Donald (Herbert) Davidson was one of the most important philosophersof the latter half of the twentieth century whose reception andinfluence is matched, among American philosophers, perhaps only bythat of his teacher, W. V. O. Quine. Davidson’s ideas, presentedin a series of essays (and one posthumous monograph) from the 1960sonwards, have had an impact in a range of areas from semantic theorythrough to epistemology and ethics. His work exhibits a breadth ofapproach, as well as a unitary and systematic character, that isunusual within twentieth century analytic philosophy. Although heacknowledged an important debt to Quine, Davidson’s thoughtamalgamates influences from a wide range of sources within philosophyas well as outside. And whilst often developed separately,Davidson’s ideas nevertheless combine in such a way as toprovide a single integrated approach to the problems of knowledge,action, language, and mind. The breadth and unity of his thought, incombination with the sometimes terse character of his prose, meansthat Davidson is not an easy writer to approach. Given the demandingnature of his work, it is perhaps only to be expected that it wouldreceive a range of interpretations and assessments, and this isespecially true of much of the engagement with Davidson’sthought that has developed in the last 20 years or so. In severalpublications, Kirk Ludwig, for instance, has advanced readings ofDavidson’s philosophy, frequently in collaboration with ErnestLepore, that although partly exegetical also take issue with many ofDavidson’s claims and arguments (see e.g. Lepore and Ludwig2005; see also the exchange between Lepore and Ludwig and Stoutland inBaghramian, 2013). This reflects a more general tendency forDavidson’s thinking to appear as a focus more often for critiquethan elaboration. Despite Davidson’s pre-eminence in analyticfigure during the 1970s and 1980s, his influence has waned over thelast decade or more and his work is now largely taken up, not in anysystematic fashion, but in relation to specific issues, especially ofmind and action (although this also reflects more general shifts inthe configuration of current philosophical thought and practice– see Brandom, 2020: 260). Yet neither the various critiquesthat have been advanced nor disciplinary shifts in philosophicaldirection or approach should be taken to undermine the significance ofDavidson’s contribution, and his work has nonetheless continuedto have an influence in the work of a range of thinkers. At the sametime, the re-publication of Davidson’s essays, especially thosefrom later in his career, has disseminated his ideas to a wider, andsometimes newly appreciative audience. In addition, Davidson’swork remains an important, if sometimes contentious, point of focusfor philosophical interaction between analytic and so-called‘continental’ thought (see e.g. Malpas, 2011), and forreflection on the history and character of analytic thought as such(see, e.g, Isaac, 2013; Braver, 2017).

• 1. Biographical Sketch
• 2. Action and Mind
  • 2.1 Reasons as Causes
  • 2.2 The Anomalism of the Mental
  • 2.3 Problems of Irrationality
  • 2.4 Ontology and Logical Form
• 3. Meaning and Truth
  • 3.1 The Structure of a Semantic Theory
  • 3.2 Tarski and ‘Convention T’
  • 3.3 Radical Interpretation
  • 3.4 Holism and Indeterminacy
  • 3.5 Language and Convention
• 4. Knowledge and Belief
  • 4.1 ‘Three Varieties of Knowledge’
  • 4.2 Against Relativism and Scepticism
  • 4.3 The ‘Third Dogma’ of Empiricism
  • 4.4 Truth, Predication, and Realism/Anti-Realism
• 5. Philosophical Contexts and Connections
• Bibliography
  • Primary Literature
  • Secondary Literature
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Biographical Sketch

Davidson was born on March 6th, 1917, in Springfield, Massachusetts,USA. He died suddenly, as a consequence of cardiac arrest followingknee surgery, on Aug. 30, 2003, in Berkeley, California. Remainingboth physically and philosophically active up until his death,Davidson left behind several important and unfinished projectsincluding a major book on the nature of predication. The latter volumewas published posthumously (see Davidson 2005b), together with twoadditional volumes of collected essays (Davidson 2004, 2005a), underthe guidance of Marcia Cavell.

Davidson completed his undergraduate study at Harvard, graduating in1939. His early interests were in literature and classics and, as anundergraduate, Davidson was strongly influenced by A. N. Whitehead.After starting graduate work in classical philosophy (completing aMaster’s degree in 1941), Davidson’s studies wereinterrupted by service with the US Navy in the Mediterranean from1942–45. He continued work in classical philosophy after thewar, graduating from Harvard in 1949 with a dissertation onPlato’s ‘Philebus’ (1990b). By this time, however,the direction of Davidson’s thinking had already, underQuine’s influence, changed quite dramatically (the two havingfirst met at Harvard in 1939–40) and he had begun to move awayfrom the largely literary and historical concerns that had preoccupiedhim as an undergraduate towards a more strongly analyticalapproach.

While his first position was at Queen’s College in New York,Davidson spent much of the early part of his career (1951–1967)at Stanford University. He subsequently held positions at Princeton(1967–1970), Rockefeller (1970–1976), and the Universityof Chicago (1976–1981). From 1981 until his death, he worked atthe University of California, Berkeley. Davidson was the recipient ofseveral awards and fellowships and was a visitor at many universitiesaround the world. He was married three times, to the artist VirginiaDavidson, from whom he was divorced but with whom he had his onlychild, then to the psychologist Nancy Hirschberg, who died in 1979,and finally, in 1984, to Marcia Cavell. Davidson’s posthumouslypublished essays are edited by Cavell, and she was also an importantinfluence on Davidson as well as drawing on Davidson’s thinkingin her own work (see esp. Cavell 1993). For more on Davidson’sbiography, including reminiscences from those who knew him, seeBaghramian 2013. The Donald Davidson papers, which include coursenotes, professional correspondence, administrative materials, andacademic writings, are held in the Bancroft Library at the Universityof California, Berkeley. In the late 1990s, under the auspices of theCentre for Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences, at theLondon School of Economics, Davidson participated in a series ofrecorded one-on-one conversations with many of the leading figures inphilosophy at the time – including, among others, Quine, NancyCartwright, Richard Rorty, Peter Strawson, and Michael Dummett(Davidson, 1997). These recordings, now available online andelsewhere, provide valuable additional insight into both the style andcontent of Davidson’s thought.

2. Action and Mind

2.1 Reasons as Causes

Much of Davidson’s early work was in decision theory (seeDecision-Making: An Experimental Approach [1957]), and it wasnot until the early 1960s that the work for which he is best knownbegan to appear in print. Indeed, Davidson’s first majorphilosophical publication was the seminal paper ‘Actions,Reasons and Causes’ (1963). In that paper Davidson sets out todefend the view that the explanation of action by reference to reasons(something we do, for instance, when we refer to an agent’sintentions or motives in acting) is also a form of causal explanation.Indeed, he argues that reasons explain actions just inasmuch as theyare the causes of those actions. This approach was in clear oppositionto the Wittgensteinian orthodoxy of the time. On this latter accountcausal explanation was viewed as essentially a matter of showing theevent to be explained as an instance of some law-like regularity (aswe might explain the whistling of a kettle by reference to certainlaws involving, among other things, the behaviour of gases underpressure). Since rational explanation was held, in general, not toinvolve any such reference to laws, but rather required showing howthe action fitted into some larger pattern of rational behaviour,explanation by reference to reasons was held to be distinct from andindependent of explanation by reference to causes.

Although directed against the Wittgensteinian-inspired view thatreasons cannot be causes, Davidson’s argument neverthelesseffectively redeploys several Wittgensteinian ideas (see Stoutland, inMalpas 2011: 297–324, for a sympathetic, but not uncritical,examination of the Davidsonian view of action from a largelyWittgensteinian perspective). Two ideas play an especially significantrole in the Davidsonian account – ideas that are also, in oneform or another, important in Davidson’s thinking elsewhere. Thefirst of these ideas is the notion of a ‘primary reason’– the pairing of a belief and a desire (or‘pro-attitude’) in the light of which an action isexplained. Thus, my action of flipping the light switch can beexplained by reference to my having thebelief that flippingthe switch turns on the light in combination with my having thedesire to turn on the light (for most explanations explicitreference to both the belief and the desire is unnecessary). An actionis thereby rendered intelligible through being embedded in a broadersystem of attitudes attributable to the agent – through beingembedded, that is, in a broader framework ofrationality. Thesecond idea is that of action ‘under a description’ (aphrase originally appearing in G. E. M. Anscombe’sIntention, published in 1959). As with the concept of aprimary reason, the idea here is simple enough: one and the sameaction is always amenable to more than one correct description. Thisidea is especially important, however, as it provides a means by whichthe same item of behaviour can be understood as intentional under somedescriptions but not under others. Thus, my action of flipping thelight switch can be redescribed as the act of turning on the light(under which it is intentional) and also as the act of alerting theprowler who, unbeknown to me, is lurking in the bushes outside (underwhich it is unintentional). Generalising this point, we can say thatthe same event can be referred to under quite disparate descriptions:the event of alerting the prowler is the same event as my flipping thelight switch which is the same event as my moving of my body (or apart of my body) in a certain way.

Davidson treats the connection between reason and action (where thereason is indeedthe reason for the action) as a connectionthat obtains between two events (the agent’s believing anddesiring on the one hand and her acting on the other) that can bevariously described. The connection is both rational, inasmuch as thebelief-desire pair (the ‘primary reason’) specifies thereason for the action, but it is also causal, inasmuch as the oneevent causes the other if it is indeed the reason for it. It isprecisely because the reason is causally related to the action thatthe action can be explained by reference to the reason. Indeed, wherean agent has several reasons for acting, and yet acts on the basis ofone reason in particular, there is no way to pick out just that reasonon which the agent acts other than by saying that it is the reasonthatcaused her action.

Understood as rational, the connection between reason and actioncannot be described in terms of any strict law. Yet inasmuch as theconnection is also a causal connection, so there must exist somelaw-like regularity, though not describable in the language ofrationality, under which the events in question fall (an explanationcan be causal, then, even though it does not specify any strict law).Davidson is thus able to maintain that rational explanation need notinvolve explicit reference to any law-like regularity, whilenevertheless also holding that there must be some such regularity thatunderlies the rational connection just inasmuch as it is causal.Moreover, since Davidson resists the idea that rational explanationscan be formulated in the terms of a predictive science, so he seemscommitted to denying that there can be any reduction of rational tonon-rational explanation.

2.2 The Anomalism of the Mental

The more developed argument for this latter claim, and for the moregeneral position in the philosophy of mind, of which it forms a part,appears at several places in Davidson’s work. The first andbest-known presentation is that of ‘Mental Events’ (1970b)in which Davidson argues for the compatibility of three principles(all three of which are adumbrated in various ways in the argument of‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’): (i) that at least somemental events interact causally with physical events –ThePrinciple of Causal Interaction; (ii) that events related ascause and effect fall under strict laws (that is, laws that are‘precise, explicit and as exceptionless as possible’)–The Principle of the Nomological Character ofCausality; and (iii) that there are no strict laws (as opposed tomere generalisations) relating mental and physical events –The Anomalism of the Mental. Of these principles the firsttwo would ordinarily be held to be incompatible with the third, and toimply, not the ‘anomalism’ of the mental, but rather, inthe case of mental and physical events related as cause and effect,the existence of strict laws relating those events. To argue, as doesDavidson, for the compatibility of the original principles is thusalso to argue for the truth of the third, that is, for the truth ofanomalous monism.

Davidson holds that events are particulars such that the same eventcan be referred to under more than one description. He also holds thatevents that are causally related must be related under some strictlaw. However, since Davidson takes laws to be linguistic entities, sothey can relate events only as those events are given under specificdescriptions. Thus, as was already evident in Davidson’sapproach to the theory of action, the same pair of events mayinstantiate a law under one description, but not under others. Thereis, for example, no strict law that relates, under just thosedescriptions, the formation of ice on the surface of a road to theskidding of a car on that road, and yet, under a different description(a description that will employ a completely different set ofconcepts), the events at issue will indeed be covered by some strictlaw or set of laws. But while nomological relations between events(relations involving laws) depend on the descriptions under which theevents are given, relations of causality and identity obtainirrespective of descriptions – if the icing-up of the road didindeed cause the skid, then it did so no matter how the events atissue are described (the form of description, whether mental orphysical, is thus irrelevant to the fact that a particular causalrelation obtains). It follows that the same pair of events may berelated causally, and yet, under certain descriptions (though notunder all), there be no strict law under which those events fall. Inparticular, it is possible that a mental event (an event given undersome mental description) will be causally related to some physicalevent (an event given under a physical description) and yet there willbe no strict law covering those eventsunder just thosedescriptions. My wanting to read Tolstoy may lead me to takeWar and Peace from the shelf, and so my wanting may cause achange in the physical arrangement of a certain region of space-time,but there is no strict law that would relate my wanting to thephysical change. Similarly, while any mental event will be identicalwith some physical event – it will indeed be one and the sameevent under two descriptions – it is possible that there will beno strict law relating the event as described in mentalistic termswith the event as physically described. In fact, Davidson is explicitin claiming that there can beno strict laws that relate themental and the physical in this way. Thus, in the example just cited,there is no strict law that relates wanting to read with a particularkind of brain activity.

Davidson’s denial of the existence of any strict‘psycho-physical’ laws follows from his view of the mentalas constrained by quite general principles of rationality that do notapply, at least not in the same way, to physical descriptions:normative considerations of overall consistency and coherence, forinstance, constrain our own thinking about events as physicallydescribed, but they have no purchase on physical events as such. Thisdoes not mean, of course, that there are no correlations whatsoever tobe discerned between the mental and the physical, but it does meanthat the correlations that can be discerned cannot be rendered in theprecise, explicit and exceptionless form – in the form, that is,of strict laws – that would be required in order to achieve anyreduction of mental to physical descriptions. The lack of strict lawscovering events under mental descriptions is thus an insuperablebarrier to any attempt to bring the mental within the framework ofunified physical science. However, while the mental is not reducibleto the physical, every mental event can be paired with some physicalevent – that is, every mental description of an event can bepaired with a physical description of the very same event. This leadsDavidson to speak of the mental as ‘supervening’ on thephysical in a way that implies a certain dependence of mentalpredicates on physical predicates: predicatep supervenes ona set of predicatesS ‘if and only ifp doesnot distinguish any entities that cannot be distinguished byS’ (see ‘Thinking Causes’ [1993]). Put moresimply, events that cannot be distinguished under some physicaldescription cannot be distinguished under a mental descriptioneither.

On the face of it, anomalous monism appears a highly attractive way tothink about the relation between the mental and the physical –inasmuch as it combines ‘monism’ with‘anomalism’ so it seems to preserve what is importantabout physicalism while nevertheless retaining the ordinary languageof so-called ‘folk-psychology’ (the language of beliefsand desires, actions and reasons). Yet anomalous monism has proved tobe a highly contentious position drawing criticism from bothphysicalists and non-physicalists alike. The nomological conception ofcausality (the second of the three principles defended in‘Mental Events’) has often been seen as something forwhich Davidson fails to supply any real argument (a criticism he hasattempted to address in ‘Laws and Cause’ [1995]); theDavidsonian account of supervenience has been viewed as incompatiblewith other aspects of his position and sometimes as simply mistaken orconfused (the idea of supervenience is itself the focus for what isnow a very large body of discussion); and, perhaps the most seriousand widespread criticism, anomalous monism has been seen as making themental causally inert. These criticisms have not, however, goneunanswered (see especially ‘Thinking Causes’), andalthough Davidson modified aspects of his position over the years, hecontinued to hold to, and to defend, the basic theses first madeexplicit in ‘Mental Events’.

2.3 Problems of Irrationality

Davidson’s commitment to the rationality of the mental as one ofthe cornerstones of anomalous monism (as well as to the account of‘radical interpretation’ [see ‘Meaning andTruth’ below]) led him to take a special interest in the problemof apparently irrational belief and action – something firstaddressed in ‘How is Weakness of the WillPossible?’(1970a). While Davidson treats irrationality as a realfeature of our mental lives, he offers a way of dealing with it thataims at preserving, in some sense, the overall rationality of the mind(see especially ‘Two Paradoxes of Irrationality’ [1982b]).A belief or desire in the mind of one person can cause a belief ordesire in the mind of another without this compromising therationality of the mental. (Davidson’s example is my growing ofa beautiful flower because I desire you to enter my garden – youdevelop a craving to see the flower as a result of my desire and mydesire has thereby caused, without being a reason for, your craving).Davidson suggests that we should view the same sort of relation assometimes holding within a single mind. To this end we should view themind as weakly ‘partitioned’ so that different attitudesmay be located within different ‘territories’ and neednot, therefore, be taken to come into direct conflict.

Davidson’s thinking about irrationality was increasinglyinfluenced by an engagement with psychoanalytic thinking. MarciaCavell had strong psychoanalytic interests, and inThePsychoanalytic Mind (Cavell 1993), she connects Davidson’sthought directly with that of Freud.

2.4 Ontology and Logical Form

Davidson’s accounts of action and of mind call upon awell-developed set of analyses concerning psychological concepts suchas belief, desire and intention – concepts whose analysis istaken further in a number of papers that follow on from, and developor modify, the ideas first set out in ‘Actions, Reasons andCauses’ (papers such as ‘Agency’ (1971) and‘Intending’ [1978a]) as well as in Davidson’sdiscussions of epistemological and semantic issues (see below). ButDavidson ‘s work in this area is also dependent on his accountof the notions of cause, event, and law and, in particular, on hisdefence of the view that events are particulars and so constitute afundamental ontological category. If events are indeed particulars,then an important question concerns the conditions of identity forevents. In ‘The Individuation of Events’ [1969a] Davidsonargues that events are identical if and only if they have identicalcauses and effects. In ‘Reply to Quine on Events’ [1985b]he abandons this criterion in favour of the Quinean suggestion thatevents are identical if and only if they occupy exactly the samelocation in space and time.

A characteristic feature of Davidson’s approach to suchontological questions has been to focus on the logical structure ofsentences about the entities at issue rather than on those entities assuch. Davidson’s approach to events, for instance, is groundedin an analysis of the underlying logical form of sentences aboutevents; in the case of causal relations, in an analysis of the logicalform of sentences that express such relations (see ‘CausalRelations’ [1967a]); and in his approach to action also,Davidson’s approach involves an analysis of the logical form ofsentences about actions (see ‘The Logical Form of ActionSentences’ [1967b]). This reflects a more general commitment onDavidson’s part to the inseparability of questions of ontologyfrom questions of logic. This commitment is spelt out explicitly in‘The Method of Truth in Metaphysics’ (1977) and itprovides a further point of connection between Davidson’s workin the philosophy of action, event and mind and his work on questionsof meaning and language.

3. Meaning and Truth

3.1 The Structure of a Semantic Theory

Although Davidson wrote on a wide range of topics, a great deal of hiswork, particularly during the late 1960s and early 1970s, is focussedon the problem of developing an approach to the theory of meaning thatwould be adequate to natural language. The characteristic feature ofDavidson’s approach to this problem is his proposal that meaningis best understood via the concept of truth, and, more particularly,that the basic structure for any adequate theory of meaning is thatgiven in a formal theory of truth.

Davidson’s thinking about semantic theory develops on the basisof a holistic conception of linguistic understanding (see ‘Truthand Meaning’ [1967c]). Providing a theory of meaning for alanguage is thus a matter of developing a theory that will enable usto generate, for every actual and potential sentence of the languagein question, a theorem that specifies what each sentence means. Onthis basis a theory of meaning for German that was given in Englishmight be expected to generate theorems that would explicate the Germansentence ‘Schnee ist weiss’ as meaning that snow is white.Since the number of potential sentences in any natural language isinfinite, a theory of meaning for a language that is to be of use tocreatures with finite powers such as ourselves, must be a theory thatcan generate an infinity of theorems (one for each sentence) on thebasis of a finite set of axioms. Indeed, any language that is to belearnable by creatures such as ourselves must possess a structure thatis amenable to such an approach. Consequently, the commitment toholism also entails a commitment to acompositionalapproach according to which the meanings of sentences are seen todepend upon the meanings of their parts, that is, upon the meanings ofthe words that form the finite base of the language and out of whichsentences are composed. Compositionality does not compromise holism,since not only does it follow from it, but, on the Davidsonianapproach, it is only as they play a role in whole sentences thatindividual words can be viewed as meaningful. It is sentences, and notwords, that are thus the primary focus for a Davidsonian theory ofmeaning. Developing a theory for a language is a matter of developinga systematic account of the finite structure of the language thatenables the user of the theory to understand any and every sentence ofthe language.

A Davidsonian theory of meaning explicates the meanings of expressionsholistically through the interconnection that obtains amongexpressions within the structure of the language as a whole.Consequently, although it is indeed a theoryof meaning, atheory of the sort Davidson proposes will have no use for a concept ofmeaning understood as some discrete entity (whether a determinatemental state or an abstract ‘idea’) to which meaningfulexpressions refer. One important implication of this is that thetheorems that are generated by such a theory of meaning cannot beunderstood as theorems that relate expressions and‘meanings’. Instead such theorems will relate sentences toother sentences. More particularly, they will relate sentences in thelanguage to which the theory applies (the‘object-language’) to sentences in the language in whichthe theory of meaning is itself couched (the‘meta-language’) in such a way that the latter effectively‘give the meanings of’ or translate the former. It mightbe thought that the way to arrive at theorems of this sort is to takeas the general form of such theorems ‘s means thatp’ wheres names an object-language sentenceandp is a sentence in the meta-language. But this would bealready to assume that we could give a formal account of theconnecting phrase ‘means that’, and not only does thisseem unlikely, but it also appears to assume a concept of meaning whenit is precisely that concept (at least as it applies within aparticular language) that the theory aims to elucidate. It is at thispoint that Davidson turns to the concept of truth. Truth, he argues,is a less opaque concept than that of meaning. Moreover, to specifythe conditions under which a sentence is true is also a way ofspecifying the meaning of a sentence. Thus, rather than‘s means thatp’, Davidson proposes, asthe model for theorems of an adequate theory of meaning,‘s is true if and only ifp’ (the use ofthe biconditional ‘if and only if’ is crucial here as itensures the truth-functional equivalence of the sentencessandp, that is, it ensures they will have identicaltruth-values). The theorems of a Davidsonian theory of meaning forGerman couched in English would thus take the form of sentences suchas “‘Schnee ist weiss’ is true if and only if snowis white.”

3.2 Tarski and ‘Convention T’

One of the great advantages of this proposal is that it enablesDavidson to connect his account of a theory of meaning with an alreadyexisting approach to the theory of truth, namely that developed byAlfred Tarski (in his seminal work ‘The Concept of Truth inFormalised Languages’, first published in Polish in 1933 and inEnglish translation in 1956). Tarski’s theory of truth wasoriginally intended, not as a general account of the nature of truth,but rather as a way of defining the truth-predicate as it applieswithin a formal language. Tarski suggests that we arrive at a formaldefinition of the predicate ‘is true’ by providing, forevery sentences in the object language, a matching sentencep in the meta-language that is a translation ofs(here, in his use of the idea of translational synonymy, Tarski reliesupon the concept of meaning in order to get at a theory of truth– Davidson reverses this approach). The resulting‘T-sentences’ will have the form ‘s is truein languageL if and only ifp’. That anadequate theory should indeed be capable of generating a T-sentencefor every sentence in the object-language is the essence ofTarski’s ‘Convention T’ – a requirement thatclearly matches the holistic requirement Davidson also specifies foran adequate theory of meaning. And just as a Davidsonian theory ofmeaning treats the meaning of whole sentences as dependent on thecomponents of those sentences, so a Tarskian theory of truth alsooperatesrecursively by means of the technical notion ofsatisfaction – a notion that stands to open sentences(expressions containing unbound variables) as does truth to closedsentences (expressions that contain no variables other than boundvariables) – such that the satisfaction conditions of morecomplex sentences are seen to depend on the satisfaction conditions ofsimpler sentences.

The formal structure that Tarski articulates in his‘semantic’ account of truth is identical to that whichDavidson explicates as the basis for a theory of meaning: a Tarskiantruth theory can generate, for every sentence of the object-language,a T-sentence that specifies the meaning of each sentence in the senseof specifying the conditions under which it is true. WhatDavidson’s work shows, then, is that meeting the requirement ofTarski’s Convention T can be seen as the basic requirement foran adequate theory of meaning.

A Tarskian truth theory defines truth using a logical apparatus thatrequires little more than the resources provided within first-orderquantificational logic as supplemented by set theory. Moreover, italso operates to deliver a definition of truth that is purely‘extensional’, that is, it defines truth by specifyingjust those instances to which the truth-predicate properly applieswithout any reference to ‘meanings’,‘thoughts’ or other ‘intensional’ entities.Both these features represent important advantages for the Davidsonianapproach (Davidson’s rejection of determinate meanings as havinga significant role to play in a theory of meaning already involves acommitment to an extensional approach to language). However, thesefeatures also present certain problems. Davidson wishes to apply theTarskian model as the basis for a theory of meaning for naturallanguages, but such languages are far richer than the well-definedformal systems to which Tarski had directed his attention. Inparticular natural languages contain features that seem to requireresources beyond those of first-order logic or of any purelyextensional analysis. Examples of such features include indirect orreported speech (‘Galileo said that the earth moves’),adverbial expressions (‘Flora swam slowly’ where‘slowly’ modifies ‘Flora swam’) andnon-indicative sentences such as imperatives (‘Eat youreggplant!’). An important part of Davidson’s work in thephilosophy of language has been to show how such apparentlyrecalcitrant features of natural language can indeed be analysed so asto make them amenable to a Tarskian treatment. In ‘On SayingThat’ (1968) and ‘Quotation’ (1979b) he addressesthe question of indirect speech; in ‘Moods andPerformances’ (1979a) he deals with non-indicative utterances;and in ‘Adverbs of Action’ (1985a) he takes up the problemof adverbial modification. As in Davidson’s analysis of actionsand events, the notion of logical form plays an important part in hisapproach here – the problem of how to apply a Tarskian truththeory to natural language is shown to depend on providing an analysisof the underlying logical form of natural language expressions whichrenders them in such a way that they fall under the scope of a purelyextensional approach employing only minimal logical resources.

There is, however, another more general problem that affectsDavidson’s appropriation of Tarski. Whilst Tarski uses thenotion of sameness of meaning, through the notion of translation, asthe means to provide a definition of truth (one of the requirements ofConvention T is that the sentence on the right-hand side of a TarskianT-sentence be a translation of the sentence on the left), Davidsonaims to use truth to provide an account of meaning. But in that case,it seems that Davidson needs some other way to constrain the formationof T-sentences so as to ensure that they do indeed deliver correctspecifications of what sentences mean. This problem is readilyillustrated by the question of how we are to rule out T-sentences ofthe form “‘Schnee ist weiss’ is true if and only ifgrass is green.” Since the biconditional ‘if and onlyif’ ensures only that the sentence named on the left will havethe same truth value as the sentence on the right, so it would seem toallow us to make any substitution of sentences on the right so long astheir truth value is identical to that on the left. In one respectthis problem is met by simply insisting on the way in whichT-sentences must be seen as theorems generated by a theory of meaningthat is adequate to the language in question as a whole (see‘Truth and Meaning’). Since the meaning of particularexpressions will not be independent of the meaning of otherexpressions (in virtue of the commitment to compositionality themeanings of all sentences must be generated on the same finite base),so a theory that generates problematic results in respect of oneexpression can be expected to generate problematic results elsewhere,and, in particular, to also generate results that do not meet therequirements of Convention T. This problem can also be seen, however,as closely related to another important point of difference between aTarskian truth theory and a Davidsonian theory of meaning: a theory ofmeaning for a natural language must be an empirical theory (it is,indeed, a theory that ought to apply to actual linguistic behaviour)and as such it ought to be empirically verifiable. Satisfaction of therequirement that a theory of meaning be adequate as an empiricaltheory, and so that it be adequate to the actual behaviour ofspeakers, will also ensure tighter constraints, if such are needed, onthe formation of T-sentences. Indeed, Davidson is not only quiteexplicit in emphasising the empirical character of a theory ofmeaning, but he also offers a detailed account that both explains howsuch a theory might be developed and specifies the nature of theevidence on which it must be based.

3.3 Radical Interpretation

Davidson’s strategy is to embed the formal structure for atheory of meaning (the structure he finds in a Tarskian truth theory)within a more general theory of interpretation the broad outlines ofwhich he draws from Quine’s discussion inWord andObject (first published in 1960). ‘Radicaltranslation’ is intended by Quine as an idealisation of theproject of translation that will exhibit that project in its purestform. Normally the task of the translator is aided by prior linguisticknowledge – either of the actual language to be translated or ofsome related language. Quine envisages a case in which translation ofa language must proceed without any prior linguistic knowledge andsolely on the basis of the observed behaviour of the speakers of thelanguage in conjunction with observation of the basic perceptualstimulations that give rise to that behaviour. Davidson has a broaderconception of the behavioural evidence available than does Quine (heallows that we may, for instance, identify speakers as having theattitude of ‘holding true’ with respect to sentences) and,in addition, rejects the Quinean insistence on a special role beinggiven to simple perceptual stimulations. Moreover, sinceDavidson’s interest is more properly semantic than Quine’s(Quine sees radical translation as part of a primarily epistemologicalinquiry), while Davidson also views a theory of translation alone asinsufficient to ensure understanding of the language it translates(the translation may be into a language we do not understand), so thenotion of ‘translation’ is replaced in the Davidsonianaccount with that of ‘interpretation’.Radicalinterpretation is a matter of interpreting the linguisticbehaviour of a speaker ‘from scratch’ and so withoutreliance on any prior knowledge either of the speaker’s beliefsor the meanings of the speaker’s utterances. It is intended tolay bare the knowledge that is required if linguistic understanding isto be possible, but it involves no claims about the possibleinstantiation of that knowledge in the minds of interpreters (Davidsonthus makes no commitments about the underlying psychological realityof the knowledge that a theory of interpretation makes explicit).

The basic problem that radical interpretation must address is that onecannot assign meanings to a speaker’s utterances without knowingwhat the speaker believes, while one cannot identify beliefs withoutknowing what the speaker’s utterances mean. It seems that wemust provide both a theory of belief and a theory of meaning at oneand the same time. Davidson claims that the way to achieve this isthrough the application of the so-called ‘principle ofcharity’ (he refers to it briefly elsewhere as the principle of‘rational accommodation’), a version of which is also tobe found in Quine. In Davidson’s work this principle, whichadmits of various formulations and cannot be rendered in anycompletely precise form, often appears in terms of the injunction tooptimise agreement between ourselves and those we interpret, that is,it counsels us to interpret speakers as holding true beliefs (true byour lights at least) wherever it is plausible to do (see‘Radical Interpretation’ [1973]). In fact the principlecan be seen as combining two notions: a holistic assumption ofrationality in belief (‘coherence’) and an assumption ofcausal relatedness between beliefs, especially perceptual beliefs, andthe objects of belief (‘correspondence’) (see ‘ThreeVarieties of Knowledge’ [1991]). The process of interpretationturns out to depend on both aspects of the principle. Attributions ofbelief and assignments of meaning must be consistent with one anotherand with the speaker’s overall behaviour; they must also beconsistent with the evidence afforded by our knowledge of thespeaker’s environment, since it is the worldly causes of beliefsthat must, in the ‘most basic cases’, be taken to be theobjects of belief (see ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth andKnowledge’ [1983]). Inasmuch as charity is taken to generateparticular attributions of belief, so those attributions are, ofcourse, always defeasible. The principle itself is not so, however,since it remains, on the Davidsonian account, a presupposition of anyinterpretation whatsoever. Charity is, in this respect, both aconstraint and an enabling principle in all interpretation. It is morethan just a heuristic device to be employed in the opening stages ofinterpretative engagement.

If we assume that the speaker’s beliefs, at least in thesimplest and most basic cases, are largely in agreement with our own,and so, by our account, are largely true, then we can use our ownbeliefs about the world as a guide to the speaker’s beliefs.And, provided that we can identify simple assertoric utterances on thepart of a speaker (that is, provided we can identify the attitude ofholding true), then the interconnection between belief and meaningenables us to use ourbeliefs as a guide to themeanings of the speaker’s utterances, thereby providingthe basis for both a rudimentary theory of belief and a rudimentaryaccount of meaning. So, for example, when the speaker with whom we areengaged uses a certain sequence of sounds repeatedly in the presenceof what we believe to be a rabbit, we can, as a preliminaryhypothesis, interpret those sounds as utterances about rabbits orabout some particular rabbit. Once we have arrived at a preliminaryassignment of meanings for a significant body of utterances, we cantest our assignments against further linguistic behaviour on the partof the speaker, modifying those assignments in accordance with theresults. Using our developing theory of meaning we are then able totest the initial attributions of belief that were generated throughthe application of charity, and, where necessary, modify thoseattributions also. This enables us, in turn, to further adjust ourassignments of meaning, which enables further adjustment in theattribution of beliefs, … and so the process continues untilsome sort of equilibrium is reached. The development of a more finelytuned theory of belief thus allows us to better adjust our theory ofmeaning, while the adjustment of our theory of meaning in turn enablesus to better tune our theory of belief. Through balancing attributionsof belief against assignments of meaning, we are able to move towardsan overall theory of behaviour for a speaker or speakers that combinesboth a theory of meaning and of belief within a single theory ofinterpretation.

3.4 Holism and Indeterminacy

Since it is indeed a single, combined theory that is the aim here, sothe adequacy of any such theory must be measured in terms of theextent to which the theory does indeed provide a unified view of thetotality of behavioural evidence available to us (taken in conjunctionwith our own beliefs about the world) rather than by reference to anysingle item of behaviour. This can be viewed as a more general versionof the same requirement, made in relation to a formal theory ofmeaning, that a theory of meaning for a language address the totalityof utterances for that language, although, in the context of radicalinterpretation, this requirement must be understood as also closelytied to the need to attend to normative considerations of overallrationality. A direct consequence of this holistic approach is thatthere will always be more than one theory of interpretation that willbe adequate to any particular body of evidence since theories maydiffer in particular attributions of belief or assignments of meaningwhile nevertheless providing an equally satisfactory account of thespeaker’s overall behaviour. It is this failure of uniquenessthat Davidson terms the ‘indeterminacy’ of interpretationand which provides a counterpart to the ‘indeterminacy oftranslation’ that also appears, though it has a more limitedapplication, in Quine. On the Davidsonian account, such indeterminacyoften goes unnoticed and is indeed rather less for Davidson than forQuine (partly as a consequence of Davidson’s employment ofTarski and so of the need to read the structure of first-order logicinto the language interpreted). It nevertheless remains anineliminable feature of all interpretation. Moreover, suchindeterminacy is not to be viewed merely as reflecting someepistemological limitation on interpretation, but rather derives fromthe holistic character of meaning and of belief. Such concepts referus to overall patterns in the behaviour of speakers rather than todiscrete, entities to which interpretation must somehow gain access.Indeed, holism of this sort applies, not only to meanings and beliefs,but also to the so-called ‘propositional attitudes’ ingeneral. The latter are most simply characterised as attitudesspecifiable by reference to a proposition (believing that there iseggplant for dinner is a matter of holding true the proposition thatthere is eggplant for dinner; desiring that there be eggplant fordinner is a matter of wanting it to be true that there be eggplant fordinner) and so thecontents of attitudes of this sort arealwayspropositional. Davidsonian holism is thus a holismthat applies to meanings, to attitudes, and, thereby, to the contentof attitudes. Indeed, we can speak of the Davidsonian account ofinterpretation as providing a quite general account of how mentalcontent is determined (such content being understood as the content ofpropositional mental states such as belief): through the causalrelation between speakers and objects in the world and through therational integration of speakers’ behaviour. Thus, asDavidson’s approach to the theory of meaning turns out to implya more general theory of interpretation, so his holistic view ofmeaning implies a holistic view of the mental, and of mental content,in general.

Davidson’s commitment to the indeterminacy that follows from hisholistic approach has led some to view his position as involving aform of anti-realism about the mind and about beliefs, desires and soforth. Davidson argues, however, that the indeterminacy ofinterpretation should be understood analogously with the indeterminacythat attaches to measurement. Such theories assign numerical values toobjects on the basis of empirically observable phenomena and inaccordance with certain formal theoretical constraints. Where thereexist different theories that address the same phenomena, each theorymay assign different numerical values to the objects at issue (as doCelsius and Fahrenheit in the measurement of temperature), and yetthere need be no difference in the empirical adequacy of thosetheories, since what is significant is the overall pattern ofassignments rather than the value assigned in any particular case.Similarly in interpretation, it is the overall pattern that a theoryfinds in behaviour that is significant and that remains invariantbetween different, but equally adequate, theories. An account ofmeaning for a language is an account of just this pattern.

Although the indeterminacy thesis has sometimes been a focus forobjections to Davidson’s approach, it is the more basic thesisof holism as developed in its full-blown form in the account ofradical interpretation (and particularly as it relates to meaning)that has often attracted the most direct and trenchant criticism.Michael Dummett has been one of the most important critics of theDavidsonian position (see especially Dummett 1975). Dummett arguesthat Davidson’s commitment to holism not only gives rise toproblems concerning, for instance, how a language can be learnt (sinceit seems to require that one come to understand the whole of thelanguage at one go, whereas learning is always piecemeal), but that italso restricts Davidson from being able to give what Dummett views asa properly full-blooded account of the nature of linguisticunderstanding (since it means that Davidson cannot provide an accountthat explicates the semantic in terms of the non-semantic). Criticismhas also come from Jerry Fodor, amongst others, whose opposition toholism (not only in Davidson, but in Quine, Dennett and elsewhere) islargely motivated by a desire to defend the possibility of a certainscientific approach to the mind (see especially, Fodor and Lepore1992).

3.5 Language and Convention

The heart of a Davidsonian theory of interpretation is, of course, aTarskian truth theory. But a truth theory provides only the formalstructure on which linguistic interpretation is based: such a theoryneeds to be embedded within a broader approach that looks to theinterconnections between utterances, other behaviour and attitudes; inaddition, the application of such a theory to actual linguisticbehaviour must also take account of the dynamic and shifting characterof such behaviour. This latter point is easily overlooked, but itleads Davidson to some important conclusions. Ordinary speech is fullof ungrammatical constructions (constructions that may even beacknowledged to be ungrammatical by the speaker herself), incompletesentences or phrases, metaphors, neologisms, jokes, puns and allmanner of phenomena that cannot be met simply by the application toutterances of a pre-existing theory for the language being spoken.Linguistic understanding cannot, then, be a matter simply of themechanical application of a Tarski-like theory (although this is justwhat Davidson might be taken to suggest in the early essays). Inpapers such as ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs’ (1986),Davidson addresses just this point, arguing that while linguisticunderstanding does indeed depend upon a grasp of the formal structureof a language, that structure always stands in need of modification inthe light of actual linguistic behaviour. Understanding a language isa matter of continually adjusting interpretative presuppositions(presuppositions that are often not explicit) in accord with theutterances to be interpreted. Furthermore, this calls upon skills andknowledge (imagination, attentiveness to the attitudes and behaviourof others, knowledge of the world) that are not specificallylinguistic and that are part of a more general ability to get on inthe world and in relation to others – an ability that alsoresists any formal explication. In ‘A Nice Derangement ofEpitaphs’, Davidson puts this point, in provocative fashion, byclaiming that ‘there is no such thing as a language’(adding the immediate qualification ‘not if a language isanything like what many philosophers and linguists havesupposed’). Put less provocatively, the essential point is thatlinguistic conventions (and in particular linguistic conventions thattake the form of agreement over the employment of shared syntactic andsemantic rules), while they may well facilitate understanding, cannotbe the basis for such understanding.

Davidson’s denial of rule-based conventions as having a foundingrole in linguistic understanding, together with his emphasis on theway in which the capacity for linguistic understanding must be seen aspart as part of a more general set of capacities for getting on in theworld, underlie Davidson’s much-discussed account of metaphorand related features of language (see ‘What MetaphorsMean’ [1978b]). Davidson rejects the idea that metaphoricallanguage can be explained by reference to any set of rules that governsuch meaning. Instead it depends on using sentences with their‘literal’ or standard meanings in ways that give rise tonew or unexpected insights, and just as there are no rules by which wecan work out what a speaker means when she utters an ungrammaticalsentence, makes a pun or otherwise uses language in a way thatdiverges from the norm, so there are no rules that govern the grasp ofmetaphor.

4. Knowledge and Belief

4.1 ‘Three Varieties of Knowledge’

In Davidson’s work the question ‘what is meaning?’is replaced by the question ‘What would a speaker need to knowto understand the utterances of another?’ The result is anaccount that treats the theory of meaning as necessarily part of amuch broader theory of interpretation and, indeed, of a much broaderapproach to the mental as such. This account is holistic inasmuch asit requires that any adequate theory must address linguistic andnon-linguistic behaviour in its entirety. As we have already seen,this means that a theory of interpretation must adopt a compositionalapproach to the analysis of meaning; it must recognise theinterconnected character of attitudes and of attitudes and behaviour;and it must also attribute attitudes and interpret behaviour in a wayconstrained by normative principles of rationality. Rationality isnot, however, the only principle on which Davidson’s account ofradical interpretation depends. It involves, in fact, a marriage ofboth holistic and ‘externalist’ considerations:considerations concerning the dependence of attitudinal content on therational connections between attitudes (‘holism’) andconcerning the dependence of such content on the causal connectionsbetween attitudes and objects in the world(‘externalism’). Indeed, this marriage is evident, as wesaw earlier, in the principle of charity itself and its combination ofconsiderations of both ‘coherence’ and‘correspondence’. Davidson holds, in fact, that attitudescan be attributed, and so attitudinal content determined, only on thebasis of a triangular structure that requires interaction between atleast two creatures as well as interaction between each creature and aset of common objects in the world.

Identifying the content of attitudes is a matter of identifying theobjects of those attitudes, and, in the most basic cases, the objectsof attitudes are identical with the causes of those same attitudes (asthe cause of my belief that there is a bird outside my window is thebird outside my window). Identifying beliefs involves a processanalogous to that of ‘triangulation’ (as employed intopographical surveying and in the fixing of location) whereby theposition of an object (or some location or topographical feature) isdetermined by taking a line from each of two already known locationsto the object in question – the intersection of the lines fixesthe position of the object (this idea first appears in ‘RationalAnimals [1982]). Similarly, the objects of propositional attitudes arefixed by looking to find objects that are the common causes, and sothe common objects, of the attitudes of two or more speakers who canobserve and respond to one another’s behaviour. In ‘ThreeVarieties of Knowledge’, Davidson develops the idea oftriangulation as a means to elaborate the three-way conceptualinterdependence that he argues obtains between knowledge of oneself,knowledge of others and knowledge of the world. Just as knowledge oflanguage cannot be separated from our more general knowledge of theworld, so Davidson argues that knowledge of oneself, knowledge ofother persons and knowledge of a common, ‘objective’ worldform an interdependent set of concepts no one of which is possible inthe absence of the others.

The idea of triangulation has important implications that go farbeyond questions of knowledge alone, and the idea is one of the mostimportant and enduring, but also controversial elements inDavidson’s later thinking (see Myers and Verheggen, 2016).Moreover, although the idea may appear at first sight to be intendedpurely as a metaphor, the structure of triangulation seems actually todirect attention to the way in which knowledge, action, and contentare fundamentally dependent on the genuinely embodied and locatedcharacter of speakers and agents. As Davidson presents matters, it isonly through their concrete engagement in the world, in relation bothto objects and to other speakers or agents, that a putative speaker oragent can be capable of genuine speaking or agency; only then can theyspeak, act,or think.

The emphasis on the holistic and externalist character of knowledgeand of content that is so central to triangulation is also expressedin Davidson’s well-known ‘Swampman’ example (in‘Knowing One’s own Mind’, Davidson 1987:443–4) Here we are asked to imagine a situation in which alightning strike in a swamp reduces Davidson’s body to its basicelements, while simultaneously transforming a nearby dead tree into anexact replica of him. Although the resulting ‘Swampman’behaves exactly like the original author of ‘RadicalInterpretation’, Davidson denies that the ‘Swampman’could properly be said to have thoughts or its words have meaning– and the reason is simply that the Swampman would lack the sortof causal history that is required in order to establish the rightconnections between itself, others and the world that underpin theattribution of thought and meaning. For all its notoriety, however,the Swampman example is not elaborated upon by Davidson, and theexample has a very limited usefulness. In this respect, the attentionSwampman has generated is quite disproportionate to his extremelybrief appearance in Davidson’s writing.

4.2 Against Relativism and Scepticism

Although it is not simply an epistemological notion, the way Davidsonpresents the idea of triangulation tends to be such as to bring itsepistemological implications to the fore. This is especially true ofthe way Davidson develops the idea in ‘Three Varieties ofKnowledge’. Since our knowledge of our own minds is notindependent of our knowledge of the world nor of our knowledge ofothers, so we cannot treat self-knowledge as a matter of our havingaccess to some set of private ‘mental’ objects. Ourknowledge of ourselves arises only in relation to our involvement withothers and with respect to a publicly accessible world – as wellas a history of such involvement (this is indeed part of the point ofthe Swampman example). Even so, we retain a certain authority over ourown attitudes and utterances simply in virtue of the fact that thoseattitudes and utterances are indeed our own (see ‘First-PersonAuthority’, [1984]). Moreover, because our knowledge of theworld is inseparable from other forms of knowledge, globalepistemological scepticism (the view that all or most of our beliefsabout the world could be false) turns out to be committed to much morethan is usually supposed. Should it indeed turn out that our beliefsabout the world were all, or for the most part, false, then this wouldnot only imply the falsity of most of our beliefs about others, but itwould also have the peculiar consequence of making false most of ourbeliefs about ourselves – including the supposition that we doindeed hold those particular false beliefs. Although this may fallshort of demonstrating the falsity of such scepticism, it surelydemonstrates it to be deeply problematic.

The way in which the Davidsonian rejection of scepticism does indeedderive quite directly from Davidson’s adoption of a holistic,externalist approach to knowledge, and to attitudinal content ingeneral, has sometimes been obscured by Davidson’s presentationof his argument against scepticism through the employment (for thefirst time in ‘Thought and Talk’[1975]) of the ratherproblematic notion of an ‘omniscient interpreter’ (theidea echoes one deployed by Wilfrid Sellars in an essay with whichDavidson was certainly familiar [Sellars, 1948]). Such an interpreterwould attribute beliefs to others and assign meanings to theirutterances but would nevertheless do so on the basis of her own (true)beliefs. The omniscient interpreter would therefore have to find alarge amount of agreement between her own beliefs and the beliefs ofthose she interprets, and what was agreed would also, by hypothesis,be true. Like the Swampman example, however, the omniscientinterpreter example has given rise to a number of complications andmisunderstandings (so much so that Davidson has expressed regret atever having deployed those examples in the first place), and althoughthe omniscient interpreter appears at several places inDavidson’s writings, the idea disappears from his laterdiscussions, and does not play a crucial role in his thinking.

A feature of both the triangulation argument, and the Davidsonianaccount of radical interpretation, is that the attribution ofattitudes must always proceed in tandem with the interpretation ofutterances – identifying content, whether of utterances or ofattitudes, is indeed a single project. An inability to interpretutterances (that is, an inability to assign meanings to instances ofputative linguistic behaviour) will thereby imply an inability toattribute attitudes (and vice versa). A creature that we cannotinterpret as capable of meaningful speech will thus also be a creaturethat we cannot interpret as capable of possessing contentfulattitudes. Such considerations lead Davidson to deny thatnon-linguistic animals are capable of thought – where thoughtinvolves the possession of propositional attitudes such as beliefs ordesires (see especially ‘Thought and Talk’). This does notmean that such animals have no mental life at all, nor does it meanthat we cannot usefully use mental concepts in explaining andpredicting the behaviour of such creatures. What it does mean,however, is that the extent to which we can think of such creatures ashaving attitudes and a mental life like our own is measured by theextent to which we can assign determinate propositional content to theattitudes we would ascribe to those creatures. A further consequenceof this view is that the idea of an untranslatable language – annotion often found in association with the thesis of conceptualrelativism – cannot be given any coherent formulation(Davidson’s argument here is suggestive, as Davidson notes, of aform of transcendental argumentation; see Davidson, 2001b: 72; butalso Davidson, in Hahn, 1999: 342–4). Inability to translatecounts as evidence, not of the existence of an untranslatablelanguage, but of the absence of a language of any sort (see ‘Onthe Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’ [1974])

4.3 The ‘Third Dogma’ of Empiricism

Davidson’s rejection of the idea of an untranslatable language(and the associated idea, also common to many forms of conceptualrelativism, of a radically different, and so‘incommensurable’ system of belief) is part of a moregeneral argument that he advances (notably in ‘On the Very Ideaof a Conceptual Scheme’) against the so-called ‘thirddogma’ of empiricism. The first two dogmas are those famouslyidentified by Quine in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ (firstpublished in thePhilosophical Review, in 1951). The first isthat of reductionism (the idea that, for any meaningful statement, itcan be recast in the language of pure sensory experience, or, atleast, in terms of a set of confirmatory instances), while the secondis the analytic-synthetic distinction (the idea that, with respect toall meaningful statements, one can distinguish between statements thatare true in virtue of their meaning and those that are true in virtueof both their meanings and some fact or facts about the world). Therejection of both these dogmas can be seen as an important elementthroughout Davidson’s thinking. The third dogma, which Davidsonclaims can still be discerned in Quine’s work (and so cansurvive the rejection even of the analytic-synthetic distinction),consists in the idea that one can distinguish within knowledge orexperience between a conceptual component (the ‘conceptualscheme’) and an empirical component (the ‘empiricalcontent’) – the former is often taken to derive fromlanguage and the later from experience, nature or some form of‘sensory input’. While there are difficulties in evenarriving at a clear formulation of this distinction (particularly sofar as the nature of the relation between the two components isconcerned), such a distinction depends on being able to distinguish,at some basic level, between a ‘subjective’ contributionto knowledge that comes from us and an ‘objective’contribution that comes from the world. What the Davidsonian accountof knowledge and interpretation demonstrates, however, is that no suchdistinction can be drawn. Attitudes are already interconnected withobjects and events in the world (causally, semantically andepistemically), whilst knowledge of self and others alreadypresupposes knowledge of the world. The very idea of a conceptualscheme is thus rejected by Davidson along with the idea of any strongform of conceptual relativism. To possess attitudes and be capable ofspeech is already to be capable of interpreting others and to be opento interpretation by them.

4.4 Truth, Predication, and Realism/Anti-Realism

Davidson emphasizes the holistic character of the mental (both interms of the interdependence that obtains between various forms ofknowledge as well as the interconnected character of attitudes and ofattitudes and behaviour). He has, at times, also referred to hisposition as involving a ‘coherence’ theory of truth and ofknowledge (in ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge’[1983]). Nevertheless, Davidson is not a coherentist, in any standardsense, about either truth or knowledge. Nor, for all that he adopts aTarskian approach to meaning, does he espouse a correspondence theoryof truth (in fact, he denies that a Tarskian truth theory is acorrespondence theory in any conventional sense). In general, Davidsoneschews the attempt to provide an account of the nature of truth,maintaining that truth is a central concept that cannot be reduced toor replaced by any other notion (see [Davidson 1990a] and [Davidson2005b]). Since he takes truth to belong to sentences or statements,and not to ‘propositions’ in any philosophicallysignificant sense (inTruth and Predication [2005b], he isparticularly emphatic in rejecting the idea of the proposition as atheoretical or explanatory concept), Davidson denies that truths canbe understood as timeless or eternal (or at least they are no more sothan are languages or sentences themselves). The only way of definingtruth, as Davidson sees it, is by means of a Tarskian truth theory andsuch a theory is not a definition of truth in any unqualified sense,but only a definition of the truth predicate as it applies within aparticular language.

Davidson’s employment of the notion of coherence is best viewed,not as a way of understanding truth, but rather as reflecting hiscommitment to the fundamentally rational and holistic character of themind. It also connects with Davidson’s rejection of those formsof epistemological foundationalism that would attempt to groundknowledge or belief in the sensory causes of belief – beliefs,as one might expect given Davidson’s holistic approach, can findevidential support only in other beliefs. Similarly, Davidson’ssometime employment of the notion of correspondence is bestunderstood, not as providing, any direct elucidation of the nature oftruth, but rather as deriving from his externalist commitment to theidea that the content of belief is dependent upon the worldly causesof belief. In ‘True to the Facts’ (1969b) Davidson doesdefend what he there presents as a form of correspondence theory oftruth. However, not only does Davidson later relinquish the claim thathis is a ‘correspondence’ view of truth (this is alreadyevident in ‘The Structure and Content of Truth’ [1990a],much of the material from which was later incorporated intoTruthand Predication [2005b]), but the account set out in ‘Trueto the Facts’ is, in any case, far removed from what is usuallytaken to be involved in any correspondence theory.

The strategy that Davidson employs in relation to the concept of truthreflects a more general approach that runs throughout his thinking.Rather than trying to reduce key concepts, like truth, to somethingelse, his tendency is to retain the primitive character of thoseconcepts and instead to look to how they are worked out within thelarger structure to which they belong (in this respect, Davidson is amoderate ‘deflationist’ about most of his key concepts).The strategy Davidson adopts in respect of truth is therefore much thesame strategy as that which he adopts with respect to meaning (whichshould not surprise us given the role Tarski plays): meaning belongsprimarily to sentences, it is not reducible to any other notion, andit is explicated only by reference to a larger linguistic structure.Moreover, this strategy is also one Davidson applies to the topic thatoccupies a large part of his last work – his inquiry into theproblem of the problem of predication or of the unity of theproposition (2005b). How are we to elucidate the relation between asubject and that which is predicated of it in a standard predicativesentence such as ‘Socrates is mortal’? The problem, likethe problem that arises when one tries to use the truth predicatereflexively, is that any attempt to explicate the predicative relationseems to give rise to circularity or regress. Davidson’ssolution is to deny that predication can be explained by resort to anyprior notion of propositionality. Instead, Davidson takes predicationas basic, irreducible, and able to be explicated only through the sortof structure that is revealed by a Tarski-style theory of meaning.

The question of truth lies at the heart of the realist/anti-realistcontroversy that was once a major concern of many Anglo-Americanphilosophers. Despite his insistence on the indispensability of anirreducibly basic concept of objective truth, and his rejection ofboth sceptical and relativist positions, Davidson has been variouslyassimilated, at different times and by different critics, to both therealist and the anti-realist camps. Yet realism and anti-realism areequally unsatisfactory from a Davidsonian point of view, since neitheris compatible with the holistic and externalist character of knowledgeand belief. Realism makes truth inaccessible (inasmuch as it admitsthe sceptical possibility that even our best-confirmed theories aboutthe world could all be false), while anti-realism makes truth tooepistemic (inasmuch as it rejects the idea of truth as objective). Inthis respect, and as he himself makes clear (see 1990a, 2005b),Davidson does not merely reject the specific premises that underliethe realist and anti-realist positions but views the very disputebetween them as essentially misconceived. This reflects acharacteristic feature of Davidson’s thinking in general (andnot just as it relates to realism and anti-realism), namely itsresistance to any simple classification using the standardphilosophical categories of the day.

5. Philosophical Contexts and Connections

Whilst Davidson’s work was at the centre of many analyticdiscussions during the 1970s and 1980s, it was also increasinglyjuxtaposed, from the mid-1980s onwards, with ideas and approaches fromoutside of the analytic mainstream –­ often to his ownbemusement. “What am I doing here?” asks Davidson in hiscatalogue essay for the 1992 Robert Morris exhibition. “BlindTime Drawings IV: Drawing with Davidson”, and he goes on:“Nothing has surprised me more than to discover myselfanthologized in books with titles such asPost-AnalyticPhilosophy orAfter Philosophy” (Davidson, 160;see Rajchman and West, 1985; Baynes, Bohman, McCarthy, 1987;Dasenbrock, 1993).

Part of the reason for this juxtaposition, as Davidson himselfsurmised, was to do with his “rejection of subjectivist theoriesof epistemology and meaning” and his affirmation of the viewthat “thought itself is essentially social” (Davidson,160). Davidson’s work, alongside that of figures such as Deweyand Heidegger, was thus explicitly drawn upon by Richard Rorty in theelaboration of his own brand of pragmatist anti-representationalism(see Rorty, 1991, i). And although Davidson did not regard himself asa pragmatist (again reflecting his resistance to easy categorisationas well as his rejection of pragmatist theories of truth), he didacknowledge convergences between his work and that of figures withinthe pragmatist tradition, including C.I. Lewis and G.H. Mead.Hans-Georg Gadamer appeared to feel a sense of affinity with Davidson,recommending Davidson for the Hegel Prize in 1989, writing to him inthe years after, and asking Davidson to contribute to his volume inthe Library of Living Philosophers (see Davidson, 2005: 261–276;Gadamer, 1997) ­– although this did not prevent the two frommisreading each other in crucial ways. Davidson’s interest inpsychoanalysis, partly due to the influence of Marcia Cavell, can beseen in some of his writings on irrationality and weakness of thewill, and the connections between aspects of Davidsonian and Freudianthinking are explored by Cavell herself (see Cavell, 1993). Variouswriters have taken up connections between the work of Davidson andthat of Gadamer (see e.g. essays by Braver, Dostal, Fultner, Vessey,and Malpas, in Malpas, 2011: 147–190 & 219–279; seealso Keane, 2021), as well as between Davidson and Heidegger (e.g.Malpas, 1992, 2012: 199–224; Wrathall, 1999; Nulty 2006; Okrent,in Malpas, 2011: 87–112), and Davidson and Derrida (e.g.Dasenbrock, 1993; Wheeler, 2000; Wheeler in Malpas, 2011:29–42). The role of a form of transcendental argumentation inDavidson has also been a focus for several discussions (see e.g.Maker, 1993; Carpenter, 2003), and has sometimes figured in broaderexplorations of connections between Davidson and Kant (see e.g.Goldberg 2015, also Fennell, 2010, and, in relation to the question ofidealism, Haddock, 2011). Davidson himself acknowledged the importantinfluence of Wittgenstein in his work (on connections between the twosee Verheggen, 2017; also Stoutland, in Malpas, 2011: 297–324)as well as exploring parallels between aspects of his thinking andthat of various figures within the history of philosophy, mostnotably, Spinoza (Davidson, 2005: 295–313; see also Van derBurg, 2007) and Plato (2005: 223–260), as well as Aristotle(Davidson, 2005: 277–294) and Hume (Davidson, 2001:277–290), and, if very briefly, Kant (Davidson, 2001: 207).Davidson’s early studies in the history of philosophy,undertaken, at Harvard, under the influence of A. N. Whitehead, andliterature (Davidson retained an abiding interest in the work of JamesJoyce, see Davidson, 2005: 143–157; also Dasenbrock, 2002)provide an important if largely hidden background throughout hismature thinking.

Bibliography

An extensive bibliography of primary and secondary material wascompiled by Davidson himself as part of Hahn (ed.) 1999, and althoughnow over 20 years old, it remains useful.

Primary Literature

• 1957,Decision-Making: An Experimental Approach, with P.Suppes, Stanford: Stanford University Press, reprinted 1977, Chicago:University of Chicago Press, Midway Reprint Series.
• 1963, ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’,Journal ofPhilosophy, 60: 685–700; reprinted in Davidson 2001a.
• 1967a, ‘Causal Relations’,Journal ofPhilosophy, 64: 691–703; reprinted in Davidson 2001a.
• 1967b, ‘The Logical Form of Action Sentences’, inNicholas Rescher (ed.),The Logic of Decision and Action,Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, reprinted in Davidson,2001a.
• 1967c, ‘Truth and Meaning’,Synthese, 17:304–23; reprinted in Davidson 2001b.
• 1968, ‘On Saying That’,Synthese, 19:130–46; reprinted in Davidson 2001b.
• 1969a, ‘The Individuation of Events’, in NicholasRescher (ed.),Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel, Dordrecht:D. Reidel, reprinted in Davidson 2001a.
• 1969b, ‘True to the Facts’,Journal ofPhilosophy, 66: 748–764; reprinted in Davidson 2001b.
• 1970a, ‘How is Weakness of the Will Possible?’, inJoel Feinberg (ed.),Moral Concepts, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, reprinted in Davidson 2001a.
• 1970b, ‘Mental Events’, in Lawrence Foster and J. W.Swanson (eds.),Experience and Theory, London: Duckworth,reprinted in Davidson 2001a.
• 1971, ‘Agency’, in Robert Binkley, Richard Bronaugh,and Ausonia Marras (eds.),Agent, Action, and Reason,Toronto: University of Toronto Press, reprinted in Davidson2001a.
• 1973, ‘Radical Interpretation’,Dialectica,27: 314–28; reprinted in Davidson 2001b.
• 1974, ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’,Proceedings and Addresses of the American PhilosophicalAssociation, 47: 5–20; reprinted in Davidson 2001b.
• 1975, ‘Thought and Talk’, in S. Guttenplan (ed.),Mind and Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, reprintedin Davidson 2001b
• 1977, ‘The Method of Truth in Metaphysics’, in P.A.French, T.E. Uehling Jr., and H.K. Wettstein (eds.),MidwestStudies in Philosophy 2: Studies in the Philosophy of Language,Morris: University of Minnesota Press, reprinted in Davidson2001b.
• 1978a, ‘Intending’, in Yirmiahu Yovel (ed.),Philosophy of History and Action, Dordrecht: D. Reidel,reprinted in Davidson 2001a.
• 1978b, ‘What Metaphors Mean’,CriticalInquiry, 5: 31–47; reprinted in Davidson 2001b.
• 1979a, ‘Moods and Performances’, in A. Margalit (ed.),Meaning and Use, Dordrecht: D. Reidel, reprinted in Davidson,2001b.
• 1979b, ‘Quotation’,Theory and Decision, 11,reprinted in Davidson 2001b.
• 1982a, ‘Rational Animals’,Dialectica, 36:318–27; reprinted in Davidson 2001c.
• 1982b, ‘Two Paradoxes of Irrationality’, in R.Wollheim and J. Hopkins (eds.)Philosophical Essays on Freud,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 289–305; reprinted inDavidson 2004
• 1983, ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge’, inD. Henrich (ed.),Kant oder Hegel?, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta;reprinted in Lepore 1986, and Davidson 2001c.
• 1984, ‘First-Person Authority’,Dialectica,38: 101–112; reprinted in Davidson 2001c.
• 1985a, ‘Adverbs of Action’, in Vermazen and Hintikka(eds.), 1985, reprinted in Davidson 2001a.
• 1985b, ‘Reply to Quine on Events’, in Lepore andMcLaughlin (eds.), 1985, reprinted in Davidson 2001a.
• 1986, ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs’, in Lepore(ed.), 1986, reprinted in Davidson 2005a.
• 1987, ‘Knowing One’s Own Mind’, inProceedings and Addresses of the American PhilosophicalAssociation, 61: 441–58; reprinted in Davidson 2001c.
• 1990a, ‘The Structure and Content of Truth’ (The DeweyLectures 1989),Journal of Philosophy, 87:279–328.
• 1990b,Plato’s ‘Philebus’, New York:Garland Publishing.
• 1991, ‘Three Varieties of Knowledge’, in A. PhillipsGriffiths (ed.),A.J. Ayer Memorial Essays: Royal Institute ofPhilosophy Supplement, 30, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,reprinted in Davidson 2001c.
• 1993, ‘Thinking Causes’, in John Heil and Alfred Mele(eds.),Mental Causation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, reprintedin Davidson 2005a.
• 1995, ‘Laws and Cause,’Dialectica, 49:263–280; reprinted in Davidson 2005a.
• 1997,In conversation : Donald Davidson, videorecording,directed and produced by Rudolf Farra (19 conversations betweenDavidson and other philosophers), London: Philosophy International,Centre for Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences, LondonSchool of Economics (see:https://www.lse.ac.uk/cpnss/research/research-projects/philosophy-archive/research/previous-research/philosophy-international/davidson).
• 1999, ‘Intellectual Autobiography’, in Hahn (ed.),1999.
• 2001a,Essays on Actions and Events, Oxford: ClarendonPress, 2nd edn,
• 2001b,Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 2nd edn.
• 2001c,Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford:Clarendon Press.
• 2004,Problems of Rationality, with introduction byMarcia Cavell and interview with Ernest Lepore, Oxford: ClarendonPress.
• 2005a,Truth, Language and History: Philosophical Essays,with Introduction by Marcia Cavell, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• 2005b,Truth and Predication, Cambridge, Mass.: BelknapPress.
• 2006,The Essential Davidson, ed. Kirk Ludwig and ErnestLepore, New York: Oxford University Press, contains a selection madeup of 15 of Davidson’s essays taken largely fromEssays onActions and Events andInquiries into Truth andInterpretation.
• 2020,The Structure of Truth. The 1970 John LockeLectures, edited by Cameron Domenica Kirk-Giannini and ErnestLepore, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Secondary Literature

• Amoretti, Maria and Nicla Vassalo (eds.), 2009,Knowledge,Language, and Interpretation: On the Philosophy of DonaldDavidson, Frankfurt-Heusenstamm: Ontos Verlag.
• Baghramian, Maria (ed.), 2013,Donald Davidson: Life andWords, London: Routledge.
• Brandom, Robert B., 2020, ‘Remembering Richard Rorty: AnInterview with Robert Brandom’, in Pedro Góis Moreira.(ed),Revisiting Richard Rorty, Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press,pp. 251–262.
• Baynes, Kenneth, James Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy, 1987,After Philosophy: End or Transformation?, Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press.
• Braver, Lee, 2017, ‘Davidson’s Interpretation ofQuine’s Radical Translation, and How It Helped Make AnalyticPhilosophy a Tradition’, in Aaron Preston (ed.),AnalyticPhilosophy: An Interpretive History, London: Routledge, pp.240–253.
• Carpenter, Andrew N., 2003, ‘Davidson’s TranscendentalArgumentation’, in Jeff Malpas (ed.),From Kant to Davidson:Philosophy and the Idea of the Transcendental, London: Routledge,pp. 219–237.
• Cavell, Marcia, 1993,The Psychoanalytic Mind: From Freud toPhilosophy, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
• Dasenbrock, Reed Way (ed.), 1993,Literary Theory AfterDavidson, University Park: Pennsylvania University Press.
• Dasenbrock, Reed Way, 2002, ‘Philosophy After Joyce: Derridaand Davidson’,Philosophy and Literature 26:334–345
• Dummett, Michael, 1975, ‘What is a Theory of Meaning’,in S. Guttenplan (ed.),Mind and Language, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
• Evnine, Simon, 1991,Donald Davidson, Cambridge: PolityPress.
• Fennell, John, 2010, ‘Rethinking Anglo- American philosophy:the neo- Kantianism of Davidson, McDowell, and Brandom’, Alan D.Schrift (ed.),The History of Continental Philosophy,Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 2855–2874.
• Fodor, Jerry and Ernest Lepore, 1992,Holism: AShopper’s Guide, Oxford: Blackwell.
• Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 1997, ‘Reply to Davidson’, inLewis Edwin Hahn (ed.),The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer,Library of Living Philosophers, Volume XXIV, Chicago: Open Court,pp. 433–435.
• Goldberg, Nathaniel Jason, 2015,Kantian ConceptualGeography, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Glüer, Kathrin, 2011,Donald Davidson: A ShortIntroduction, New York: Oxford University Press
• Haddock, Adrian, 2011, ‘Davidson and Idealism’, inJoel Smith and Peter Sullivan (eds.),Transcendental Philosophyand Naturalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.26–41.
• Hahn, Lewis Edwin (ed.), 1999,The Philosophy of DonaldDavidson, Library of Living Philosophers, Volume XXVII, Chicago:Open Court.
• Isaac, Joel, 2013, ‘Donald Davidson and the analyticrevolution in american philosophy, 1940–1970’,TheHistorical Journal 56: 757–779.
• Joseph, Marc A., 2004,Donald Davidson, Montreal:McGill-Queen’s University Press.
• Keane, Niall, 2021, ‘Hermeneutics in a Broader Horizon:Gadamer, Rorty, Davidson’, in Robert Dostal (ed.),TheCambridge Companion to Gadamer, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2nd edn., pp. 374–405.
• Kotatko, Petr, Peter Pagin and Gabriel Segal (eds.), 2001,Interpreting Davidson, Stanford: CSLI Publications.
• Lepore, Ernest (ed.), 1986,Truth and Interpretation:Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Oxford: BasilBlackwell.
• Lepore, Ernest and Kirk Ludwig, 2006,Donald Davidson:Meaning, Truth, Language and Reality, Oxford: ClarendonPress.
• –––, 2007,Donald Davidson’sTruth-Theoretic Semantics, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Lepore, Ernest and Kirk Ludwig (eds.), 2013,A Companion toDonald Davidson, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Lepore, Ernest and Brian McLaughlin (eds.), 1985,Actions andEvents: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson,Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Ludwig, Kirk (ed.), 2003,Donald Davidson, New York:Cambridge University Press.
• Maker, William, 1993, ‘Davidson’s TranscendentalArguments’,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,51: 345–360
• Malpas, Jeff, 1992,Donald Davidson and the Mirror ofMeaning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Malpas, Jeff, 2012,Heidegger and the Thinking of Place,Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Malpas, Jeff (ed.), 2011,Dialogues with Davidson: Acting,Interpreting, Understanding, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT PressPress.
• Mou, Bo (ed.), 2006,Davidson’s Philosophy and ChinesePhilosophy. Constructive Engagement, Leiden: Brill.
• Myers, Robert H.and Claudine Verheggen, 2016,DonaldDavidson’s Triangulation Argument: A Philosophical Inquiry,New York: Routledge.
• Nulty, Timothy J. , 2006,Primitive Disclosive Alethism:Davidson, Heidegger, and the Nature of Truth, New York: PeterLang.
• Okrent, Mark, 2011, ‘Davidson, Heidegger and Truth’,in Malpas (ed.).Dialogues with Davidson,pp.87–112.
• Preyer, Gerhard, Frank Siebelt and Alexander Ulfig (eds.), 1994,Language, Mind and Epistemology, Dordrecht: Kluwer.
• Preyer, Gerhard (ed.), 2012,Donald Davidson on Truth,Meaning, and the Mental, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Rajchman, John, and Cornell West (eds.), 1985,Post-AnalyticPhilosophy, New York: Columbia.
• Ramberg, Bjørn, 1989,Donald Davidson’sPhilosophy of Language: An Introduction, Oxford: BasilBlackwell.
• Sellars, Wilfrid, 1948, ‘Realism and the New Way ofWords’,Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 8:601–634.
• Stoecker, Ralf (ed.), 1993,Reflecting Davidson, Berlin:W. de Gruyter.
• Van der Burg, Floris, 2007,Davidson and Spinoza,Aldershot: Ashgate.
• Verheggen, Claudine (ed.), 2017,Wittgenstein and Davidson onLanguage, Thought, and Action, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
• Vermazen, B., and Hintikka, M., 1985,Essays on Davidson:Actions and Events, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Wheeler, Samuel C. III, 2000,Deconstruction as AnalyticPhilosophy, Stanford, Stanford University Press.
• Wrathall, Mark A., 1999, ‘The Conditions of Truth inHeidegger and Davidson’,The Monist 82:304–323.
• Zeglen, Ursula M. (ed.), 1991,Donald Davidson: Truth, meaningand knowledge, London: Routledge.

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