Davidson’s Holism:
Epistemology in the Mirror of Meaning
Jeff Malpas
To Margaret
The methodology of interpretation is... nothing but epistemology seen in the mirror of meaning.
– Donald Davidson, ‘Thought and Talk’
Table of Contents
Foreword to the new edition
Acknowledgements
Introduction: radically interpreting Davidson
I.From translation to interpretation
1.The Quinean background
1.1Radical translation and naturalized epistemology
1.2Meaning and indeterminacy
1.3Analytical hypotheses and charity
2. The Davidsonian project
2.1The development of a theory of meaning
2.2The project of radical interpretation
2.3From charity to triangulation
II.Holism and interpretation
3.The idea of psychological holism
3.1Holism and the psychological
3.2Holism and anti-holism
3.3Holism and rationality
3.4The nature and extent of psychological holism
4. Indeterminacy and psychological structure
4.1The indeterminacy and incompleteness of interpretation
4.2The intentional-horizonal structure of the psychological
4.3Dialogue, unity and world
5.Charity and understanding
5.1The nature and role of charity
5.2Charity, error and reference
5.3The presupposition of agreement
5.4The nature of understanding
5.5Charity and morality
III.Reality, knowledge and truth
6A holistic ‘theory’ of knowledge
6.1‘The third dogma’
6.2Relativism, horizonality and psychological unity
6.3Holism and skeptical doubt
7Truth and the world
7.1Skepticism, realism and anti-realism
7.2Realism, anti-realism and truth
7.3The centrality of truth
7.4A horizonal account of truth
Epilogue: Davidson, Brandom, and McDowell
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
Although extensively revised during 2002, and again in 2010, the core of thisbook, originally published as Donald Davidson and the Mirror of Meaning, was written between 1987 and 1991. Davidson read the original typescript after attending the NEH seminar on ‘Heidegger and Davidson: Critics of Cartesianism’ organized by Hubert Dreyfus at Santa Cruz in 1990, sending me a faxed message shortly after the seminar that read: ‘Am chagrined to have to admit that I have only just read your book. Would have learned more by staying home and reading it than by attending the recent seminar. Do you have a publisher?’ As it happened, the book had at that stage already been accepted for publication by Cambridge University Press.
It appeared in print at the same time as Jerry Fodor and Ernest LePore’s, Holism: A Shopper’s Guide, as well as Akeel Bilgrami’s, Belief and Meaning. Bilgrami’s book shared some similar themes with The Mirror of Meaning, particularly the idea that holism requires a principle of ‘localism’ or what I term ‘horizonality’.[1] Fodor and LePore’s volume, on the other, represented quite a different and rather less sympathetic approach, taking issue with arguments for holism as they were supposed to appear in a number of different writers including Davidson.[2] In the decade or so since, holism itself has received some, but not a great deal of more extensive elaboration.The main reason for this, it seems to me, is simply that holism, particularly in the form that it is developed in Davidson’s or in my own work, is not well understood. Not only that, but holism, or ‘contextualism’ as it is sometimes also called, has increasingly been seen as a threat to most standard theories of language and meaning, and so when it is discussed it is usually in a manner that is concerned to dismiss rather than to understand.. For these reasons alone, a new edition of this book seems worthwhile. Moreover, recent years have also seen a great deal of additional interest in possible convergence between ‘analytic’ and so-called ‘continental’ philosophy and the exploration of such convergence that appears in these pages remains extremely relevant – perhaps even more so than when it first appeared – while the appearance of the new and revised editions of Davidson’s essays make it possible to read the development of his thinking, and the role of holism in that thinking, with greater clarity.
Although the text published here is indeed a revised, and, in some cases, expanded, the main lines of argument have been left unchanged (although the account of indeterminacy, of the treatment of the role of propositionality, and the discussion of truth have been substantially modified in ways that reflect what I hope is my own better understanding of the issuesat stake – the title has also been returned to something closer to that which I originally envisaged). Indeed, I take the fact that I have been able to leave so much the argument here in a relatively unaltered form to be an indication that the ideas as originally set out were quite faithful to the direction of Davidson’s own thinking – even if the exact manner in which those ideas are developed here, particularly the use of notions taken from phenomenology, hermeneutics and semiotics, is rather different from anything to be found in Davidson. This seems to me to be confirmed by the way in which the holism that is the central focus for my account became an increasingly important, if sometimes still under-developed, theme in Davidson’s own writing over the last fifteen years or so. The idea of triangulation, in particular, which can itself be seen as a development out of the notion of charity, and the associated idea of the indispensability of a notion of objectivity in understanding, is particularly significant in this regard. In triangulation, arguably the central idea in Davidson’s later writing, the idea of what I here termed ‘psychological holism’ (which on my account is seen as itself incorporating an externalist commitment) can be seen as being developed through the notion of the interdependence, not only of the attitudes and behavior of individual agents and speakers, but also of the concepts of the subjective, the objective and the intersubjective.
It remains the case, however, that the account I offer here goes far beyond anything that is made explicit in Davidson’s own published work. Indeed, while Davidson has acknowledged his commitment to a form of holism, he also sometimes seems to present a much narrower view of holism than I do here, commenting, at one point, that ‘My form of holism is mainly a logical constraint.’[3] Similarly Davidson often seems to have viewed holism in a way that keeps it relatively distinct in relation to other elements in his position, notably from his externalist commitments and from the indeterminacy thesis. In contrast, my account is explicit in pushing for a view of holism as quite radical and far-reaching, and as actually encompassing, in one way or another, both indeterminacy and externalism. Indeed, in my view, it is holism that drives most of the other ideas that are at issue here. In this respect, and although I was more hesitant on this point when the book was first published (see the comments in the ‘Introduction’ below), I would now say that the book should be read not merely as an attempt at exegesis and defense of the underlying Davidsonian position, but also as a development of that position in a way that can also be seen as something of a challenge to Davidson’s own elaboration of his ideas – whether Davidson was himselfable or willing to travel all the way in this direction or not, it is the direction in which I believe many of his core ideas naturally lead. In addition, of course, the book continues to present a way of approaching Davidson that enables his work, and certain aspects of the analytic tradition more broadly, to be seen, not as apart from and opposed to the European tradition, especially the tradition of hermeneutic thought, but in many important ways convergent with it. One might argue that this is something already evident in Rorty’s work, but although his writing provided an important part of the context in which this book was written, Rorty’s approach is very different from that elaborated here. One of the reasons, therefore, for thinking that a new edition of this book is warranted is not only to update some of its ideas in the light of the work Davidson produced from 1992-2003, nor because it remains the only systematic study of Davidsonian holism – a holism that often seems to be dealt with in all too summary a fashion within the narrowly analytic re-appropriation of Davidson being led by such as LePore and Ludwig – but also because it seems timely once again to reassert the claim concerning the continuity of Davidsonian with hermeneutic thinking. Thus one of the key claims of this book is that Davidson’s work represents perhaps the most important point within the analytic tradition from which it connects with hermeneutic thinking – and this remains so, in my view, in spite of the work more recently undertaken by such as Brandom and McDowell (work that is arguably itself dependent on the work of Davidson).
I had not expected, when I began the revisions of the volume, that Davidson would not himself be around to see the new edition when it appeared – he had promised to write something for the new edition and I had sent him a copy of the revised typescript not long before his unexpected death (the sudden turn of events also meant that I put the project to one side and only recently returned to it). His intellectual vitality, to say nothing of the very full and active nature of his life, makes it all the harder to accept the fact of his passing. Although I knew him only in his later years – we first met in 1992, when I went to Berkeley at his invitation – I will always be grateful to Don for his personal and intellectual generosity, for the enormous amount I learnt from him, and for the ideas that he opened up.
Acknowledgements
This has not been an easy book to write, and in some ways the task of writing it has been a lonely one. Yet this has not been for want of the encouragement and assistance of many people. Special thanks are due first to my wife Margaret, for many things (including the proof-reading of the final typescript) and for her love and support over the past years~ I am also especially grateful to Fred D ‘Agostino, who not only read through many pages, and was willing to consider some strange ideas, but who has been the best of friends and colleagues. Judith Ayling, Graeme Butler, Robyn Ferrell, Peter Gilet, Don Letham, Michael P. Levine, Horst Ruthrof, Philip Pettit and Jack Smart have each contributed (in many different ways) to the writing of this book and I thank all of them. I must also thank Donald Davidson for showing support and encouragement for the project in its latter stages. Finally, I must acknowledge a longstanding debt both in friendship and philosophy to Carl Page.
In addition to the original list of acknowledgements, thanks also go to Irene Sawford for doing the work in transferring the book back into electronic form ready for revision, as well as to Eliza Goddard for additional bibliographic work.The most important acknowledgement, however, must be to Davidson himself – as he said of Quine, ‘without whom not’.
1
Introduction: Radically Interpreting Davidson
‘The ‘doctrine’ of a thinker is that which is left unsaid’ – Martin Heidegger, ‘Plato’s Doctrine of Truth’
‘The methodology of interpretation,’ says Davidson, ‘is nothing but epistemology seen in the mirror of meaning’. But what does it mean to ‘see’ epistemology in ‘the mirror of meaning’? How could this illuminate ‘the methodology of interpretation’? While Davidson does not himself unpack the details of this passage, it is certainly possible to give a fairly straightforward explanation of what he means. The methodology of interpretation must be a methodology designed to resolve the central interpretive problem of providing a theory for interpreting utterances. For Davidson this must mean resolving the problem set by the entanglement of meanings with beliefs. To see epistemology in the mirror of meaning is to see belief in its relation to truth (a problem typically approached by the epistemologist in terms of the justification of beliefs) in the light of meaning itself. The passage thus sets out the central task of Davidson’s work in this area: the task is the elaboration of a theory of meaning, or, as it might be more suggestively put, the elaboration of a theory of interpretation. But, in addition, the way Davidson characterizes that task is such as to set out the form that elaboration will take: namely, an articulation of the relations between belief, meaning and truth. Indeed, resolving the problem of interpretation is identical with (‘nothing but’) the task of understanding the relations between these three concepts.
Davidson does not himself provide this sort of elucidation, and it is largely because he does not do so – on this and other matters – that this book has been both possible and necessary (at least for myself). It is Davidson’s account of interpretation, undertaken through an investigation of the particular circumstances of ‘radical interpretation’, that is the main focus for this book. But the Davidsonian account has often suggested much more than it spells out; while Davidson’s own philosophical style is often condensed and even opaque. Thus, the aim of this book is to provide an articulation and development of Davidson’s account of interpretation and of some of the philosophical consequences of that account. In particular, the book provides an account of the holism that seems so clearly to underlie the Davidsonian position. In the course of developing that account, I have attempted to fill gaps, to argue for positions and to suggest interesting lines of development or similarity from the original Davidsonian starting point. Sometimes this may have led me away from the pure Davidsonian text, but it is the matters at issue that have been my guide here. Wherever possible I have tried to find support for the views I have advanced in Davidson’s own words; where he has expressed himself in such a way as to clearly conflict with those views I have tried to indicate the disagreement and to show the reasons behind it. What I have done in the following pages is thus to sketch a Davidson who is implicit in the Davidsonian text, rather than attempt to somehow reconstruct Davidson’s own explicit views.
Some readers might feel, nevertheless, that I have not been sufficiently critical of Davidson in this book. One response to this is that my primary aim has been to develop and expound the Davidsonian position (or a version of it) in as convincing a manner as possible, rather than to criticize it. Another, and more accurate, response is to say that my whole approach is a critical one, but it is a critique that arises out of my own development and deployment of the Davidsonian position itself. One could say that my approach is critical in something like the sense of an ‘immanent critique’, insofar as it is a critique based on an acceptance of many of the basic Davidsonian premises. But the critical element in the book appears less in terms of explicit disagreement with Davidson (though such disagreement is not absent), as in the attempt to reinterpret the direction of the Davidsonian project. In this respect it is a critique insofar as it is also a ‘radical interpretation’ of Davidson’s work – an attempt to reconstruct the Davidsonian position as an integrated whole. This is evident in Part II, where I introduce structuralist, phenomenological and hermeneutical ideas in order to develop the idea of holism that is implicit in Davidson’s work. Yet the ‘radical’ nature of my interpretation does not become fully explicit until the concluding section of the concluding chapter where I discuss the Davidsonian conception of truth. In discussing truth I make a claim that may well appear absurd to some: I argue that if we are to try to come fully to terms with the nature and role of truth in Davidson’s work, then we are inevitably led in the direction of the Heideggerian notion of truth as aletheia. For some this may seem a ridiculous idea from the start: to connect Davidson, surely one of the major figures in contemporary ‘analytic’ philosophy, with Heidegger at his most obscure. If the idea seems ridiculous to some, I believe it will not seem so to those who are at all familiar with the work of these two thinkers.[4]
That there is a connection between Heidegger and Davidson worth pursuing seems to me the obvious implication of the, almost commonplace, although often undeveloped, observation of similarities between Davidson and Gadamer.[5]For, while Gadamer’s thought is in many ways less radical than Heidegger’s, it nevertheless grows out of Heidegger’s thinking and cannot be understood independently of it. Heidegger is thus essential to the Gadamerian account of interpretation, and, just as I suggest points of similarity between Davidson and Gadamer, so I also make use of both Heideggerian and Husserlian notions to provide an articulation of the holism that I argue is implicit in the Davidsonian account of radical interpretation. It is, moreover, Heidegger who, more than any other twentieth-century philosopher, has made truth the central idea in his thinking (indeed the Heideggerian account of truth is largely what lies behind Gadamerian hermeneutics). Given Davidson’s own treatment of truth as a central notion – its role as, what I call in chapter seven, a ‘horizonal’ notion – it seems only natural to look to the work of Heidegger in this respect.
Heidegger ‘s approach to philosophical issues is, of course, very different – not least in method and style – from that adopted by Davidson. Given what would otherwise seem to be the enormous differences between the work of these two thinkers, the conclusion I reach here – that the Davidsonian position depends on something like the Heideggerian notion of truth as aletheiafor its completion – might be taken to be indicative of a deep tension within the account that gives rise to that conclusion. Some readers may even be led to wonder whether the account I offer is really an account of Davidson at all – whether it is not, perhaps, a thinly disguised piece of Heideggerian exegesis that merely uses Davidson as its starting point. That latter question can only be answered through a consideration of the arguments that I offer below. In fact, I think I show that there is strong ground for seeing, at the very least, a close similarity between many central Heideggerian and Davidsonian theses. Whether I am correct in my further claim as to the relevance of the Heideggerian notion of truth may be a more difficult matter to decide - although, once again, any such decision will need to take account of the considerations that I set forth in these pages.