School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemDavidson and realism( 1998)The consequence of constraints imposed on epistemology by scepticism of the Cartesian variety on the one hand, and accounts of the appropriate criteria for meaning ori the other, is that arguments in epistemological realism, about the external world, must take a specific form. Such arguments are required to argue transcendentally for realism from explanations of meaning, or interpretation, if they are to negotiate the impasse created by the constraints indicated above. Donald Davidson's arguments for realism appear to satisfy the necessary requirements to argue for epistemological realism about the external world successfully. This thesis is an evaluation of whether Davidson's claims succeed. Three related, though separate arguments for realism, are distinguished. They are related by virtue of all stemming from the same explanation of interpretation. Where they differ is in how the realist thesis is transcendentally deduced from the common theory of interpretation. The third argument is distinct from the first two by way of incorporating a naturalistic argument into the transcendental deduction. I argue that only the third argument actually qualifies as a possible successful argument in epistemological realism because it is the only version that can potentially make the realist thesis an explanation of a necessary relation between What we mean and believe and what there is, rather than the previous ploys which could only draw, as candidates for a realist thesis, a necessary relation between what we mean and believe and what must obtain for that meaning and believing to be intelligibly explainable. However, I. conclude that Davidson's third argument does not succeed for it reverts back to an old source of scepticism in appealing to a notion of the epistemic priority of sense experience. What this means is that Davidson can give us no reason for why we must take the object of our beliefs to be synonymous with the idea of an objective world. I do offer, by way of conclusion, what I think would be a likely naturalistic source for an argument in epistemological realism, and I draw on a particular interpretation of a passage in Wittgenstein to make this point.