Interpreting Davidson (Center for the Study of Language and Information - Lecture Notes) [Paperback]

Petr Kotatko (Editor), Peter Pagin (Editor), Gabriel Segal (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1575863561 | ISBN-13: 978-1575863566 | Publication Date: August 1, 2001 | Edition: 1

Donald Davidson is, arguably, the most important philosopher of mind and language in recent decades. His articulation of the position he called "anomalous monism" and his ideas for unifying the general theory of linguistic meaning with semantics for natural language both set new agendas in the field. Interpreting Davidson collects original essays on his work by some of his leading contemporaries, with Davidson himself contributing a reply to each and an original paper of his own.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Petr Kotatko is head of the Department for the Philosophy of Language and Philosophy of Science at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Peter Pagin is associate professor of philosophy at Stockholm University. Gabriel Segal is reader in philosophy at King's College, London.

Product Details

• Paperback: 315 pages
• Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Inf; 1 edition (August 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1575863561
• ISBN-13: 978-1575863566
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,356,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Having a nice conversation with Davidson, October 15, 2005

By 

Randall Helzerman (campbell, ca) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Interpreting Davidson (Center for the Study of Language and Information - Lecture Notes) (Hardcover)

Plato wrote dialogs instead of long, boring expositions, because he thought that conversation with real people was better than reading any book. Even though reading a dialog is distant second to actually talking with Socretes, it at least gives you some of the flavor of what talking with Socretes would have been like.

One of Donald Davidson's chief virtues, IMHO is that he was very willing to attend conferences about his philosophy and engage in discussions with the attendees. Sadly, Davidson is gone now and we can't talk with him anymore, but we do have many records of his interactions with other philosophers.

This book is one such, being a transcript of talks given at a Conference on Davidson at Karlovy Vary. The opening essay, "Externalisms" by Donald Davidson, is all by itself worth the price of the whole book. This essay very lucidly describes Davidson's thesis of triangulation--the relationship between self, other, and world which, as Davidson puts it, "creates a space for normativity". Davidson is famous for writing very dense, difficult-to-understand essays, but as he got older and older his writing style became clearer and clearer, and this essay is marvel of clarity.

All of the talks in the book are wonderful, but I'd like to particularly mention one other, the essay "meaning, Truth, Ontology" by Stephen Neale. It is probably the best summary and restatement of Davidson's thesis that a theory of truth can serve as a theory of meaning ever written. Reading this one essay can literally save you years of work reading dozens of other essays written about Davidson's project. An expanded version of this essay serves as a chapter in Neale's book "Facing Facts", but I like the version here because is more concise--really a marvel of how to squeeze a million insights into 20 pages or less, without seeming crowded at all.

But the best part of this book is that you can read Davidson's responses to the various essays--you can overhead the conversations which Davidson and the other philsophers at the conference were having. Philsophy is an _active_ enterprise. Yes, we'll never be able to talk with either Davidson or Socretes, but we do have the next best thing.