This book is an introduction to and interpretation of the
philosophy of language devised by Donald Davidson over the past 25
years. The guiding intuition is that Davidson's work is best
understood as an ongoing attempt to purge semantics of theoretical
reifications. Seen in this light the recent attack on the notion of
language itself emerges as a natural development of his Quinian
scepticism towards "meanings" and his rejections of reference-based
semantic theories.
Linguistic understanding is, for Davidson, essentially dynamic,
arising only through a continuous process of theory construction
and reconstruction. The result is a conception of semantics in
which the notion of interpretation and not the notion of knowing a
language is fundamental.
In the course of his book Bjorn Ramberg provides a critical
discussion of reference-based semantic theories, challenging the
standard accounts of the principle of charity and elucidating the
notion of radical interpretation. The final chapter on
incommensurability ties in with the discussions of Kuhn's work in
the philosophy of science and suggests certain links between
Davidson's analytic semantics and hermeneutic theory.
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