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Favorite Davidson Passage 3 Years, 9 Months ago
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I like this:
[blockquote]"...however feeble or faulty our attempts to relate these various basic concepts to each other, these attempts fare better and teach us more, than our efforts to produce correct and revealing definitions of basic concepts...For the most part, the concepts philosophers single out for attention, like truth, knowledge, belief, action, cause, the good and the right, are the most elementary concepts we have, without which (I am inclined to say) we would have no concepts at all. Why then should we expect to be able to reduce these concepts definitionally to other concepts that are simpler?"
Donald Davidson, "The Structure and Content of Truth," Journal of Philosophy 87 (1990), p. 267.[/blockquote]
I don't know if much philosophizing can be done with this quote, and on a whole, I must admit that Davidson is fast becoming my favorite "all around analytic" philosopher. I just wanted to share it.
JKT
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Re: Favorite Davidson Passage 3 Years, 9 Months ago
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It's a view I can I relate to for sure. There does seem to be some basic concepts which form the fabric of our experience of reality. The extent to which they actually represent reality is hard to say. Even to make the distinction between reality and our experience is part of our fundamental set of concepts.
However it is extremely difficult, as Davidson points out, to define these terms. I can think of two ways of interpreting that. One is that these are concepts with real meaning but that the meaning cannot be adequately expressed as they are, for want a better expression, atomic concepts. They form the very basis by which we can meaningfully talk about the world and more complex concepts. To use an analogy, we build houses out of bricks but we can't make a brick out of bricks.
Another interpretation is that these are linguistic creations with no fixed essential definition. The meaning they have is determined by the uses we have for them. That is why we get into difficulties when we try to explain what they mean.
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Zero
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Re: Favorite Davidson Passage 3 Years, 9 Months ago
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Yes, I keep getting the impression that Davidson is awesome, and still haven't had time to give him a chance. I have an ebook sitting around of his that I really must make some time for.
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It's really an absurdly over-attended corner of the not-entirely consistent space of reason.
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Re: Favorite Davidson Passage 3 Years, 9 Months ago
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I like his stuff on metaphor.
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Re: Favorite Davidson Passage 3 Years, 9 Months ago
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While Reagan's two "minds" shared most desires and beliefs and further attitudes, one contained the memory that he had agreed to the arms-for-hostages deal while the other denied that he had any part in it. Of course, this could not be the only difference: each of the contradictory beliefs needed a supporting phalanx of ideas. Producing support for the second belief was the task of self-deception.
The image I wished to invite was not, then, that of two minds each somehow able to act like an independent agent; the image is rather that of a single mind not wholly integrated; a brain suffering from perhaps temporary self-inflicted lobotomy.
8)
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The kind of philosophy one chooses depends upon what kind of person one is. ~ J.G. Fichte
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Re: Favorite Davidson Passage 3 Years, 9 Months ago
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Successful communication proves the existence of a shared, and largely true view of the world. ...
The merit of the method of truth is not that it settles such matters once and for all, or even that it settles them without further metaphysical reflection. But the method does serve to sharpen our sense of viable alternatives, and gives a comprehensive idea of the consequences of a decision. Metaphysics has generality as an aim; the method of truth expresses that demand by requiring a theory that touches all the bases. Thus the problems of metaphysics, while neither solved nor replaced, come to be seen as the problems of all good theory building. We want a theory that is simple and clear, with a logical apparatus that is understood and justified, and that accounts for the facts about how our language works. What those facts are may remain somewhat in dispute, as will certainly the various trade-offs between simplicity and clarity. These questions will be, I do not doubt, the old questions of metaphysics in new dress. But the new dress is in many ways an attractive one.
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