The Prices Of Radical Interpretation

In order to provide the explanations of his theory of meaning,Donald·Davidson took the radical interpretation theory as its empirical solution.Being inspired by Tarski's theory of Convention T,Davidson had finally put forward his theory of meaning,and embarked on a path which explained his theory of meaning in an extensionalist way.Davidson believed that if Convention T could provide the formal constraints,and radical interpretation theory could provide the empirical constraints,it could explain the theory of meaning in an effective way.The success of radical interpretation theory should achieve this goal: it can provide an interpretation of all utterances which states by the speaker without any preset semantic knowledge and the beliefs of the speaker.Davidson's radical interpretation theory considered truth as its core concept,and Convention T as its formal framework.Through holding a sentence true,the principle of charity,and the principle of holism,using the way of decision theory gives the explanation of which states by the speaker utterances without any preset semantic knowledge.Unfortunately,Davidson's radical interpretation theory can not solve his problems about the theory of meaning radically.The debates focus on the following aspects: whether Davidson understood Tarski's theory of convention T correctly,and applied it in an appropriate way;whether his negative argument on conceptual scheme is valid or not;whether the principle of charity could respond to the criticism from skepticism;whether the principle of holism would cause uncertainty of the interpretation;whether the principles of radical interpretation theory are consistent with each other.Davidson did not make a strong argument or explanation for these aspects mentioned above.Based on related research,this paper integrates the issues that have been debated in radical interpretation theory,states the content of radical interpretationtheory,and claims the main problems it faced.This paper points out that if we admit Davidson's radical interpretation theory proved interpretations successfully,we must accept the following contents: the uncertain attitude of holding a sentence true;the artificial definition about the principle of charity;and the theoretical flaws in his arguments on anti skepticism and wholism.These are the price of intuition and theories which in order to demonstrate the radical interpretation theory.Meanwhile,these prices also indicated that the research of theory of meaning on the topic of extensionalism had not yet been realized,at least it had not been achieved in Davidson's way.