American philosopher. Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, Davidson held posts at a number of universities before becoming professor at Berkeley in 1981. His writings have been a major influence on philosophy of mind and language in the latter half of the 20th century. Davidson introduced the position known as anomalous monism in the philosophy of mind, instigating a vigorous debate over the relation between mental and physical descriptions of persons, and the possibility of genuine explanation of events in terms of psychological properties. Following but enlarging upon the work of Quine on language, Davidson concentrated upon the figure of the radical interpreter, arguing that the method of interpreting a language could be thought of as constructing a truth definition in the style of Tarski, in which the systematic contribution of elements of sentences to their overall meaning is laid bare. The construction takes place within a generally holistic theory of knowledge and meaning. A radical interpreter can tell when a subject holds a sentence true, and using the principle of charity ends up making an assignment of truth conditions to individual sentences. Although Davidson is a defender of the doctrines of the indeterminacy of radical translation and the inscrutability of reference, his approach has seemed to many to offer some hope of identifying meaning as a respectable notion, even within a broadly extensional approach to language. Davidson is also known for rejection of the idea of a conceptual scheme, thought of as something peculiar to one language or one way of looking at the world, arguing that where the possibility of translation stops so does the coherence of the idea that there is anything to translate.
His papers are collected in Essays on Actions and Events (1980) and Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (1983), Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (2001), and Problems of Rationality (2004).
【哲學】真理、意義與方法－大衛森哲學文選 (簡體書) 2008
唐纳德·戴维森是20世纪最重要的哲学家之一。戴维森的哲学论著涉及一系列哲学基本问题；其影响力跨越不同哲学传统。无论是赞成还是反对戴维森(某些)观 点的哲学家都一致认为，戴维森思想是激发他们深入进行哲学思考的原动力之一。本卷《真理、意义与方法--戴维森哲学文选》是在《真理、意义、行动与事件- -戴维森哲学文选》一书基础上增选9篇文章、重新组织结构并充实有关内容而成。
主要包括：第一部分，一般意义理论与真理理论；
第二部分，意义理论应用：命题态度问题与隐喻问题；
第三部分，关于理解的理论：解释与翻译；
第四部分，语言、思想与实在；
第五部分，知识与客观性；
第六部分，行动和心理事件；
第七部分，实践理性和非理性。
选编者引言
第一部分 一般意义理论与真理理论
1.真理与意义(1967)
2.为约定T辩护(1973)
3.真理概念的结构与内容(1990)
第二部分 意义理论应用:命题态度问题与隐喻问题
4.论说出(that)(1968)
5.隐喻的含意(1978)
第三部分 关于理解的理论:解释与翻译
6.彻底的解释(1973)
7.信念与意义的基础(1974)
8.对福斯特的答复(1976)
9.墓志铭的完全错乱(1986)
第四部分 语言、思想与实在
10.论概念图式这一观念(1974)
11.论分析方法与跨文化理解(2001)
12.形而上学中的真理方法(1977)
13.无指称的实在(1977)
14.通过语言的理解(1997)
第五部分 知识与客观性
15.关于真理与知识的融贯论(1983)
补记(1987)
16.知识的三种类型(1991)
第六部分 行动与心理事件
17.行动、理由与原因(1963)
18.行动语句的逻辑形式(1967)
19.心理事件(1970)
第七部分 实践理性与非理性
20.意志薄弱如何可能?(1970)
21.非理性的悖论(1974)
22.欺骗与区分(1986)
附录一 戴维森论著目录
附录二 参考文献目录
附录三 牟博:戴维森、哲学与中国哲学
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
Donald Davidson
(born March 6, 1917, Springfield, Mass., U.S. — died Aug. 30, 2003, Berkeley, Calif.) U.S. philosopher. He taught at various universities before settling at the University of California at Berkeley in 1981. In a series of seminal papers, he developed strikingly original and unusually systematic positions on a wide range of traditional philosophical problems.
According to his doctrine of anomalist monism, although mental events are identical to physical events (in the brain) under appropriate descriptions, there are no psychophysical laws (in the strict sense) that relate the two; it follows that reduction of the mental to the physical is impossible (see also supervenience).
He argued that a formal requirement for any adequate theory of linguistic meaning is that it generate theorems that express the truth conditions of sentences in the "object language" in terms of sentences in a metalanguage.
He also developed sophisticated arguments against the possibility of conceptual relativism (the view that there are mutually unintelligible "conceptual schemes") and global skepticism (the view that most if not all of one's beliefs about the world may be false).
第一部分 一般意义理论与真理理论
1.真理与意义(1967)
大多数语言 哲学家都承认,并且近来有些语言学家也承认,令人满意的意义理论必须对语句的意义依赖语词的意义的方式提出一种解释。除非能够对某一语言提供这样一种解 释,否则,人们便会论证说,这就没有对于我们为何能够学会这种语言这一事实作出解释,也就是说,没有对于这样一个事实作出解释:根据对于有限词汇和有限地 加以阐明的一组规则的掌握,我们便有条件去造出并理解其数量潜在无限的任何语句。我不对这些模糊的断言提出质疑,因为我领会到这些断言含有不少真实性。我 想要问的是,一种理论提出所勾画的那种解释,这是怎么一回事。
一种提议认为,首先要把某种作为意义的实体指派给语句中的每个语词(或其他 有含义的句法成分),这样,我们便能在“忒厄特图斯(Theaetetus)飞翔”这个语句中把忒厄特图斯指派给“忒厄特图斯”、把飞翔这种特性指派给 “飞翔”。因此,就产生了语句意义如何从这些语词意义中生成的问题。把这些语词的连结视为在 句法上有含义的片断,我们便能使这种连结具有参与关系或例证关系(the relation of participating in or instantiating)。可是,显然我们在这里开始了一种无穷倒退。弗雷格试图通过这样一种说法来避免这种倒退,这就是说,(例如)对应于谓词的实 体与对应于名称的实体相比,前者是“不饱和的”或“不完全的”;但这种学说看来与其说解决了问题,倒不如说标明了困难所在。
2.为约定T辩护
假设某人说,“今天晚上天空出现一百万颗星”,另外一个人回答说,“那是真的”, 那么,第一个人所说的话是真的当且仅当另外那个人所说的话是真的,没有能比这一点更清楚明了的了。这种人们所熟悉的结果是由下述两种手段造成的,其中之一 是一种对表达式的指称方式(在此,这项工作是由指示词“那”(that)完成的),另外一种手段便是真理概念。第一个手段使我们从谈论世界到谈论语言;第 二个手段则又使我们返回来从谈论语言到谈论世界。
我们已获知由具有下述形式的语句来描述这些事实,即“‘今天晚上天空出现一百万颗星’这个语句是 真的当且仅当今天晚上天空出现一百万颗星”。因为T一语句(我们可以这样称呼具有上述形式的语句)显然是真的,因此有些哲学家认为真理概念是无足轻重的 (至少当把它应用于语句时)。但是,正如拉姆赛(F.P.Ramsey)或许是第一个指出的那样,这种看法当然是错误的,因为,仅仅对于某些语境来说T一 语句才提供了一种可供选择的谈论真理的方式。
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