Truth & Predication

by Donald Davidson, Kevin Sharpe (Editor)

This brief book takes readers to the very heart of what it is that philosophy can do well. Completed shortly before Donald Davidson's death at 85, Truth and Predication brings full circle a journey moving from the insights of Plato and Aristotle to the problems of contemporary philosophy. In particular, Davidson, countering many of his contemporaries, argues that the concept of truth is not ambiguous, and that we need an effective theory of truth in order to live well. Davidson begins by harking back to an early interest in the classics, and an even earlier engagement with the workings of grammar; in the pleasures of diagramming sentences in grade school, he locates his first glimpse into the mechanics of how we conduct the most important activities in our life--such as declaring love, asking directions, issuing orders, and telling stories. Davidson connects these essential questions with the most basic and yet hard to understand mysteries of language use--how we connect noun to verb. This is a problem that Plato and Aristotle wrestled with, and Davidson draws on their thinking to show how an understanding of linguistic behavior is critical to the formulating of a workable concept of truth. Anchored in classical philosophy, Truth and Predication nonetheless makes telling use of the work of a great number of modern philosophers from Tarski and Dewey to Quine and Rorty. Representing the very best of Western thought, it reopens the most difficult and pressing of ancient philosophical problems, and reveals them to be very much of our day.

Genres: Philosophy

192 pages, Hardcover

First published May 31, 2005

About the author

Donald Davidson was one of the most important philosophers of the latter half of the twentieth century. His ideas, presented in a series of essays from the 1960's onwards, have been influential across a range of areas from semantic theory through to epistemology and ethics. Davidson's work exhibits a breadth of approach, as well as a unitary and systematic character, which is unusual within twentieth century analytic philosophy. Thus, although he acknowledged an important debt to W. V. O. Quine, Davidson's thought amalgamates influences (though these are not always explicit) from a variety of sources, including Quine, C. I. Lewis, Frank Ramsey, Immanuel Kant and the later Wittgenstein. And while often developed separately, Davidson's ideas nevertheless combine in such a way as to provide a single integrated approach to the problems of knowledge, action, language and mind. The breadth and unity of his thought, in combination with the sometimes-terse character of his prose, means that Davidson is not an easy writer to approach. Yet however demanding his work might sometimes appear, this in no way detracts from either the significance of that work or the influence it has exercised and will undoubtedly continue to exercise. Indeed, in the hands of Richard Rorty and others, and through the widespread translation of his writings, Davidson's ideas have reached an audience that extends far beyond the confines of English-speaking analytic philosophy. Of late twentieth century American philosophers, perhaps only Quine has had a similar reception and influence.

Donald Herbert Davidson was born on March 6th, 1917, in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. He died suddenly, as a consequence of cardiac arrest following knee surgery, on Aug. 30, 2003, in Berkeley, California. Remaining both physically and philosophically active up until his death, Davidson left behind behind a number of important and unfinished projects including a major book on the nature of predication. The latter volume was published posthumously (see Davidson, 2005b), together with two additional volumes of collected essays (Davidson 2004, 2005a), under the guidance of Marcia Cavell.

Davidson completed his undergraduate study at Harvard, graduating in 1939. His early interests were in literature and classics and, as an undergraduate, Davidson was strongly influenced by A. N. Whitehead. After starting graduate work in classical philosophy (completing a Master's degree in 1941), Davidson's studies were interrupted by service with the US Navy in the Mediterranean from 1942-45. He continued work in classical philosophy after the war, graduating from Harvard in 1949 with a dissertation on Plato's ‘Philebus’ (1990b). By this time, however, the direction of Davidson's thinking had already, under Quine's influence, changed quite dramatically (the two having first met at Harvard in 1939-40) and he had begun to move away from the largely literary and historical concerns that had preoccupied him as an undergraduate towards a more strongly analytical approach.

While his first position was at Queen's College in New York, Davidson spent much of the early part of his career (1951-1967) at Stanford University. He subsequently held positions at Princeton (1967-1970), Rockefeller (1970-1976), and the University of Chicago (1976-1981). From 1981 until his death he worked at the University of California, Berkeley. Davidson was the recipient of a number of award and fellowships and was a visitor at many universities around the world. Davidson was twice married, with his second marriage, in 1984, being to Marcia Cavell.

-http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dav...

Reviews

[Champagne Drinking Teetotaler · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent study! But is a shame that Davidson didn't consider the classical theory of correspondence, which doesn't talk about correspondence to "facts" at all. I think that the classical correspondence theory, when paired with the classical theory of Predication, could solve many problems, and even restore talk of facts. Davidson's efforts to continue the debate within analytical philosophy in a less historically illiterate way are of course laudable and we don't know where Davidson would have ended up, had he been given just a few more days in this valley of sorrows. One virtue of the book is to show how Russell Strawson and the like fell into the same traps as Plato and his followers.
But Davidson repeats much of his own writings, when he states his own position, and this is simply a position which I find insane and untenable. Classical Thomists or Aristoteleans probably won't be much impressed by the slingshot or the theory of reality without reference. If noone has written out a clear response to this yet, then it probably is about time!

[Jacob]

Everybody seems to have an different idea of what disquotation is, much less what to make of it. Davidson does an amazing job explaining the various ways to take Tarski before arguing that a non-deflationary way of applying Tarski's insights is superior to a correspondence theory of truth and also solves the problem of the unity of the proposition. A lot of historical overview, but still short and sweet.

[Leo Espluga]

Es el primer libro de filosofía analítica y del lenguaje puro y jo der. Que manera de sufrir, hay momentos donde he captado cosas y me ha parecido de mucho interés. Eso sí, el viaje ha sido duro, duro. Me quedo con ganas de leer más sobre esta filosofía, que pese que escapa de mi interés principal, creo que dota de una profundidad necesaria la concepción de las cosas.

[Nat Baldino · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I don't agree with Davidson's conclusions, I so admire the clarity of his writing and his scope. Think he misunderstands and limits Dewey but is spot on about Quine, and thank God he disagrees with Rorty.

[Edmundo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly wonderful account of the problems of truth, but especially of predication going from Plato and Aristotle to the 1900s. The solution is interesting, but vague, albeit perhaps as intended. A truth definition was rejected as impossible. Yet the notion of grasping the concept of truth was vital for the conception of predication. How are we to understand truth? Is the Tarski definition really helpful in the way Davidson suggests? I don't know. There seems to be many shortcuts here, and, as already pointed out, vagueness. Is our conception of truth the Tarski-style sentences, "Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white. What does this really say about predication? The predication refers to the truth conditions? I guess ultimately I did not garner a good enough understanding... It's unfortunate. There is something to Davidson's account, but I think mostly what he achieves is the rejection of other accounts of predication - Quine, Frege, Sellars, and Russell are all clearly wrong in how they conceptualized predication, based on Davidson's very instructive elucidation of these theories and their flaws. There is something deeply satisfying with the account, if I understand it right, in that what unifies a sentence's subject and predication is what is true about the sentence itself, taken in an extensional sense. But then we assume that predication functions extensionally... Does it function that way? Or is there sense here, if so, how does it square with this account? Ah, well. Many thoughts will circulate around this book for a long time. It is very good and interesting. While it won't give a satisfying conclusion, I believe it might be setting us in the right direction on how to think about both truth and predication. Truth seems to caught up with notions such as belief, meaning, translation, and so on, in very intricate ways. To really understand truth, one has to untangle that mess, Davidson says. With this I agree wholeheartedly, even if I am not on board with his particular way of untangling things. This is a great book, in any case. Fantastic and clear writing throughout. I liked it a lot.