Structured interviews were held with 149 registered nurses in seven countries in America, Asia, Australia and Europe concerning the feeding of severely demented patients who do not accept food. The most common reasons for nurses being willing to change their decision to feed or not to feed were an order from the medical head, a request from the patient's husband and/or the staff meeting. There was a connection between the willingness to feed and the ranking of ethical principles. Nurses who (...) were most prone to feed the patient most often gave a high rank to the ethical principle of sanctity of life, while those who primarily chose not to feed the patient gave a high rank to the ethical principle of autonomy. All nurses stressed the ethical principle of beneficence. Des interviews structurés ont eu lieu avec 149 infirmiers/ères dans sept pays en Amérique, Asie, Australie et Europe concernant l'alimentation des malades gravement dément qui refusent de manger. La raison la plus générale pour des infirmiers/ères d'être prêt à changer leures décisions de donner à manger ou non sont: un ordre du médecin, la demande du mari de la malade ou de la réunion du personnel. Il y avait un lien entre la volonté de nourir et le rang des principes éthiques. Les infirmiers/ères les plus enclins de nourir la malade le plus souvent donnaient un rang supérieur au principe éthique de la sainteté de vie, pendant que ceux et celles qui choisissaient de ne pas nourrir la malade donnaient un rang supérieur au principe éthique de l'autonomie. Tous insistaient sur l'importance du principe éthique de la bienfaisance. Konstruktive Interviews wurden mit 149 ausgebildeten Krankenschwestern und Pfleger in sieben Ländern in Amerika, Asien, Australien und Europa gehalten über die Ernährung von schwer von Dementia praecox leidenden Patienten, die das Essen verweigern. Die gewöhnlichsten Gründe des Pflegepersonals für die Bereitwilligkeit, ihre Entscheidung, zu ernähren oder nicht, zu ändern, waren Anordnungen vom medizinischen Chef, Anfragen vom Ehemann der Patientin und/oder einer Personalsitzung. Es bestand ein Zusammenhang zwischen der Bereitwilligkeit zur Ernährung und dem Rang der ethischen Prinzipien. Die Pflegenden, die sich am meisten neigten, die Patientin zu ernähren, gaben dem ethischen Prinzip der Heiligkeit des Lebens einen hohen Rang, während die, die meistens vorzogen, die Patientin nicht zu ernähren, gaben dem ethischen Prinzip der Autonomie einen hohen Rang. Alle Pflegenden legten grossen Wert auf das ethische Prinzip der Wohltätigkeit. (shrink)

Professor Davidson's anomalous monism has been subject to the criticism that, despite advertisements to the contrary, if it were true mental properties would be epiphenomenal. To this Davidson has replied that his critics have misunderstood his views concerning the extensional nature of causal relations and the intensional character of causal explanations. I call this his 'extension reply'. This paper argues that there are two ways to read Davidson's 'extension reply'; one weaker and one stronger. But the dilemma is that: (i) (...) the weak extension reply on its own isn't sufficient to support the principle of the nomological character of causality, (ii) anything strong enough to support that principle under the weak extension reply would be strong enough to warrant the strong extension reply; but (iii) the strong extension reply threatens the very stability of anomalous monism by threatening the causal potency and reality of the mental. For these reasons, I claim that either version of the 'extension reply' is bad news for anomalous monism. I conclude by suggesting that a form of absolute idealism circumvents the very assumptions that generate these kinds of difficulty for committed monists. (shrink)

Professor Davidson's anomalous monism has been subject to the criticism that, despite advertisements to the contrary, if it were true mental properties would be epiphenomenal. To this Davidson has replied that his critics have misunderstood his views concerning the extensional nature of causal relations and the intensional character of causal explanations. I call this his ‘extension reply’. This paper argues that there are two ways to read Davidson's ‘extension reply’; one weaker and one stronger. But the dilemma is that: the (...) weak extension reply on its own isn't sufficient to support the principle of the nomological character of causality, anything strong enough to support that principle under the weak extension reply would be strong enough to warrant the strong extension reply; but the strong extension reply threatens the very stability of anomalous monism by threatening the causal potency and reality of the mental. For these reasons, I claim that either version of the ‘extension reply’ is bad news for anomalous monism. I conclude by suggesting that a form of absolute idealism circumvents the very assumptions that generate these kinds of difficulty for committed monists. (shrink)

Fictional and non-fictional texts rely on the same language to express their meaning; yet many philosophers in the analytic tradition would say, with reason, that fictional texts literally make no truth claims, or more modestly that the rhetorical and literary devices to which fiction and non-fiction writers alike have recourse are unconnected to truth or have no propositional content. These related views are associated with a doctrine in the philosophy of language, most notably advanced by the late Donald Davidson, which (...) holds that we understand the semantic structure of a language by applying to it a theory of truth, which involves discovering the truth conditions of its sentences. This approach to semantic theory raises several seemingly intractable problems, such as the problem of stating the meaning of non-declarative sentences, e.g. questions and imperatives. The chief aim of this paper will be to try to dispel these problems by suggesting an adjustment in Davidson’s account of the relation of truth to meaning, one which will also allow us to picture such troublesome linguistic items as metaphor within a semantic theory, and to expand the range of objects which can be brought into a general theory of meaning. (shrink)

A.C. Graham, a widely respected Sinologist, may be the first scholar in the context of Chinese philosophy to express opinions counter to Donald Davidson’s principle of charity and to his view on the very idea of a conceptual scheme.

This book is an introduction to and interpretation of the philosophy of language devised by Donald Davidson over the past 25 years. The guiding intuition is that Davidson's work is best understood as an ongoing attempt to purge semantics of theoretical reifications. Seen in this light the recent attack on the notion of language itself emerges as a natural development of his Quinian scepticism towards "meanings" and his rejections of reference-based semantic theories. Linguistic understanding is, for Davidson, essentially dynamic, arising (...) only through a continuous process of theory construction and reconstruction. The result is a conception of semantics in which the notion of interpretation and not the notion of knowing a language is fundamental. In the course of his book Bjorn Ramberg provides a critical discussion of reference-based semantic theories, challenging the standard accounts of the principle of charity and elucidating the notion of radical interpretation. The final chapter on incommensurability ties in with the discussions of Kuhn's work in the philosophy of science and suggests certain links between Davidson's analytic semantics and hermeneutic theory. (shrink)

Recent interpretations of Locke's primary/secondary quality distinction have tended to emphasize Locke's relationship to the corpuscularian science of his time, especially to that of Boyle. Although this trend may have corrected the unfortunate tendency to view Locke in isolation from his scientific contemporaries, it nevertheless has resulted in some over- simplifications and distortions of Locke's general enterprise. As everyone now agrees, Locke was attempting to provide a philosophical foundation for English corpuscularianism and one must therefore look not only at the (...) current scientific hypotheses but also at the nature of the philosophical foundation Locke was attempting to erect. In particular, Locke made an attempt, based on epistemological principles, to give a philosophical justification of atomistic corpuscularianism. Moreover, he was not content to give this justification post hoc—the epistemological foundation was prior to, and determined the framework for, the details of the correct scientific theory. Locke's epistemology made legitimate an atomistic theory, one making crucial use of the notion of solidity in the definition of the elementary particles, although it did not prejudge the details of this theory. (shrink)

This essay develops the relation, implicit in Essay 11, of intentional action to behaviour described in purely physical terms; Davidson repeats from Essay 3 that an action counts as intentional if the agent caused it, and asks to which degree a study of action thus conceived permits being scientific. Davidson stresses the central importance of a normative concept of rationality in attributing reasons to agents ; because this concept has no echo in physical theory, any explanatory schema governed by the (...) concept is irreducible to physical theory. Davidson adduces several facts that prevent us from giving strict laws connecting reasons and action: first, we cannot give conditions that are not only necessary but also sufficient for an action to be intentional, using only the concepts of belief, desire, and cause----for we cannot specify the ”right way’ in which beliefs and desires cause actions ; second, a certain holism of the mental pervades explanations of human behaviour: we cannot assign beliefs and desires independently of and prior to the actions they cause, a point Davidson takes Ramsey’s work on subjective probability to have shown. Davidson appends a set of replies to critics, which clarify his attitude to psychology as a science, his analysis of statements of law, the principle of causal interaction, and the relation between mutually irreducible explanatory schema. (shrink)

Is freedom compatible with determinism? Davidson famously rephrased this question by replacing “freedom” with “anomaly of the mental”, that is, failure to fall under a law. In order to prove that the anomaly of the mental is compatible with other conjectures he makes, in particular that: there is psycho-physical causation; “where there is causality, there must be a law” ; and the mental supervenes on the physical, Davidson proposed a model, that came to be known as anomalous monism. Accepting all (...) of Davidson’s conjectures, we compare the structure of Davidson’s argument with that of Einstein’s argument for the special theory of relativity. This leads us to an exposition of Davidson’s ontology in terms that are inspired by recent results in the philosophy of physics, that is, in terms of fundamental ontology and high-level coarse-grained descriptions. We explain in what sense Davidson’s model is a principle theory and discuss some requirements that the constructive theory underlying Davidson's principle approach must satisfy. We propose two constructive theories of description that may underlie Davidson's approach and this deeper structure leads us to formulating a dilemma according to which Davidson's approach entails either a non-physicalist type-identity reductive and monistic structure of events; or else it entails a structure of events that requires what we call token-substance dualism. We consider some issues which seem to suggest that the first horn of this dilemma collapses into a reductive type-identity physicalist theory, contrary to Davidson's intent. Finally, we show how Davidson's achievement of accounting for some freedom of the mental from the physical and the anomaly of the mental within anomalous monism can be achieved in a fully reductive type-identity physicalist theory. (shrink)

This special issue reconsiders the contributions that phenomenology can make to the development and practice of a clinicat science of psychology. In it, we suggest that earlier attempts to apply phenomenological principles were influenced heavily by psychoanalysis, with few, if any, alternative versions of a "depth" psychology available on which to draw in reframing the nature of psychopathology and its treatment. We suggest that this lingering presence of psychoanalysis runs counter to the founding principles of phenomenological method and offer a (...) few examples of a constructive alternative grounded in Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. Borrowing from Mohanty, we offer this approach as a respectful-as opposed to suspicious-phenomenology, and begin to outline ways in which a transcendental ly-grounded psychology reconceptualizes both clinical research and practice, from the initial intake interview and interpretation of interview data to the aims and strategies of psychological interventions. (shrink)

In this article I argue that governments are justified in addressing the potential for human induced climate damages on the basis of future generations' rights to bodily integrity and personal property. First, although future generations' entitlements to property originate in our present entitlements, the principle of self-ownership requires us to take 'reasonable care' of the products of future labour. Second, while Parfit's non-identity problem has as yet no satisfactory solution, the present absence of an equilibrium between theory and intuitions (...) justifies a precautionary approach, i.e. treating climate damage as a wrongful harm. In addition, a supplementary consideration is described as arising from transcendental needs. (shrink)

Michel Foucault turned to Classical and Hellenistic philosophy late in his career, a change of focus that surprised and was misunderstood by many at the time. Often, it is supposed that his aim was to find the “freedom” that he had allegedly denied in his earlier works on power relations; he is thought to have proposed an autonomous self which would oppose and resist dominating political institutions. I instead contend that Foucault’s work on the Ancients is better understood as a (...) challenge to or interrogation of current understandings of freedom. Rather than locating a subject whose freedom would consist in a lack of determination (whether from power or any other source), “freedom” in Foucault’s work on the Ancients is the result of a deterministic production. Rather than describing a freedom which is already naturally ours, Foucault shows how Classical and Hellenistic subjects used techniques to constitute themselves as free. Hence his later works’ emphasis on askesis, or “practices of the self”— that is, the work one performs on oneself in order to transform what one is. Practices of askesis, and those of Epictetus in particular, show that knowledge alone is not sufficient for morally improving oneself. Practices of askesis also indicate that treating one’s volition (or “will”) as a quasi-object to be adjusted through practical techniques does not alienate freedom, but rather is freedom’s foundation. Indeed, Foucault shows that through the exercises of askesis, a subject can be produced and constituted as free for the first time. Examples of askesis in Epictetus are given to show how a Stoic could force himself to have a morally correct volition: taking ideas which he knew but could not follow, and transforming them into principles of actual conduct which he could not help but follow. The sense of “freedom” and “subject” developed in Foucault’s reading of the Stoics thus remains wholly foreign to free will as an original possession of a purely autonomous self. In fact, it challenges free will on a number of issues, including the relation of choice to knowledge, how to effectively reform and reshape desire and judgment, and the benefits of treating oneself as a quasi-object. It is through askesis that Foucault most clearly raises these challenges, and in so doing, makes us question our reliance on the free will as an explanation for human ethical behavior. He replaces it with askesis, a set of effective techniques which can actually transform us into the ethical selves we want to become. (shrink)

Preventive solutions for the paradoxes lead to the inexpressability of the adequacy conditions for the representation of truth within the system. Davidsonian theories of truth presuppose an understood language (for the background theory) which should permit the expression of the solutional principles for the paradoxes. The suitability of languages for this aim is tested by inferential validity paradoxes. They necessitate the introduction of an inner and an outer truthpredicate. For the paradoxes, two different types of circularity, often wrongly identified, have (...) to be distinguished. For Davidsonian theories of truth, non-two-valuedness, different versions of convention T and "principled openess" of the background theory have to be postulated. (shrink)

Preventive solutions for the paradoxes lead to the inexpressability of the adequacy conditions for the representation of truth within the system. Davidsonian theories of truth presuppose an understood language (for the background theory) which should permit the expression of the solutional principles for the paradoxes. The suitability of languages for this aim is tested by inferential validity paradoxes. They necessitate the introduction of an inner and an outer truthpredicate. For the paradoxes, two different types of circularity, often wrongly identified, have (...) to be distinguished. For Davidsonian theories of truth, non-two-valuedness, different versions of convention T and "principled openess" of the background theory have to be postulated. (shrink)

This chapter briefly discusses the history of the notion of "cure" in relation to serious mental illnesses from Pinel to the present day, including both theories on the nature of the illnesses and the nature of presumed therapeutic agents and mechanisms. The chapter then gives a brief overview of the notion of "recovery" in relation to serious mental illnesses, also from Pinel to the present day, and describes various definitions and forms of recovery as they have emerged over time. With (...) this historical and conceptual background in place, the chapter then takes up the present state-of-the-art in psychiatry in relation to both concepts of cure and recovery, considers the empirical and neuroscientific evidence available relative to each concept, and then suggests several directions for research and philosophical reflection as the field continues to evolve. Two guiding principles that shape this discussion are that mental illnesses are not one-dimensional phenomena, but may be made up of several loosely related components which each have their own natural course, and that mental illnesses do not typically take over the entirety of a person's functioning, but also leave other aspects of functioning relatively intact. The combination of these principles suggests that cure and recovery are not likely to be binary functions in relation to serious mental illnesses, but will more likely be more a matter of degree across multiple domains. (shrink)

This essay is a reconstruction and defense of Davidson's argument against the intelligibility of the notion of conceptual scheme. After presenting a brief clarification of Davidson's argument in 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme', I turn to reconstructing Davidson's argument. Unlike many commentators, and occasionally Davidson, who hold that the motive force of the argument is the Principle of Charity (or the denial of the Third Dogma), I argue that there is a further principle which underlies (...) the argument. This principle I call the Strong Discrimination Principle. But the argument of the paper is not purely exegetical. Not only do I show how the Strong Discrimination Principle meets certain objections to Davidson's argument, but I show how the Principle clarifies the realist position. In particular, I show how a line of argument advanced by Rorty and Putnam against (metaphysical) realism can be rejected. (shrink)

The De officiis of Ambrose of Milan is one of the most important texts of Latin Patristic literature. Modelled on the De Officiis of Cicero, it sets out Ambrose's ethical vision for his clergy, synthesizing ancient Stoic assumptions on virtue and expediency with Biblical patterns of humility, charity, and self-denial to present a paradigm of a church hierarchy capable of making the right impact on its social world. Ambrose aspires to demonstrate that the age of profound principles is now available.This (...) new edition constitutes the first Modern English translation of Ambrose's Latin. The Text and Translation in Volume 1 are accompanied by a detailed Commentary that concentrates on Ambrose's debts to Cicero and his attempts to renovate his philosophical inheritance. An extensive Introduction analyses his ethical ideals and sets them in their social context. (shrink)

Reminiscences of Peter, by P. Oppenheim.--Natural kinds, by W. V. Quine.--Inductive independence and the paradoxes of confirmation, by J. Hintikka.--Partial entailment as a basis for inductive logic, by W. C. Salmon.--Are there non-deductive logics?, by W. Sellars.--Statistical explanation vs. statistical inference, by R. C. Jeffre--Newcomb's problem and two principles of choice, by R. Nozick.--The meaning of time, by A. Grünbaum.--Lawfulness as mind-dependent, by N. Rescher.--Events and their descriptions: some considerations, by J. Kim.--The individuation of events, by D. Davidson.--On properties, by (...) H. Putnam.--A method for avoiding the Curry paradox, by F. B. Fitch.--Publications (1934-1969) by Carl G. Hempel (p. [266]-270). (shrink)

The ‘Lima Call for Climate Action’ decision marked the conclusion of the 20th session of the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It expresses how the 196 UNFCCC Parties intend to negotiate the elements of a new agreement to be opened for signature in Paris at COP21. This ‘Paris Agreement’ would govern Parties starting in 2020, when the Kyoto Protocol's second commitment period ends. The new agreement would also move Parties beyond the Kyoto Protocol's (...) focus on mitigation to include adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, and capacity building requirements. At COP20, Party delegates struggled to find consensus on how to act on the UNFCCC's core principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities’ when drafting the Call for Climate Action. In this article, we provide a detailed account of the evolution of the COP20 decision, to show how both its overall structure and specific language shifted in.. (shrink)

The publication of Davidson 2001, anthologizing articles from the 1980s and 1990s, encourages reconsidering arguments contained in them. One such argument is Davidson's omniscient-interpreter argument ('€˜OIA'€™) in Davidson 1983. The OIA allegedly establishes that it is necessary that most beliefs are true. Thus the omniscient interpreter, revived in 2001 and now 20 years old, was born to answer the skeptic. In Part I of this paper, I consider charges that the OIA establishes only that it is possible that most beliefs (...) are true; if correct, then it is also possibly the case that most beliefs are false—the skeptic’s very position. Next, I consider two responses on Davidson'€™s behalf, showing that each fails. In Part II, I show that the OIA establishes neither that it is necessarily merely possibly but actually the case that most beliefs are true. I then conclude that this is enough to answer the skeptic. (shrink)

This essay is a reconstruction and defense of Davidson''s argument against the intelligiblity of the notion of conceptual scheme. After presenting a brief clarification of Davidson''s argument in On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme, I turn to reconstructing Davidson''s argument. Unlike many commentators, and occasionally Davidson, who hold that the motive force of the argument is the Principle of Charity (or the denial of the Third Dogma), I argue that there is a further principle which underlies (...) the argument. This principle I call the Strong Discrimination Principle.But the argument of the paper is not purely exegetical. Not only do I show how the Strong Discrimination Principle meets certain objections to Davidson''s argument, but I show how the Principle clarifies the realist position. In particular, I show how a line of argument advanced by Rorty and Putnam against (metaphysical) realism can be rejected. (shrink)

The philosopher Donald Davidson has argued in an influential article, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” that there is no intelligible basis on which to distinguish between conceptual schemes that Kuhn and Feyerabend have treated as incommensurable or incompatible. He concludes that, given the underlying methodology of interpretation of speech behavior, we cannot be in a position to judge that others have concepts or beliefs radically different from our own. Thus, he adds, we cannot talk meaningfully about the (...) existence of conceptual schemes. I offer a historical rejoinder to Davidson, focusing on the famous seventeenth-century debate between Descartes and Gassendi regarding the use of the first-person pronoun. I show that, in this particular debate, their failure to translate the pronoun “I” was so basic and fundamental a failure that, although it turned on just one word, it forced Gassendi to question the longstanding Renaissance humanist principle of the intertranslatability of all natural languages. Could the Gassendi-Descartes debate similarly challenge Davidson’s assertion of the intertranslatability of all natural languages and his consequent denial of the existence of conceptual schemes? (shrink)

Augustine advances the view that morally devout interpreters of a Biblical text, such as the Psalter, can each advance contradictory interpretations of the very same portion of the text and yet both interpretations can be true. But the moral character of the interpreter is paramount in weighing the validity of the interpretation. I explore this hermeneutical principle Augustine advances with Donald Davidson’s secular “Principle of Charity”.

In a recent article in Theoria , Hamid Vahid offered an explanation of the phenomenon of Moore-paradoxicality which employed Davidson's Principle of Charity regarding radical interpretation. I argue here that Vahid's explanation fails.

Many philosophers hold that if an agent acts intentionally, she must know what she is doing. Although the scholarly consensus for many years was to reject the thesis in light of presumed counterexamples by Donald Davidson, several scholars have recently argued that attention to aspectual distinctions and the practical nature of this knowledge shows that these counterexamples fail. In this paper I defend a new objection against the thesis, one modelled after Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument. Since this argument relies on (...) general principles about the nature of knowledge rather than on intuitions about fringe cases, the recent responses that have been given to defuse the force of Davidson’s objection are silent against it. Moreover, the argument suggests that even weaker theses connecting practical entities with knowledge are also false. Recent defenders of the thesis that there is a necessary connection between knowledge and intentional action are motivated by the insight that this connection is non-accidental. I close with a positive proposal to account for the non-accidentality of this link without appeal to necessary connections by drawing an extended analogy between practical and perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

Libertarians and non libertarians alike agree that counterfeiting legitimate money owned by innocent people is illicit. But what about counterfeiting counterfeit money owned by the guiltless? Davidson and I, both libertarians, take the position that this would be a rights violation; that this would violate the rights of innocent owners of currency, who would be victimized by such fraudulent behavior of counterfeiters, even those who limit themselves to counterfeiting counterfeit funds. But what about counterfeiting counterfeit money owned by those who (...) are guilty of crimes? Davidson opines, in effect, that there are no such people. The counterfeiter of counterfeit money is thus himself a criminal, she avers. I argue, very much to the contrary, that the relevant population consists mostly of guilty people, and thus they are not in a logical position to object to what would otherwise be considered victimization. As for the few innocents among them, they demonstrate their innocence to a large degree by not objecting to the counterfeiting of counterfeit money. If they do object, and take actions to prevent this practice, they act in a manner incompatible with the libertarian non aggression principle and thus enter the ranks of the guilty. I find Davidson’s economic analysis impeccable; her understanding of libertarianism highly problematic. In the interests of full disclosure, I should make it clear that the present paper contains the radical suggestion that we should do away with our established monetary- and financial system. If need be, and this is by no means my first choice, we are entitled to do so by means of massive counterfeiting of established currencies. Of course, this is illegal in extant nations, and I would not want to be imprisoned for committing a crime. So, for purposes of our discussion, we will be considering only the imaginary country of Ruritania. (shrink)

The papers collected in this issue were solicited to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Donald Davidson’s birth. Four of them discuss the implications of Davidson’s views—in particular, his later views on triangulation—for questions that are still very much at the centre of current debates. These are, first, the question whether Saul Kripke’s doubts about meaning and rule-following can be answered without making concessions to the sceptic or to the quietist; second, the question whether a way can be found (...) to answer Davidson’s own doubts about the continuity of non-propositional thought and language; third, the question whether normative properties can be at once causal and prescriptive; fourth, the question whether folk psychological explanations can be at once illuminating and autonomous. The fifth paper reexamines Davidson’s take on the principle of compositionality, which always was at the centre of his theorizing about language. (shrink)

Donald Davidson famously argued, contra radical skepticism, that belief is in its nature veridical. In assessing whether Davidson was successful in this regard, it is first necessary to establish the exact philosophical basis Davidson was adducing for this claim, which is far from clear. In particular, a lot of the critical focus on Davidson's approach to radical skepticism has tended to focus on his appeal to an omniscient interpreter, and yet a closer evaluation of Davidson's antiskepticism reveals that this notion (...) is almost certainly dialectically inessential. Following some introductory remarks, in Section 2, I outline how the project of radical interpretation, and the associated principle of charity, are key parts of the philosophical background to Davidson's argument against radical skepticism. In Section 3, I critically evaluate Davidson's appeal to an omniscient interpreter. In Section 4, I demonstrate the role that Davidson's specific brand of content externalism plays in his antiskepticism, in particular in virtue of his notion of triangulation. Finally, in Section 5 I consider, and defend, an interpretation of Davidson's view that treats it as a kind of transcendental argument against skepticism. (shrink)

This chapter explores some general aspects of the tension between one’s role as a believer and one’s role as an appraiser of oneself as a believer in philosophy. The proposal is to replace true belief by knowledge in a principle of charity constitutive of content. Knowledge maximization need not make the ascription of knowledge come too cheap. By contrast, Davidson’s principle of charity gives good marks to an interpretation for having Stone Age people assent to many truths (...) of quantum mechanics, if it happens to fit the compositional structure of their language. Perhaps the underlying worries about knowledge maximization can be captured in a more abstract form. A subtler attempt to extract knowledge from Davidson’s principle of charity exploits beliefs that one knows. Knowledge maximization implies that our ancestors had some primitive knowledge as soon as they had some primitive beliefs; it is not as though archaeology suggests otherwise. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Misperception Davidson on Interpretation The Proposal References.

In this paper I outline Donald Davidson’s account of two forms of irrationality, akrasia and self-deception, and relate this account to ethical action and belief. His view of irrationality is generally a Freudian one, to the effect that agents must compartmentalize both offending particular mental contents, and governing second order principles. Davidson also hints that his account of akrasia and self-deception might show certain normative and meta-ethical theories to be irrational, insofar as they too engender irrationality. I explore these (...) hints, and hopefully show both that Davidson is correct about irrationality and correct that certain ethical theories engender irrationality as well. I believe this to be no great loss to ethics generally, but will hopefully aid our understanding of how ethical action and belief actually happen. (shrink)

J. E. Malpas discusses and develops the ideas of Donald Davidson, influential in contemporary thinking on the nature of understanding and meaning, and of truth and knowledge. He provides an account of Davidson's holistic and hermeneutical conception of linguistic interpretation, and, more generally, of the mind. Outlining its Quinean origins and the elements basic to Davidson's Radical Interpretation, J. E. Malpas' book goes on to elaborate this holism and to examine the indeterminacy of interpretation and the principle of charity. (...) The metaphysical and epistemological consequences of Davidson's approach are considered, particularly in relation to scepticism and relativism, the realist/anti-realist debate, and the problem of truth. Parallels are drawn between the Davidsonian emphasis on the centrality of the notion of truth and Heidegger's notion of truth as aletheia, as the book looks to structuralist, hermeneutical and phenomenological sources to illuminate Davidson's position. (shrink)

SummaryIn developing his claim that meaning cannot be understood independently of truth, Donald Davidson argues that a theory of meaning will take the form of a Tarskian theory of truth. In this essay I seek to describe more fully the structure of a Davidsonian theory of meaning and the extent to which Davidson modifies Tarski's account. 1 consider and reject John Foster's claim that Davidson takes, or should take, truth as a formal primitive, and argue that it is Davidson's (...) class='Hi'>principle of charity which plays the essential role in giving theories of truth empirical application. (shrink)

Was sind Maximen gemäß Kants Moralphilosophie? Diese Frage entsteht, da Kant zwar eine Explikation von ‚Maxime‘ als ‚subjektives Prinzip des Wollens‘ angibt, diese Explikation aber selbst wieder sehr dunkel bleibt und schwer verständlich ist. Zur Beantwortung dieser Frage werde ich in einem ersten Teil versuchen, plausible Kandidaten dafür zu ermitteln, was unter Maximen zu verstehen ist. Dabei wird sich zeigen, dass Kandidaten, die aus Davidsons Handlungstheorie stammen, sehr geeignete Kandidaten sind. In einem zweiten Teil sollen diese Kandidaten dann ‚auf Herz (...) und Nieren‘ geprüft werden. Dazu werde ich in Anlehnung an Rüdiger Bittner diskutieren, ob die Kandidaten, die sich im ersten Teil als die plausibelsten erweisen, gewisse Grundanforderungen an Maximen erfüllen (An die auf der Annahme, Maximen seien die hier favorisierten Kandidaten, beruhende Maximenkonzeption gibt es folgende zwei Grundanforderungen: erstens die Möglichkeit der Explikation, was es heißt, dass eine Maxime vorliegt, auch wenn ihr nicht gefolgt wird, zweitens die Möglichkeit der Unterscheidung zwischen dem Befolgen einer Maxime und dem Handeln lediglich gemäß einer Maxime). Und ich werde mich dazu ferner der Frage widmen, ob bestimmte Kritiken, die an – nicht identischen, aber – ähnlichen Kandidaten für Maximen vorgebracht wurden, auch für die hier präsentierten Kandidaten einschlägig sind. Schließlich werde ich in diesem zweiten Teil noch gewisse Schwächen der von mir favorisierten Maximenkonzeptionen erläutern, die man unabhängig von Bittners Kritikpunkten konstatieren könnte. What are maxims in Kant's moral philosophy? This question arises because the explanation of 'maxim' Kant offers, namely as being a subjective principle of volition, remains dark and hard to understand as it stands. To answer this question I will first try to find plausible candidates for what might count as a maxime. It will turn out that candidates which come from Davidson's theory of action are very plausible candidates, indeed. In a second part of the paper these candidates should be "put through the acid test", so to speak: Following Rüdiger Bittner, I will discuss whether those candidates, which are, according to part one of the paper, the most plausible ones, meet some basic requirements maxims have to fulfill. And I will - still following Bittner - attend to the question whether certain critiques that were put forward against some similar maxim-candidates are relevant for those candidates here presented. Finally I am going to explain in this second part of the paper some remaining weaknesses one could point out against the conceptions of maxims I favour and which could be stated independently from Bittner's critiques. (shrink)

Donald Davidson assigns truth a central role in his theory of meaning but he also makes truth a guiding methodological principle in metaphysics. Truth is inexorably connected to belief and meaning, and no one of these concepts has theoretical priority over the others. I argue that there is a methodological circularity in Davidson’s account of how the world contributes to the truth of our beliefs and utterances. The difficulty for Davidson is in providing an account of how speakers (...) share a common world while denying an ontologically privileged domain of entities and further claiming that being supervenes on truth. I suggest that the Heideggerian notion of disclosedness offers one solution. (shrink)

The recent discussions on the unity of virtue suffer from a lack of reference to the processes through which we interpret each other as moral agents. In the present paper it is argued that much light can be thrown on that crucial issue by appealing to a version of Donald Davidson’s Principle of Charity, which we call “Principle of Phronetic Charity”. The idea is that in order to treat somebody as a moral agent, one has first to (...) attribute to them, at least pro tempore, a significant degree of practical wisdom and, then, to assess and rationally adjust such attribution of competence via actual engagement with them – a process that may lead to different responses on the part of the interpreter. After expounding and defending the Principle of Phronetic Charity and the interpretive practices connected with it, we discuss the repercussions of our account on the issue of the epistemic access to virtue. We will show, in particular, that some important components of both disunitarianism and unitarianism have to be retained: in accordance with the former, we stress the role of concrete experience over pure speculation and, up to a point, the idea that virtues tend to form variegated ensembles; in accordance with the latter, we accept the claim that virtues are not attributed to moral agents in isolation. Ultimately, however, the account developed here rejects both the atomism of the disunitarian view and the holism of the “Unity of the Virtues”, since it is in fact a form of molecularism, according to which virtues come neither individually nor as a whole, but rather as clusters. (shrink)

Paul Davidson asserts that Post Keynesians could fare just as well without insights from their Austrian colleagues. He's wrong. Radical subjectivists within both schools of thought have something to gain through dialogue, as evidenced by the efforts of Kenneth Boulding, G.L.S. Shackle, and Ludwig Lachmann. Many Austrian and Post Keynesian economists share a common methodological principle of radical subjectivism, which emphasizes nonergo‐dic constructs and systems indeterminacy, and each school can gain from the insights of the other when asking such (...) questions as why capitalism generates recessions and depressions and why capitalism generates any degree of order at all. (shrink)

Happy accidents happen even in philosophy. Sometimes our arguments yield insights despite missing their target, though when they do others can often spot it more easily. Consider the work of Donald Davidson. Few did more to explore connections among mind, language, and world. Now that we have critical distance from his views, however, we can see that Davidson’s accomplishments are not quite what they seem. First, while Davidson attacked the dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content, he in fact (...) illustrated a way to hold it. Second, while Davidson used the principle of charity to argue against the dualism, his argument in effect treats the principle as constitutive of a conceptual scheme. And third, while Davidson asserted that he cannot define what truth ultimately is—and while I do not disagree—his work nonetheless allows us to saymore about truth than Davidson himself does. -/- I aim to establish these three claims. Doing so enriches our understanding of issues central to the history of philosophy concerning how, if at all, to divvy up the mental or linguistic contribution, and the worldly contribution, to knowledge. As we see below, Davidson was right in taking his work to be one stage of a dialectic begun by Immanuel Kant.1 He was just wrong about what that stage is. Reconsidering Davidson’s views also moves the current debate forward, as they reveal a previously unrecognized yet intuitive notion of truth—even if Davidson himself remained largely unaware of it. We begin however with scheme/content dualism and Davidson’s argument against it. (shrink)

Davidson's principle of the anomalousness of the mental was instrumental in discrediting once-popular versions of mind-brain reductionism. In this essay I argue that a novel account of intertheoretic reduction, which does not require the sort of cross-theoretic bridge laws that Davidson's principle rules out, allows a version of mind-brain reductionism which is immune from Davidson's challenge. In the final section, I address a second worry about reductionism, also based on Davidson's principle, that survives this response. I argue (...) that new reductionists should revise some significant details of the program, particularly the conception of theories, to circumvent this more potent Davidson-inspired worry. (shrink)

Are our beliefs mostly true? Donald Davidson has proposed some very interesting arguments in favor of his "extended claim" that most our beliefs must be true. The main aim of this paper is to show that Davidson's arguments are not convincing. The most well known of his arguments is the argument of the "omniscient interpreter". The conceivability of a totally ignorant interpreter, however, shows that this argument fails. Davidson offers two more arguments for his extended claim: one of them based (...) on his holism of the propositional attitudes, the other one based on his externalism of language and thought. Both arguments, however, do not sufficiently support the extended claim. Hence, it must remain open at least whether we live in one of the best possible epistemic worlds. (shrink)

Davidson has famously argued that conceptual relativism, which, for him, is based on the content-scheme dualism, or the “third dogma” of empiricism, is either unintelligible or philosophically uninteresting and has accused Quine of holding onto such a dogma. For Davidson, there can be found no intelligible ground for the claim that there may exist untranslatable languages: all languages, if they are languages, are in principle inter-translatable and uttered sentences, if identifiable as utterances, are interpretable. Davidson has also endorsed the (...) Quinean indeterminacy-underdetermination distinction. The early Quine, as well as the later Quine, believe that the indeterminacy of translation casts serious doubt on the existence of facts of the matter about correct translation between languages. In this paper, I will argue that Quine cannot be the target of Davidson’s argument against conceptual relativism, and that Davidson’s argument is in conflict, among others, with his endorsement of the Quinean indeterminacy-underdetermination distinction. I will show how this conflict results in a radical departure from Quine with respect to the matter of factualism about fine-grained meanings. (shrink)

Since Davidson's proposal to use a Tarskian theory of truth in order to develop a theory of meaning has been criticised extensively, it is decisive to ask whether Davidson needs such a theory as an assumption and premise in other parts of his work. Especially, many authors have claimed that Davidson's argument in his paper 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme' depends on his approach in the theory of meaning. It is argued that this interpretation is wrong and (...) Davidson's attack on conceptual relativism does not depend in any way on his defense of truth-conditional semantics. Rather Davidson's thoroughgoing holism and the principle of charity are the basic rationale for his denial of conceptual relativism. (shrink)

The project of this chapter is to explore some relations between the rule-following considerations and radical interpretation. I spell out the sense in which the rule-following considerations are about meaning determination, and investigate whether the principle of meaning determination used in the early Davidson's account of meaning determination - the principle of charity - provides an answer to what I shall call "Wittgenstein's paradox". More precisely, I am interested in one aspect of the paradox: the "problem of objectivity". (...) My question then is whether meaning, as determined by charity, is such that the correctness of the applications of meaningful expressions is an objective matter. After running us through the basics of the radical interpretation account of meaning determination I argue that the principle of charity does seem to fall prey to the problem of objectivity. After unsuccessfully trying to rescue objectivity by means of Lewisian natural properties, this is the verdict I in the end endorse. (shrink)

In two of his more recent papers, Donald davidson has argued for the "a priori" truth of what he calls "the principle of the anomalism of the mental." my concern in this paper is with examining that principle and davidson's defense of it. After clarifying the principle, I discuss three considerations which davidson gives in its defense and argue that they are not persuasive. Then I argue that although the principle of the anomalism of the mental (...) cannot be known "a priori" to be true, There are some arguments and some neurophysiological evidence which make it reasonable to believe that the principle is, Indeed, True. (shrink)

I focus on holism in philosophy of language, particularly in Donald Davidson's truth-conditional semantics and Jurgen Habermas's formal pragmatics. An adequate semantics must take account of three dimensions: the subjective, the social, and the objective. It must, in this sense, be holistic. All three aspects are mutually irreducible and interdependent. Yet holistic approaches lack a clear sense of how they are related. Both Habermas and Davidson recognise that language is spoken by individuals whose intentions it expresses, that it is social (...) , and that it makes claims about the objective world. Habermas places paramount importance on speakers' mutual recognition of norms, whereas Davidson maintains that conventions play no essential role in interpretation. I argue that Davidson's idiolectic conception of language overemphasises the achievements of individuals. Distinguishing between a public and a social theory of meaning, I argue that meaning is social and depends on communities of language users who share a lifeworld. Habermas, however, fails to recognise that if the background knowledge of the lifeworld is holistic, this holism extends to the theory of meaning. Davidson's principle of charity and Habermas's lifeworld are both transcendental notions: they refer to the conditions of possibility--the pragmatic presuppositions--of interpretation. Habermasian transcendentalism, correctly understood, is much closer to Davidson than might initially appear. An important complementarity between them concerns the relation between truth and justification. While Habermas aptly articulates the connection between meaning and justification, Davidson's conception of truth as a semantic primitive avoids problems associated with accounts of truth as idealised warranted assertibility. Nonetheless, it is compatible with taking truth to be a regulative idea. Finally, I argue in favour of an assertibilist semantics in order to accommodate the holistic relation of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and objectivity. Considerations of meaning holism and the fact that both Davidson and Habermas acknowledge a contextual element in meaning, however, continue to fuel scepticism concerning such a theory. (shrink)