Davidson: Private Language

Yeah, I’m still doing Davidson. Last time was Davidson and Rational Animals. This time I’m taking a common theme from several essays (so I don’t get repetitive). The question is the possibility of a private language. Roughly, as I see it, Davidson is taking a Peircean like angle.
To have a belief [...]

Davidson & Rational Animals

Getting back to my Davidson readings in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, I found the paper “Rational Animals” rather interesting. This is the old idea that what separates man from the animals is reason. Now some, especially animal rights activists, don’t like this idea. While I agree that it’s likely there is a matter [...]

Davidson on Irreducible Concepts

A concept is irreducible only relative to specified resources. When it comes to the large, grand concepts that concern philosophers, like the good, truth, belief, knowledge, physical object, cause and event, I think of a concept as irreducible if it cannot be defined in terms that are as general as the concept to be [...]

Intentionality and Potentiality

Maverick Philosopher on Intentionality and Potentiality.
“Reference to an object is thus an intrinsic feature of mental states and not a feature they have in virtue of a relation to an existing object. This is why Brentano speaks of the ‘intentional in-existence of an object.’ It is also why Husserl can ‘bracket’ the existence [...]

Davidson: What Is Present to the Mind

I really am getting into Davidson as I read his latter works. It certainly at minimum gives a more nuanced view of his earlier works I was already familiar with. This paper continues the same topic as the prior one with a lot of overlap. The debate is over what identifies a [...]

Davidson: The Myth of the Subjective 2

My initial thoughts on the paper were here. I want to delve into the arguments here. I think I finally really get Davidson after this paper and the next one (”What Is Present to the Mind?”). I was rereading this one again and suddenly, click, a lot came together. Basically it [...]

Davidson: The Myth of the Subjective 1

Sorry for falling behind in the more general philosophy posts. It’s been a very busy summer and will continue to be a busy fall. I really did want to get back to Davidson. As you recall I’m going through the collections of Davidson’s more recent works starting with Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. [...]

Davidson: Knowing Ones Own Mind 2

This is a followup to my prior post on Davidson’s paper “Knowing Ones Own Mind” in Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. Sorry for the delay. The part that is left in the paper deals with the question of “where” thoughts are. It’s an interesting question and one I’ve switched my own views on. [...]

Davidson: Knowing Ones Own Mind

Sorry, I fell behind on my Davidson. This is my reading through Davidson’s Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. My last post was on the first essay, “First Person Authority” where Davidson argued that due to the way we interpret there is a presumption that an other persons beliefs are largely correct and thus their first [...]

Davidson: First Person Authority

I’m slowly going through some of my Davidson texts. I’m starting with Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective. This is a procession through roughly the first person perspective to the shared perspective to the objective.
So the first obvious question is why we should assume that first person introspection is so trustworthy. Or, [...]

Once Again Davidson

OK, a quick Davidson post. After last week I once again learned that I really must reread what I’m commenting on. Especially after a year of not reading any philosophy and arguably a year before that of having limited time to do much philosophy. Anyway, I fully admit to getting some basic [...]

Critiquing Davidson

DuckRabbit has had a series of posts on Davidson that have been quite interesting. One I’d linked to on the sideblog was Davidson and Dummett. I’d suggested there that perhaps Dummett’s criticism of Davidson was similar to Derrida’s critique of Gadamer (which I’d discussed at the old blog about four years ago) [...]

Davidson on Analytic Philosophy

I don’t think of analytic philosophy quite in the same way that Rorty does. He thinks of analytic philosophy as being almost entirely concerned with epistemology, with producing one or another response to skepticism; however, I think of analytic philosophy as a method. The method is one which tries to state problems and arguments as [...]