On Davidson’s Theory Of Meaning

Donald Davidson is recognized as one of the most important philosophers in the second half of the 20 th century.Davidson’s main contribution to Philosophy of language is to establish a unique theory of meaning.Davidson believes that to construct the meaning theory of natural language,we can use formal language to analyze natural language and study the logical structure of natural language.Davidson believes that Tarski’s definition of truth reveals the relationship between truth and meaning,and the definition of truth explains the meaning of a sentence by giving the truth condition of the sentence.Therefore,Davidson takes Tarski’s definition of truth as the basis of the formal representation of meaning theory,so that the transformed Tarski’s definition of truth can be applied to natural language,realizing the combination of formal semantics and natural language.Davidson’s theory of meaning takes the concept of truth as the basic concept of the theory of meaning,adjusts the order of interpretation of Tarski’s definition of truth,and changes from the explanation of truth to the explanation of meaning based on the concept of truth.Davidson uses the method of extension,does not presuppose any semantic concept,seeks for behavioral evidence of speech expression,and develops the approach of meaning theory research.Influenced by Quine’s thorough translation theory,Davidson put forward a thorough interpretation theory.Davidson’s thorough interpretation theory does not rely on the meaning entity or the connotation entity such as belief and intention,but only takes the speaker’s speech behavior in the process of speech communication as the evidence of interpretation to make the meaning interpretation of the sentences in the language.Davidson’s theory of meaning promotes the development of logical pragmatism,arouses the debate between realism and anti realism,and has an important influence on contemporary philosophical research.