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Translated from: D. Davidson: Problems of Rationality, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 151-166.

Translated from: Davidson, Donald: Subjective, Inter-subjective, Objective, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001, str. 95-10

Goodman Ace skrev sitcoms til radioen. Ifølge Mark Singer talte Ace ofte på samme måde som han skrev

Barry's remarks are sympathetic, and very much in tune with my own present thinking about ostensive learning and its importance. He warns against exaggerations and confusions of which I have been guilty, as does John, and I accept most of their admonitions. There remains an issue on which I think I sense a difference with Barry, and I will try to bring it to the surface. Barry finds it difficult to phrase the point that language is social in a way that makes that point sound even minimally controversial. Tn general,' he says, 'when people speak and listen to each other...it is not as if their efforts are to be seen as attempts to ascertain or grasp some self-standing meanings possessed by objects or expressions somehow completely independent of human activity and the world in which it takes place.' Barry says that on my own account I learned this 'undeniable' fact from Quine's Word and Object (although there were other possible sources of this insight, he adds). This was not quite what I was trying to express in the remark Barry has in mind. Here is what I wrote

A phenomenon “emerges” when a concept is instantiated for the first time: hence emergence is relative to a set of concepts. Propositional thought and language emerge together. It is proposed that the degree of complexity of an object language relative to a given metalanguage can be gauged by the number of ways it can be translated into that metalanguage: in analogy with other forms of measurement, the more ways the object language can be translated into the metalanguage, the less powerful the conceptual resources of the object language.

Replies to my Critics

Rejetant les theories minimalistes ou deflationnistes de la verite, selon lesquelles il n'existe pas de connexions importantes entre la verite et les concepts de signification et de realite, l'A. montre que le concept de verite ne peut etre defini de maniere plus fondamentale que l'a fait Aristote

Davidson discusses two related claims of Quine: ontological relativity and the indeterminacy of reference. By comparing these claims to the related indeterminacies of truth and logical form, he suggests how we can minimize them by investigating them from within truth theories and radical interpretation. They can be minimized to a greater degree than Quine's own framework permits, but not to the high degree a causal theory of reference claims. Davidson objects to this theory, as he had in Essay 15, on the basis that reference assignments are tested at the sentential level, and that two interpretations which agree on that level may differ however much they like about subsentential assignments. Davidson then suggests a way of formulating Quine's insights without trace of relativism (cf Essay 13).

I'm sorry that this paper, "Is Radical Interpretation Possible?" (henceforth RIP), does not address the question its title asks. I wish it did; it is a good question. I can't blame Jerry Fodor and Ernie Lepore for suspecting that "it may turn out that perfectly kosher languages (like, for example, English) aren't radically interpretable"; I share the suspicion. But unfortunately they never discuss, much less demonstrate the inadequacy of, the fairly elaborate account I have developed over the years of how I think it might be done. Instead they demolish, to their own satisfaction, an argument they think is mine, and then "deny that any other plausible reason" has been given for holding that natural languages are radically interpretable. Since the argument they claim to have demolished is not mine, it is a pity they did not explain why they consider the reasons I do give implausible.1 RIP is largely devoted to attacking arguments of what its authors call "form T". As far as I know, I have never endorsed any argument of form T; the authors of RIP refer to no text of mine that contains such an argument. Let me try to make clear the relation of my views to arguments of form T. Premise 1. I do not think I have ever argued for the claim that radical interpretability is a condition of interpretability.2 Not only have I never argued that every language is radically interpretable; I have not even argued that every language can be understood by someone other than its employer, since it would be possible to have a private code no one else could break. I do not think, and have not argued, that radical interpretation of natural languages must be possible; I have argued only that it is possible. The point of the "epistemic position" of the radical interpreter is not that it exhausts the evidence available to an actual interpreter, but that it arguably provides sufficient evidence for interpretation. Premise 2. What, exactly, are we to put for "F"? The only substitution instance Fodor and Lepore ascribe to me is "the principle of charity". It is true

First let me respond to David Lewis' careful and useful comments and suggestions. Lewis says that ontological parsimony is not the subject we're discus sing, so we may as well assume any entities that can do us any good. I'm all for that. The question I raised was whether or not things like proposi tions, meanings as entities and objects of beliefs do do us any good in the present enterprise. Now for a more important point. The P corpus determines all the rest; in one sense that seems to me to be absolutely right and it's a dogma I accept along with David. But there's that word 'determine'. All the things that go in boxes Ao, Ak and M are supervenient on what goes into P. David gave the same characterization of supervenience I would (the same one Moore gave, although he was giving it for a special case) : you can't have two things that are exactly alike in all of the things that you would list under P and differing in the things you would list under Ao, Ak and M. This is a 'determining' I agree with completely, a mild form of mater ialism. But there's another sense of 'determining' that, it seems to me, David thinks follows from this or is even identical to it, that I would put in a different compartment. That is, for example, the idea that if you describe all of the truths about what's in P you have now given all of the evidence you will ever need or could use in deciding what goes into the other boxes. This I think is false. It isn't any part of my project to show how the entire evidential base can be drawn from P. I don't mean, in saying this, to question David's remark that there is information in P that I've thrown away or wasted. That's a different point, and it may be right. But the idea that the whole evidential base could come from P seems to be very questionable. Perhaps we don't have to argue about that. Whatever is in Ak comes from P, according to David; my question was how far we could get with what comes out of Ak. If David can show that we can, or must, use more of what comes from P than is used in Ak, then it seems to me he has scored a real point and I ought to go along with it.

A theory of radical interpretation gives the meanings of all sentences of a language, and can be verified by evidence available to someone who does not understand the language. Such evidence cannot include detailed information concerning the beliefs and intentions of speakers, and therefore the theory must simultaneously interpret the utterances of speakers and specify (some of) his beliefs. Analogies and connections with decision theory suggest the kind of theory that will serve for radical interpretation, and how permissible evidence can support it.

Metaphor is the dreamwork of language and, like all dreamwork, its interpretation reflects as much on the interpreter as on the originator. The interpretation of dreams requires collaboration between a dreamer and a waker, even if they be the same person; and the act of interpretation is itself a work of the imagination. So too understanding a metaphor is as much a creative endeavor as making a metaphor, and as little guided by rules.

Physics has advanced, however, without answering metaphysical questions; statistics has advanced without answering semantical questions; and it is our opinion that similar substantial progress in the theory of value can be made independent of metaphysics and semantics. As in other disciplines, theory in the domain of value can proceed along formal lines without waiting upon a solution to the grand questions; indeed even the most modest constructive progress might result, here as elsewhere, in putting what have been considered the fundamental problems in a new light. We take it as the general function of formal value theory to provide formal criteria for rational decision, choice and evaluation. Our conception of this aspect of value theory is in one way similar to Kant's, for like him we believe it possible to state in purely formal terms certain necessary conditions for rationality with respect to value. Unlike Kant, however, we do not suggest that any particular evaluations or value principles can be derived from purely formal considerations. Value theory, as here conceived, is associated with another venerable, and at present rather unfashionable, tradition, for it seems to us that there is a sense in which it is perfectly correct to say that just as logic can be used to define neces1 The unexpected death of Professor J. C. C. McKinsey after the completion of an earlier and much shorter draft of the present paper means that although he played a major part in formulating the fundamental ideas he cannot be held accountable for any of the shortcomings of the final version.

The title of my paper, I hasten to say, is intended to be noncommittal. It does not mean that there has been a marriage between agrarianism and politics, or even anything approaching a love affair. Yet perhaps this explanation is superfluous. It is obvious that there is not a close working-relationship between current politics and the theory of agrarianism. That condition is the subject of my discussion. The politics of agrarianism has not been denned or has been poorly defined. This paper is simply an attempt to locate the source of the difficulty.

Such priority schedules must assume, of course, an important administrative set-up to comprehend a national advisory planning council with essential corresponding units of state and regional councils so clearly articulate as to insure co6rdinate functioning and so constituted as to be nonpartisan and satisfactory to the people as well as to provide the facts and skills necessary for the national and state legislatures. Necessary also would be such referendum to the people as would provide some sort of satisfactory sanction in which might inhere also the principle of an acceptable moratorium on action and conflict policies within an acceptable frame of agreements pending the development of planning policies, procedures, personnel. It seems clear, however, that the minimum essential for any such development is first to make the case for regional national social planning as the only orderly "way on" in the present crisis. The indications are that, in the present state of confusion and mood of the people, as well as of political leaders and social scientists, a great deal may happen before the case shall have been made. Not much is being done toward making clear the case; a great deal is happening to contribute to one or more of the other alternatives so subversive to American culture.

The objective of the research presented is to furnish design information for stone and dolos armor on non-overtopping breakwater trunks that are subjected to severe depth-limited breaking waves. Since it would be a mammoth task to comprehensively investigate all the different types of existing armor, this particular research effort concentrated on stone, which is a natural and economical protection when it is of sufficient size and quality to meet design constraints, and on the dolos, which according to nonbreaking wave data is the best hydraulically stable concrete armor unit.

Common experience suggests, and experiment confirms, that a person does not always make the same choice when faced with the same options, even when the circumstances of choice seem in all relevant respects to be the same. However, the bulk of economic theory neglects the existence of such inconsistencies; and the best known theories for decision making, for example, those of von Neumann and Morgenstern [1] or Savage [2], base the existence of a measurable utility upon a pattern of invariant two-place relations, sometimes called ‘preference’ and ‘indifference’. This raises a difficulty for any attempt to use such theories to describe and predict actual behavior.

Rubble-mound breakwaters are used extensively throughout the world to provide protection from the destructive forces of storm waves for harbor and port facilities. In some locations, a proposed rubble-mound breakwater may be subject to attack by waves of such magnitude that quarrystone of adequate size to provide economic construction of a stable breakwater is not available. Under these circumstances, it is required that the protective cover layer consist of specially shaped concrete armor units. In 1966, Merrifield and Zwamborn (1) introduced a new shape of armor unit, the dolos (Figure 1) which was acclaimed to have much higher stability characteristics than any existing armor unit. Site-specific model tests conducted at the U. S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station (WES) by Davidson (2); Carver (3); Bottin, Chatham, and Carver (4): and Carver and Davidson (5) have shown dolos to exhibit an excellent stability response when exposed to breaking wave conditions. Comprehensive stability tests of dolos also have been conducted at WES by Carver and Davidson (6) for a wide range of nonbreaking wave conditions. These tests used randomly placed dolosse with a first underlayer stone weight of W /5 and a density of units per given area (N/A) equal to 0.83 V~2'3, i!e., n=2, k =0.94, and P=56 percent. It was concluded from this study that the stability response of dolos can be adequately predicted by the Hudson Stability Equation for the range of wave conditions investigated. Their data indicated an average stability coefficient (K) of 33 for dolosse use in a nonbreaking nonovertopping wave environment. Based on the lower limit scatter of their data, a K of 31 was approved for design.

Subjects, Speakers, and Roles.- Deep Structure as Logical Form.- Troubles about Actions.- Act.- Some Problems Concerning the Logic of Grammatical Modifiers.- Pragmatics and Intensional Logic.- General Semantics.- On the Frame of Reference.- Naming and Necessity.- Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions.- Pragmatics.- The Semantics of Modal Notions and the Indeterminacy of Ontology.- Opacity, Coreference, and Pronouns.- Methodological Reflections on Current Linguistic Theory.- Grammar and Philosophy.- Analytic/Synthetic and Semantic Theory.- A Program for Syntax.- A Program for Logic.- Linguistics and Natural Logic.- Semantical Archaeology: A Parable.- On the Semantics of the Ought-To-Do.- Inference and Self-Reference.- What Is Said.- The Role of Inductive Reasoning in the Interpretation of Metaphor.- Probabilistic Grammars for Natural Languages.- Addenda to Saul A. Kripke's Paper 'Naming and Necessity'.