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person1917-2003

Donald Davidson

Disciplines:
epistemology
philosophy of mind
philosophy/philosophy of language

Summary

American philosopher who developed anomalous monism — mental events are physical but mental descriptions are irreducible — truth-conditional semantics based on Tarski, and the principle of charity in interpretation.

Core Contribution

Anomalous monism: mental events are identical to physical events, but mental descriptions cannot be reduced to physical laws. Radical interpretation: to understand a speaker, we must assume most of their beliefs are true (principle of charity) — providing the conditions for the possibility of language. Triangulation: knowledge of the external world, knowledge of other minds, and self-knowledge are mutually dependent.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Anomalous monism was criticized for making mental properties epiphenomenal — if mental descriptions cannot be reduced to physical laws, how can mental properties cause anything?
  • The principle of charity is not a normative constraint on how we should interpret but a constitutive feature of interpretation — without it, there is no such thing as attribution of beliefs.
  • Argued that there is no coherent notion of a conceptual scheme — no view from nowhere outside our conceptual resources — against linguistic relativism and the scheme-content distinction.

Notable Works & Achievements

Essays on Actions and Events

Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation

Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective

Historical Influences

W. V. O. Quine Alfred Tarski Ludwig Wittgenstein

Intellectual Lineage

Analytic Philosophy American Pragmatism Quinean Naturalism

Contemporaries & Peers

W. V. O. Quine David Lewis Hilary Putnam

Minds Influenced

John McDowell Richard Rorty Ernest LePore

Intellectual Posterity

Anomalous Monism Principle of CharityTruth-Conditional SemanticsTriangulation

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