Donald Davidson on Action, Mind and Value PDF
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Logic in Asia: Studia Logica Library Series Editors: Fenrong Liu · Hiroakira Ono · Kamal Lodaya Syraya Chin-Mu Yang Robert H. Myers Editors Donald Davidson on Action, Mind and Value Logic in Asia: Studia Logica Library Series Editors Fenrong Liu, Tsinghua University and University of Amsterdam, Beijing, China Hiroakira Ono, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), Ishikawa, Japan Kamal Lodaya, Bengaluru, India Editorial Board Natasha Alechina, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK Toshiyasu Arai, Chiba University, Chiba Shi, Inage-ku, Japan Sergei Artemov, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA Mattias Baaz, Technical university of Vienna, Austria, Vietnam Lev Beklemishev, Institute of Russian Academy of Science, Russia Mihir Chakraborty, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India Phan Minh Dung, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand Amitabha Gupta, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India Christoph Harbsmeier, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Shier Ju, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China Makoto Kanazawa, National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan Fangzhen Lin, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong Jacek Malinowski, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland Ram Ramanujam, Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India Jeremy Seligman, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand Kaile Su, Peking University and Griffith University, Peking, China Johan van Benthem, University of Amsterdam and Stanford University, The Netherlands Hans van Ditmarsch, Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications, France Dag Westerstahl, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden Yue Yang, Singapore National University, Singapore Syraya Chin-Mu Yang, National Taiwan University, Taipei, China Logic in Asia: Studia Logica Library Thisbookseriespromotestheadvanceofscientificresearchwithinthefieldoflogic in Asian countries. 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Myers (cid:129) Editors Donald Davidson on Action, Mind and Value 123 Editors Syraya Chin-MuYang RobertH.Myers National Taiwan University York University Taipei, Taiwan Toronto, ON,Canada ISSN 2364-4613 ISSN 2364-4621 (electronic) Logicin Asia: Studia Logica Library ISBN978-981-15-7229-6 ISBN978-981-15-7230-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7230-2 ©SpringerNatureSingaporePteLtd.2021 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. 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The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Preface In the last twenty years of his life, Donald Davidson brought his causal theory of reasons and action and his truth-theoretic semantics for natural language together into a fully unified theory of mind and language, clarifying the roles that norma- tivity, rationality, and objectivity play in his treatment of intentional action, eval- uative judgement, and radical interpretation. At the core of this programme is his triangulation argument, whichaimsnotmerelyatasatisfactory theoryoflanguage and thought but also at a full-fledged theory of knowledge by explaining why rational agents must have knowledge of theworld, knowledge of other minds, and self-knowledge. By showing how communication among rational agents is possi- ble, Davidson sheds new light on the nature of human knowledge and the objec- tivity of meaning and ultimately extends this grand programme to questions concerning values, emotions, and other related issues. The papers in this volume were originally written for (and most were presented at) the Third Taiwan Metaphysics Conference (TMC-2017), which was held in November 2017, at the National Taiwan University. As 2017 was the centenary anniversary of Davidson’s birth, the conference took as its theme the development of his philosophy over time and its continuing relevance to ongoing debates. This resulted in a wide range of innovative reflections, many of which focussed on the pivotalrolethatDavidson’sconceptionofagencyplaysinhislaterphilosophyand its impact on his epistemology, his philosophy of language and mind, and his philosophy of values. The participants critically assessed central elements of Davidson’s programme, and offered reappraisals of his seminal contributions to, andhiscontinuinginfluenceon,thedevelopmentofcontemporaryphilosophy.The particular focus on agency revealed Davidson’s views to have been more dynamic and less reductive than hitherto acknowledged—pointing, as we shall see, towards important new possibilities not only in the theory of knowledge but also in the philosophy of action, mind, and value. Chapter One “Objects and Events in Davidson”, by Jennifer Hornsby, focusses on Davidson’s metaphysics, and specifically on the conception of events that Davidsonintroducedwhenhetooktheoperationofcausalityalwaystoconsistinthe relation cause obtaining between a pair of events. Hornsby argues that Davidson’s v vi Preface conceptionofeventsasindividualentitiesstandsinthewayofaccordingobjectsa role in the causal world, and that it cannot allow for the understanding of general statementsaboutevents.Butshegoesontosuggestthat,whenDavidsonturnedto epistemological questions, he relinquished the ontology that guided his early work onactionandcame totake amuch more relaxedviewof“whatthere is”.Hornsby concludes by discussing the implication of this for Davidson’s physicalism, which he usedhis thesis ofthe Nomological Character ofCausality to establish. In Chapter Two “Davidson’s Meta-normative Naturalism and the Rationality Requirement”, Robert H. Myers invokes Davidson’s causal account of normative propertiestodefendnormativerealismagainstapowerfulobjection.MichaelSmith hasfamouslyarguedthatrealistscannotexplainwhypeopleactontheirnormative judgements as reliably as they do, and that constructivism (or perhaps constitu- tivism) is therefore to be preferred. Normative realists have often countered this argument by insisting that they can establish (1) that rationality typically requires people to act on their normative judgements and (2) that people typically are rational. Myers acknowledges that normative realists can establish (1) but argues that (2) poses problems both for non-naturalists and for reductive naturalists. He closes by suggesting that Davidson’s non-reductive (or “anomalous”) form of naturalism may give normative realists a better chance of success. In Chapter Three “Acting Against Your Better Judgement”, Rowland Stout defendsaDavidsonianapproachtoweaknessofwillagainstsomerecentarguments by John McDowell and adapts the approach to meet other objections. Instead of treating one’s better judgement as a conditional judgement about what is desirable todogivenavailablereasons,heproposestotreatitasanunconditionaljudgement about what is desirable to do from a rational perspective that one takes to be the right perspective to have. He argues that this makes sense of Aristotle’s claim that desire is for the good or the apparent good: judgements of desirability generally concern the apparent good, whereas judgements of desirability from rational per- spectivesthat arejudged tobetheonestohavearejudgementsoftheactualgood. Weakness of will occurs when one’s actual rational perspective is not the one that one takes to be the one to have—i.e. when one’s judgement of the apparent good does not coincide with one’s judgement of the actual good. One makes two judgements—onefromanadoptedperspectivethatonejudgestobetheonetohave and one from one’s actual perspective. Chapter Four “A Davidsonian Theory of Evaluative Judgment”, by Ya-Ting Chang, develops a Davidsonian theory of evaluative judgement. As she notes, because the Humean theory of motivation remains the dominant view, most philosophers endorse the idea that desire is necessary for motivation. As a result, they often feel compelled to endorse non-cognitivism in order to defend internal- ism, since it seems to them that evaluative judgements must either express or be desiresiftheyaretomotivateaction.Butthenevaluativejudgementscannotbetrue or false, for desires lack cognitive content. Chang aims to avoid this result by reconstructing a Davidsonian theory of evaluative judgement. She argues that, by following Davidson and taking evaluative judgements tobe conative propositional attitudes, we can see how they can be both necessarily motivating and truth-apt. Preface vii In Chapter Five “Davidson on Emotions and Values”, Pascal Engel discusses Davidson’sviews about emotionsandvalues.He demonstratesthat Davidson held a causal version of the cognitive theory of emotions, which he associated with an objective conception of values. Engel confronts Davidson’s account of the cor- rectness of emotions with the fitting-attitude view of the relation of emotions to valuesandarguesthatthetwoapproachescanbereconciledifthecorrectnessofan emotion is construed as a form of idealization. In Chapter Six “Pleasure Makes Pro-attitudes”, Jeremias Koh and Neil Sinhababu consider what it is to be a pro-attitude, the sort of mental state that can motivate one to act for a reason. They argue that pro-attitudes must do more than simply cause the right behaviour when combined with an appropriately linked belief. However, they also argue against requiring pro-attitudes to beaccompanied by beliefs that the object is valuable, or treating pro-attitudes as perceptions of value. On their view, pro-attitudes must not only motivate action, but cause more pleasure when one thinks about attaining their objects than when one thinks about failing to attain them. Chapter Seven “On the Distinctive Value of Knowledge”, by Kok Yong Lee, defends the distinctivevalue thesis, i.e. the thesis that knowledge is more valuable than any of its proper parts. The first part of the paper considers three prominent arguments against the distinctive value thesis: the swamping argument, the gen- eralized swampingargument, andtheadhocargument. Leemaintainsthatthey all relyonthemistakenideathatthedistinctivevaluethesisisincompatiblewithwhat hecallsepistemicveritism,theviewthatthevalueofknowledgeisparasiticonthe valueoftruth.Inthesecondpartofthepaper,Leearguesthatthedistinctivevalue thesisisnotonlycompatiblewithepistemicveritismbutinfactfollowsfromit.The crucialobservationhereisthatknowledgedoesnotcontainorpresupposefalsehood in the way mere justified true belief does. In Chapter Eight “The Continuity of Davidson’s Thought: Non-reductionism Without Quietism”, Claudine Verheggen discusses the continuity of Davidson’s thought. Her goal is to show that two commonly held conceptions of Davidson’s philosophy,onetotheeffectthatthereisashiftfromradicalinterpretationtotrian- gulation,inparticular,ashiftfromreductionismtonon-reductionism,theothertothe effect that Davidson’s non-reductionism isincompatible with constructive philoso- phizing, are in fact misconceptions. Verheggen argues that, though Davidson’s accountofmeaning,beingnon-reductionist,doesnotspelloutnon-circularsufficient conditions for any particular utterances to have the meaning they have, and for someonetohavealanguageandthoughtsatall,itisnonethelessnon-quietist,forit does give us necessary conditions for these phenomena to occur. These necessary conditionsfirstemergefromDavidson’sreflectionsonradicalinterpretationandare furtherarticulatedinhiswritingsontriangulation,whichalsodemonstratethatradical interpretationisbutaninstanceoftriangulation,sincetheymakeclearthatsuccessful radicalinterpretationineffectrequirestriangulation. InChapterNine“MethodologicalConsiderationsintheTriangulationArgument”, Wai Chun Leong examines Davidson’s triangulation argument, which purports to show that an agent could not have propositionalthoughtsif it had never interacted viii Preface withotheragentsincertainrequisiteways.AsLeongnotes,notmanyphilosophers accept this argument, and indeed no consensus has emerged on how exactly the argument goes. He thus sets out to reformulate it, paying special attention to methodological considerations bearing on the notion of relevant similarity, which he believes are often overlooked in the literature. He also proposes a tentative modification of the kind of interaction that triangulation requires. ChapterTen“Meaning,Evidence,andObjectivity”,byOliviaSultanescu,takes up the question of what, according to the conception of meaning offered by Davidson,makesexpressionsmeaningful.Sheaddressesthisquestionbyreflecting on Kathrin Glüer’s recent response to it, arguing that Glüer misconstrues both the evidenceformeaningthattheradicalinterpretermustrelyonandthewayinwhich the principle of charity must be deployed. The articulation of the correct construal of the evidence and the principle reveals the thoroughly non-reductionist aspect of Davidson’s conception of meaning. Sultanescu maintains that this aspect becomes even clearer in Davidson’s later work, through the articulation of the triangulation argument, and shows how this argument helps explain what makes expressions meaningful.SheendswithabriefdiscussionofthequestionwhetherDavidsonhas the resources to account for the objectivity of meaning. Inthefinalchapter,“Davidson’sTriangulationArgumentintheLogicofActions”, Syraya Chin-Mu Yang provides a formal machinery to complement the epistemic background in Davidson’s triangulation argument by presenting a structural mod- ellingoftheargumentinasemanticframeworkofanepistemiclogicofactions.Yang focussesontwoaspects.Firstly,hesuggeststhattoguaranteethatthepropositional content of what the speaker says in the ongoing communication is a justified true belief,thespeaker’sutterancemustbeanassertiongovernedbytheknowledgenorm, assumingDavidson’scharacterizationofknowledgeintermsofholisticallyjustified truebeliefs.Secondly,theauthorclaimsthatongoingcommunicationsucceedsonlyif what the speaker says becomes common knowledge. Accordingly, the required underlying system for the desired logic of actions will be a logic of common knowledge,inwhichthenotionofcommonknowledgeischaracterizedintermsofthe knowledge account of assertion. A semantics appropriate for the logic of common knowledge is given. Yang further proposes that the transition from the speaker’s initial assertion to common knowledge can be formulated by virtue of individual agents’learningandgrouplearning,resultingfromwhatthehearerlearnsfromthe speaker’sassertionandwhatthespeakerlearnsfromthehearer’sresponse,andthe following interactions between them. Two act-operators for individual agents’ learningandgrouplearningareintroduced;therequiredsemanticrulesarestipulated. We owe thanks to all of the authors and referees of the manuscripts, to the members of the organizing committee, and to the participants in the joint confer- ence, including all of the speakers, discussants, and attendees, and the staff of the Department of Philosophy, National Taiwan University. In particular, we would like to express our gratitude to Jennifer Hornsby, Claudine Verheggen, Pascal Engel, and Rowland Stout for their contributions to TMC3-2017 and to this vol- ume. We also appreciate the help in the organization of the conference that we received from a large number of friends, especially Derek Baker, D.-M. Deng, Preface ix Chung-I Lin, Rong-Lin Wang, and Chun-Ping Yen. We are deeply indebted to Fenrong Liu and Hiroakira Ono, the editors-in-chief of the book series Logic in Asia (LIAA), for their encouragement and long-term support of the TMCs and the preparation of this volume. Thanks also go to Leana Li, Editorial Director of Humanities and Social Sciences, for her contributions to this volume. Finally, and above all, we owe special thanks to Miss Wendy Huang. Without her generous financial support of the Wendy Huang Program and the Taiwan Metaphysics Colloquium series, this collection could only have materialized in some merely, perhaps even inaccessible, possible worlds. Taipei, Taiwan Syraya Chin-Mu Yang Toronto, Canada Robert H. Myers
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