If we look at the starting point of learning a first language as involving (lots of) triangulation situations which are special in the sense that in those situations there necessarily is an asymmetrical relation of authority between the parties involved, is that not, pace Davidson, a form/source of social externalism?
If this is right, then one could make the case that first-person authority exists only as the result of successful communication. And that would make throw a different light on the appeal that Davidson makes to first-person authority in his argumentation against social externalism à la Burge.
The reason that Davidson wants to keep social externalism at arm’s length is probably that he thinks it might interfere with his claim that language is not an epistemic intermediary. After all, if we accept social externalism and accept the possibility of variety in sources of such external elements, then some form of relativism seem to ensue.
Martin Stokhof from: Aantekeningen/Notes date: 20/10/2015
Concerning Dummett’s criticism of Davidson’s semantics (cf., ‘What is a theory of meaning? (II)’ ). First step: a semantic theory is (also) a theory of competence, i.e., of the ability to use the language with its semantics. That much is unproblematic from a Davidsonian perspective, it is what Davidson starts out with (cf., the opening paragraphs of ‘Truth and meaning, and ‘Radical interpretation’). Second step: adding the requirement that this ‘knowledge of language’ must be manifested (or, at least, manifestable). As such that does not seem to be objectionable from a Davidsonian perspective, the crux of the matter is what will count as manifestation of semantic knowledge.
Next, Dummett seems to make two moves. First he constructs semantic knowledge as the ability to observe that truth conditions obtain, and then, correctly of course, notes that taken in a more or less `literal’ way, this is problematic for sentences that have truth conditions that involve counterfactual or past situations or infinite domains. One reply to that could be that observation of truth conditions being fulfilled is not a very representative case anyway, and that it seems much more natural to construe manifestation of knowledge of truth conditions in terms of having knowledge of ways of ascertaining that truth conditions hold. (So, with regard to the past, a basic knowledge of historical methods; with regard to infinite domains, the concept of a proof by induction; etc.) This is not something Dummett spells out, but he seems to tie in with this, since the next move he makes is to suggest that verification actually is what we are after: the ability to manifest semantic knowledge is the ability to verify sentences (statements). That is a crucial move, since now the semantic and the epistemological are intimately tied: semantic competence, viz., the ability to use language correctly, has now been identified with what at first sight seems to be an epistemological `competence’, viz., the ability to verify a statement (always ‘in principle’, of course).
Here, I guess, Davidson would object. In ‘A coherence theory of truth and knowledge’ he makes an effort to carefully dissociate the semantic and the epistemological, and in a criticism of his ideas that effort cannot simply be neglected. It must be shown defective before this further step can be taken. For Davidson verification, as a particular form of justification, belongs to the coherence notion of truth, which is not to be mistaken for the `mild’ correspondence notion that plays a role in semantics and semantic competence.
The difference between Dummett’s and Davidson’s position is a substantial one. By separating semantics and epistemology Davidson makes room for the possibility that we might be able to understand statements that are epistemologically unassailable, whereas in Dummett’s approach this becomes impossible. Mathematics provides an example: Dummett’s view on meaning forces him to adopt a constructivistic approach to mathematics, whereas for Davidson such an approach would need additional arguments that do not hinge on the semantics of mathematical statements.
What is the right approach is not obvious in any way, the point here is simply that the transition from the requirement that one be able to manifest one’s semantic knowledge to the requirement that one have a method of verification is one that stands in need of argumentation and that part of that argumentation is essentially non-semantic.
Martin Stokhof from: Interpretation date: fall 2001
There is an interesting parallel between Davidson’s arguments against the analysis of metaphor in terms of simile, and Wittgenstein’s way of arguing that religious expressions are not similes in ‘A Lecture on Ethics’. In both cases the point is that something ineffable is explained in terms of something that is expressible, or to put it differently, that something that does not have cognitive content is equated with something that has. Essentially, it is the distinction between showing and saying that is at stake in both cases.
Martin Stokhof from: Interpretation date: fall 2001
Crucial for Davidson’s account of radical interpretation is that although we can distinguish verbal from non-verbal behaviour, we cannot separate them. The perennial liar can be found out because what we say is linked to what we do and because what we do is to some extent ‘shared beyond our will’ (i.e., we cannot determine that at will). That some instance of verbal behaviour is a lie will then be revealed by some particular instance of non-verbal behaviour being incongruent with ours where ‘by assumption’ it should be the same. If a perennial liar were able to completely separate their verbal from their non-verbal behaviour, and hence be congruent in what they do, yet lie in what they say, they could indeed not be found out.
Davidson on rationality and the transcendental status of Charity
What is it that strikes one as problematic about Davidson’s appeal to rationality? Is it the apparently metaphysical status of the concept as it plays a role in Davidson’s work, or does it concern the content of the concept that he uses? (In the latter case, how does that differ from the kind of appeal to rationality that is inherent in, e.g., Popper’s approach in terms of falsifiability? Isn’t that another application of a conception of rationality?)
As for the qualms that many people have about the Kantian, transcendental status of Charity: it is certainly true that one can raise objections to the kind of transcendental analysis that Davidson’s use of Charity seems to instantiate. But we should ask ourselves whether the alternative theories are really theories about the same phenomenon, or whether perhaps a shift takes place when we drop the appeal to transcendental notions. For example, one may argue that a consequentialist in ethics `really’ (but the use of `really’ should be a warning sign!) is concerned with a different notion of the good than a deontologist. Likewise, if we talk about interpretation on the assumption of the possibility of an external, independent identification of what counts as (utterances of) the same language, we’re dealing with not quite (another red light flashes) the same problem as Davidson. So what seems to be needed (but at the same time seems very hard to get) is an a priori, non-theory dependent characterisation of the phenomenon in question.
Question: suppose it were clear what exactly Davidson’s conception of rationality was, and suppose it would be one with which we agreed, would that make a difference? In other words, is it the lack of perspicuity of some of the central concepts that is bothering us, or is it the way in which they are used?
Observation: Davidson’s goal is not to come up with empirical theories in the sense in which scientific theories are empirical. (Cf., the discussion in `The Second Person’ about the abstract nature of the concepts of ‘language’, ‘meaning’, etc.) If anything, his goal is to come up with models for empirical phenomena that explain, not their actual ‘ins and outs’, but, one could say, their ‘possibility’.
That actually leads to a second question (one that is not restricted to Davidson’s analyses), viz., what it is that we do when in philosophy we analyse something that is also a straightforward empirical phenomenon. To that question there are many answers, one of which is that of transcendental methodology. And the next step is then to determine how empirical observations are relevant for assessing these philosophical answers.
Martin Stokhof from: Radical Interpretation Discussion Board date: fall 2006
Davidson’s analysis in ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs’ marks a goodbye to the idea of a compositional (recursive) theory of meaning. Why? To answer this question we must answer another one first: Why did we want such a theory in the first place? The answer seems to be because we wanted an a priori characterisation of semantic competence, i.e., an account which deliberately disregards factual use. For such an abstract, non-situated analysis the potential infinity of language constitutes a major problem. In other words, it is the assumption of a pure, individual-based language which creates the problem, for which compositionality provides a solution (one that is intuitive, though arguably not the only one possible). If we drop this assumption this argument for compositionality at least vanishes (there may be other ones). Of course, another issue takes its place: How are we able to create ever new passing theories? Here Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations come to bear directly on Davidson’s approach. It seems that Davidson has managed to back himself into a corner by not dropping the individual bias: meaning tends to get locked up inside each individual speaker, and a serious threat of semantic solipsism arises.
One question that keeps coming back is what a practice based approach (such as Wittgenstein’s and Schatzki’s) has to offer over and above what Davidson’s appeal to Charity accomplishes. And there are good reasons to ask this question, if only because the Charity principle does seem to lend itself to formal modelling, unlike a practice based view.
The answer can be given in two ways (but it is basically the same answer): ‘uninterpreted content’, and ‘learning’. Participation in a practice originates from a point outside the practice, and a characterisation of what it means to be a participant minimally has to allow for an account of how one becomes one. When the practice is linguistic, -one that involves interpretation-, this involves an account of the transition of the non-linguistic to the linguistic realm, and hence includes a specification of the role of uninterpreted content.
On both counts the Davidsonian approach does not seem to do well: the participants in radical interpretation are autonomous and fully competent, but how they became that way is left in the dark. (Meredith Williams in ‘Wittgenstein and Davidson on the sociality of language’ also voices for criticism along these lines.) In particular, the essentially linguistic nature (in the sense of being linguistically expressible) of what they bring to bear on the task (beliefs, desires, and other attitudes) seems to be an obstacle: there is no role for uninterpreted content here.
Another point that speaks in favour of the learning approach is that it suggests that it is not just the transition from the pre-verbal to the verbal stage that is at stake, but that learning is a continuous process. Hence, ‘teacher’ and ‘pupil’ are really indications of functions, of roles, and even during our days as ‘competent’ speakers of a language we play both roles. If we encounter a new phrase, or one that is used in a new way, we may adopt the role of ‘pupil’ and try to learn what the new meaning is. Or we may adopt the ‘teacher’ role and try to correct the other’s usage. What role we choose depends on a number of factors: our concern with successful communication in this instance, our estimate of the abilities of the other language user, social relations, our emotional attitudes towards the other, and so on.
Martin Stokhof from: Interpretation date: fall 2009
If we compare the picture that we can extract from On Certainty with Davidson’s view (as expounded in, e.g., ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge’), the important difference seems to be this, that Wittgenstein introduces the layer of certainties in between our epistemological practices and external reality, whereas Davidson construes the relation between belief and reality much more directly. The fact that certainties are categorically different from beliefs and other epistemological entities (despite the fact that over time, and between communities and/or individuals, what counts as what may change) in combination with the plurality of systems of certainties, makes room for a measure of (conceptual) relativism that Davidson seeks to avoid. His way of doing so is to take the core of our belief system to be as stable (over time, over communities and/or individuals) as is the causal influence of external reality on humans. (There is more room for differences in the ‘superstructure’ of complex beliefs that are not directly caused by our interactions with reality, but that is something that Davidson does not pay that much attention to).
This has also consequences for how truth works in both perspectives. In On Certainty truth is first and foremost a concept that operates within a particular epistemological practice, that itself is made possible by a particular system of reference consisting of certainties. (That Wittgenstein construes it in more or less verificationistic terms is an additional, independently motivated feature.) The relation between external reality and certainties is not one of determination, but of constraint. This is the source of plurality, and it also implies that certainties are not upheld because they are true. The fact that different certainties can be upheld at the same time also testifies to that, of course. Nevertheless, certainties differ in terms of their entrenchment and some are so basic to our form of life that it does not seem that much of a stretch to call them ‘true’, admittedly in quite a different sense. In Davidson’s perspective we also have two distinct properties. ‘Mild correspondence’ is the notion of truth that links beliefs (and hence meaning) to the world. It is what the causal influence of the world on us results in. Internally, i.e., within our actual epistemological practice, truth then takes on a different form, that of coherence.
Martin Stokhof from: Aantekeningen/Notes date: 22/03/2012
The following is a curious catch in Davidson’s account of metaphor. If a metaphor has only literal meaning, then what exactly does it mean to say that a speaker uses a metaphor? What a speaker uses, in any case, is a sentence, and, according to Davidson, any sentence only has literal meaning. So, ‘metaphor’ as it is used here cannot be a predicate of sentences, but at best expresses a property of utterances of sentences, i.e., of use. ‘To use a metaphor’ then must mean: ‘to use a sentence metaphorically’. But is that not at odds with Davidson’s insistence that metaphor is not a matter of speaker’s intention?
Martin Stokhof from: Interpretation date: fall 1998
What Charity does is to assume agreement (in beliefs). That by itself does not automatically assume truth (of those beliefs), it does so only in conjunction with the assumption that we ourselves have the right beliefs. And there is the conundrum: we know that some of our beliefs are false, but we do no know which these are (otherwise we would not hold them). So indirectly we will assume that others, even if we assume they agree with us, will not be right all the time, but for the same reason that we can not attribute false beliefs to ourselves without giving them up, we can not attribute false beliefs to other without giving up the assumption of agreement.
Martin Stokhof from: Interpretation date: fall 2008
Part of the argumentation in Davidson’s ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’ centers around transitivity of the translation relation. The point Davidson is trying to make here, I think, is that if there exists a translation from L1 into L2, that translation itself can be stated in either L1 or L2, and consists in an accurate mapping of sentences from L1 onto sentences of L2. If the translation is stated in L1 then, by assumption, it can also be stated in L2 (after all, there is a mapping from all of L1 into L2, i.e., also of the L1-sentences describing the mapping). So we can safely assume that if there is a translation from L1 into L2, it can be formulated in L2. Now suppose there is a translation from L2 into L3: that, again is a mapping, in this case of L2-sentences onto L3-sentences. That mapping includes those L2-sentences that describe how to translate L1-sentences into L2-sentences. So what we have then is (among other things) a set of L3-sentences that tell us which L2-sentences are translations of which L1-sentences, and L3-translations of the L2-sentences. But that means we have a translation of L1 into L3. (More neatly: if a translation is a homomorphism from L to L’, then we know that if there is a homomorphism from L1 to L2 and a homomorphism from L2 to L3, then there is a homomorphism from L1 to L3, viz.: the composition of the two.)
Of course the above argument only works if we assume that translations are total, i.e., that they map all sentences of L onto sentences of L’ and vice versa. What if we drop that assumption? First of all we have to ask ourselves whether we are still dealing with translation in such a case. But let that pass, and suppose we have a mapping of all the sentences of L1 onto a proper subset of sentences of L2, i.e., there are parts of L2 that have no counterpart in L1. Notice that the formulation of the translation can not be in the latter set (for that would mean that the translation would be statable in L2, but not in L1, which is absurd.) Now assume we have a translation from L2 into L3: the only way in which that would not give us a translation of L1 into L3 (by the reasoning above), is by being restricted to exactly that part of L2 that does not contain the L1-to-L2 translation. But that would mean that it really isn’t a translation of L2 as such: it must leave out a proper part of L2. Of course, such a mapping could exists, but we would lack any justification for calling it a translation. (And if we would insist that we could call it that, then we actually are assuming what we set out to prove, viz., the failure of transitivity of translation.)
Note that the fact that in actual cases there are bound to be discrepancies between languages, i.e., things in L that don’t have an exact counterpart in L’, or things in L’ that lack a counterpart in L, does not really affect this line of argumentation. The central point is that the translation itself concerns such a substantial part of both languages, that that by itself guarantees transitivity to a sufficient degree.
Martin Stokhof from: Radical Interpretation Discussion Board date: 11-2004
Suppose there were creatures with the following features. If something is the case, they believe it; if something is not the case, they believe it is not the case; they do not entertain any other thoughts, more specifically they don’t have thoughts of the form ‘Suppose A were (not) the case …’, ‘If B had not been the case …’, and so on. Would we say that these creatures had knowledge? They could serve as reliable oracles, as perfect encyclopaedias, but we wouldn’t want to say that they knew anything. So knowledge presupposes (among other things) our ability to be uncertain, to entertain suppositions, to consider situations that we know to be counterfactual.
Does this mean that the concept of an omniscient interpreter à la Davidson is incoherent? Not necessarily. Perfect knowledge about the world is compatible, at least so it seems, with counterfactual uncertainty, and hence with having the concept of being wrong.
Martin Stokhof from: Aantekeningen/Notes date: 13/10/2000, 09/08/2001
Theodore Schatzki’s analysis of dispersed and integrative practises implies that normativity arises, not at the higher order level of rules, or practises, or institutions (at least not exclusively), but at the very basic level of individual interaction with the environment. This view is reinforced by various analyses of know-how and expertise.
What is interesting to note, especially with regard to Davidson and Gadamer, who actually are in the same boat here, is that uninterpreted content then plays a key role. We need such content in order for normativity to have a basis on which the language-based practises may build.
For Gadamer this is anathema: all experience is linguistic and exists only in and through language. For Davidson it presents a problem too, although it may not be immediately obvious that it does. For doesn’t Davidson avail himself of a primitive causal relationship between the world and us? And doesn’t he reject any form of mediation (linguistic or otherwise) between ourselves and the world?
But unmediated content is not the same as uninterpreted content as we use the phrase here. For in Davidson’s view our causal interaction with the world results in beliefs, and beliefs and (sentence) meanings are indistinguishable in terms of structure and content. So Davidson’s unmediated content is highly structured, in such a way that it is immediately expressible (given a suitably expressive language, of course): definitely not the uninterpreted content of everyday expertise. In fact Davidson seems committed to the same kind of linguistic view on experience that Gadamer embraces explicitly.
Martin Stokhof from: Aantekeningen/Notes date: 21/11/2006
The point seems to be this: given that we have a shared ontology due to the application of the Tarskian framework (as the theoretical framework in which we formulate concrete theories of meanings for concrete languages) and charity, which implies shared beliefs, why don’t we have a shared vocabulary and a shared theory of reference concerning this vocabulary?
The point seems to be this: given that we have a shared ontology due to the application of the Tarskian framework (as the theoretical framework in which we formulate concrete theories of meanings for concrete languages) and charity, which implies shared beliefs, why don’t we have a shared vocabulary and a shared theory of reference concerning this vocabulary?
The question boils down to what follows from the assumptions mentioned about reference. Let’s start with the use of the Tarskian framework. For Davidson this follows from the assumptions he makes concerning the nature of meaning (extensionalism) and the function of a semantic theory (explanation of competence); cf., ‘Truth and Meaning’ for the details. So his view is that if we want a theory of meaning for a language, it has to have that particular form. And that in its turn presupposes that in any language we find a shared logical machinery, consisting of propositional connectives, quantificational apparatus (and the basic distinctions brought along by that) and the logical rules governing their behaviour. But that is all, in particular it does not involve any assumptions concerning the reference of the non-logical vocabulary. Of course, reference is used in stating the Tarskian truth theory, but there it is used only as an auxiliary notion. What the theory defines, or accounts for, is (our knowledge of) truth conditions of sentences. It does so using the auxiliary notion of reference of sub-sentential expressions, but, and this is the important point: it does not define truth on the basis of an independent account of reference. And as Davidson points out, any account of truth along these lines leaves reference essentially underdetermined (a point also made by Putnam and several others): two sentences may have the same truth conditions under different assignments of references to their sub-sentential expressions. (If the sentences are from different languages, we have two translatable sentences which do not allow us to infer any shared reference; if the sentences are from the same language, this means that synonymy does not guarantee unique reference; and as a special (but most important) case we have that it is possible to assign to one and the same sentence the same truth conditions based on attributions of different references to one or more of its component expressions.)
Then charity. Notice that charity, too, concerns sentences, not words. In interpretation, i.e., in actually trying to construct a Tarskian theory of truth for a given language, the empirical data we start from are utterances made in a context (situation). The assumption that truth plays the same role for the speakers of the language we are interpreting as it does for us, these data can be viewed as utterances of sentences held true in that situation. A specific (to be determined!) subset of those will be utterances of sentences held true about that situation, i.e., utterances of sentences that are held true on the basis of certain aspects of the situation in which they are uttered. Each and every sentence uttered is supposed to express a belief. So certain sentences uttered in a situation express beliefs of the speaker about that situation. This is where charity comes in: it allows us to proceed on the assumption that the belief that the speaker expresses in these sentences (but remember, we do not know of every sentence in advance whether it belongs to this set) is a belief that we hold about the situation as well. This is supposed to give us enough common ground to work our way into the language. But, and this is the important point, just as two sentences can have the same truth conditions, yet not share reference of sub-sentential expressions, beliefs too can be shared without a shared set of objects, properties and relations that can be attached in a unique way as references to the expressions that occur in the sentences that are used to express these beliefs.
So neither the Tarskian framework nor charity allows us to venture beyond the level of sentences/beliefs and be confident that we will return with a unique ontology in this particular sense. But for Davidson the conclusion is not that hence there is a relativity of ontological schemes, but rather that the idea behind it, viz., that the beliefs we hold and the meanings of the sentences we use to express those beliefs, are built up from referents in this particular way, is misguided in the first place. In combination with the holistic nature of language and belief that Davidson clearly endorses, this assumption would lead to relativism. But there is, according to Davidson, no reason to make it in the first place.
Martin Stokhof from: Radical Interpretation Discussion Board date: 10-2003
Martin Stokhof 
You must be logged in to post a comment.