Truth, Language, and History is the much-anticipated final volume of
Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. In the four groups of essays
that comprise it, Davidson continues to explore the themes that
occupied him for more than fifty years: the relations between language
and the world; speaker intention and linguistic meaning; language and
mind; mind and body; mind and world; mind and other minds. He asks:
what is the role of the concept of truth in these explorations? And,
can a scientific world view make room for human thought without
reducing it to something material and mechanistic? Davidson's
underlying picture, which can be seen in many of these essays, is that
we are acquainted directly with the world, not indirectly via some
intermediary such as sense-data, representations, or language itself;
that thought emerges in the first place through interpersonal
communication in a shared material world, and continues to develop as
we engage each other in dialogue; and that language depends on
communication, not vice versa. This is the triangulating situation -
two creatures communicating about a common world - about which
Davidson has written elsewhere. As for the mind-body relation: our
ontology need posit nothing more that material objects and events; but
as explainers we require two mutually irreducible vocabularies: mind
and body. In the last six essays Davidson finds interconnections
between his own views and those of some of the major philosophers of
the past. Including a new introduction by his widow, Marcia Cavell,
this volume completes Donald Davidson's colossal intellectual legacy.
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Philosophical Essays Volume 5
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191519246
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
Clarendon Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter