Donald Davidson Edited by KIRK LUDWIG University of Florida PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon´ 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org C Cambridge University Press 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2003 Printed in the United States of America Typefaces Janson Text Roman 10/13 pt. and ITC Officina Sans System LATEX2ε [TB] A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Donald Davidson / edited by Kirk Ludwig. p. cm. – (Contemporary philosophy in focus) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-79043-3 – ISBN 0-521-79382-3 (pbk.) 1. Davidson, Donald, 1917– I. Ludwig, Kirk, 1959– II. Series. B945.D384 D65 2003 191 – dc21 2002035082 ISBN 0 521 79043 3 hardback ISBN 0 521 79382 3 paperback Contents List of Contributors page xi Introduction 1 kirk ludwig 1 Truth and Meaning 35 ernest lepore and kirk ludwig 2 Philosophy of Action 64 alfred r. mele 3 Radical Interpretation 85 piers rawling 4 Philosophy of Mind and Psychology 113 jaegwon kim 5 Semantics and Metaphysics of Events 137 paul pietroski 6 Knowledge of Self, Others, and World 163 ernest sosa 7 Language and Literature 183 samuel c. wheeler iii Bibliography of Davidson’s Publications 207 Selected Commentary on Davidson 214 Bibliographic References 216 Name Index 233 Subject Index 235 ix Contributors JAEGWON KIM is William Herbert Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. He is the author of Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays (Cambridge University Press, 1993), Philosophy of Mind (1996), Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation (1998), Supervenience (2001), and of numerous articles in the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. He is coeditor of Values and Morals: Essays in Honor of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson, and Richard Brant, with Alvin Goldman (1978); Emergence or Reduction? Essays on the Prospects of Non-reductive Physicalism, with A. Beckerman and H. Flohr (1992); and, with Ernest Sosa, of A Companion to Metaphysics (1995), Metaphysics: An Anthology (1999), and Epistemology: An Anthology (2000). ERNEST LEPORE is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University and di- rector of the Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science. He is the author of Meaning and Argument: An Introduction to Logic through Language (2000); coauthor, with Jerry Fodor, of Holism: A Shopper’s Guide (1992); and the author of numerous articles in the philosophy of language, philosoph- ical logic, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics. He is the editor of Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (1986) and New Directions in Semantics (1987). He is coeditor of Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, with B. McLaughlin (1985); John Searle and His Critics, with Robert Van Gulick (1991); Holism: A Con- sumer Update, with Jerry Fodor (1993); and What Is Cognitive Science?, with Zenon Pylyshyn (1999). KIRK LUDWIG is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Florida. He is the author of numerous articles in the philosophy of lan- guage, philosophical logic, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. His recent publications include “The Semantics and Pragmatics of Complex Demonstratives,” with Ernest Lepore, in Mind (2000); “What Is the Role of a Truth Theory in a Meaning Theory?,” in Truth and Meaning: Topics xi xii Contributors in Contemporary Philosophy (2001); “What Is Logical Form?,” with Ernest Lepore, in Logical Form and Language (2002); “Outline of a Truth Condi- tional Semantics for Tense,”with Ernest Lepore, in Tense, Time and Reference (2002); “The Mind-Body Problem: An Overview,” in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind (2002); and “Vagueness and the Sorites Paradox,” with Greg Ray, Philosophical Perspectives (2002). He is completing a book with Ernest Lepore titled Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language and Reality (forthcoming). ALFRED R. MELE is the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-deception, and Self-control (1987), Springs of Action: Understanding Intentional Behavior (1992), Autonomous Agents: From Self- control to Autonomy (1995), Self-Deception Unmasked (2001), Motivation and Agency (forthcoming), and of numerous articles in the philosophy of action and philosophy of mind. He is the editor of The Philosophy of Action (1997) and coeditor of Mental Causation, with John Heil (1993), and of Rationality, with Piers Rawling (forthcoming). PAUL PIETROSKI is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Causing Actions (2000), Events and Semantic Architecture (forthcoming), and of numerous articles in the philosophy of language, semantics, and philosophy of mind. His recent ar- ticles include “On Explaining That,” Journal of Philosophy (2000); “Nature, Nurture, and Universal Grammar,” with Stephen Crain, Linguistics and Phi- losophy (2001); “Function and Concatenation,” in Logical Form and Language (2002); and “Small Verbs,Complex Events: Analyticity without Synonymy,” in Chomsky and His Critics (2002). PIERS RAWLING is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of numerous articles in areas ranging from ethics and the philosophy of language to game theory, decision theory, and quantum computing. His recent publications include “Orthologic and Quantum Logic: Models and Computational Elements,” with Stephen Selesnick, Journal of the Association of Computing Machinery (2000); “The Exchange Paradox, Finite Additivity, and the Principle of Dominance,” in Logic, Probability and the Sciences (2000); “Achievement, Welfare and Consequentialism,” with David McNaughton, Analysis (2001); “Davidson’s Measurement-Theoretic Reduction of Mind,” in Interpreting Davidson (2001); “Deontology,” with David McNaughton, Ethics (2002); “Condi- tional Obligations,” with David McNaughton, Utilitas (forthcoming); and Contributors xiii “Decision Theory and Degree of Belief,” in Companion to the Philosophy of Science (forthcoming). He is coeditor, with Alfred Mele, of Rationality (forthcoming). ERNEST SOSA is Romeo Elton Professor of Natural Theology and Pro- fessor of Philosophy at Brown University. He is the author of numerous articles in epistemology and metaphysics. His recent publications in- clude “Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles,” Journal of Philosophy (1997); “Man the Rational Animal?,” with David Galloway, Synthese (2000); “Human Knowledge, Animal and Reflective,” Philosophical Studies (2001); and “Thomas Reid,” with James Van Cleve, in The Blackwell Guide to the Modern Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche (2001). He is editor or coeditor of fifteen books, including A Companion to Epistemology, with Jonathan Dancy (1992); Causation, with Michael Tooley (1993); A Com- panion to Metaphysics, with Jaegwon Kim (1995); Cognition, Agency, and Rationality, with Kepa Korta and Xabier Arrazola (1999); The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, with John Greco (1999); Metaphysics: An Anthology, with Jaegwon Kim (1999); Epistemology: An Anthology, with Jaegwon Kim (2000); and Skepticism, with Enrique Villanueva (2000). SAMUEL C. WHEELER is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy (2000) and of articles in a wide range of areas of philosophy, from ancient philos- ophy, literary theory, philosophical logic, and the philosophy of language to metaphysics and ethics. His publications include “Metaphor According to Davidson and De Man,” in Redrawing the Lines (1989); “True Figures: Metaphor, Social Relations, and the Sorites,” in The Interpretive Turn (1991); “Plato’s Enlightenment: The Good as the Sun,” History of Philosophy Quar- terly (1997); “Derrida’sDifferance and Plato’sDifferent,” Philosophy and Phe- nomenological Research (1999); “Arms as Insurance,” Public Affairs Quarterly (1999); and “Gun Violence and Fundamental Rights,” Criminal Justice Ethics (2001). Introduction KIRK LUDWIG Donald Davidson has been one of the most influential philosophers work- ing in the analytic tradition in the last half of the twentieth century. He has made seminal contributions to a wide range of subjects: the philos- ophy of language and the theory of meaning, the philosophy of action, the philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and the theory of ra- tionality. His principal work, spread out in a series of articles stretching over nearly forty years, exhibits a unity rare among philosophers contribut- ing to so many different topics. His essays are elegant, but they are also noted for their compact, sometimes cryptic style, and for their difficulty. Themes and arguments in different essays overlap, and later papers often presuppose familiarity with earlier work. Together, they form a mosaic that presents a systematic account of the nature