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PhA 40
Herausgegeben von / Edited by Herbert Hochberg · Rafael Hüntelmann · Christian Kanzian Richard Schantz · Erwin Tegtmeier
Maria Cristina Amoretti, Gerhard Preyer (Eds.) Triangulation
This volume breaks new grounds by bringing together a great variety of innovative contributions on triangulation, epistemology, and mind. The notion of “triangulation”, developed by Donald Davidson (19172003) during the last two decades of his life, has changed our understanding of the relationship between subjective, intersubjective, and objective, and shed new light on concepts such as externalism, internalism, communication, interpretation, and language. At the same time, however, it has been strongly criticized for several aspects. The papers collected in this volume– written by established contributors–aim to provide new insights into the contemporary debate on triangulation. The upshot is not only a deeper understanding of Davidson's ideas but also a new appreciation of some central problems of epistemology and the philosophy of mind with regard to adjoining disciplines such as, for instance, cognitive sciences and the philosophy of language.
Maria Cristina Amoretti, Gerhard Preyer (Eds.)
Triangulation From an Epistemological Point of View
ontos
9 783868 381191
Distributed in North and South America by Transaction Books ISBN 978-3-86838-119-1
Philosophische Analyse Philosophical Analysis
verlag 40
CONTENTS
Introduction: Mind, Knowledge, and Communication in Triangular Externalism M. Cristina Amoretti and Gerhard Preyer 9 Part I: The Epistemological Turn
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1. Triangulation and Philosophical Skepticism Claudine Verheggen
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2. Triangulation between Externalism and Internalism M. Cristina Amoretti
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3. Triangulation Triangulated Kirk Ludwig
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4. Triangulation and Objectivity: Squaring the Circle? Adina L. Roskies
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Part II: Communication and Environment
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5. Knowing Me, Knowing You: Triangulation and Its Discontents Fredrik Stjernberg 105 6. Triangulation and the Beasts Dorit Bar-On and Matthew Priselac
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7. Interpreting Assertions Sanford C. Goldberg
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Part III: Philosophical Geography
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8. The Short Happy Life of the Swampman: Interpretation and Social Externalism in Davidson Mario De Caro 179 9. The Externalism of Triangulation Gerhard Preyer
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10. Triangulation in Action: A Rationalizing Proposal Ingvald Fergestad and Bjørn Ramberg
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11. Triangulation and Philosophy: A Davidsonian Landscape Jeff Malpas
257
Contributors
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Name Index
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Subject Index
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INTRODUCTION: MIND, KNOWLEDGE, AND COMMUNICATION IN TRIANGULAR EXTERNALISM M. Cristina AMORETTI (University of Genoa, Italy) Gerhard PREYER (Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany)
Well, that is just what we see when one of our triangular or other acquaintances comes toward us in Flatland. As there is neither sun with us, nor any light of such a kind as to make shadows, we have none of the helps to the sight that you have in Spaceland. If our friend comes closer to us we see his line becomes larger; if he leaves us it becomes smaller: but still he looks like a straight line; be he a Triangle, Square, Pentagon, Hexagon, Circle, what you will—a straight Line he looks and nothing else. (Abbott 1884: 16-17).
1. On the Naturalistic Turn and the Externalism/Internalism Debate about the Mind Since the mid-1960s, naturalism (physicalism, materialism) has had a great effect on American philosophy of mind, and more generally, on the analytic tradition. This trend is not self-evident and therefore requires further explanation. The successes of different sciences, such as biochemistry and neurophysiology, the behaviorism dominating psychology, the orientation of logical empiricism to natural sciences, and its critique of Scheinprobleme initiated this turn toward naturalism, which was underpinned by the overwhelming influence of mathematical logic in early twentieth-century philosophy. Since the mid-1950s, Wilfrid Sellars’ article “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” (Sellars 1956), in which it is argued that mental states are neural states, has had particular significance. However, the work of Willard von Orman Quine, John C. Smart, and Ullin T. Place has also played a pivotal role for the naturalistic turn in the philosophy of mind.
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In the 1960s, materialism was widely accepted. The critiques of the popular type-type-identity theory (as the one developed and defended by Smart) by philosophers such as Hilary Putnam (multi-realization of mental states) or Donald Davidson (anomalous monism), however, caused most materialists to abandon the type-type-identity theory in favor of some kind of token-token-identity theory. Among its other consequences, this move toward token-token-identity theory initiated the debate on mental causality.1 The reaction to type-type-identity theory was not only ontological, but also ideological (Burge 1993: 360). For instance, the answer to Putman’s above-mentioned critique gave birth to functionalism (analytical as well as scientific functionalism).2 It is worth stressing that functionalism and behaviorism both agreed that mental explanations are insufficient and should be replaced by non-mental explanations. Most functionalists assumed that their own account harmonizes with materialism. The central intuition of functionalism dictates that mental states (and events) are states within a causal (or functional) network in the mental architecture of a living organism. Mental states (and events) are to be specified exclusively as sequences (or places) of inputs and outputs, which are to be described in a nonmentalistic vocabulary. The theoretical model at the base of functionalism is the analogy of the mind as a computer program (Block 1995): the mind is considered the software that runs on the hardware of the brain (and, at least in theory, this mental software may be implemented by other kinds of hardware). Since the mid-1970s we have been confronted with the difficulties raised by two accounts of the philosophy of mind: internalism and externalism. For internalists, mental content is independent from the external environment, that is to say, mental content is narrow in principle. More precisely, they believe that the content of mental states is determined solely by “internal” features, that is, by something that is under the skin, inside 1
On mental causation and supervenience, see, for instance, Burge 1993, 2006; Heil J. and Mele 1993; Kim 1993, 1998; Rogler and Preyer 2001 2 On an analytic version of functionalism, see Armstrong 1968; Lewis 1972; Shoemaker 1984; on a scientific version, see Putnam 1967; Fodor 1981 had argued for a non-reductive version.
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the body or the brain. Therefore, properties are regarded as intrinsic. Such a view is compatible with the basic tenets of functionalism and is defended by philosophers such as, for example, Jerry Fodor, Colin McGinn, Brian Loar, and John R. Searle, although Searle opposes functionalism. Moreover, it is important to mention the critiques of functionalism raised by Thomas Nagel, Ned Block, John R. Searle, and Frank Jackson, which have had a great influence in the philosophy of mind (Block 1978; Jackson 1982; Nagel 1974; Searle 1980). Since the 1990s, Gilbert Harman’s concept of representation (according to which representational states are nothing more than representational features) and his critique on the invert spectrum have also acquired a particular relevance (Harman 1990). Looking back to the philosophical tradition, we may classify René Descartes, John Locke, David Hume, Edmund Husserl, and Gottlob Frege, independent of their particular philosophies, as internalists. From the externalist point of view, however, mental content is to be individuated by the outside environment; more precisely, externalism argues that the content of mental states depends on or is individuated by external objects and events. Therefore, such content does not depend solely on internal states (or properties). That is, at least some properties of the content of thoughts are relational; they are external to the skin, to the body or to the brain. Externalists such as Hilary Putnam, John McDowell, Tyler Burge, Gareth Evans, and Donald Davidson argue that all content is wide and non-relational and agree with Putnam’s doctrine: ‘meanings’ just ain’t in the head (Putnam 1975a: 227, see also 223-227). Externalism is not a homogeneous position; we may distinguish, for example, between diachronic or synchronic externalism, social (linguistic) or physical (causal) externalism, and reductive or non-reductive versions of it (LePore and Ludwig 2005: 335-340). Burge’s version is a kind of social (linguistic, non-individualistic) externalism. Putnam, Davidson, and Dretske are physical (causal) externalists, even if in very different ways. For example, Dretske presents a diachronic version of externalism, whereas Davidson’s triangular externalism is more ambiguous: it may be seen either as synchronic (if we focus our attention on the social framework in which mental states are currently evaluated) or diachronic (if we underline the role of causal history for the determination of content). One may also distinguish between token physicalism, that is, every token of an
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event is a physical event, and type externalism, that is, some types of mental states are to be individuated externally when we explain actions. More precisely, Cynthia Macdonald (Macdonald 1989, 1990, 1992) makes the distinction between 1. internalism, 2. externalism, 3. type externalism connected with token internalism, 4. type internalism connected with token externalism. According to Macdonald, 2. is a version of strong externalism, as externalism is strong if it rejects both type and token internalism, whereas 3. and 4. are versions of weak externalism, as externalism is weak if it rejects either type internalism alone or token internalism alone. On the motivation of externalism and internalism, Colin McGinn makes a similar distinction between strong and weak externalism (McGinn 1982a, 1982b, 1983, 1989). The former argues that some mental states are to be individuated by the properties of the environment, while the second argues that certain mental states are dependent on features of the body of the subject. Regardless of whether or not this is the case, the features occur in the environment of the thinker (speaker, agent). Burge’s definition of internalism (individualism) is a critique of strong externalism, and it is in harmony with weak externalism. From our point of view, it is obvious that strong externalism implies weak externalism (see also Edwards 1994). It is worth stressing here that internalism as a mind-body relationship should not be confused with ontological Cartesianism, nor should externalism be identified with the denial of ontological Cartesianism. The Cartesian view of the mind is that mental states are ontologically independent of the physical ones (ontological dualism). The turn from Cartesianism in the philosophy of mind is marked by the affirmation that there is no nonspatial mind substance (ontological monism). If Cartesianists hold that the mind is a substance ontologically independent from the physical, both internalists and externalists deny this ontological dualism, maintaining that the mind ontologically depends on the physical or coincides with it. However, according to the internalists, the physical must be identified solely with the body or the brain, whereas the externalists point out that the
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physical may also comprise some features of the outside natural/social environment. Many philosophers agree that there are at least two problems with the individuation of content: first, the epistemic one, whether the thinker (speaker, agent) knows what she thinks, and second, the first person authority of the thinker (speaker, agent). The first problem is caused by the acquisition of knowledge from outside. This acquisition cannot be assumed a priori. The second problem is that first person authority means that the thinker (speaker, agent) has special authority, knowing the content of her own intentional states, even if content is to be individuated externally (see, for instance, Brown 2004; Ludlow and Martin 1998; Wright et al. 1998). More precisely, the thinker (speaker, agent) knows the content of her own intentional states immediately (directly, a priori), without the need of any evidence or inference from utterances and actions. Thus, her non-evidential knowledge is authoritative, in contrast to knowledge acquired by evidence (Davidson 1984, 1987, 1988, 1991). This feature of Cartesianism—that is, the Cartesian view of first person thinking, namely, that the thinker (speaker, agent) has a special epistemic access to the content of her own mental states, intentional or not—is not disputed among many philosophers including most externalists. More precisely, Cartesian first-person thinking means that the subject knows her own occurring first-order mental states directly, without any conscious inference; this contrasts with the knowledge of mental states from the third-person point of view, which is inferred from utterances and actions. Although the Cartesian intuition about the nature of thought is compatible with internalism, there is a potential conflict with externalism. For Cartesians, the nature of thought is considered from the first-person point of view: the thinker (speaker, agent) knows the content of her own mental states and is authoritative about the knowledge of the content of these states. However, first person authority seems possible only if thought content is narrow content (as internalists hold). Externalism, in contrast, argues that content is, in principle, to be individuated by features of the external environment outside the thinker (speaker, agent) and, thus, that there is no narrow content. Even if the problem of non-evidential knowledge may seem particularly relevant for externalism, it is not one of externalism itself.
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According to Davidson (1989), for example, the problem is not due to externalism itself but to the assuming of inner entities (abstract entities, Frege-thoughts, or similar) and to the thesis that content is determined by relations with such entities. If we argue in a Fregean manner, then we must ask, “What is the individuation of such entities?” The Frege’s turn is that thought is individuation dependent. Therefore, the individuation condition that is specified by external relations cannot be known from either the third- or first-point of view. British empiricists (such as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume) have the same problem that Cartesians have. They have not shown how inner entities stand in relation to the outer entities that cause them. The solution, according to Davidson, is doing away with these inner entities. In general, to answer the problem raised by first-person authority, externalists argue, grosso modo, in the following way: if we consider any first-order thought (mental content) such as “p”, it is fixed externally and is therefore a feature of the external world; however, the individuation conditions that fix the first-order thought are the same external conditions that also fix the second-order thought, “I am thinking that p”. That is to say, the second-order thought contains or inherits the first-order thought. If this reasoning is true, there is no room for error, and thus first-person authority is maintained. Moreover, another problem immediately arises. On the one hand, the ascription of intentional states to others, as well as the existence of other minds, can only be established by contingent correlations between mental states and behavior from the third person point of view, that is, ascriptions to others require evidence. On the other hand, first person authority is immediate, that is, we need no evidence for self-ascriptions. The difference between an evidential and a non-evidential basis for the ascription of mental states makes it difficult to answer the following question: “Why do the mental predicates mean the same in ascriptions to ourselves and to others?—I, you, he know(s)”.3
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We is a special case. It also makes sense to ascribe knowledge, attitudes, and conscious states to a group.
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2. On Davidson’s triangular externalism Davidson introduced the notion of triangulation in “Rational animals” (1982): If I were bolted to the earth, I would have no way of determining the distance from me of many objects. I would only know they were on some line drawn from me towards them. I might interact successfully with objects, but I could have no way of giving content to the question where they were. Not being bolted down, I am free to triangulate. Our sense of objectivity is the consequence of another sort of triangulation, one that requires two creatures. Each interacts with an object, but what gives each the concept of the way things are objectively is the base line formed between the creatures by language (Davidson 1982: 105).
This brief passage conceals all of the basic elements of the theory of triangulation: according to Davidson, in order to have any thought (and language), there must be (at least) two creatures, a speaker and an interpreter, linguistically interacting on the background of a public shared world. Although the theory of triangulation has become a central notion in Davidson’s whole philosophy, it is particularly crucial to characterize his own kind of externalism about mental content, that is, triangular externalism. According to Davidson, in fact, our thought (and language) emerges from the basic interaction involving a speaker, an interpreter, and the outside shared world. It is important to understand why that is so. The briefest answer is that the process of triangulation is, in principle, necessary to account for two elements that are both basic to propositional thought (and language): on the one hand, empirical content and, on the other, the concept of objectivity (see Davidson 1992, 1999a). More precisely, triangulation would explain how our beliefs about the external world, that is, our empirical beliefs, acquire their empirical (objective) content, and how the concept of objectivity may eventually emerge. It is quite easy to understand that empirical content is necessary to thought (at least if thought must be about something in the outside world), whereas the necessity of the concept of objectivity for the possession of thought is far more controversial.
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According to Davidson, in the most basic situations, what determines (at least in part) the empirical content of a belief about the external world is its “typical” cause, but in order to identify such a cause, a single creature is not sufficient because she is not able to single out the relevant cause among all the possible causes (which include, for instance, both proximal and distal causes). With the introduction of (at least) a second creature— the interpreter—the situation radically changes: because the relevant cause must be common to the speaker and the interpreter, it must be situated in the shared public world, and thus, it must be a distal cause. The relevant cause may also be narrowed due to the presence of a second creature: the relevant cause is what typically causes relevantly similar responses by both the speaker and the interpreter, and thus, it may be found where the two lines connecting, respectively, speaker and world, and interpreter and world do intersect. It is important to note that, according to Davidson, the relevant cause may be successfully identified only in a linguistic framework (that is to say, only language can solve once and for all the underdetermination of the relevant cause), and thus, thought and language are deeply intertwined from the very beginning (Davidson 1999a: 130). Moreover, content is objective in the sense that (in most cases) it is true or false independent of the existence of a thought about it or of a thinker. Moving to the concept of objectivity, Davidson believes that a thinker—in order to be a real thinker—must be aware of the objectivity of thought, namely, that what she believes may be either true or false, and thus, she must posses the concept of objectivity. This concept is clearly linked to that of error: in order to understand the former, a creature should be able to understand that she can be mistaken. On this point, Davidson follows Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea that one would not have the concept of error if one would not be (or at least have been) in interaction with other creatures similar to us. Because the process of triangulation, involving two creatures with the backdrop of a public shared world, is the most basic example of social interaction, it is easy to understand why this process is necessary to the concept of objectivity. Again, it is worth noting that language is also needed for the emergence of the concept of objectivity: only linguistic creatures can have it. The interdependence of thought and language may be seen as a consequence of Davidson’s strong anti-reductionism (intentional mental states
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and concepts cannot be reduced to physical ones), but it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to explain the emergence of thought and language in scientifically acceptable terms (Amoretti 2009). Moreover, triangular externalism is revealed to be quite different from other kinds of externalism about mental content. It is a form of physical (or causal) externalism, but the presence of an interpreter is necessary to identify the relevant typical cause determining mental content. As Davidson would say, there is a social element (the interpreter) that enters into the causal process of content determination. The need for the social element is quite interesting because it reveals some pivotal features of Davidson’s triangular externalism. First, the theory of triangulation does not simply require that the speaker’s utterances may be possibly interpretable by a potential interpreter but rather implies the stronger claim that the speaker’s utterances are really interpreted by an actual interpreter. Without an interpreter concretely triangulating with the subject, there can be no content and thus no propositional thought and no language. Thus, thought and language are public in a very strong sense: the very possibility of thought and language emerges together with a community. Second, externalism, holism, and rationality are deeply connected: if the relevant typical cause is determined through the process of triangulation, then it is contaminated by holistic and rational constraints from the very beginning. Content is thus determined by both causal and holistic factors (that is to say, external elements are necessary but not sufficient for determining content). As a corollary, it is worth noting that externalism concerns (directly or indirectly, through holistic relations) the whole thought, not only some special thoughts, such as those concerning natural kinds. Triangular externalism has attracted numerous critics from the very beginning. To begin with, Davidson’s attempt at determining empirical content through the process of triangulation has been objected to in at least three different ways. First, the presence of the interpreter may cast doubt on the objectivity of content (Pagin 2001). Second, a shared cause may be considered as ambiguous as an unshared one (Føllesdal 1999; LePore and Ludwig 2005; Verheggen 1997). Third, we may question the implicit assumption that the speaker and interpreter perceive the same similarities (Fennell 2000). Other doubts have been raised about the idea that triangu-
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lation is necessary for the concept of objectivity. For example, it may be argued that a single creature comparing past and present experiences is sufficient for the emergence of the concept of objectivity (Briscoe 2007; Child 2001; Engel 2001; Heil 1992; Montminy 2003). Moreover, the possession of the concept of objectivity (especially if it is regarded as involving the concept of truth) seems too strong of a requirement for having thought. Finally, a more general objection: given that we need to introduce language (and thus thought itself) to understand why triangulation is necessary for thought, why should we consider triangulation necessary at all? (Sinclair 2005). In addition to the above problems, it has also been argued that certain basic characteristics of Davidson’s externalism are themselves highly contentious, making triangular externalism an intrinsically instable theory. On the one hand, some critics think there is an irremediable tension between the interpreter’s point of view and the role of causal history for the determination of content. On the other hand, they see a conflict between the holistic character of content and its externalist individuation (De Caro 1998; Hahn 2003; Stjernberg 2002). To conclude, it is worth stressing that in order to evaluate triangular externalism from an epistemological point of view, it would be important to answer the following question: how does externalism truly affect Davidson’s epistemology? We may want to divide this issue into three subproblems: what are the consequences of triangular externalism for (1) our knowledge of our own mental states, (2) our knowledge of others’ mental states, and (3) our knowledge of the external world? For what concerns question (1), Davidson faces a problem common to all varieties of externalism, namely, that of reconciling the external nature of content with first person authority. As we have seen, a general reply is that what determines the content of our first-order thoughts, whatever it is, also determines the content of our second-order thoughts. But, of course, it is not sufficient to explain the asymmetry between first-person and thirdperson knowledge (Davidson 1984, 1987, 1988, 1989). On question (2), Davidson should explain how it is possible to know others’ mental states: because content is determined not only causally, but also holistically, and obviously it cannot be the case that two different subjects share exactly the same holistic constraints about any given content, it
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cannot be the case that they share the same content. In this situation, as Michael Dummett notably argued, it is difficult to understand how communication would still be possible (Davidson 1986, 1994; Dummett 1986). Regarding question (3), it is worth mentioning that Davidson has explicitly stated that his own kind of externalism regarding mental content has the incredible virtue to block radical skeptics (or, at least, to tell the skeptic “to get lost”) and, thus, to guarantee our knowledge of the external world (Davidson 1983, 1990, 1999b, 1999c, 1999d). All of these issues regarding the process of triangulation and triangular externalism are variously examined and discussed by the contributors to this volume. 3. Triangulation in debate The question of objective knowledge and philosophical skepticism about the external world is scrutinized by both Claudine Verheggen in “Triangulation and Philosophical Skepticism” and M. Cristina Amoretti in “Triangulation between Externalism and Internalism”. Verheggen argues that those who analyzed Davidson’s anti-skeptical argument have often paid insufficient attention both to the claim, made explicit in the triangulation argument, that the conditions on belief-attribution are also conditions of belief-possession and to the lessons to be drawn from the rejection of the scheme/content distinction. According to Verheggen, taking into consideration these two most important elements of Davidson’s philosophy allows us to make the anti-skeptical claim that “belief is in its nature veridical” and, hence, to reach a strong anti-skeptical conclusion. Amoretti considers Davidson’s triangular externalism in relation both to his coherence theory of justification and to his anti-skeptical argument. On the one hand, she considers the claim that content externalism cannot be compatible with epistemic internalism and argues against the notion that there is no tension between triangular externalism and Davidson’s epistemic internalism. On the other, she agrees that triangular externalism supports the thesis that “belief is in its nature veridical” but also points out that it is probably not enough to satisfactorily answer the skeptic. The difficulties of triangulation in accounting for the two elements that Davidson considers essential to propositional thought—empirical content
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and the concept of objectivity—are evaluated by Kirk Ludwig in “Triangulation Triangulated” and by Adina L. Roskies in “Triangulation and Objectivity: Squaring the Circle?” According to Ludwig, Davidson fails to show that the idea of triangulation is necessary for both the above elements. First, it is not required for the concept of objective truth because communication is not essential for developing the idea of contrasting perspectives necessary for the concept of objectivity. With respect to the problem of determining the empirical content, Ludwig shows that appeal to this sort of triangulation does not help with the problem of underdetermination of thought and meaning by the patterns of causal relations we stand in to the environment. Roskies concentrates her critiques on the concept of objectivity. According to her, triangulation cannot provide the logical ground for the construction of this concept because, in order for triangulation to get off the ground, the parties involved in the triangle must already have a notion that the world is objective, or mind-independent, namely, they must already have a concept of objectivity. As a consequence, it is not clear that a second person, or language, is needed to fix mental content. Moreover, Roskies concludes, triangulation fails to show that language is necessary for thought. Fredrik Stjernberg, in “Knowing Me, Knowing You: Triangulation and Its Discontents”, also claims that Davidson’s arguments derived from triangulation do not work as intended: the second person does not have to be invoked to ensure objectivity of thought or mental content. Moreover, Davidson’s conclusions seem to conflict with another argument from triangulation that, showing how objective, subjective, and intersubjective knowledge would be interacting in a concrete interpretational situation, aims to demonstrate that there is no privileged type of knowledge and that one must have all three types or none. According to Stjernberg, this emphasis on the interwoven nature of knowledge has the merit of locating knowledge where it actually should be located. We have said that triangulation, in Davidson’s view, is taken to be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for thought, as language is also necessary. This account is clearly circular and succumbs to the pivotal problem of explaining, in naturalistic and scientifically acceptable terms, the very emergence of thought (and language). Some attempts to fill the gap between the pre-cognitive realm and the full-cognitive one are pro-
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posed by Dorit Bar-On and Matthew Priselac in “Triangulation and the Beasts”. They show that Davidson finds no room for a conceptual middleground between “pure” triangulation in the animal world (necessary but not sufficient for thought), and reflective triangulation between speakers. Bar-On and Priselac take a fresh look at Davidson’s “continuity skepticism” (as they label it) and offer some reflections on a distinct form of behavior that we humans share with the beasts: expressive behavior. They argue that the intersubjective interactions among creatures capable of expressive behavior can exemplify “intermediate triangulation” and support at least proto-objectivity. The relations between speaker, interpreter and the outside environment that are involved in the process of triangulation are analyzed by Sanford C. Goldberg, in “Interpreting Assertions”, from a perspective quite different from the above ones. More precisely, Goldberg explores the task of interpretation in cases involving sincere assertion and make two claims: first, that assertion has an epistemic norm; and second, that this has implications for the nature of what Donald Davidson called “the task of interpretation” in general and “triangulation” in particular. On the assumption that assertion has an epistemic norm (and that this is mutually familiar to all), Goldberg maintains we can justify a methodological injunction that requires the interpreter to exhibit a sort of “epistemological charity” in her rendering of the speech she is interpreting. The very nature of Davidson’s triangular externalism is then thoroughly analyzed and its common understanding partially revised by Mario De Caro in his “The Short Happy Life of the Swampman: Interpretation and Social Externalism in Davidson”. The author argues that even if in the beginning Davidson advocated a mixed form of externalism—one that, besides a strong physical variety of that view, also encompassed a peculiar form of social externalism, according to which interpretability offers necessary and sufficient conditions for the attribution of contents—he amended his own earlier view in his final years. More precisely, it is shown that because Davidson’s mixed form of externalism was unavoidably unstable, he finally decided to abandon the strong version of physical externalism he had defended. Davidson’s move from the truth-centered theory of radical interpretation to epistemology externalized is not a contingent one because in his
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view there are no intensional entities, such as truth bearer, Frege-Sinne, propositions, and attributes. From the global third-person stance of radical interpretation comes the main question: how are we to individuate the entities of propositional attitudes that the speaker refers to? Following the interpretation of Davidson’s philosophy of Ernie Lepore and Kirk Ludwig (2005) as a keystone of the understanding of the unified theory of thought, meaning, action and evaluation, Gerhard Preyer, in “The Externalism of Triangulation, shows that charity (basic rationality) does not solve the task of interpretation of linguistic behavior. The constraints of interpretation also take effect in Davidson’s externalism of triangulation. Preyer resystemizes the perspectives of triangulation and shows that the common causes cannot close the triangle between speaker, interpreter, and the external environment within both are embedded. This leads him back to the constraints of interpretation. He concludes that both radical interpretation and the individuation of the content of our perceptual beliefs by directly caused objects and events are impossible. The epistemic restrictions of interpretation are not to eliminate by the truth-theory and its axioms because the truth-predicate cannot filter out the epistemic qualification in the procedure of making behavior intelligible. The notion of triangulation is also examined and criticized by Ingvald Fergestad and Bjørn Ramberg who, in their “Triangulation in Action: A Rationalizing Proposal”, suggest an alternative project in which triangulation may instead successfully serve. Their project is brought into view emphasizing those aspects of Davidson’s philosophy that resonate with Robert Brandom’s inferentialism, that is, triangulating the more traditional rendering of Davidson with Brandom’s inferentialist position. This move allows them to shed new light onto a “Radical Davidson”, an idealization of some tendencies that exist in Davidson’s work but that are overwhelmed by the naturalistic ones. More precisely, they conceive “Radical Davidson” as concerned with construing the conceptual as a certain kind of dynamic interaction and triangulation as a useful tool to make a point about what kind of dynamic interaction this might be. Finally, the contribution of Jess Malpas, “Triangulation and Philosophy: A Davidsonian Landscape”, is not focused mainly on triangulation itself but carefully explores some of the far-reaching connections— conceptual as well as historical—linking triangulation with a wide body of
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philosophical ideas and ways of thinking that are not limited within the sole analytic tradition but also involve the pragmatist, phenomenological, idealist, and hermeneutic traditions. Hence, Malpas provides a sketch of the territory or region within which Davidson can be located—a territory or region that, in his own work, is encompassed within the idea of “philosophical topography” or “topology”. His aim is twofold: not only to shed new light on Davidson’s position as such but also to open up a different mode of philosophical proceeding than that which is common in the analytic tradition. The project was initiated and planned by M. Cristina Amoretti (University of Genova, Department of Philosophy, Italy)4 and Gerhard Preyer (ProtoSociology, Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Germany). The editors wish to thank all contributors and Frank Hüntelmann for his support in realizing the project. Our contributions show an open-minded view of a free intercourse of ideas between philosophers. The collection brings together contributions from philosophers with diverse points of view and, as such, it illuminates the lively and ongoing debate on mind, internalism, externalism, and epistemology with regard to adjoining disciplines such as, for instance, cognitive sciences and the philosophy of language. References Abbott, E.A. 1884, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Amoretti, M.C. 2009, “Comunicazione Preverbale e Razionalità”. In D. Gambarara and A. Givigliano (eds.), Origine e Sviluppo del Linguaggio, tra Teoria e Storia. Roma: Aracne Editrice, 291-301. Armstrong, D.M. 1968, A Materialist Theory of the Mind. London: Routledge. Block, N. 1978, “Troubles with Functionalism”. In C.W. Savage (ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol IX. Minneapolis: Univeristy of Minnesota Press.
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M. Cristina Amoretti gratefully acknowledges financial support for her research from Grant POSDRU/89/1.5/S/63663.
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Block, N. 1995, “The Mind as the Software of the Brain”. In D. Osherson, L. Gleitman, et al. (eds.), An Invitation to Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press. Briscoe, R.E. 2007, “Communication and Rational Responsiveness to the World”. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 88, 135-159. Brown, J. 2004, Anti-Individualism and Knowledge. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Burge, T. 1993, “Mind-Body Causation and Explanatory Practice”. In J. Heil and A.R. Mele (eds.), Mental Causation: Oxford University Press; repr. in Burge 2007 (from which we quote). Burge, T. 2006, “Postscript to ‘Mind-Body Causation and Explanatory Practice’”. In Burge 2007, 363-382. Burge, T. 2007, Foundations of Mind. Philosophical Essays vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Child, W. 2001, “Triangulation: Davidson, Realism and Natural Kinds”. Dialectica, 55 (1), 29-49. Davidson, D. 1982, “Rational Animals”. Dialectica, 36, 317-327; repr. in Davidson 2001 (from which we quote). Davidson, D. 1983, “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge”. In D. Henrich (ed.) Kant Oder Hegel. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 423-438; repr. in Davidson 2001. Davidson, D. 1984, “First Person Authority”. Dialectica, 38, 101-111; repr. in Davidson 2001. Davidson, D. 1986, “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs”. In R. Grandy and R. Warner (eds.), Philosophical Grounds of Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 156-174; repr. in Davidson 2005. Davidson, D. 1987, “Knowing One’s Own Mind”. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 60, 441-458; repr. in Davidson 2001. Davidson, D. 1988, “The Myth of Subjective”. In M. Krausz (ed.) Relativism. Interpretation and Confrontation. Notre Dame: Universtiy of Notre Dame Press, 159-172; repr. in Davidson 2001.
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Davidson, D. 1989, “What Is Present to the Mind?”. In J. Brand and W.L. Gombocz (eds.), The Mind of Donald Davidson. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 3-18; repr. in Davidson 2001. Davidson, D. 1990, “Epistemology Externalised”. Análisis filósofico, 10, 1-13; repr. in Davidson 2001. Davidson, D. 1991, “Three Varieties of Knowledge”. Philosophy, 66, 156-166; repr. in Davidson 2001. Davidson, D. 1992, “The Second Person”. In P. French, T. Uehling, et al. (eds.), The Wittgenstein Legacy, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol 17. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 255-267; repr. in Davidson 2001. Davidson, D. 1994, “The Social Aspect of Language”. In B. Mcguinness (ed.) The Philosophy of Michael Dummett. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1-16; repr. in Davidson 2005. Davidson, D. 1999a, “The Emergence of Thought”. Erkenntnis, 51, 7-17; repr. in Davidson 2001. Davidson, D. 1999b, “Reply to Genova”. In L.E. Hahn (ed.) The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Chicago: Open Court, 192-194. Davidson, D. 1999c, “Reply to Nagel”. In L.E. Hahn (ed.) The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Chicago: Open Court, 207-210. Davidson, D. 1999d, “Reply to Stroud”. In L.E. Hahn (ed.) The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Chicago: Opern Court, 162-166. De Caro, M. 1998, Dal Punto di Vista dell’interprete. Roma: Carocci. Dummett, M. 1986, “‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs’: Some Comments on Davidson and Hacking”. In E. Lepore (ed.) Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Oxford: Blackwell, 459-476. Edwards, S.D. 1994, Externalism in the Philosophy of Mind. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate. Engel, P. 2001, “The Norms of Thought: Are They Social?”. Mind & Society, 2, 129-148.
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Fennell, J. 2000, “Davidson on Meaning Normativity: Public or Social”. European Journal of Philosophy, 8 (2), 139-154. Fodor, J. 1981, Representation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Føllesdal, D. 1999, “Triangulation”. In L.E. Hahn (ed.) The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Chicago: Open Court, 719-728. Hahn, L.E. 2003, “When Swampmen Get Arthritis: Externalism in Burge and Davidson”. In M. Hahn and B.T. Ramberg (eds.), Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 29-58. Harman, G. 1990, “The Intrinsic Quality of Experience”. Philosophical Perspectives, 4, 31-52. Heil, J. 1992, The Nature of True Minds. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press. Heil, J. and Mele, A.R. (eds.) 1993, Mental Causation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jackson, F. 1982, “Epiphenomenal Qualia”. Philosophical Quarterly, 32, 127136. Kim, J. 1993, Supervenience and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kim, J. 1998, Philosophy of Mind. Boulder, Col.: Westview Press. Lepore, E. and Ludwig, K. 2005, Donald Davidson. Meaning, Truth, Language, and Reality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lewis, D. 1972, “Psychophysical and Theoretical Identification”. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 50, 249-258. Ludlow, P. and Martin, N. 1998, Externalism and Self-Knowledge. Stanford: CSLI. Macdonald, C. 1989, Mind-Body Identity Theories. London: Routledge. Macdonald, C. 1990, “Weak Externalism and Mind-Body Identity”. Mind, 99 (395), 387-404.
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Macdonald, C. 1992, “Weak Externalism and Psychological Reduction”. In D. Owain, M. Charles, et al. (eds.), Reduction, Explanation and Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McGinn, C. 1982a, The Character of Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McGinn, C. 1982b, “The Structure of Content”. In A. Woodfield (ed.), Thought and Object. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 207-258. McGinn, C. 1983, The Subjective View: Secondary Qualities and Indexical Thoughts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McGinn, C. 1989, Mental Content. New York: Blackwell. Montminy, M. 2003, “Triangulation, Objectivity and the Ambiguity Problem”. Critica, 35, 25-48. Nagel, T. 1974, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”. Philosophical Review, 83, 435456. Pagin, P. 2001, “Semantic Triangulation”. In P. Kotatko, P. Pagin, et al. (eds.), Interpreting Davidson. Stanford: CSLI, 199-212. Putnam, H. 1967, “The Nature of Mental States”. In Putnam 1975b, 429-440. Putnam, H. 1975a, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”. In Putnam 1975b, 215-271. Putnam, H. 1975b, Mind, Language, and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rogler, E. and Preyer, G. 2001, Materialismus, Anomaler Monismus und Mentale Kausalität. Frankfurt a.M.: Humanities Online. Engl. transl. Anomalous Monism and Mental Causality. On the Debate on Doland Davidson’s Philosophy of the Mental. Frankfurt a.M.: Humanities Online, 2001. Searle, J. 1980, “Minds, Brains and Programs”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 417-457. Sellars, W. 1956, “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”. In H. Feigl and M. Scriven (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Minneapolois: University of Minnesota Press. Shoemaker, S. 1984, “Functionalism and Qualia”. In Identity, Cause and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Sinclair, R. 2005, “The Philosophical Significance of Triangulation: Locating Davidson’s Non-Reductive Naturalism”. Metaphilosophy, 36 (5), 708-727. Stjernberg, F. 2002, “Sulla Combinazione di Olismo ed Esternalismo”. In M. Dell’Utri (ed.) Olismi. Macerata: Quodlibet, 231-248. Verheggen, C. 1997, “Davidson’s Second Person”. The Philosophical Quarterly, 47 (188), 361-369. Wright, C., Smith, B.C., et al. (eds.) 1998, Knowing Our Own Minds. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
THE EXTERNALISM OF TRIANGULATION Gerhard PREYER (Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany)
The theory that language and meaning follow from radical interpretation (RI) is a continuation of Quine’s post-empirical theory of meaning, which claims to identify a cyclical relationship between belief and meaning into which an radical interpreter must break in. In Davidson’s theory, the essential feature of language is that the speaker himself is an interpreter of another speaker. The nature of language demands that every speaker be radically interpretable. Therefore, the third person perspective is global. Only the radical interpreter has the task of interpretation. The third person perspective and the constraints of RI create the epistemic position for understanding meaning and mental concepts. The problem with Davidson’s philosophy is that it makes the global third person point of view of an interpreter the foundation for understanding linguistic behavior. Davidson’s philosophy contends that the speaker’s disposition determines the meaning of words. This conclusion is drawn from the belief that the radical interpreter’s position toward a speaker forms the foundation of the theory of interpretation. This belief also suggests that facts about the speaker’s actual prior or subsequent behavior and facts about his participation in conventional word use do not form the basis of understanding linguistic behavior or other types of behavior. Davidson’s theory of language and thought is a version of the theory-theory approach because the concepts of the mental state are to understand by our theory of interpretation and its specification to causal relations which trigger the observed behavior in the environment of the interpreter and the speaker. Firstly, I will show that the truth-centered theory of RI leads to a nonreductive externalism of the individuation of thought content. However, the principle of charity cannot accomplish the task of interpretation. The constraints of making behavior intelligible are not provided by charity. In fact, RI is impossible. Secondly, I argue that the view of triangulation as a link between the mental (attitudes), the linguistic, the communicative (the social) and other aspects of nature is mistaken. This conclusion leads me
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back to the epistemic restrictions of making behavior intelligible. I conclude that both RI and triangulation are impossible. 1. Language-Grounded Externalism Radical Interpretation The global third person position of interpretation constrains intelligible redescription by RI. The causal structure of the world in which the speaker is embedded is insufficient to select correlations between true attitudes and conditions in a speaker’s environment. The interpreter must choose between sets of correlations, and incompatible interpretation theories do not enable the interpreter to exclude certain attitudes or correlations. The notion of RI focuses the constraints of intelligible redescription to accomplish its task on a priori knowledge of the principle of charity (rationality) and to select successful interpretive markers. This knowledge is not sufficient for determining a unique correlation. With this approach, the theory of interpretation cannot explain this under-determination. Davidson’s view is that every speaker is radically interpretable in a particular environment (the ambitious version of RI).1 A radical interpreter is not, however, a mind reader.2 Therefore, Davidson has concluded that RI is possible and is successful, regardless of what is true about a speaker as such. However, additional constraints arise, and the assumptions about the subject of interpretation are not conditioned simply by the speaker. Further assumptions must be made about the speaker (as thinker and agent). These factors include the speaker’s psychology, culture and social status. The notion of RI is a confirmation (justification) of an interpretive truth theory for a single speaker. The constraints are 1. the assumption of a rational agent, that is, the radical interpreter applies the Principle of Coherence and Correspondence (charity, basis of ra1
On the ambitious and the modest project of radical interpretation, see Lepore and Ludwig (2005: 166-173). The first is that radical interpretation is possible from the third person position a priori, that is, it concludes that the speaker is right in most matters; the second is that radical interpretation is only possible a posteriori. The question is whether charity is to justify a priori as a transcendental guarantee. 2 This is the difference in principle to the proposal of Goldman (2006).
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tionality, normativity/rationality of mental features) as a bridge principle (constraints of interpretation3) and 2. complete information about physical interactions with the environment (triangulation)—the theory assumes an omniscient interpreter with perfect knowledge of the world but not of the attitudes of speakers and the meaning of the uttered sentences under study.4 From this point of view, the interpreter does not use semantical concepts to fix lingual objects to non-lingual objects (the external world) thereby sentences of a language are informative (informational content), and we state (judge) something about the assumed universe of discourse of these objects. A semantical concept of truth reflects a relationship between a sentence and its content. According to this concept and not the theory of truth (fulfillment), semantical expressions have an intension.5 We describe contents, judge something and communicate information. From my point of view, semantical interpretation of expression requires the inference from an all-sentence to the specific case (example). But the concept of interpretation does not align with the expressions of this language (object language). Therefore, we do not possess this concept in the object language. This concept is, therefore, a part of a meta-language. We classify in the meta-language the sentences as true and false for a given object language. We utter (use) the sentences of the meta-language and mention the sen3
Davidson and Quine attribute to the speaker the modicum of classical logic, which creates the basic situation of radical translation (interpretation). I think that the power of classical logic should not be forsaken. However, it does not justify charity and RI. 4 Davidson’s argument is problematic. The omniscient interpreter attributes attitudes to the speaker on the basis of his own beliefs, and this is the usual praxis of all speakers. Massive error about perceptual beliefs is, therefore, impossible and unintelligible. If we assumed that, we would view an interpreter as an omniscient one who would correctly interpret speakers as soon as they make extensive mistakes. This is impossible from Davidson’s point of view; see Davidson (1977: 201). It is doubtful whether this argument works because there is no transcendental guarantee that most of our beliefs are true. This is simply presupposed from the stance of an omniscient interpreter (see Lepore and Ludwig (2005: 323-326)). An omniscient interpreter cannot have false beliefs. The question is: why is charity required for interpretation? The two are not compatible; see Fodor and Lepore (1992: 159-161). 5 On the Fulfillment-Conditional Approach, see Lepore and Ludwig (2007: 276-282).
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tences of the object language. These sentences could also be an object of a true-false statement, but on a higher (meta) level. Therefore, I conclude that there is no theory of truth. These levels are unlimited and open; there is no ultimate statement of truth. I do not restrict the principle of abstraction, but I also do not assume abstract entities. The alternative is to level classes of entities and to suppose that properties and classes of entities cannot be expressed on the same level. But the strategy which is powerful for fixing ontological commitments cannot be proven. 6 Davidson’s semantics does not consider this option.7 3. Davidson adds the first person authority to the procedure of RI because the asymmetry of RI works in our communication of our own mental states and what others can say about us. The mental is determinate by the internal, but it is not determinate by itself. 4. Holism, rationality of mental features and externalism work together. None can be eliminated without changing the subject. Since the middle of the last century philosophy, the philosophy of language, and the theory of science have been dominated by different versions of holism, such as epistemic holism in epistemology (Hempel, Quine), semantic holism (the conceptual role/inferential role semantics of Wilfrid Sellars) and the holism of radical interpretation. Quine discusses the holistic picture in semantics. Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore have characterized holism in their critique on semantic holism: «Holistic properties are prop6
See Essler (1988). Therefore, the distinction between concept of truth, criterion (evidence) of truth and theory of truth is fruitful. In the theory of truth would give a truth definition. The question is: For what—for languages with a unique ontology and for all cases or for an interpreted language with its ontology which we can modify? 7 On the modifications of Davidson’s concept of truth and the ontology of RI in the history of his work, see Preyer (2011: 126-33). See also an overview of Davidson’s theory of truth in Lepore and Ludwig (2007: 315-24). They conclude that Davidson’s theory of truth is a correspondence theory because the true predicate is to interpret semantically by the satisfaction of conditions (reference) and not of the intension of truth. But the issue is that every meta-language states something about a language of a lower level. There are no maximal universes of the discourse of objects. Therefore, let us make the assumption that the concept of the universe of discourse is dependent on a supposed language. The universe of discourse is fixed to syntactical (logical) expressions. We always speak about that fixation in a meta-language.
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erties such that, if anything has them, then lots of other things must have them, too. 2. This is a metaphysical characterization of holism (as generic properties). Some authors speak on a logical dependency only» (Fodor and Lepore 1992: x). But in the last case, we do not characterize the properties as holistic. The logical implications between sentences are not holistic according to the characterized meanings, which is theoretically trivial and does not commit us to semantic holism. Fodor and Lepore have emphasized that holism «is a doctrine that only the whole language or whole theories or whole belief systems really have meaning, so that the meaning of smaller units [...] are merely derivative» (1992: x). Quine gives this statement an epistemological turn because, according to his theory, we do not confirm a single belief (confirmation/epistemological holism). This notion is connected in the Quine-Davidson tradition with a belief in holism. For them semantic holism is valid: a conceptual content and meaning holism (semantic holism). This is the common reading of Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951), his critique of the Wiener Kreis’s verification theory of meaning and logical empiricism.8 An alternate reading of Quine suggests that the indetermination of translation (incompatible translations) does not contradict his naturalism (scientific realism) because differences in translation are empirically equivalent, that is, there are no physical differences between either. Quine ascribes this power to the stimulus synonymy, which is tested empirically (statistically). The naturalizing of epistemology excludes that different translations express different intentional states. If this were the case, the museums-myth would reemerge. Coherence applies a degree of the principle of consistence and ascribes to the speaker a modicum of logic. Therefore, the interpreter assumes that the speaker is logically consistent in his thoughts. The guarantee of the empirical turn of formal semantics and decision theory is the application of the basis of rationality. This rational basis describes the mentality of the speaker (thinker, agent) and what he thinks, wants or means by a degree of logical coherence when we ascribe a content to attitudes, thus linking meaning with linguistic utterances. 8
Quine’s article was one of the most discussed articles in philosophy after its publication. For a critique see, for example, Fodor and Lepore (1992: 37-58).
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Correspondence assumes that the speaker is disposed to respond to a feature of the world in the same way the interpreter would. The interpreter redescribes the speaker he is interpreting in a way that he finds true to himself. Davidson has argued that the indeterminacy of translation does not arise because of questions regarding the truth of the speaker’s sentences. Applying the theory of truth in the style of Tarski on linguistic behavior in the procedure of intelligible redescription by an interpreter, for example, we see that the statement “Peter said snow is white,” at a particular time point with a reference to a speaker (the Davidson truth-convention9) does not have as output a qualified knowledge. Truth is a central external component of Davidson’s non-relativist theory of linguistic behavior.10 But Davidson considers that we are not born with the knowledge of how words and the world are connected; we must learn the connection.11 The shared response individuates the content of thought, forming a triangle between speaker, interpreter and the external world by the intersection of causal chains, which trigger the same (similar) response. The omniscient interpreter is introduced because the true belief of the external world and the individuation of content (most of our beliefs are true) work together.12 Da9
See, on the Davidson truth-convention, Ludwig (1999: 30-31). On the paradigmatic switch away from traditional semantics—from Davidson (1965) and the initial project (the compositional theory of meaning: the meaning of sentences depends upon the meanings of words) to Davidson (1967), which is continued as the extended project (1. extensional truth theory for natural language given by the Tarski-style truth theory; 2. confirmation of the interpretative truth theory by RI) or a re-interpretation of the compositional meaning theory by the replacement theory (the compositional meaning theory is exchanged by the truth theory; the replacement of the theory with the theory of reference)—see Lepore and Ludwig (2005: 19-37). In Davidson (1967), the step to a replacement theory is not considered. But in continuation, Davidson switches to a replacement proposal as a critique of a building block theory. See, for example, as textual evidence, Davidson (1988a: 180, 1990: 299-300). 11 The question is whether language is learned, and we learn a language by correlations with caused behavior. Language cannot be learned, as behaviorism—trivial or not—has argued. 12 Davidson is not a pragmatist like Richard Rorty; for example, among other responses to Rorty, see «Correspondence, while it is empty as a definition, does capture the thought that truth depends on how the world, and this should be enough to discredit most epistemic and pragmatic theories» (Davidson 1999: 114). 10
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vidson calls this knowledge the basis rationality that we (all rational beings) have (a priori). It is, therefore, not merely a policy we can choose.13 The theory of thought, meaning and decision is unified because the primitive term in the theory is the attitude of preferring one sentence as true rather than another sentence. No entities are required for the description of this relationship. Meanings are not required (not sufficient) for a compositional semantics of natural language. In contrast, translation/interpretation is possible only when we assume that speaker and interpreter believe that the same statement holds true. First Person Authority Saying something about first person authority is relevant epistemologically and for the analysis of psychological concepts. The problem is whether we agree with the relational account of mental states. Do first person authority and externalism work together? Davidson explains the first person authority by RI, that is, we must assume that the speaker knows the meanings of the uttered words, while this is not the case for the interpreter. Therefore, the speaker is in a particular epistemic position. The epistemic state of the thinker is determined by behavioral issues regarding the relationships among the speaker, the sentences the interpreter directly receives, and the role of the first person authority in the procedure of RI because this knowledge is authoritative in contrast to knowledge acquired by evidence. Lepore and Ludwig (2005) have shown that this argument is not successful. Firstly, this is not an explanation of the speaker’s knowledge, and, secondly, it does not explain the asymmetry of first person knowledge. The assumption that the speaker is in a particular epistemic position does not necessarily mean that he can single out his consciousness and does not consider the primary role of our knowledge of his mental states from the interpreter’s position. Therefore, Davidson’s concept of first person authority cannot prove that the speaker’s knowledge of himself is not inferential.14 In addition to this critique, if an interpreter assumes that a 13
This notion is emphasized in Davidson (1985: 196-197). See Lepore and Ludwig (2005: 343-372). Regarding the master-argument (of first person authority), see Ludwig (1994).
14
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speaker is interpretable only if he knows the meanings of his words and the content of propositional attitudes, we have an explanation of the speakers’ knowledge, which provides an answer to the challenge of non-inferential knowledge. The first person stance is not, though, the foundational methodological stance of interpretation.15 Holism about content of thought is a feature of the whole system of attitudes, which the radical interpreter ascribes to the speaker. He does not ascribe single attitudes, but he assumes that there are endless related propositional attitudes. Attitudes are related by their content. However, the related attitudes do not dictate the particular correlation of content to particular beliefs, which is called the two holistic constraints of attitude sets (Lepore and Ludwig 2005: 21216). These constraints are of particular significance because the ascription of attitudes within a logical (abstract) structure does not fix the empirical belief and the concepts of the individual speaker. Davidson’s view is that attitudes always come to mind in patterns. The question is whether the mental attitudes and the mental language are expressed holistically in a whole system of beliefs. It is significant to mention that this question leads us to the problem of communication from the semantical point of view. When we assume that the attitudes of one person are structured by inference roles in the person’s own belief system, then there are no two persons who have the same conceptual content because there are no beliefs that 15
Lepore and Ludwig (2005: 368) have argued similarly. They distinguish a rigid holism: there is a relationship between particular attitudes with particular contents, which are related to specific attitudes and their specific content that the speaker has, from an extreme holism: particular attitudes with their particular content are dependent on all of the other attitudes that the speaker has and, therefore, a change in one attitude changes, at the same time, the content of every other attitude. Both holisms are not aligned with Davidson’s proposal (Lepore and Ludwig 2005: 211-213). They claim that Davidson refuses to commit to meaning holism (2005: 213). He has argued contrarily: «only in the context of the language does a sentence (and therefore a word) have meaning» (Davidson 1967: 22). He has corrected this view: «I am not an unbuttoned holist in that I do not say the meaning of a sentence depends on the meaning of all sentences» (Davidson 1994: 124). But the problem is a deeper one because, when the principle of compositionality is applied, we are not committed to holism in semantics. The problem is not that the sentence’s meaning depends on the structure that we derive from it. 16
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have the same inferential relations in the whole system of beliefs of two persons. This is not a critique on semantic holism, but, under these conditions, communication would not be possible. Recalling the constraints of RI from the third person stance, we must consider the question of the possibility of RI. RI is obviously not possible because the conformation of the truth-centered theory of RI borders on the epistemic restrictions of interpretation in general. This notion is a variation of Lepore’s and Ludwig’s (and Fodor’s and Lepore’s) critique17—with a slightly different intent—which concludes the impossibility of RI. If constraints were realized a priori, every speaker would be radically interpretable, and interpretation from the third person position of a radical interpreter would be possible (ambitious project, sufficient evidence of interpretation). But the concern is that holding true sentences supported by behavioral evidence caused by related conditions in the surroundings cannot qualify the attitudes of the speaker globally. Lepore and Ludwig argue that the so-called possibility of RI is a posteriori. Some speakers are radically interpretable (modest project). From their point of view, ceteris paribus, the success of interpretation is true. This belief qualifies the speaker’s knowledge, which is considered in the procedure of interpretation. Therefore, it is not the external component of truth (distal stimulus, meaning, common cause) which is the guarantee of the individuation of the content of thought in the procedure of RI. If this is true, it also affects the concept of the first person position and the speaker’s epistemic position. I conclude, then, that language-grounded externalism of triangulation—the linguistic, truth-centered theory of RI and the external individuation of the content of thought by common causes—is an epistemological condition for RI. That is, language is necessary for thought. This version of externalism assumes, in continuation of Davidson’s philosophical work, that meaning is determined by observable behavior; it is not defined by, or reduced to, this behavior. It is a synchronic (not diachronic) and nonreductive (physical) version of externalism. Davidson agreed with Quine, 17
See Lepore and Ludwig (2005: 174-197). They introduce a stronger principle, Grace (2005: 194-197), which I do not discuss here. I agree with them that charity is not sufficient. It is not disputed that, when we accept semantic representations as semantic properties, we give up attitude (semantic) holism.
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though, that language is a set of dispositions that we harmonize with utterances within observable circumstances. This concept of meaning followed from the step Davidson has taken from the compositional theory of meaning to a truth-centered theory of RI that is constructed from the third person position. Therefore, language is public in a strong sense. Epistemically, there are no intermediaries between us and the world; also, language is not a medium (on that in particular matter, see Davidson 1997a). Semantic internalism (Cartesian intuition) is a contrary view.18 2. Triangulation From Quine’s point of view, meaning, reference, and representation do not have an objective status. For naturalized epistemology, language is a set of dispositions which are fitted by a translator to evidential circumstances. All ascription of a representative content to a speaker is indeterminate. Quine’s critique on the logical empiricists is that belief and meaning are connected in principle. Therefore, there is no pure linguistic meaning. Stimulus meaning is fixed as a class of sentences, which have no linguistic or theoretical meaning. The empirical net-meaning of observed stimuli breaks into the circle of belief and meaning. Quine’s concept of meaning is restricted by the observational circumstances of a radical translator. Learning a language requires a direct association with a concurrent stimulation. The concern is that the analysis of observation sentences—in this case, their meaning is obvious—tells us nothing about the expressions of particular types of sentences by the specification of the conditioned stimuli and responses in particular situations, which are observed by a translator. Davidson’s triangulation of the content of thought is a critique on the role of stimulus meaning. His central critique of Quine’s ontogenesis of reference is the rejection of proximal stimulation as an explanation of meaning and reference.
18
I characterize the Cartesian intuition that the mental is determined by itself as an epistemic version of internalism. From my point of view, we must redraw the line between the mental (the internal, the subjective) and the physical (the external, the objective) (Preyer 2011).
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The triangulation model of RI is the foundation for Davidson’s theory of meaning, truth, action and evaluation and their unification.19 This theory claims that triangulation explains how we conceptually link the mental (attitudes), the linguistic, the communicative (the social) and other aspects of nature. We should consider that triangulation, as the individuation of the content of thought, intends to explain how two speakers with different perspectives can view the same reality and how what they say about the world is intelligible among two or more speakers. Therefore, triangulation justifies a realistic conception of the world (of objective truth) in which we are thinkers (speakers, agents). The (direct) objects of awareness are, thus, not interpretations, as Nelson Goodman has argued. Perspectives of Triangulation Triangulation is a pre-linguistic, precognitive situation that is a necessary condition for language and thought.20 It occurs in the ontogeny and phylogeny of attitudes. Building the triangle is based on the third person perspective. The interpreters of Davidson’s epistemology of triangulation agree that the lines of triangulation emerge in perspectives between the interpreter, the speaker and the external world by the intersection of causal chains. Triangulation is, at the same time, a model of learning. The claim of triangulation is that the common cause individuates the content of thought of the speaker when he is in communication about the object of thought with others. Without the public object, communication is not possible. The baseline of the triangle, which requires communication, determines the knowledge of the world and, at the same time—through the observable behavior of others—the knowledge of other minds.
19
I do not analyze the unification of the theory of interpretation and decision itself but only the connection between his theory of meaning and the individuation of thought (propositional attitudes). On the unification, see Lepore and Ludwig (2005: 248-260). There is a problem in Davidson’s unification, in principle, because he provides no evidence that propositional attitudes are countable, that is, he does not pair numbers to these attitudes. On decision and practical thought, see Preyer (2011). 20 First introduced in Davidson (1982b: 105, 1992: 117-21, 1997b: 128). See on triangulation, for example, Lepore and Ludwig (2005: 404-12); Glüer (2006).
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This notion agrees with Quine’s behaviorism in linguistics as a basis theory. Critics have said that the thesis (of indeterminacy of translation) is a consequence of my behaviourism. Some have said that it is a reduction ad absurdum of my behaviourism. I disagree with this second point, but I agree with the first. I hold further that the behaviourist approach is mandatory. In psychology one may or may not be a behaviourist, but in linguistics one has no choice. Each of us learns his language by observing other people’s verbal behaviour and having his own faltering verbal behaviour observed and reinforced or corrected by others. We depend strictly on overt behaviour in observable situations […] There is nothing in linguistic meaning beyond what is to be gleaned from overt behaviour in observable circumstances (Quine 1990: 37-8). A child learns his first words and sentences by hearing and using them in the presence of appropriate stimuli. […] What I have said of infant learning applies equally to the linguist’s learning a new languages for which there are previously accepted translation practices, then obviously he has no data but the concomitance of native utterance and observable stimulus situation (Quine 1969a: 81).
In this case, there is no difference between the epistemic stance and the individuation of content of thoughts by the proximal stimuli meaning and the distal meaning caused by the public objects. The interpreter extracts from observable behavior the theory of thought and language of the speaker, that is, the third person position is the interpersonal stance, as the epistemic foundation, which gives thoughts their content. Therefore, knowledge of the world, of one’s own mind and of other minds are essentially interconnected. This belief revises Cartesian epistemology. The problem is whether the argument from triangulation support the global third person position in epistemology and gives thoughts, by the public object, their content as the language content of speech.
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First perspective The speaker and interpreter are both aware at the same time of similar things in their surroundings. The relevant stimuli are objects and events that are correlated with the responses of the speaker, which the interpreter finds similar to his own responses. The line of triangulation runs from (a) the speaker in the direction of the objects and events—the direction is perceived by similar response (b) the interpreter in the direction of the objects and events—the direction is perceived by similar response (c) the lines run between both the speaker and the interpreter—the intersection of causal chains, which causes the common response, gives thoughts a content. The common cause is the public object.21 All perceptions are caused simply by what we see, hear, touch, taste and smell. The content of observation sentences (“perceptual sentences”) is directly connected to perception, which provides the content for the belief (Davidson 1997a: 137). These sentences are expressed and caused by particular circumstances. Therefore, having a concept is not distinct from having a thought.
21
Davidson argues that there is an “ambiguity of the concept of cause”: «Without other people with whom to share responses to a mutual environment there is no answer to the question what it is in the world to which we are responding. The reason has to do with the ambiguity of the concept of cause. It is essential to resolve these ambiguities, since it is, in the simplest cases, what causes a belief that gives it its content. In the present case, the cause is doubly indeterminate: with respect to width, and with respect to distance. The first ambiguity concerns how much of the total cause of a belief is relevant to content. The brief answer is that it is the part or aspect of the total cause that typically cause relevantly similar responses. What makes the responses relevantly similar in turn is the social sharing of reactions that makes the objectivity of content available. The second problem has to do with the ambiguity of the relevant stimulus, whether it is proximal (at the skin, say) or distal. What makes the distal stimulus the relevant determiner of content is again its social character: it is the cause that is shared. The stimulus is thus triangulated; it is where causes converge in the world» (1997b: 129-130).
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The distal stimulus is located where the lines from the speaker and the interpreter to the object and event converge. Davidson argues that the object and event are a robust (common) cause in the triangulation that gives thoughts their contents because both are public entities. The response of the creature is evidence that both have these concepts of such particular objects and events. They are concepts as concepts of, that is, the speaker has some particular objects or events as object of his thought (Davidson 1992: 119). Yet it is obvious when the object is the cause of the content of thought—whatever this means—the question is of “which link” causes the content (Fodor 2008). The significant question is whether we know the content of our thoughts without an observation of behavior. Thoughts require second, third and fourth perspectives. Second perspective The speaker who is interpreted also interprets the interpreter, that is, there is a reciprocal interpretation. This, however, is an asymmetrical relationship. To be a linguistic being is to be a radical interpreter. The evidence of intelligible redescription is the third person position. The evidence from this stance is globally available for every interpreter of a speaker. Therefore, Davidson assumes RI is possible for all linguistic creatures. This theory leads to the problem of possibility of RI. When this perspective breaks down, triangulation does not work and does not give thoughts their content directly; the individuation of the content of thought by building the triangle is not an argument for the possibility of RI. Why is it not possible that we correlate our thoughts and our behaviors from the first person perspective and project the correlation to others? Davidson must argue that this correlation generally works. This conclusion leads us back to Cartesian intuition. Third perspective We must add that both the speaker and the interpreter observe others in communication and can communicate with people. «Communication begins where causes converge: your utterance means what mine does if beliefs in its truth is systematically caused by the same object and event» (Davidson 1983: 151). That is, the common (public) cause is shared by
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both the speaker and the interpreter. Therefore, there is no communication among people without responding to selected content-determining causes. A justification of the attributing of attitudes is not required (Davidson 1989: 198). Thus, communication is only possible on objective grounds of the third person position. Two distinct concerns arise: 1. what is required by the concept of objective thoughts and 2. how do we identify a unique object of thought (Lepore and Ludwig 2005: 408)? The first question is a problem of the theory of truth; the second is one of the individuation of the content of attitudes. I do not discuss this point here because there is a deeper problem: communication requires the recognition of space-temporal things and events for both speaker and interpreter. From my point of view, communication requires that we recognize (identify) spatial and temporal concepts and events within a linguistic framework, and that we identify/reidentify these entities. They are not given directly. Fourth perspective Each participant in the triangulated communication is understood in his speaking by others when RI is possible without speaking the same language. This level closes the references to the world (common causes) and to other people as interpreters. Therefore, the third person position is, in triangulation, the basis of linguistic communication because the speaker and interpreter do not share a common language as the basis of communication. The work of the causal chain between the speaker, the interpreter and the world makes communication possible by common responses in the particular environment in which they interact.22 I have argued that triangulation requires perspectives between the interpreter, the speaker and the external world. But the perspectives are not level in triangulation. Triangulation always considers the same perspective: the third person position. The four perspectives lead us back to the constraints of interpretation because they do not eliminate issues of relativity 22
For Davidson, there is a historical component to thought content. I think it is correct that the historical content is not intrinsically motivated by the methodological stance of his externalism. The support offered by the Swampman thought experiment is not persuasive; I agree with Lepore and Ludwig (2005: 337-342).
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and indetermination. Davidson’s point of view also uses triangulation to find the proper cause from the third person stance to give thought its content as an argument for RI. The external condition closes the triangle. This is Davidson’s version of triangulation as a language-grounded-externalism. This version of externalism agrees with externalism in general because for triangulation all content is wide. This creates a myth of subjective from Davidson’s point of view (1988b).23 Therefore he concludes there is no private language (thought). His critique of a private language is not reasoned, though, from the rule-following argument but from the argument that language is necessary for thought (first introduced in Davidson 1974: 170). The argument is that we have the concept of a belief only by the interpretation of language from the third person stance of RI. Thus, the theoretical description of interpretation from the third person stance as a stance of yours and mine— not only as a philosophical exercise—makes interpretation and understanding possible. The argument is reasoned from triangulation. However, the belief that the only evidence for the interpretation of linguistic behavior is the third person evidence, which is available for the radical interpreter globally, does not create a successful argument. Davidson’s language-grounded externalism assumes, in continuation of his philosophical work, that meaning is determined by observable behavior. He agrees with Quine that language is a set of dispositions that we harmonize with utterances within observable circumstances. This concept of meaning follows his movement from the compositional theory of meaning to RI as a theory of linguistic behavior from the third person stance. This theory leads us back to a reinterpretation of the relationship between language, semantics and ontology and a reconsideration of what we can learn about ontology itself from the semantics of language, which illuminates the ontology of language we speak.
23
This is a continuation of Quine’s myth of a museum, that is, «the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels» (1969b: 27).
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3. The Epistemological Role of Publicity Externalists, in particular, proponents of the language-grounded externalism of triangulation, argue that the individuation of thought by distal stimuli and dispositional meanings are basically connected. This belief aligns with mainstream of philosophy in the last century (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gilbert Ryle and their fellows). Ryle, for example, assumes that what a person intends with his behavior can be found in the epistemic public surroundings of his actions. It is often argued that this notion is the antecedent for the ascription of intentions and beliefs. However, an agent may have a mental disposition to do something but does not think of acting in this way. It may be that, in many cases, we cannot discover how attitudes work together. For Ryle (1949), some words that describe human behavior refer to dispositions and do not refer to episodes (occurrences), as, for example, “smoke a cigarette” does. Words like “knowing”, “intelligent”, “clever”, and “humorous” specify dispositions, tendencies, or abilities.24 Ryleian language is a public language. This is not so obvious, though, as it prima vista appears. The question is whether publicity plays an epistemic role for the externalistic individuation of the content of thought as conscious states in principle. This issue coincides with another: is meaning dispositional? For language-grounded externalism, the question arises of whether the publicity of observable behavior is a constitutive feature of language: «There are obvious relations between holding a sentence true and linguistic (and other) behaviour» (Davidson 1988a: 190. my emphasis): Perhaps someone (not Quine) will be tempted to say, ‘But at least the speaker knows what he is referring to.’ One should stand firm against this thought. The semantic features of language are public features. What no one can, in the nature of the case figure out from the totality of the relevant evidence cannot be part of meaning. And since every speaker must, in some dim sense at least, know this, he cannot even intend to use his words with a 24
We should mention in this context that this turn goes back to the dispute between Moritz Schlick and Otto Neurath and the switch from a phenomenological language to the universal assumption of thing-event language as a basic theory in epistemology. It was perhaps an idea of Wittgenstein’s (1929), as Merrill B. Hintikka and Jaakko Hintikka (1986) have argued. On the protocol-sentence debate and the problem of publicity, see also Davidson (1982a).
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unique reference, for he knows that there is no way for his words to convey this reference to another (Davidson 1979: 235).
From Davidson’s point of view, there is a dilemma in the theory of knowledge: 1. Moritz Schlick’s self-certainty of observation statements or events are private, and it is not possible to write down these sentences without losing their certainty (they have no connection to public language). 2. Sentences (or beliefs expressed) within public language have no intelligible link to self-certification (Otto Neurath’s problem). Therefore, Davidson has concluded that the foundation of knowledge must be subjective and, at the same time, objective (Davidson 1982a: 168). The question is whether Davidson’s answer actually works. Davidson’s language-grounded externalism contends that every interpretation essentially refers to things and events that give the uttered words their meaning. He claims to explain communication by the convergence of common causes between the speaker and the interpreter. The distal meaning (reference) individuated by common causes assumes that the content of thought of observation sentences is, in most cases, determined by the significant features that the speaker and interpreter perceive; it is an unmediated correlation of our commonsense understanding of learning a language. Objectivity originates with the triangle of the speaker, the interpreter and the world that they share.25 The consequence of this origin is that language is public in a surprisingly strong sense. In Davidson’s view, the theory of truth gives us the conceptual resources for understanding the world and intelligible redescription of behavior, and truth is ultimately based on beliefs and on effective attitudes, that is, the thinker (speaker, agent)’s dispositions. Publicity and dispositional meaning primarily act together. However, this proposal is too strong. It does not include constraints on belief. Publicity is a domain of verification, but it is not a foundation of knowledge and of objective thoughts. Publicity is a principle of verifying knowledge in general, but not an exclusive epis25
On the argument of triangulation having thoughts, see Lepore and Ludwig (2005: 404-411).
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temological account of language and the ascription of knowledge. Public circumstances have, as constraint, the notion that the thinker (speaker, agent) and the interpreter have the same ontology and that, within linguistic framework and its expressibility, they identify (re-identify) entities. The problem with this theory is that no ascribing person reaches another’s consciousness. In this sense, we are captives of a Leibnizian Monadology. We also cannot broaden our consciousness to the external world; we see our picture in a mirror, but we cannot observe ourselves from an external point of view. This notion is valid from the third person position. However, there is also, from the first person perspective, the transparency of my own consciousness. I do not know myself better as an observer but in another manner. My first person authority is not non-correctible and absolute. There are self-deceptions. These aspects represent one side of the first person authority, but the other side contends that I know myself immediately, as others cannot know me, or that I ascribe to myself something I cannot ascribe to others.26 Publicity is an Ersatz (surrogate) for an epistemic qualification of the procedure of RI (interpretation in general). For the truth-centered theory of RI and the individuation of the content of thought, there is no epistemic qualification of the speaker under study. I call this restriction the epistemic restriction (resources) of interpretation. This notion is also valid if the utterance is true from the standpoint of a (radical) interpreter. The notion of RI is not possible because epistemic restrictions are taken in every interpretation (understanding) of behavior, linguistic or not. The truth condition of lingual utterances does not depend on the causal history of the interpreter’s relation to objects and events as the proper causes in general. This conclusion is not reached in ignorance of Davidson’s basis problem of understanding one’s language because a framework is required for the analysis of the connections between words and world, which are established for the speaker and the interpreter in the selections of communicative intercourse. The critique of this basis theory is that the epistemic restrictions of interpretation cannot be found from the third person point of view of interpreta26
The concept of tabula rasa is a critique of the Cartesian ideae innatae. Also, John Locke did not assume that we are empty boxes within which we can put any contents. On the limit of first person authority, see Georg H. von Wright (1994: 157-163).
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tion (translation) and behavioral evidence, which bring together inductive reasons that are confirmed by distal causes. The constraints of triangulation of the content of thoughts by distal stimuli answer the question how we draw the distinction between the inside and outside of thoughts and their contents. Similarly, is there a direct relationship between what we are aware of in our environment when we think about something and what we then communicate to others? The distinction between the inside and the outside is not between what is under the skin and what is outside of us in the world. How do we draw the distinction between the inside and outside of us, or how is this distinction made? This is the question of the non-conceptual content of thoughts and at the same time of the mental. Without the distinction between self-reference and reference to others, there is no inside-outside distinction. We make the distinction between self-reference and reference to others as an elementary operation of our consciousnesses. This distinction, and no causal relationship, makes communication possible. The epistemic point of view of a radical interpreter is insufficient to ascribe knowledge to a speaker we are interested in understanding, and the externalism of triangulation in epistemology cannot close the gap between the beliefs of the interpreter and the speaker by common causes. I do not, however, relinquish the claim that there are correct and incorrect interpretations of what a speaker means and intends by his words. The problem is that Quine and Davidson have not said enough about the justification of the evidential constraints of radical translation and interpretation. The reasoning of the constraints of interpretation from the third person position is described as an a priori argument (transcendental argument) and an a priori truth. Davidson communicates that he does not give a transcendental argument for the constraints of RI, but the possibility of it is shown by an “informal proof” on the evidence, which is available for RI (see Davidson 1993; on the transcendental argument of RI, see Fodor and Lepore 1992). It is obvious, though, that the principle of charity and correspondence is stronger because the radical interpreter cannot dispose of both for an interpretive theory to understand linguistic beings. Epistemic restrictions of the speaker or a group of speakers contradict the work of RI and the application of the triangulation model of RI. The a priori theory available to break into the circle between belief and meaning and the radically
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interpretable nature of speakers present certain limits. The notion of RI does not have all relevant evidence for intelligible redescription at its disposal. I think there are actual relationships between thought, language and communication. These relationships are not founded, however, by behavioral evidence as the only “evidence” that forms the meaning of linguistic and mental concepts and expressions, nor from obvious behavioral evidence from the global third person position in the epistemology and philosophy of language. Therefore, we renew a version of the Third Dogma of Empiricism: the distinction between content and scheme is not eliminated by Davidson’s version of a naturalized epistemology, that is, by making behavior intelligible by deriving the content of thought by common causes from the third person perspective because an epistemic gap of translation and interpretation of linguistic behavior may emerge in the procedure of intelligible redescription. This theory represents a borderline of understanding linguistic beings and their responses to the social and cultural features of the world. I call this notion the paradox of understanding and communication: Understanding other people is possible by crossing context only, but epistemic restrictions (capacity) limit the success of re-interpretation and communication. We cannot exclude the possibility that there is an upper limit to an interpreter’s understanding of a speaker. The limit of understanding is the metaphysics of experience, whether the speaker and the interpreter share or not. I do not believe that people from the Western world, who adhere to standards of rationality (charity), have an understanding of a magic trick, such as rain magic. This gap leads us back to many old problems in epistemology and in understanding foreign social intercourse, which are difficulties in communication that have not disappeared in the time of globalization. References Davidson, D. 1965, “Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages”. In Proceedings of the 1964 International Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co., 383-394.
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Davidson, D. 1967, “Truth and Meaning”; repr. in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Davidson, D. 1974, “Thought and Talk”; repr. in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Davidson, D. 1977, “The Method of Truth in Metaphysics”; repr. in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Davidson, D. 1979, “The Inscrutability of Reference”; repr. in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Davidson, D. 1982a, “Empirical Content”; repr. in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Davidson, D. 1982b, “Rational Animals”. Dialectica, 36, 317-327. Davidson, D. 1983, “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge”; repr. in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Davidson, D. 1985, “Incoherence and Irrationality”. Dialectica, 39, 345-354. Davidson, D. 1988a, “Epistemology and Truth”; repr. in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Davidson, D. 1988b, “The Myth of Subjective”; repr. in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, 39-52. Davidson, D. 1989, “The Conditions of Thought”. In J. Brand and W.L. Gombocz (eds.), The Mind of Donald Davidson. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 193200. Davidson, D. 1990, “The Structure and Content of Truth”. The Journal of Philosophy, 87 (6), 279-328. Davidson, D. 1992, “The Second Person”. In P. French, T. Uehling, et al. (eds.), The Wittgenstein Legacy, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 17. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 255-267. Davidson, D. 1993, “Replies to Fodor and Lepore”. In R.R. Stoecker (ed.) Reflecting Davidson: Donald Davidson Responding to an International Forum of Philosophers. Berlin: De Gruyer, 77-84. Davidson, D. 1994, “Radical Interpretation Interpreted”. In J. Tomberlin (ed.) Philosophy of Language. Atascadero, Cal.: Ridgeview, 121-128.
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Davidson, D. 1997a, “Seeing through Language”; repr. in Truth, Language, and History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 127-141. Davidson, D. 1997b, “The Emergence of Thought”; repr. in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Davidson, D. 1999, “The Centrality of Truth”. In J. Peregrin (ed.), Truth and its Nature (if any). Dordrecht: Kluwer, 105-15. Essler, W.K. 1988, “Open Philosophizing”. In Erkenntnis, 29, 149-67. Fodor, J. 2008, Lot2: The Language of Thought Rrevisited. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fodor, J.A. and Lepore, E. 1992, Holism: A Shopper’s Guide. Oxford: Blackwell. Glüer, K. 2006, “Triangulation”. In E. Lepore and B. Smith (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1006-1019. Goldman, A.I. 2006, Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hintikka, M.B. and Hintikka, J. 1986, Investigating Wittgenstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lepore, E. and Ludwig, K. 2005, Donald Davidson. Meaning, Truth, Language, and Reality. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lepore, E. and Ludwig, K. 2007, Donald Davidson’s Truth-Theoretic Semantics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ludwig, K. 1994, “First Person Knowledge and Authority”. In G. Preyer (ed.), Language, Mind, and Epistemology. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Ludwig, K. 1999, “Theories of Meaning, Truth, and Interpretation”. In U.M. Zeglen (ed.), Donald Davidson: Truth, Meaning, and Knowledge. London: Routledge, 27-45. Preyer, G. 2011, Donald Davidson’s Philosophy. From Radical Interpretation to Radical Contextualism, second edition. Frankfurt: Humanities Online. Preyer, G. 2011, Intention and Practical Thought. Frankfurt: Humanities Online.
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Preyer, G. 2011, Back to Cartesian Intuition. Internalism, Externalism and the Mental (manuscript). Quine, W.V.O. 1969a, “Epistemology Naturalized”. In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press. Quine, W.V.O. 1969b, “Ontological Relativity”. In Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press. Quine, W.V.O. 1990, Pursuit of Truth. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Ryle, G. 1949, The Concept of Mind. New York: Barnes and Noble. Wright, G. H. von 1994, Normen, Werte und Handlungen. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag.
