Davidson's Theory Research Articles

Religion, interpretation, and diversity of belief: the framework model from Kant to Durkheim to Davidson

Different religious traditions offer apparently very different pictures of the world. How are we to make sense of this radical diversity of religious belief? In this book, Professor Godlove argues that religions are alternative conceptual frameworks, the categories of which organise experience in diverse ways. He traces the history of this idea from Kant to Durkheim, and then proceeds to discuss two constraints on the diversity of all human judgment and belief: first that human experience is made possible by shared, a priori rules, and second, that as language-users we must presuppose that we hold the vast bulk of our beliefs in common. Given these unavoidable constraints, it is clear how religions may offer encompassing symbolic systems that often diverge dramatically from one another. 'An original and brilliant critique of Durkheim and Kant from within the framework of Davidson's semantic theory. This book is required reading for anyone interested in the academic study of religion, and the problems of relativism and the diversity of belief.' -- Hans H. Penner, Dartmouth CollegeDifferent religious traditions offer apparently very different pictures of the world. How are we to make sense of this radical diversity of religious belief? In this book, Professor Godlove argues that religions are alternative conceptual frameworks, the categories of which organise experience in diverse ways. He traces the history of this idea from Kant to Durkheim, and then proceeds to discuss two constraints on the diversity of all human judgment and belief: first that human experience is made possible by shared, a priori rules, and second, that as language-users we must presuppose that we hold the vast bulk of our beliefs in common. Given these unavoidable constraints, it is clear how religions may offer encompassing symbolic systems that often diverge dramatically from one another. 'An original and brilliant critique of Durkheim and Kant from within the framework of Davidson's semantic theory. This book is required reading for anyone interested in the academic study of religion, and the problems of relativism and the diversity of belief.' -- Hans H. Penner, Dartmouth College

On Davidson and interpretation

Davidson's theory of interpretation, I argue, is vulnerable to a number of significant difficulties, difficulties which can be avoided or resolved by the more Quinean approach which I develop. In Section 1 I note difficulties which apply to T-theories but are avoided by translation manuals. In Section 2 I show how to construct what I call ‘T-manuals’, which are like T-theories in requiring Tarskian structure, but like translation manuals in avoiding the difficulties discussed in Section 1. In Section 3 I show that the approach using T-manuals does at least as well as Davidson's with respect to a number of other concerns of his. In Section 4 I show that it does better than Davidson's with respect to reporting interpretations, especially where demonstrative utterances are concerned. In Section 5 I argue for (somewhat modified) Quinean empirical constraints, which go with manuals, as superior to the empirical constraints Davidson imposes, which go with T-theories. In Section 6 I show that Davidson is unable to offer an adequate account of what an interpreter knows; and propose a more acceptable theory of language mastery which gives a central role to the requirement that the interpreter's language usage satisfy the refined and amplified Quinean empirical constraints of Section 5.

Some Remarks on Davidson's Theory of Truth

Some Remarks on Davidson's Theory of Truth

Effect of voidage variation on flow past a fluidisation bubble

The motion of the particle—fluid mixture around a gas bubble rising in an incipiently gas-fluidised bed is studied using a potential-flow theory for the solid particles and allowing for observed void variation. The principal conclusion of this work is that the agreement between the Davidson theory and the theory based on observed void profiles is very good, though in the case of the fluid stream function the values are different.

X—Radical Interpretation and the Structure of Thought

It is often argued that a radical interpretation procedure for the analysis of thought (especially davidson's) is committed to the thesis that thoughts are essentially structured entities, And is therefore false because many structures of thought do not match linguistic or semantic structures. The author attempts to defend davidson's theory of radical interpretation against such criticisms and to show that the interdependence of thought and language presupposed by this theory does not mean a primacy of either one over the other.

A "Semantic Realist" Response to Dummett's Antirealism

In What Is a Theory of Meaning? (II)' Michael Dummett argues that the applicability of a truth-conditions theory of meaning for natural language is extremely limited. There are many natural language sentences whose meaning a truth-conditions theory cannot account for. This failure of a truth-conditions theory leads Dummett to adopt a verificationist theory of meaning. But, since a verificationist theory of meaning rejects bivalence, and because bivalence is a necessary condition for realism, it follows that in adopting a verificationist theory of meaning Dummett is also adopting an antirealist theory of meaning. In follows I will suggest that at least one' of Dummett's arguments against Donald Davidson's version of a truth-conditions theory of meaning fails and that Davidson's semantic realism can be defended from this argument. For Dummett a theory of meaning for a natural language is a theory of understanding for that language. This means that a theory of meaning for a language must specify both a speaker of the language knows and what counts as a manifestation of that (WTM II, p. 71). Thus, if a theory of meaning takes truth as its central notion, as for Davidson, then the theory must supply an explanation of it is to ascribe to someone a knowledge of the condition which must obtain for a sentence to be (WTM II, pp. 79, 8o). According to Dummett, this knowledge consists in the ability to determine whether the condition under which a sentence is true obtains or not. Thus, applying a Davidsonian theory of

Some Aspects of the Sparkover Time of a Low-Pressure Magnetic Switch

In this paper an approximate equation for the calculation of sparkover time of a low-pressure magnetic switch is presented. The theory is based on the assumption that all of the positive ions generated in the gap are situated at the anode. The concept of the effective reduced electric field (EREF) is applied to take into account the influence of a crossed magnetic field on the discharge parameters. The results obtained show that on application of a magnetic field the sparkover time in oxygen decreases very rapidly and reaches a minimum value. The spark over time remains at this minimum value over a range of magnetic field strengths, the minimum value depending upon the molecular number density and the applied voltage. A further increase in the magnetic field increases the sparkvoer time very rapidly, reaching a cut-off value at which breakdown of the gap is not possible. Application of Davidson's theory for a low pressure discharge shows very good agreement between the calculated and measured sparkover times in electric fields alone. Davidson's theory has been extended to a coaxial cylindrical geometry and also to the case of an applied crossed magnetic field. The sparkover times are calculated using the extended Davidson's theory and compared with the present author's theory.

Davidson's Theory of Propositional Attitudes

One commonly stated reason for thinking that there are abstract entities such as propositions is that they are needed to account for undeniable facts about propositional attitudes and the sentences reporting such attitudes. According to the propositional theory, belief, doubt, assertion and other attitudes are relations between individuals and propositions. In sentences reporting these relations the words in the content-sentence (e.g., ‘p’ in sentences of the form ‘S said that p’) refer to concepts or other abstract things and the entire ‘that-clause’ refers to a proposition. According to a common rival account, propositional attitudes are complex relations between individuals and sentences and each that-clause refers to the content-sentence it contains. The words in the content-sentence either fail to refer or refer to themselves. A striking implication of both the propositional theory and the sentential theory is that the words and phrases in the content-sentence of a sentence expressing a propositional attitude fail to refer to the familiar things to which they ordinarily refer.

The rationalization of meaning and understanding: Davidson and Habermas

To the doctrinal schisms that always divided philosophers, the twen tieth century added a cultural rift that bifurcated the philosophical world into mutually indifferent factions. Alongside the differences in interests and tradition which still separate Anglo-American from Continental philosophy, however, there are many areas of in vestigation which they share. Prominent among these is the analysis of meaning and understanding, which has been among the central, if not the central, concern in both traditions this century. It is this area of philosophy, accordingly, that contains especially promising possibili ties for the rapprochement that is already underway. This is evidenced by the recent convergence in the doctrines of two philosophers, each a prominent member of one of the two traditions. Donald Davidson's theory of meaning forms one of the major paradigms in analytic philosophy of language. Its two most salient features are, first, construing meaning as given by truth conditions, and, second, treating understanding as an undertaking that necessarily finds its object to be rational. J?rgen Habermas has recently produced a theory of meaning and understanding that has two highly similar features and that draws out the consequences attending the second.1 For him, meaning is constituted by satisfaction or validity conditions, and understanding is essentially a critical undertaking. Despite their differences, these two philosophers form a united front extending across the Anglo-Continental divide, a front which can be labeled "the rationalization of meaning and understanding". Davidson and Habermas not only share a theory of meaning and understanding, but they do so within the framework of highly similar projects. For Davidson, one cannot understand another person's actions unless one can interpret his or her speech. Understanding language, in other words, is part of the wider project of understanding miman beings. So Davidson advances the idea that a theory of interpretation, together with a theory of decision, form a comprehen sive theory for interpreting human action in general.2 Habermas, too, aims at a comprehensive theory of action, in particular social action.

The Question of Conation in Action Theory

In some recent and most interesting articles, Myles Brand argues that intending has an exclusively conative feature. 1 This conative feature is said by Brand to be non-cognitive and to be that aspect of an episode of intending which moves an agent to act. Brand alleges that the conative feature of intending must be included in any satisfactory answer to what he calls the fundamental question in action theory: what characteristics must a mental event possess in order to be the proximate cause of action? Brand contends that no philosophical theory of the relation between intending and acting has been offered which includes the conative feature of intending as an element. Therefore, he thinks that no philosophical theory of the relation between intending and acting has answered the fundamental question in action theory. I shall argue, however, that one contemporary theory of the relation between intending and acting does contain an account of the conative feature of which Brand speaks. I shall submit that Hector-Neri Castaneda's theory of the relation between intending and acting provides an answer to the fundamental question in action theory. 1 Brand's identification of a conative component of intending is best understood in light of the recent history of Causal theories of action. Basciaily, a Causal theory is one which holds that intentional action is caused by a preceding mental event of a particular kind. Recent interest and developments in such theories owe much in impetus to the work of Donald Davidson whose version of the Causal theory holds that the mental event causing action is the combination of a pro-attitude toward actions of a certain kind and the belief that such actions can be performed. 1 A proattitude, according to Davidson, can be a desire, a wanting, an urging, a prompting, and numerous other things, such as a moral view, an aesthetic principle, a private goal, etc. Davidson's account, however, has been severely criticized. Wilfrid Sellars, for example, finds Davidson's theory objectionable on the grounds that it does not pinpoint the type of mental event that has action as its effect. Sellars thinks that the term 'pro-attitude' does not identify with

New Directions in European Historiography (review)

368 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY scientific study of meaning.' According to Chomsky, a theory of language is a theory about the syntactic structure of sentences. Further, in Syntactic Structures Chomsky acknowledges his debt to W. V. Quine, whom Hacking recognizes as the founder of the "no meaning" theory of language. If Chomsky has now adopted a theory of meaning in response to the pressures of the generative semanticists--and it is not clear whether he has or has not--he has moved from his original Quinean position that meaning is not relevant to language to the position that it is; he has traveled, so to say, back in time, from epoch C to epoch B. Following his study of Chomsky, Hacking turns to Russell as his second instance of a meaning-theorist. Yet Russell is no better than Chomsky in this regard, even though Russell always had one theory of "meaning" or another. What is wrong with using Russell in this way is that both parts of his theory of "meaning" have just those aspects that incline Hacking to disqualify seventeenth-century philosophers from having one. The first part of Russell's theory is that the meaning of general names, such as "red," is a concept--something which, though not private, is observable only to the mind's eye. The second part of his theory is that the meaning of proper names, such as "this," is a sense-datum--something which, though observable with the physical eye, is private (since people cannot share perspectives, they cannot share their sense-data). Ironically, Hacking admits that Russell's theory leads to the conclusion that "meaning is essentially private" (p. 76). And yet he is undaunted. He does not see that Russell cannot serve as a meaning-theorist, because, for Russell, the meanings of proper names are private entities, whereas, for Hacking they cannot be. Finally, Davidson certainly has a theory of meaning in Hacking's sense. The fact that he explicates meaning in terms of the truth-conditions of sentences does not falsify but rather confirms that claim. The fact that "Meaning will never be mentioned" in Davidson's theory and that "we [can] get along fine with sentences and their truth-conditions" (p. 179)is beside the point. I can talk about someone, say, Hacking, without ever mentioning his name; I can get along fine with references to the author of Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy? and still believe in his existence. I might do this if someone found the use of the name "Hacking" unsuited, for some reason, to fix a reference. Hacking clearly sees his book as addressing an important issue. Had he succeeded we would have been greatly in his debt. In my opinion he has failed, and, I regret to say, has failed miserably. His Philosophical Thesis is preposterous and his Historical Thesis wrecked by his misinterpretations, in his preface, Hacking says his "approach was often more historical than the audience expected." In my view, it is not historical; or, at best, it is an example of how history of philosophy ought not be done. ALOYSIUSP. MARTINICH University of Texas, Austin New Directions in European Historiography. By George G. Iggers. With a Contribution by Norman Baker. (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1975. Pp. ix + 229. $16.00) In his earlier book on the German historical tradition,' Iggers took his readers up to and through a crisis in that tradition. He showed how the hermeneutic approach of the German Geisteswissenschaften led to an emphasis upon the conscious actions of selected ("great") 4 In "Deep Structure, Surface Structure, and Semantic Interpretation," Chomsky says, "In the domain of semantics there are, needless to say, problems of fact and principle that have barely beenapproached , and there is no reasonably concrete or well-defined 'theory of semantic representation' to which one can refer" (Semantics, ed. Danny D. Steinberg and Leon A. Jakobovits [Cambridge: At the University Press, 1971], p. 183). BOOK REVIEWS 369 individuals, and thus to certain traditional types of political and intellectual history. This methodological bent was supported, on the theoretical level, by a Romantic notion of individualityand by Idealist theories of culture. It was also nourished, at a practical...

Davidson's extensional theory of meaning

Davidson's extensional theory of meaning

A more complete kinetic theory of DNA renaturation

We develop here a more complete theory of DNA renaturation kinetics which differs from the Wetmur and Davidson theory mainly in the assumption that nucleation is not necessarily the rate−limiting step. Thus, the theory includes the several first order zipping steps. Our assumption that zipping is much slower than previously thought appears to be due to the presence of secondary structure in reacting single strands. The theory explains several anomalies seen in renaturation kinetic experiments followed by optical density. Specifically, it explains quantitatively (1) the deviations from linearity in reciprocal−second−order (RSO) plots, (2) the variation with concentration of rate constants obtained from the early−time linear region of an RSO plot, and (3) the high values of complexity calculated for viral DNAs using bacterial DNAs as the known standard. Renaturation kinetic experiments followed by hydroxypatite chromatography do not show these anomalies, since hydroxyapatite presumably ’’sees’’ only nucleation. In this paper the theory is derived and compared with experiments on bacterial and bacteriophage DNA. The implications of the theory for other biologically oriented experiments will be explained elsewhere.

The pressure field around a two-dimensional gas bubble in a fluidized bed

Measurements of the entire pressure field around a two-dimensional bubble rising in an incipiently fluidized bed are reported. Above the center of pressure line, the field is Laplacian and reasonably well described by Davidson's theory. The pressure wake is closed. It extends for 12 bubble radii below the stagnation point and four radii on either side of the vertical axis of symmetry.

Time-dependent current leading to a spark

The Schade and the Kachickas and Fischer theories for the time-dependent current leading to a spark consider secondary ionisation by positive ions and photons, respectively; they are adapted here for photon and positive-ion secondary ionisation at the cathode. The theories are then extended to include simultaneous secondary ionisation by positive ions and photons. It is shown that, for small overvoltages, the extended Schade theory is reduced to the more accurate Davidson theory. However, no such reduction appears possible for the Kachickas and Fischer theory. The advantage of the Schade theory is that it gives a better engineering insight into the development of the time-dependent current leading to a spark than does the mathematical derivation by Davidson; also, no. subsidiary experiment is required to derive the current-growth constant.

Secondary ionization coefficients in a low-pressure discharge in mercury vapour

Formative time lags have been measured in mercury vapour for Es/p0=138-422 V cm−1 Torr−1, and have been compared with time lags calculated from models based on Davidson's theory of the temporal growth of a gas discharge. The observed times were compatible with a model having one slow process and one faster secondary ionization process: that is, a process in which delayed photons are produced by the destruction of metastable atoms by collisions in the vapour (coefficient δ1/α), and a faster process such as positive ion bombardment (coefficient γ). The analysis could not distinguish between the various faster processes so all were included in the coefficient γ. Data are given for the appropriate values of both these secondary ionization coefficients as functions of Es/p0. The curve for δ1/α as a function of Es/p0 resembles the excitation probability curve for the 3P2 metastable state of mercury and the corresponding delayed photon process is predominant for Es/p0<220 V cm−1 Torr−1.

Davidson's Theory of “Objective Value”: A “Transformation” Problem

Research Article| March 01 1971 Davidson's Theory of “Objective Value”: A “Transformation” Problem Carl G. Uhr Carl G. Uhr Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (1971) 3 (1): 56–91. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-3-1-56 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Carl G. Uhr; Davidson's Theory of “Objective Value”: A “Transformation” Problem. History of Political Economy 1 March 1971; 3 (1): 56–91. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-3-1-56 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsHistory of Political Economy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 1971 by Duke University Press1971 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The effect of a bubble on gas flow in a plane fluidized bed of finite width: two theories compared

In this paper equations for the gas flow patterns produced by a bubble in a finite two-dimensional fluidized bed are derived using Murray's linearized theory. Several features of these patterns are found to be in qualitative agreement with results for the same problem obtained from Davidson's theory, and for a certain approximate representation of a slug the predictions of the two theories are identical. They are in good agreement also when the geometrical representation of the slug is improved.

An extension of Davidson's theory of bubbles in fluidized beds

The two-dimensional form of D avidson's model of a circular gas fluidization bubble in an infinite bed is extended to study a bubble shape closer to that observed experimentally. The gas flow pattern is seen to be significantly altered only close to the rear of the bubble, and study of the theoretical particle flow in that region prompted the successful search for trailing particle vortices reported by R owe and P artridge. A further extension to beds of finite width shows that, under certain conditions, a bubble on the axis is capable of capturing all gas flow into the bed. The presence of the wall reduces the size of the gas cloud known to form round a bubble when the bubble velocity exceeds the interstitial gas velocity in the undisturbed bed.

Gas flow through bubbles in a fluidized bed—I Flow through an ideal bubble

Gas flow through a fluidized bed is normally streamline and the pattern of flow depends on the bubbles within the bed and their velocities relative to gas. Because the bubbles are regions of high permeability gas tends to flow through them, and in addition particles, which themselves flow in streamlines around the bubbles, impose a drag on the gas. D avidson (ref. [3]) has shown how the pressure field and the drag field around a bubble can be added to predict the resulting pattern of gas streamlines. In this paper experiments are described in which the gas flow through a “two-dimensional” fluidized bed was followed using NO 2 as a tracer. The trace forms a streak line which is related to the streamline pattern and this is compared with Davidson's theory. The agreement is probably good enough for the purpose of engineering design but in detail there are discrepancies which suggest that a more sophisticated theory will be needed to explain the origin of bubbles and their stability.