Donald Davidson: Truth, Meaning and Knowledge discusses the philosophical views of Donald Davidson, one of the outstanding and most influential living philosophers. Since the 1960s Davidson’s views have provoked and inspired and his intellectual dynamism has revolutionized the philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophy of language and semantics. Donald Davidson is not only known for his rigorous and often controversial thinking but also by his willingness to engage in dialogue and re-evaluate his ideas and paradigms. The present collection is testimony to his spirit of openess and contains essays by leading academics on the major themes of Davidson’s philosophy, complete with individual responses by the philosopher himself. The essays address the main ideas of Davidson’s theory of language and epistemology with their implications in ontology and philosophy of mind. The book begins with polemical essays on the central problem of truth, one of the most controversial philosophical issues. The core of the controversy can be formulated in the question: is truth the goal of enquiry? This query has recently been raised by Richard Rorty to whom Davidson has penned a personal reply. In the second part of the anthology, eminent contributors discuss Davidson’s semantic programme in regard to meaning, truth and interpretation, including, among others, the question of learnability, understanding, holism and indeterminacy of meaning. Semantic questions and their applications are further presented in the third part, while the final part focuses on the question of knowledge and mind, discussed in reference to Davidson and the views of Willard V. Quine, John McDowell and Peter F. Strawson. The discussions with Davidson make this a unique collection which sheds light on a wide area of the philosophers thinking. Moreover, this book is an invaluable reference source thanks to its complete bibliography of Donald Davidson’s works.
