Background
Davidson, Donald Herbert was born on March 6, 1917 in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Clarence Herbert and Grace (Anthony) Davidson.
(Including two new essays, this remarkable volume is an up...)
Including two new essays, this remarkable volume is an updated edition of Davidson's classic Essays on Actions and Events (1980). A superb work on the nature of human action, it features influential discussions of numerous topics. These include the freedom to act; weakness of the will; the logical form of talk about actions, intentions, and causality; the logic of practical reasoning; Hume's theory of the indirect passions; and the nature and limits of decision theory.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199246270/?tag=2022091-20
(Now in a new edition, this volume updates Davidson's exce...)
Now in a new edition, this volume updates Davidson's exceptional Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (1984), which set out his enormously influential philosophy of language. The original volume remains a central point of reference, and a focus of controversy, with its impact extending into linguistic theory, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. Addressing a central question-what it is for words to mean what they do-and featuring a previously uncollected, additional essay, this work will appeal to a wide audience of philosophers, linguists, and psychologists.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199246297/?tag=2022091-20
(This book is intended for all philosophers, linguists, an...)
This book is intended for all philosophers, linguists, and psychologists interested in philosophy; anyone else interested in language and mind.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0092IZTYI/?tag=2022091-20
( This volume contains a detailed, precise and clear sema...)
This volume contains a detailed, precise and clear semantic formalism designed to allow non-programmers such as linguists and literary specialists to represent elements of meaning which they must deal with in their research and teaching. At the same time, by its basis in a functional programming paradigm, it retains sufficient formal precision to support computational implementation. The formalism is designed to represent meaning as found at a variety of levels, including basic semantic units and relations, word meaning, sentence-level phenomena, and text-level meaning. By drawing on fundamental principles of program design, the proposed formalism is both easy to read and modify yet sufficiently powerful to allow for the representation of complex semantic phenomena. In this monograph, the authors introduce the formalism and show its basic structure, apply it to the analysis of the semantics of a variety of linguistic phenomena in both English and French, and use it to represent the semantics of a variety of texts ranging from single sentences, to textual excepts, to a full story.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/147257656X/?tag=2022091-20
(This is the long-awaited third volume of philosophical wr...)
This is the long-awaited third volume of philosophical writings by Davidson, whose influence on philosophy since the 1960s has been deep and broad. His first two collections, published by Oxford in the early 1980s, are recognized as contemporary classics. His ideas have continued to flow; now, in this new work, he presents a selection of his best work on knowledge, mind, and language from the last two decades. It is a rich and rewarding feast for anyone interested in philosophy, and essential reading for anyone working on these topics.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198237537/?tag=2022091-20
(Book annotation not available for this title. Title: Subj...)
Book annotation not available for this title. Title: Subjetivo, intersubjetivo, objetivo/ Subjective, Intersubjective and Objective Author: Davidson, Donald Publisher: Grupo Anaya Comercial Publication Date: 2003/06/30 Number of Pages: 316 Binding Type: PAPERBACK Library of Congress:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/8437620856/?tag=2022091-20
( Could a single semantic formalism be created which woul...)
Could a single semantic formalism be created which would allow for the representation of meaning at all levels from basic semantic units and relations to sentence-level and text-level meaning, while remaining practical and user-friendly? This book showcases a detailed, precise and clear semantic formalism such that representations of meaning can be created and understood by a wide range of users, including logicians, linguists, creative writers, and literary specialists without detailed technical knowledge. In this monograph, the authors propose the formalism, showing its basic structure, applying it to the analysis of the semantics of a wide variety of linguistic phenomena in both English and French, and using it to generate the semantics of a variety of texts ranging from single sentences, to textual excepts, to a full story. By drawing on fundamental principles of program design, the proposed formalism is both easy to read and modify yet sufficiently powerful to allow for the representation of complex semantic phenomena.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1441162534/?tag=2022091-20
Davidson, Donald Herbert was born on March 6, 1917 in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Clarence Herbert and Grace (Anthony) Davidson.
Bachelor, Harvard University, 1939. Master of Arts, Harvard University, 1941. Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, 1949.
DDL (honorary), Oxford University, 1995. Doctor of Letters (honorary), Oxford University, 1995. Doctor of Philosophy (honorary), Stockholm University, 1999.
Instructor philosophy Queen's (New York ) College, 1947-1950. From assistant professor to professor Stanford (California) University, 1951-1967. Professor Princeton (New Jersey) University, 1967-1970, chairman department philosophy, 1968-1970, professor, 1970-1976, Rockefeller University, New York City, 1970-1976, University Chicago, 1976-1981, University California, Berkeley, from 1981.
Appointed Willis S. and Marion Slusser professor, visiting professor Tokyo University, 1955. Gavin David Young lecturer University Adelaide, 1968. John Locke lecturer Oxford (England) University, 1970.
Visiting professor University Sydney, 1968, University Pittsburgh, 1972, University Capetown, 1980, University Venice, 1991, University Rome, 1993, law & philosophy New York University, 1993. John Dewey lecturer University Minnesota, 1975. Matchette Foundation lecturer University Wisconsin, 1976.
Carus lecturer, 1980. Hägerstrom lecturer, 1980. Josè Gaos visiting lecturer University Mexico, 1980.
George Eastman visiting professor Balliol College, Oxford, 1984-1985. Kant lecturer Stanford University, 1986. Society of Jesus (Jesuit) Keeling Memorial lecturer Greek philosophy University College, University London, 1986.
Fulbright Distinguished lecturer, India, 1985-1986. Selfridge lecturer Lehigh University, 1986. Thalheimer lecturer Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1987, David Ross Boyd lecturer University Oklahoma, 1988, John Dewey lecturer Columbia University, 1989, Alfred North Whitehead lecturer Harvard University, 1990, Heisenberg lecturer, Munich, 1981.
Kant lecturer University Munich, 1993, Spinoza lecturer Jerusalem University, 1993, Grambieh and Orr lecturer Dartmouth College, 1993, Alan Donagan memorial lecturer Notre Dame, 1994, Josep Ferrater Mora lecturer, Girona Spain, 1994. Franquini chair lecturer University Leuven, Belgium, 1994. Jean Nicod lecturer Caen & Paris, 1995.
Shearman Memorial lecturer University College, London, 1995. Hill visiting professor University Minnesota, 1997. Hermes lecturer University Perugia, 2001.
Francesco Sanches lecturer University Lisbon, 2001.
( Could a single semantic formalism be created which woul...)
( This volume contains a detailed, precise and clear sema...)
(Now in a new edition, this volume updates Davidson's exce...)
(This is the long-awaited third volume of philosophical wr...)
(This book is intended for all philosophers, linguists, an...)
(Including two new essays, this remarkable volume is an up...)
(Book annotation not available for this title. Title: Subj...)
(about the logic of language)
Co-Author: (with Patrick Suppes) Decision Making: An Experimental Approach, 1957. Author: Essays on Actions and Events, 1980, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, 1983. Co-editor: (with J. Hintikka) Words and Objections, 1969, (with Gilbert Harman) Semantics for Natural Language, 1970, The Logic of Grammar, 1975, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, 2001.
Member editorial board Philosophia, since 1970, Theoretical Linguistics, since 1973, Theory and Decision, since 1974, Erkenntnis, since 1974, Current Commentary in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, since 1976.
Theoretical perspectives in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. Some of his earliest work was devoted to uncovering the logical form of causal and action statements, already demonstrating the close relation between semantic and other substantive issues. Dissatisfied with standard analyses of such statements, he argued that legitimate inferences, for example from ‘Caesar stabbed Brutus with a knife’ to ‘Caesar stabbed Brutus’ were not recoverable unless such statements were analysed in terms of relations between events, where these latter were taken as belonging to an ontological category distinct from things and their properties.
Espousing a materialist position, Davidson had to accommodate prima facie conflicting theses: that as human beings we were part of the natural order, but that our mental life and voluntary action failed to fit the requirements of deterministic law. Davidson disputes that there are strict laws connecting the mental and the physical, or connecting mental events with one another, despite being committed to the view that each mental event is a physical event. This controversial view, which he calls ‘anomalous monism', itself supplies an interesting twist to the debates between proponents of soft and hard determinism, the point being that it is only under a physical description that mental events instantiate deterministic laws.
Yet for Davidson causation is essential to understanding the idea of acting with a reason, and we can make singular causal claims without reference to any laws that they might instantiate. Reasons are not only causes, but also explanatory of what people do. Thus Davidson’s strategy is appropriately described as rationalizing one, in that normative principles embody all that we know about menial life and human action.
So while we might defer to experts about the nature of copper or q uarks, our everyday or ‘folkpsychology’ requires no such deference.
In his treatment of the mental Davidson concentrates on ‘propositional attitudes’, states with propositional content as expressed in statements like ‘Joan believes that snow is white'. He sees beliefs as explanatory, but also as showing how other beliefs and actions can be reasonable, given those initial beliefs. Being a believer-agent, therefore, amounts to being more or less rational.
Not only is this strategy normative, it is holistic in that we cannot ascribe beliefs and other attitudes in isolation, but only as elements in a web of attitudes. This holistic dimension owes much to the influence of Quine, and this influence is visible elsewhere in Davidson’s work.
Undoubtedly Davidson’s most significant and influential work has been in the field of what is known as ‘truth-conditional semantics’, the theoretical position according to which the meaning of a sentence in a language is given by stating the conditions under which it is true. Furthermore, this type of theory purports to show how the truth-conditions of sentences are determined by the semantic properties of the component expressions such as nouns and verbs.
Such a theory might be expected to yield for any sentence S, a sentence of the form‘S means p‘, in which the meaning of S is given by whatever sentence replaces p. However, again under Quinean influence. Davidson regards any appeal to ‘meanings’ as opaque and, drawing on the work of Alfred Tarski, substitutes locutions of the form ‘S is true if, and only if, p’, claiming that a theory based on the notion of truth is both more perspicuous and can do all that a theory of meaning is supposed to do.
Davidson does, however, depart from Tarski in certain respects: the latter’s work was exclusively with formalized technical languages, and was combined with a scepticism about the applicability of formal techniques to natural languages, everyday languages being too messy, changeable and inconsistent. It is precisely these features which pose the most acute problems for Davidson himself, especially indexicality, attributive adjectives like ‘good’ and "large’, and indirect speech contexts as instanced by ‘Galileo said that the earth moves’. Attempts by Davidson and his followers to deal with these problems, while exhibiting considerable ingenuity and innovation, have met with a mixed reception from critics.
The two main strands of Davidson’s work have a wider purport which goes beyond their narrower technical interest.
It has to be shown how the theory of meaning can be put to work in interpreting the utterances of speakers of an alien tongue, using the strategy of ‘radical interpretation’. Davidson imposes a constraint on this, called the ‘principle of charity’, by which we seek to maximize agreement between ourselves and the speakers of the other language. We are to assume that most of what those natives say is true by our lights.
Davidson sets himself against scepticism and relativism, arguing that there is no sense to be attached to the notion of radically divergent or alternative conceptual schemes. Local untranslatability is unremarkable. Wholesale untranslatability between languages is unintelligible.
Davidson has influenced many younger philosophers including John McDowell, Colin McGinn and Mark Platts. He has also attracted spirited
criticisms from thinkers as diverse as Michael Dummett and Jerry Fodor. More generally, his anomalous monism has been condemned as an unstable compromise, and theorists otherwise sympathetic to his semantical Project have none the less suggested that appeal to truth-conditions is at best necessary but not sufficient to account for how and why people behave and speak as they do.
Overall his work has had a conspicuous impact on some major philosophical issues such as relativism, objectivity and rationality, and as such has a relevance to debates in discipline areas outside the traditional boundaries of philosophy.
Lieutenant (senior grade) United States Naval Reserve, 1942-1945, Mediterranean Theatre of Operations. Fellow American Academy Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, British Academy (correspondent). Member American Philos Association (secretary Pacific Coast division 1956-1959, vice president 1961, president Eastern division 1973-1974, president Pacific division 1985-1986), American Philos Society, Institute Internacional de Philosophie, Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, American Association of University Professors.
Married Nancy Hirschberg, April 4, 1975 (deceased 1979). 1 child, by previous marriage, Elizabeth Ann. Married Marcia Cavell, July 3, 1984.