Donald Davidson (philosopher)

Donald Davidson
Portrait by photographer Steve Pyke in 1990
Born
Donald Herbert Davidson

(1917-03-06)6 March 1917
Died30 August 2003(2003-08-30) (aged 86)
EducationHarvard University (BA, PhD)
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolAnalytic
Neopragmatism[1]
ThesisPlato's 'Philebus' (1949)
Doctoral advisorRaphael Demos
Donald Cary Williams
Other academic advisorsWillard Van Orman Quine
Doctoral studentsAkeel Bilgrami
Michael Bratman
Kirk Ludwig
Claudine Verheggen
Stephen Yablo
Main interests
Philosophy of language, philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, epistemology, ontology
Notable ideas
Radical interpretation, anomalous monism, truth-conditional semantics, principle of charity, slingshot argument, reasons as causes, understanding as translation, swampman, events, Davidson's translation argument against alternative conceptual schemes[2][3] (the third dogma of empiricism)[a]
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Donald Herbert Davidson (March 6, 1917 – August 30, 2003) was an American philosopher. He served as Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1981 to 2003 after having also held teaching appointments at Stanford University, Rockefeller University, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. Davidson was known for his charismatic personality and the depth and difficulty of his thought.[5] His work exerted considerable influence in many areas of philosophy from the 1960s onward, particularly in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and action theory. While Davidson was an analytic philosopher, and most of his influence lies in that tradition, his work has attracted attention in continental philosophy as well, particularly in literary theory and related areas.[6]

  1. ^ Pragmatism – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  2. ^ Malpas, Jeffrey. "Donald Davidson," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005.
  3. ^ Davidson, Donald. "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 47(1) (1973–1974): 5–20.
  4. ^ Michael Dummett, The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy, Duckworth, 1981, p. xv.
  5. ^ McGinn, Colin. "Cooling it". London Review of Books. 19 August 1993. Accessed 28 October 2010.
  6. ^ Dasenbrock, Reed Way, ed. Literary Theory After Davidson. Penn State Press, 1989.


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