Charity and grace

This essay attempts to reconcile charity with grace, the central concepts of two thinkers whose views may seem irreconcilable to many: Donald Davidson, an analytical philosopher and the most distinguished follower of Quine; and Julian Pitt-Rivers, an Europeanist anthropologist, who wrote at length on Spain and Southern France. The latter's historicist exegesis of gracia points to basic aspects of human experience that are also salient in the reduction to basics that Davidson carried out concerning interpretation and truth. For Davidson, in the face of ultimate indeterminacy, interpretation is made possible due to the rational accommodation that charity sparks off. For Pitt-Rivers, gratuity highlights how processes of personal interaction depend on the drawing of shared trajectories: that is, not only do I have to grant others charity to make sense of them, I also have to frame others as subjects with a future by relation to myself as already in existence. The paper proposes that human interaction involves processes of sensemaking that integrate shared intentionality (i.e. the credit with which we respond to the indeterminacy of meaning) with shared experience (i.e. the debt implicit in the ultimate underdetermination of the world's entities). Thus, it brings both concepts together under the label of charis, their common etymological root, suggesting that the dynamic it represents is a broader feature of life itself.

"(In)distinct Languages": Revisiting the Dualism of Literal and Literary Meaning in Roman Jakobson and Donald Davidson

(In)distinct Languages: Revisiting the Dualism of Literal and Literary Meaning in Roman Jakobson and Donald Davidson The paper traces the relationship between the literal and literary language that is found in structuralism and analytic philosophy. The paper’s gist provides a comparative account of Roman Jakobson’s and Donald Davidson’s notions of poetic language and their relation to the general idea of language as it is given in their work. In reconsidering Jakobson’s and Davidson’s arguments, I propose abandoning the dualistic hypotheses of the oppositions between literal and non-literal language, and between literal and literary language. I contend that the notions of first and literal meanings are necessary for other types of interpretation. The dualistic hypothesis requires the cascade model, which displays a bottom-top transition across hierarchically arranged levels of meanings. Instead, I outline the multilayered structure of language with two thresholds: mimetic and semiotic. Therefore, the cascade model should be replaced with the palimpsest model of concurring, merging, and blending layers of meanings. Języki (nie)odrębne. Jeszcze raz o dualizmie znaczeń, dosłownego i literackiego, u Romana Jakobsona i Donalda DavidsonaW artykule poddano analizie relacje między językiem dosłownym a językiem literackim, występujące w strukturalizmie i filozofii analitycznej. W rozważaniach istotna była konfrontacja koncepcji języka poetyckiego Romana Jakobsona i Donalda Davidsona oraz ich związku z ogólną ideą języka, jaką można znaleźć w ich pracach. Rozważając ponownie argumenty Jakobsona i Davidsona, autor proponuje porzucić dualistyczne hipotezy, zasadzające się na opozycji między językiem dosłownym a językiem niedosłownym oraz między językiem dosłownym a językiem literackim. Twierdzi, że pojęcia znaczenia pierwszego i dosłownego są niezbędne w innych typach interpretacji. Hipoteza dualistyczna wymaga modelu kaskadowego, który ukazuje przejście od dołu do góry przez hierarchicznie ułożone poziomy znaczeń. Zamiast tego autor zarysowuje wielowarstwową strukturę języka z dwoma poziomami: mimetycznym i semiotycznym i wskazuje na konieczność zastąpienia modelu kaskadowego palimpsestowym modelem współbieżności, łączenia i mieszania warstw znaczeniowych.

Against Epistemological Virus of Scepticism: Davidson on Objectivity of Knowledge

This paper provides a short overview of approaches to epistemological issues as represented by Donald Davidson, an American philosopher. This is an attempt to analyse Davidson’s essential postulates, in order to construct a framework for understanding a highly authentic epistemological position and the way in which it appears as an antipode to the sceptical epistemological strategies. In other words – the goal is to identify a coordinate system, through a set of postulates, from which Davidson projects his epistemological attitudes. For that purpose, the paper presents the developmental process of Davidson’s epistemological thought that goes through triangulation of notions subjective, intersubjective, and objective. The paper places special emphasis on Davidson’s concentration on communicative practices and intersubjectivity as the only topoi in which the issue of objectivity can be raised.

Sucesos comportamentales: estados mentales, cuerpo y género

Distintas disciplinas y epistemologías feministas han visibilizado los sesgos deterministas que permean el discurso científico predominante. Sin embargo, considero que ninguna de las críticas problematiza la lógica causa-efecto sobre la que se estructuran las relaciones físicas y simbólicas de género. En este sentido, se naturaliza una linealidad temporal que antepone lo biológico a comportamientos típicamente generizados, tales como la agresión y la competencia. Tal naturalización resulta de no problematizar lo suficiente la relación mente-cuerpo desde los Estudios de Género. Propongo un cruce entre el concepto de suceso y el monismo anómalo de Donald Davidson con ciertos aportes de los nuevos materialismos feministas, y sostengo que existe una sincronización temporal entre nuestros estados biológicos y nuestros estados psicológicos. A la vez, resalto la irreductibilidad de lo mental. Concluyo que interpretar de esta manera las conductas generizadas habilita una ontología del cuerpo que diluye la lógica causa-efecto, una lógica androcéntrica heredada de la ciencia moderna y fundada en un biologicismo inherentemente cisheteronormativo.

Problemas con la crítica de Fodor y Lepore al holismo semántico de Davidson

El objetivo de este artículo es problematizar las críticas que hacen Fodor y Lepore en Holism: a shopper’s guide a la teoría holista propuesta por Donald Davidson. Para hacerlo, primero se hará una exposición de la teoría davidsoniana y se expondrán tres de las críticas hechas por Fodor y Lepore: (1) la composicionalidad es necesaria para evitar los enunciados-W; (2) la condición epistemológica de un intérprete radical es problemática; (3) el principio de caridad no tiene ningún uso en la teoría del significado, entonces no se puede derivar una conclusión holista de este principio. Una vez claras las críticas de Fodor y Lepore, se argumentará por qué no tienen un fundamento fuerte y se señalarán alguno problemas que quedan por resolver.

¿Hay realmente inteligencia animal? Una revisión filosófica.

In the context of philosophical research on animal intelligence, there are different traditions that deny that nonhuman animals are intelligent. In this article we mention some of these traditions, such as Cartesian mechanism and behaviorism. However, we will focus our attention on the proposals of the analytical philosophers John McDowell and Donald Davidson as representative of this philosophical tradition. His main idea is that by not having a language like that of human beings, the rest of the animals cannot be rational and, therefore, not intelligent either. Our position is that such an analytical tradition flatly ignores the scientific and philosophical evidence against it. We will give some relevant data in favor of animal intelligence. In addition, we will give an account of a trend that is manifested with increasing force among ethologists according to which there is a continuity between animal and human intelligence, considering the latter as the result of an evolutionary process and, therefore, as a result of a series of skills acquired by different species at some point in their formation.

Ajdukiewicz and the Notion of Conceptual Apparatus

The Polish philosopher Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz adopted the notion of “conceptual apparatus”, which is very similar to the idea of “conceptual scheme” put forward by Donald Davidson, Willard V. Quine, Nicholas Rescher and others. Ajdukiewicz’s theses are, in this regard, very important although less known, and he treated cognitive processes as inseparably connected with language.

Interpretation and Rationality

Although influential in philosophy and relevant to international political theory’s (IPT) key concerns, Donald Davidson has not received commensurate attention in IPT. I aim here to commence filling this gap. I explore Davidson’s insights which fruitfully challenge established disciplinary views. The notions of rationality, objectivity and truth, and, on the other hand, those of intersubjectivity, language and interpretation are often needlessly separated and constricted by seemingly alternative approaches. Davidson firmly reconnects these notions. He helps rethink the realist, strong post-positivist, but also liberal, ‘thin’ constructivist and critical (not thoroughly contextualist) approaches. He bridges the normative cosmopolitan–communitarian distinction. Eventually, Davidson laid foundations for a perspective foregrounding possibilities for rational communication and agreement between very different contexts and also for the non-dogmatic, pluralist and dynamic nature of communication itself.

Is Davidson's Theory of Action Consistent?

A theory of human action should provide an account of the connection between reason and action when an agent acts for a reason, and it should provide an account of the explanatory force of explanations of actions. On the causal theory of action, the connection between reasons and actions is that of event causality and explanations of actions are modeled on ordinary causal explanations, where events are explained by citing other events as their causes. A once common objection to the causal theory had it that reasons cannot be causes, since explanations of actions do not fit reason and action into a nomic nexus expressed by laws or law-like generalizations. Against this train of thought, Donald Davidson defends a version of the causal theory by arguing that the view that the connection between reasons and actions is that of event causality and the view that explanations of actions do not fit reasons and actions into a nomic nexus are compatible. Davidson's theory generated a small industry of criticism focusing on the implications of his version of the causal theory for the nature of the causal connection between reasons and actions.