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Pragmatics, Meaning and Truth

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Hisuichan

What does Donald Davidson mean when he says that a theory of truth can do duty to a theory of meaning and what do you think are the principal obstacles to this project?

Discuss. Give me your best shot.

12 years ago*

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11 Comments
Exactually

After some thought, the schema's we assign to words provide the meanings necessary to describe "stuff".

The problem with Davidson's theory of truth is when a word is vague or has multiple meanings. Another issue can be simply shown using the example below.

"I accidentally 93MB of .rar files"

Spotting the issue here demonstrates either changes of language by omission of words, or changing the structuring of language itself.

I'm a little rusty on Davidson, I took a course on Philosophy of Psychology and never stayed at a Holiday Inn so I...
12 years ago
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Hisuichan

My teacher would give you a cookie along with a reading list of 20 different texts and books, because he's that cool (and cruel at the same time).

Honestly, I had never heard of Davidson before entering this course. And I honestly regret it. :(

12 years ago
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Incog

I think someone's trying to get out of doing their Philosophy paper >.>

12 years ago
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Hisuichan

Nah, 4500 words can't be dished out in a day, deadline's in 26 hours minus sleep. And I'm halfway through my paper anyway, got the rest pretty much mapped out. Just wondering whether people around here have a clue what this question is about ;) (Also I'm doing Linguistics, funnily enough.)

12 years ago
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TheEgo

Is Linguistics your major, or just the class of this assignment? Myself, I am an English Major. Not a very good one, but I am one.

12 years ago
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Hisuichan

I'm majoring (doing a BA) in English Studies and Linguistics, 'tis my final year and this term's linguistics module is called "Pragmatics, Meaning and Truth". That's several notches more difficult than what I did last year in Semantics. Never done philosophy so far and I honestly expected something more linguistics-oriented like speech acts, conversation theory and the like, so I'm a bit distraught that my teacher decided to make it a class on Davidson and his antics on truth and meaning.

12 years ago
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TheEgo

I really hate when classes end up being nothing like I expected from the descriptions. Always end up having a counselor or adviser help me with my schedule so it doesn't happen again. I suppose in your case it would have been unavoidable though.

12 years ago
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Hisuichan

Yeah, it was compulsory. Well, at least I know what I'm not going to write about in my dissertation!

12 years ago
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TheEgo

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/davidson/#Tru

I wish I could speak from my own knowledge, but I didn't study Davidson in philosophy and I doubt I'll need to take a full logic course.

12 years ago
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Hisuichan

Turns out I'm fussing about so much about compositionality and holism that I don't think if I will even have enough space to include radical interpretation, even though that's probably the 'meatiest' stuff (quoting my teacher there) Davidson has written about.

12 years ago
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TheEgo

At least you won't have to worry about running out of material? You'll just... look like a fool who only read 1/3 of the necessary material.

12 years ago
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Closed 12 years ago by Hisuichan.