Donald Davidson: a short introduction

Description

Introduction -- Radical interpretation: Davidson's philosophy of language -- The principle of charity -- Davidson's theory of action -- Language, mind, and world -- The mental and the physical.;Donald Davidson was one of the 20th Century's deepest analytic thinkers. He developed a systematic picture of the human mind and its relation to the world, an original and sustained vision that exerted a shaping influence well beyond analytic philosophy of mind and language. At its center is an idea of minded creatures as essentially rational animals: Rational animals can be interpreted, their behavior can be understood, and the contents of their thoughts are, in principle, open to others. The combination of a rigorous analytic stance with aspects of humanism so distinctive of Davidsonian thou. Introduction -- Radical interpretation: Davidson's philosophy of language -- The principle of charity -- Davidson's theory of action -- Language, mind, and world -- The mental and the physical.