Davidson, Donald , formerly University of CaliforniaBerkeley
Problems of Rationality
Publication date 2004 (this edition)
Print ISBN-10: 0-19-823754-5
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-823754-9
doi:10.1093/0198237545.001.0001
Abstract: Applies Davidson's Unified Theory of thought, meaning, and action to three families of problems involving various aspects of rationality, some degree of which Davidson's theory of radical interpretation attributes to any creature, which can be said to have a mind. These problems are the nature and our understanding of value judgements, the adequacy conditions for attributing mental states to a being, and the problem of irrationality.The first four chapters apply Davidson's thesis that our interpretations of another person's mental states are a source of objectivity to value judgements: such judgements, Davidson argues in this section, are as objective as any judgement about the mind can be. Chs 5 to 10 develop Davidson's Unified Theory for interpreting thought, meaning, and action, the primary concern of this section being the specification of the minimal conditions for attributing mental states to an object or creature. Chs 11 to 14 deal primarily with the problems raised by those cognitive states and actions that seem to violate, in a fundamental way, the constraints of rationality. Since Davidson regards the constraints of rationality to be amongst the necessary conditions for both mind and interpretation, irrational thoughts, and actions pose a particular problem for his Unified Theory. The final four chapters attempt to remove the apparent contradiction.
Keywords: action,constraints of rationality,Donald Davidson,irrationality,meaning,mental states,mind,objectivity,Problems of Rationality,radical interpretation,thought,value judgements
Other volumes of collected essays by Donald Davidson
Essays on Actions and Events
Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation
Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective
Truth, Language, and History (forthcoming)
end p.ii
Provenance of the Essays and Acknowledgments
Essay 1, 'The Problem of Objectivity', was published in Tijdschrift voor Filosofie (Leuven, June 1995), 203-20.
Essay 2, 'Expressing Evaluations', was delivered as the Lindley Lecture and published as a Lindley Lecture monograph at the University of Kansas, 1984.
Essay 3, 'The Objectivity of Values', was first published in El Trabajo Filosfico de Hoy en el Continente, edited by Carlos Gutirrez (Bogat, Editorial ABC, 1995), 59-69. Translated into Serbo-Croatian by D.. Mileusni, it was later published in Belgrade Circle, 1-2 (1995), 177-88, both in English and Serbo-Croatian.
Essay 4, 'The Interpersonal Comparison of Values', is a slightly altered version of 'Judging Interpersonal Interests', published in Foundations of Social Choice Theory, edited by J. Elster and A. Hylland (Cambridge University Press, 1986), 195-211.
Essay 5, 'Turing's Test', was published in Modelling the Mind, edited by W. H. Newton-Smith and K. V. Wilkes (Oxford University Press, 1990), 1-11.
Essay 6, 'Representation and Interpretation', was published in Modelling the Mind, edited by W. H. Newton-Smith and K. V. Wilkes (Oxford University Press, 1990), 13-26.
Essay 7, 'Problems in the Explanation of Action', was published in Metaphysics and Morality: Essays in Honour of J. J. C. Smart, edited by P. Pettit, R. Sylvan, and J. Norman (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 35-49.