Abstract

This dissertation aims to address the question what is it to interpret and to understand a human being. I will suggest that this kind of understanding involves a redescription and comparison of the agent's mental states and behaviour in terms of the interpreter's mental states and behaviour, taking as frame of reference their shared world. I will try to show that this process requires the projection of the interpreter's mental states upon the agent, and his ability to simulate being her in her particular circumstances. adjust his attributions according to new behavioral evidence. ;I will focus on the principle of charity, developed mainly by Donald Davidson, as a model of intentional interpretation. The principle of charity claims that, in order to understand a person, the interpreter has to assume that the agent is largely consistent, that she is mainly a believer of truths, and that she tends to acts according to her best judgment. I will assume the basic Davidsonian formulation of charity, but I will add some elements to it and I will explore some of its consequences, suggesting a new version of charity. I will hold that to understand a person requires to assume the rationality of her behaviour, in order to look for the particular interconnections between her beliefs, desires and actions as well as the meanings she attributes to her expressions and the significance she attaches to things and events. This requires that the interpreter begin interpretation by projecting his own system of mental states upon the agent. While interpretation proceeds, he will make adjustments, adding or dropping attributions in order to make better sense for her unexpected behaviour. Analysis of this process will show the two main elements in understanding: comparison and redescription. The interpreter will compare the agent's mental states and actions with his own mental states and actions, in order to redescribe the alien ones in terms of the familiar ones. I will try to show that the process of the production of T-sentences, in a truth conditional account of linguistic interpretation, can be seen as a technical model of this interpretative process. ;However, for understanding to be more than just an imposition of the interpreter's mental states upon the agent, he has to go beyond his own mental states. He has to modify his attributions in order to produce better interpretations of the agent. I will suggest that the principle of charity, thus formulated, can be seen as a technical version of the simulation theory of understanding, in which the interpreter simulates being the agent in counterfactual conditions. I will not defend the simulation theory from its critics nor I will discuss its details; I will only show the connections between charity and simulation, and how charity can be seen as an improved version of simulation. I will conclude the dissertation assessing the objection that a theory of interpretation based on the principle of charity is committed to self-centrism and ethnocentrism