson," Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyStanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a freely-accessible online encyclopedia of philosophy maintained by Stanford University. Each entry is written and maintained by an expert in the field, including professors from over 65 academic institutions worldwide...
, 2005. (link) - Preyer, Gerhard, Frank Siebelt, and Alexander Ulfig (eds.). Language, Mind and Epistemology: On Donald Davidson's Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1994.
- Ramberg, Bjorn. Donald Davidson's Philosophy of Language: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1989.
- Romaneczko, Marta E. The Role of Metalanguage in Radical Interpretation. Journal of Consciousness Studies. 2007.
- Stoecker, Ralf (ed.). Reflecting Davidson. Berlin: W. de Gruyter. 1993.
- Vermazen, B., and Hintikka, M. Essays on Davidson: Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1985.
- Zeglen, Ursula M. (ed.). Donald Davidson: Truth, Meaning and Knowledge. London: Routledge. 1991.
External links
- "Donald Davidson" - by Jeff Malpas, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005.
- "Donald Davidson (1917-2003)" - by Vladimir Kalugin, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006.
- Guide to the Donald Davidson Papers at The Bancroft Library