Donald Davidson

Problems of Rationality is the eagerly awaited fourth volume of Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. From the 1960s until his death in August 2003 Davidson was perhaps the most influential figure in English-language philosophy, and his work has had a profound effect upon the discipline. His unified theory of the interpretation of thought, meaning, and action holds that rationality is a necessary condition for both mind and interpretation. Davidson here develops this theory to illuminate value judgements and how we understand them; to investigate what the conditions are for attributing mental states to an object or creature; and to grapple with the problems presented by thoughts and actions which seem to be irrational. Anyone working on knowledge, mind, and language will find these essays essential reading.

Problems of Rationality is the eagerly awaited fourth volume of Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. From the 1960s until his death in August 2003 Davidson was perhaps the most influential figure in English-language philosophy, and his work has had a profound effect upon the discipline. His unified theory of the interpretation of thought, meaning, and action holds that rationality is a necessary condition for both mind and interpretation. Davidson here develops this theory to illuminate value judgements and how we understand them; to investigate what the conditions are for attributing mental states to an object or creature; and to grapple with the problems presented by thoughts and actions which seem to be irrational. Anyone working on knowledge, mind, and language will find these essays essential reading.

Här har samlats några av Davidsons viktigaste bidrag i språkfilosofi, medvetandefilosofi och handlingsteori. Donald Davidson var en av de stora 1900-talsfilosoferna, aktiv ända in till förra året, då han oväntat gick bort i augusti. Kännetecknande för Davidsons filosofi är att han kombinerar logiska och naturvetenskapliga aspekter med humanistiska. Detta kommer bland annat till uttryck i hans språkfilosofi där han kopplar frågan om den logiska strukturen hos en meningsteori med frågan hur det är möjligt att tolka ett för oss helt okänt språk, talat av för oss helt främmande människor, vad han kallar en "radikal tolkning". Detta förutsätter enligt Davidson att vi i möjligaste tillskriver talaren en viss rationalitet. Denna s.k. välvillighetsprincip är en hörnsten i Davidsons tolkningsteori, och har också betydelsefulla kunskapsteoretiska och ontologiska konsekvenser. I senare uppsatser utvecklar Davidson detta genom tanken på en intersubjektiv "triangulering" som förutsättning för språklig mening och kunskap: objektivitet är inte något som föds hos ett isolerat subjekt, utan uppkommer först i mötet mellan talande varelser som betraktar och handlar i en gemensam värld. Davidsons bredd kommer också till uttryck i hans skarpsinniga förslag till lösning av det klassiska kropp-själsproblemet, som presenteras i några av uppsatserna. Han lyckas här gör rättvisa åt två svårförenliga idéer: vår vanliga föreställning att det mentala och det fysiska ömsesidigt påverkar varandra t. ex. önskningar och övertygelser å ena sidan och handlingar som vi utför å andra sidan och det fysikaliska antagandet att det fysiska utgör ett kausalt slutet system. Volymen är försedd med en instruktiv inledning skriven av docent Katrin Glüer, författare till boken Donald Davidson zur Einführung, och Peter Pagin, professor i teoretisk filosofi vid Stockholms universitet.

The central question which these essays address is what it is for words to mean what they do. Among the topics covered are the relation between theories of truth and theories of meaning, translation, quotation, belief, radical interpretation, reference, metaphor, and communication.

This book is intended for all philosophers; psychologists and linguists interested in philosophy; anyone else interested in mind and action.

A third volume of philosophical writings by Donald Davidson, whose influence on philosophy since the 1960s has been deep and broad. Davidson's first two collections were published by OUP in the early 1980s, His ideas have continued to flow, and here he presents a selection of his best work on knowledge, mind, and language from the 1980s and 90s.

Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective is the long-awaited third volume of philosophical writings by Donald Davidson, whose influence on philosophy since the 1960s has been deep and broad. His first two collections, published by OUP in the early 1980s, are recognized as contemporary classics. Now Davidson presents a selection of his work on knowledge, mind, and language from the 1980s and the 1990s. We all have knowledge of our own minds, knowledge of the contents of other minds, and knowledge of the shared environment. Davidson examines the nature and status of each of these three sorts of knowledge, and the connections and differences among them. Along the way he has illuminating things to say about truth, human rationality, and the relations among language, thought, and the world. This new volume offers a rich and rewarding feast for anyone interested in philosophy today, and is essential reading for anyone working on its central topics.

This investigation of the nature of human action argues for an ontology which includes events along with persons and other objects. Among the topics discussed are: freedom to act; weakness of the will; the logical form of talk about actions, intentions, and causality; and decision theory.

This book is intended for all philosophers, linguists, and psychologists interested in philosophy; anyone else interested in language and mind.

This collection of essays by experts in the field investigates the issue of philosophical methodology through a comparative approach; promotes dialogue and understanding among different traditions; and shows the many ways in which Chinese and Western analytic philosophy complement rather than contradict each other.

A decade and more has passed since the first publication of Still Rebels, Still Yankees. During that time the book has become recognized as a classic affirmation of the necessity of tradition in conserving cultural order. Donald Davidson, a major figure in the Agrarian Movement, summed up the intent of the work this way:""The general theme that binds the essays- no matter what their specific subjects- is the conflict between tradition and anti-tradition that characterizes modern society, with tradition viewed as the living continuum that makes society and civilization possible and anti-tradition as the disintegrative principle that destroys society and civilization in the name of science and progress. The South, which has suffered most in its devoted defense of tradition, naturally offers me examples for consideration; but this is not a book about the South as such. It is as near as I can come, in essay form, to defining what I would conceive to be the true American position.""In a brilliant and graceful style, Davidson pursues his theme in a rich variety of subjects: poetry, myth, and folklore; and in the complex rivalries between nation and region, the free citizen and the Leviathan state, the values of religion and the facts of science. Order, sanity, and fullness of life are cornerstones of the tradition against which he appraises writers like Hardy and John Gould Fletcher, the historiography of Toynbee, and the social reporting of W. J. Cash.

A quarter of a century before Lyndon B. Johnson popularized the slogan "The Great Society," Donald Davidson wrote his critique of Leviathan, the omnipotent nation-state, in terms that only recently have come to be appreciated. "Leviathan is the idea of the Great Society, organized under a single, complex, but strong and highly centralized national government, motivated ultimately by men's desire for economic welfare of a specific kind rather than their desire for personal liberty. " Originally published as The Attack on Leviathan, this eloquent volume is an attack on state centralism and an affirmation of regional identity. Davidson's work is a special sort of intellectual as well as social history. It reveals an extraordinary mastery of the literature on regionalism in the United States, with special emphasis on the work on Rupert Vance and Howard Odum in the social sciences. Davidson looks at regionalism in arts, literature, and education. He favors agriculture over industrialization, and "the hinterland" over cities, examining along the way varying historical memories, the dilemma of Southern liberals, and the choice of expedience or principles. His book is a forceful and commanding challenge to those who would push for central authority at the sacrifice of individual and regional identity. Davidson concludes with a devastating critique of nationalism leading to a supra-nationalism. Ultimately, the heterogeneity of human desires comes up against the uniformity of world systems and world states. Davidson offers instead a broad world of intellectual history and commentary in which individualism allies itself with communities as a means for stemming the tide of collectivism and its base in a world state. For Davidson, Leviathan, the monstrous state, is a devourer, not a savior. As several peoples rise to strike down their own Leviathans, this courageous book may be better understood now than it was in 1938. Donald Davidson was part of that movement in American letters known as the Southern Agrarians. He was a poet, critic, historian, and political analyst. He spent most of his life at Vanderbilt University, and was himself born in central Tennessee. He is best known as the author of The Tall Men (1927) and a collection of essays, Still Rebels, Still Yankees (1957).

Poems, 1922-1961 was first published in 1966. This volume contains a collection of the most important work of Donald Davidson, one of America's greatest contemporary poets. The selection range from the time of his association with the Fugitive group of Southern writers during the 1920's to his most recently published book of poems, The Long Street (1961). The Tall Men, first published in 1927, is included here in its revised version of 1938. Among the other early poems are selections from An Outland Piper (1924) and from Lee in the Mountains and Other Poems (1938). The critic Louis D. Rubin, Jr. calls this "the life work of a master poet." He comments: "These poems don't date; they represent no outmoded school or clique . . . and the new poems have a simplicity about them that does not hide so much as it enhances their rich imaginativeness and wealth of imagery. These are the poems of a man of great sensitivity and an exciting imagination and command of the language."