No Need to Speak the Same Language

Bjorn T. Ramberg’s book focuses on Davidson’s work in the philosophy of language, published between 1984 and the appearance of the book. Recent papers provide the focus for an overview of Davidson’s philosophy of language and its relations to broader debates and influences. Still, the reader is warned: the author “cannot claim” that the book “is in every detail a faithful representation or development of Davidson’s own current theory.” Instead, what we have is a “reconstruction” of Davidson on language and meaning, an account “Davidsonian in spirit and in all its fundamental features.” The result is a projection of Davidson’s views, or important aspects of them, in a particular direction: Davidson and interpretation in process. The following critical discussion of main issues in Ramberg’s book should not distract potential readers from this useful and thoughtful overview of Davidson on interpretation and meaning. The book is an “introductory” reconstruction of Davidson on interpretation—a claim to be taken with a grain of salt. Writing introductory books has become an idol of the tribe. This is a concise book and reflects much study. It has many virtues along with some flaws. Ramberg assembles themes and puzzles from Davidson into a more or less coherent viewpoint. A special virtue is the innovative treatment of incommensurability and of the relation of Davidson’s work to hermeneutic themes. The weakness comes in a certain unevenness. While generally convincing and well written, the book has low points which may leave the reader confused or unconvinced. Davidson is the hero in this book, and our hero is sometimes over-idealized. The Introduction starts with a famous yet startling quote from Davidson’s “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs:” “There is no such thing as a language.” The reader is hooked—leastwise those readers who were once gripped by the project of semantics for natural language, who have spent hours looking for the “latest,” or had occasion to hope for dispensation in the mail from Berkeley. Emphasis on Davidson’s “Nice Derangement” gives Ramberg’s book a particular slant. To be sure, the aim is still to construct theories of meaning for languages, modeled on the structure of Tarskian truth theories, but the meaning of “theory” and “language” have shifted: “linguistic understanding arises only through an on-going process of theory construction and reconstruction.” How does Davidson’s recent work relate to the project for semantics of natural language dating back (at least) to “Truth and Meaning” (1967) Ramberg argues that Davidson came to de-emphasize the notion of language, shifting attention to linguistic communication. “Though Davidson does write as if we can make good sense of the concept of language,” this is to be regarded as provisional. “By taking for granted that there are languages, Davidson was able to articulate a theory of meaning.” The concept of language became problematic, according to Ramberg, still the result “is not a theory which undercuts itself, but a comprehensive, coherent account of the phenomenon of linguistic communications” where “truth” and “satisfaction” are the crucial explanatory concepts. We need to take into account how “languages” change in communications—even in the communication required to interpret them. The approach is enlightening, though the process of interpretation threatens to swallow the products. The interpretation is interesting and plausible, all the more since it seems that Davidson has arrived, in a sense, at a conclusion pessimistically forecast by Chomsky. For Chomsky had argued, via a reductio ad absurdum, against the idea that belief or attitude are fully relevant to formal semantics in empirical linguistics, favoring a strict distinction between matters of meaning and matters of fact or belief. Thus, given Davidson’s approach to meaning via radical interpretation, and the role of belief (or “holding true”) in this, any de-emphasis or shift on the concept of language is of special interest. Chomsky argued that since speakers of the same language differ in beliefs and attitudes, if such differences are fully