I've been enjoying reading the new Davidson books I got. I wasn't going to start with them but somehow they made for easier reading. The one thing I notice immediately as I compare his writings over time is how much better he got as a writer. His early works, while hardly complex relative to many philosophers, often still required multiple reads to figure out exactly what his point was. Further they were often frustratingly vague right where you didn't want them to be. In contrast his writings from the 90's are very easy to read and always seem to give sufficient information in a very short span. I wish I could write like that. I was surprised at just how readable he is. Some philosophers are like that. (Think what you will about Putnam, but I find him a good writer)
The essays I was reading last night were primarily about Davidson's form of externalism. "Epistemology Externalized" was my favorite. I don't want to focus on Budge and Putnam's externalism too much. Even though that's what Davidson is addressing. Roughly Putnam's externalism, via the famous twin earth thought experiment, primarily deals with natural kinds like water. It's primarily the assertion that the cause of my word meanings is tied up significantly in its meaning. Thus two different physical causes (water and twin-earth's water) lead to two different meanings. Thus meaning isn't purely in the head. Typer Burge has two externalism. The first is a form of social externalism where the meaning of our words is determined by some elite. Thus if I use the phrase "poplar tree" what counts is less my understanding of the term than the understanding of experts in my community on the phrase. His second externalism is a perception externalism which is roughly that the content of my thoughts is partially determined by the cause of my thoughts. (Similar to Putnam, albeit subtly different)
Davidson offers arguments against these positions, although I'll admit I don't find his arguments terribly compelling. By and large they reduce down to his not finding Burge or Putnam compelling enough - although that is, in part, due to the role of first person authority Davidson feels is necessary. I want to focus less on Davidson's criticisms though than to bring out Davidson's own externalist solution. It's very similar to Putnam and Burge, but with a few subtle differences.
Davidson basically argues that we have to include both the social and the perception into meaning "thus locating the role of society within the causal nexus that includes the interplay between persons and the rest of nature." (201) In place of Burge's placing meaning in terms of the cause of thoughts Davidson places the "typical cause of thoughts" in that role. This then depends upon communication and society.
Without one create to observe another, the triangulation that locates the relevant objects in a public space cold not take place. I do not mean by this that one creature observing an other provides either creature with the concept of objectivity; the presence fo two or more creatures interacting with each other and with a common environment is at best a necessary condition for such a concept. Only communication can provide the concept, for to have the concept of objectivity, the concepts of objects and events that occupy a shared world, of objects and events whose properties and existence is independent of our thought, requires that we are aware of the fact we share thoughts and a world with others. (202)
When we learn meanings and concepts we are, for Davidson, in a triangle with ourselves, the world, and those we are communicating with. I'd note in passing that this is the ideal structure of a Peircean sign. That is a sign stands for something (the world) to us (our mind) via the sign (the others). We develop this language hermeneutically via interactions with all three.
I think Davidson is quite right in this. Unfortunately he leaves somewhat ambiguous exactly what "typical cause" and "typical use" (the world) are. I want to quickly turn to an other philosopher though who has a similar view: Heidegger.
Heidegger famously has the notion of "worlds" which contain equipment, practices, aims, and uses to which we put things. These in turn provide us with the meaning of objects. The world arises out of our engagement with others. So my understanding of a paintbrush arises out of the world of painting and the uses and goals of a paintbrush as well as other equipment like wall board, rollers, etc. I'll not really go into the details of Heidegger's pragmatic conception of meaning as I suspect most are familiar with it.
Heidegger famously also has two modes for a person (Dasein). The inauthentic mode has a person caught up in the understanding of what he calls "The They" (Das Man). This is roughly a kind of averageness of meaning that we find in our culture where there is little inquiry. The exact way to take it is fairly unclear though and I think it ends up being very similar to what Davidson's social aspect of externalism ends up being. While some have argued for Heidegger adopting a social externalism equivalent to Burge I'm not sure that's right. What counts for Heidegger is less experts (who tend to be wrapped up in inquiry and thus perhaps not inauthentic engagements) than the average engagement. So it's definitely a form of social externalism but one tied more to "typical use."
The second aspect of Heidegger's thought is that he is very concerned with the objects of thought themselves. That is when I think about a paint brush what matters isn't just the paint brush as understood in this average social meaning. Rather what counts is the brush itself. That's especially true in what Heidegger calls authenticity: roughly an originary encounter with the objects of thought that goes beyond what the social gives us. However even in a person's inauthentic mode of being the objects themselves are key.
So to me Davidson and Heidegger are very much heading in the same direction. Unfortunately both appear to leave vague and muddled some key issues. That is, exactly what element of the social is it that grounds our meanings? The other issue I've not addressed, even though it is at minimum key to Heidegger and perhaps also Davidson, is the role of temporality in externalism. That is what is the point of time of an object or a society that determines my meanings? Is it the time from when I speak? Or are my meanings wrapped up in both past and future social meaning and nature of the objects that caused my thoughts.
Put an other way if I talk about poplar trees unaware of some aspect of poplar trees that arises tomorrow, is that future social understanding and physical reality part of my meaning? For Heidegger, as I understand him, it most certainly is. For Davidson I think it might be but I simply am not sure.
When Davidson does go into some more detail about the import of the "typical cause" of some belief, I think his account starts to show its weak-points. That such-and-such was the cause of my belief that p doesn't give me a reason for holding that p, but that's all the grounding Davidson ever gives for our perceptual beliefs. I think McDowell's really does improve on Davidson, here, when he brings experience back into the picture as a sort of thing which can rationally ground our perceptual beliefs. But of course McDowell has his own (sideways-view-less) version of triangulation, so this is not a great strike against Davidson.
If you're hoping for some clarification on the "typical" part of "typical cause" then I doubt Davidson ever expands on it significantly. In any particular instance of triangulation, the "typical" cause (insofar as that is relevant for discerning the meaning of some term or other) is what the speakers take it to mean, if they understand one another; if they share an idiosyncratic view of what is "typical" for some term, then this is not a problem. (It could easily be a problem for a third party, but again what would be needed there would be to figure out what each party meant by some term or other; what is the "typical" meaning of a term is not necessary to know for the speakers to understand what one another mean by it.) And of course in some cases the cause which the speakers care about will just be whatever is the actual cause of the responses of the two. Davidson only talks of the "typical" causes and uses of words because he's stating his position in a general fashion, so that it might make out what words generally mean -- sentence-meaning. But what Davidson is actually concerned with is speaker-meaning, what we really do mean by our words, and in that case what is "typical" is of merely heuristic value.
I'm not sure how the (surprising, in this instance) future of poplar trees could be part of what I mean by "poplar trees", for Davidson. He's an intentionalist -- there's nothing that we could sensibly ask about what "such-and-such" means except for what it means in the mouth of some speaker or other, and there it means what he intended it to mean. If the poplar trees of tomorrow will be something quite different from the poplar trees I have some familiarity with today, then it would seem odd to say that I intended to say something about them when I speak of poplar trees. (Of course there are limits on what one can intend, since if I am to say something I must say it intelligibly (or else I am merely vocalizing, but not speaking) -- and if I am to be intelligible, it has to be possible for my hearer to grasp my meaning. Hence I cannot mean something by my words that nobody could ever guess at, as is the case with Humpty Dumpty.)
I'm inclined to think that Heidegger does come out closer to Burge when it comes to inauthentic speech; we don't have to think of the relevant sort of "experts" as professionals or what-have-you, when what's at issue is the everyday use of some "boring" term; the relevant "expert" for some bit of inauthentic dialogue would be Jane and John Doe. (Certainly we can't really establish a panel of "average speakers" to establish the verdict of The They, but I doubt we could do any better with trying to wrangle up a panel of "experts" to nail down just what the "expert opinion" was on some term. But one could appeal to "expert opinion" in a very similar way to how one can appeal to "what one does" in inauthenticity.)
I kind of figured that Davidson was a synchronic externalist. I'm just admitting my ignorance in that I don't know one way or the other.
For Heidegger while a lot see him as close to Burge I just don't see it since Das Man has no experts. What you suggest is roughly akin to the Mode in the statistical sense. (Mean, Median, Mode) However it would seem that any "typical" individuals would vary enough that I just don't see that as helpful. But then as I said, I find the notion of this "averageness" as extremely undeveloped in his thought. (Which is undoubtedly why so many disagree on how to take it) So I find it quite problematic.
I think finding experts is easier since there will be standard strategies for identifying them via power relations. The power relations in Das Man strike me as far more complex.
Actually let me take that back. The swamp man thought experiment implies that time does matter. It's just that he only worries about the past and not the future. But he's not a synchronic externalist.
First let me say how nice it is to see here a picture of this most important book. "Epistemology Externalized" is not the key essay here (that would be the subsequent one, "Three Varieties of Knowledge"), but I do agree pretty much with what Davidson says there. On the other hand I'm not sure I would put things exactly the way he does. One thing underplayed here is the holism (i.e. anti-dualism) of belief and meaning which had been a part of his views since the introduction of the radical-interpretation picture in the 70's. Of course it's not missing entirely, since the whole point is to discuss the interaction of epistemology (as in the title) and semantics (as in Burge). But the effect of his aligning this discussion (again, as the title implies) with Quine's third-person account of the matter is that here he (Davidson) tends to say more about what his theory implies than about how it is supposed to work.
This, anyway, is my reaction to your worry about what it means to appeal to the idea that the referent of a term is what "typically" causes its use. You make it sound like we may have to go polling people (experts or not) about what they mean by this or that. But look at it this way. What do you think "typically" causes beliefs that (say) a dog is present? ("That's a dog.") Of course I am not required to give the obvious answer ("dogs"). But why wouldn't I? That's what *I* mean by "dog", after all -- one of those things (like that one there, the one barking like a lunatic). Only if I have some reason to think either that a) my use of the word is idiosyncratic (i.e. my meaning is unusual), or, well, b) ... my use of the word is idiosyncratic (i.e., I have different beliefs about [those things I call] dogs) -- that is, by my lights, most people don't recognize a dog when they see one. Again, maybe I do have some reason to believe this in particular cases; but "typically" we don't -- and why should we? indeed, how could we? That's the force of "typical" here.
[Now of course one way we might rephrase your worry is that you think the "obvious" answer doesn't tell us anything. (Naturally I'm going to say that "dogs" typically cause beliefs about "dogs"; but what are "dogs"?) But all this means is that to set your mind at rest on this matter in any particular case you have to actually ... do some interpretation. Boo hoo.]
As I see it, this is as perfectly straightforward an application of charity as there is -- one that brings out how unusual ("atypical"?) the cases are in which we do not simply apply it naturally. And as Davidson points out, this point applies to everything, not just "natural kinds" (a big problem for Burge/Putnam/Kripke in my book).
So I recommend three things: 1) "Three Varieties of Knowedge," like I said; 2) Akeel Bilgrami's book on his own Davidsonian externalism (Belief and Meaning); and 3) the section in The Claim of Reason where Cavell talks about "what a thing is (called)".
That is, in the second paragraph, that only if I have reason to believe (a) or (b) would I even consider giving anything but the obvious answer. (Forgot to finish the sentence - heh heh).
As I recall Davidson himself often mentions that he doesn't fill in all the details. Rather than starting with the details he proceeds by viewing what is essential for something to be what it is. (Interestingly, Heidegger does something similar in many of his middle writings, even though obviously there's a big gulf of focus between Heidegger and Davidson)
Regarding your example, I suspect most of the time we'll agree. It's the times we don't that seems most interesting. Further that's where externalism seems to raise the most interesting questions relative to the internalist. That is, the externalist seems to capture that meaning is wrapped up in future efforts of verification. So, to use the popular examples, if the folks on Earth2 and Earth meet, find they use the same words but have different referents of water, how would they adjudicate? If someone is talking about poplar trees and discovers he is in error, how would they correct themselves?
The internalist, of course, has answers to all this. But he separates this behavior from meaning in a fashion I tend to find problematic. It confuses the representation with the content (IMO). But of course this is clearly my Peircean tendencies coming out since it is inherently caught up in the pragmatic maxim.
My objection to Davidson and "the typical" is simply that while Davidson can handle a lot (arguably most) language use this way, the exceptions are still language use and can't be neglected to the degree I think Davidson does. That is, the typical isn't all that counts.
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