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3 for the Price of 1 - Donald Davidson's Principle of Charity Slays Empiricism, Conceptual Schemes & The Cartesian Skeptic (Maybe)

3 for the Price of 1 - Donald Davidson's Principle of Charity Slays Empiricism, Conceptual Schemes & The Cartesian Skeptic (Maybe)

FromOn The Very Idea - A Philosophy Podcast


3 for the Price of 1 - Donald Davidson's Principle of Charity Slays Empiricism, Conceptual Schemes & The Cartesian Skeptic (Maybe)

FromOn The Very Idea - A Philosophy Podcast

ratings:
Length:
19 minutes
Released:
Apr 22, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

Apologies for the Buzzfeedesque title - In this final episode of a two-part series on the work of Donald Davidson, I look at Davidson’s work on a theory of meaning, his principle of charity, and, what he believed were his arguments that put the final nail in the coffin of empiricism. Davidson claims that we should develop a theory of meaning by imagining interpreting the utterances of others. In order to make a program of interpretation, we must kindly assume that the subjects of interpretation are at least largely correct by our own standards - they must share the majority of our background beliefs. We must interpret with this principle of charity. But when we acknowledge the necessity of a principle of charity to arrive at shared meaning, we see that the interpretation of other speakers cannot involve direct 'word to world' or 'sentence to stuff' relations. Here, in interpretation, empiricism is false and a holism of massive shared background beliefs is necessary. Meaning and interpretation between speakers can only be mediated through a whole heap of background beliefs that are assumed to be shared between interpreter and interpretee. This mass of shared beliefs undermines any workable notion of people having differing conceptual schemes and, funnily enough, provides us with a somewhat janky answer to the Cartesian skeptic.
Released:
Apr 22, 2022
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (61)

A self-indulgent vanity project of a man with a microphone in hand, each episode explores a philosophical theme hopefully with a certain degree of accuracy. I try to keep it pretty light. More philosophy nerd than academic, it sprung out of free time during the pandemic. @KMaca5