Belief and the Basis of Meaning (1974)

Abstract

Davidson responds to David Lewis’ and W.V. Quine's replies to Essay 10. He discusses the various interpretative principles Lewis improved on (Charity, Rationalization, Truthfulness) and then raises the issue whether, as Lewis seemed to suggest, we can interpret utterances and beliefs independently of employing intentional idiom (that is, whether we can employ a reductive, physical framework to get the same interpretative results). Agreeing with Lewis on the supervenience of the mental on the physical (but disqualifying his ontic monism in a new footnote as not even ‘materialist’), Davidson stresses the analytical irreducibility of the former to the latter (he refers us to Essay 11 of his Essays on Actions and Events). In relation to both Lewis and Quine, he discusses the degree of determinacy ineliminable from his truth‐theoretic approach to interpretation.