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Notes
In Jurgen Habermas: 1984,Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1, Thomas McCarthy-(trans.), Beacon Press, Boston.
See ‘Belief and the Basis of Meaning’,Synthese 27 (1974), p. 300, and ‘Psychology as Philosophy’, in S. C. Brown (ed.),Philosophy of Psychology, Barnes and Noble, New York, 1974.
Cf., his remark that “...we can clarify the conditions for the communicative coordination of action by stating what it means for a hearer to understand what is said.”Theory of Communicative Action, p. 101.
Some writers distinguish between understanding and interpretation. For my purposes, it does not matter whether there is any significant distinction between the two.
Donald Davidson: 1967, ‘Truth and Meaning’,Synthese 17, 310. Strictly speaking, of course, utterances and not sentences have truth conditions and semantics. Since, however, Davidson speaks mostly of sentences, so will I.
Donald Davidson: 1973, ‘Radical Interpretation’,Dialectica 27, 322.
Donald Davidson: 1975, ‘Thought and Talk’, in Samuel Guttenplan (ed.),Mind and Language, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 14.
Donald Davidson: 1984, ‘The Inscrutability of Reference’, inTruth and Interpretation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, p. 235.
‘Truth and Meaning’, p. 307.
Ibid., p. 312.
Ibid., p. 305.
Ibid., p. 311.
See ‘Radical Interpretation’, p. 325.
Ibid., p. 326.
‘Moods and Performances’, in Donald Davidson,Truth and Interpretation, op. cit., p. 119.
Ibid., pp. 119–20.
‘Belief and the Basis of Meaning’, p. 312.
‘Radical Interpretation’, p. 315.
See ‘Reply to Foster’, in Gareth Evans and John McDowell (eds.),Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1976), p. 38.
Belief and the Basis of Meaning’, p. 312.
‘Radical Interpretation’, p. 322.
Cf., ‘What is Universal Pragmatics?’, in Jurgen Habermas,Communication and the Evolution of Society, Thomas McCarthy, (trans.) Beacon Press, Boston (1979), p. 49.
Ibid., p. 52.
Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. I,op. cit., pp. 299–303. Henceforth, all unexplicated references in the text will be to this book.
See ‘What is Universal Pragmatics?’, pp. 48–49.
For Habermas' rational discourse theory of truth, see Jurgen Habermas, ‘Wahrheitstheorien’, in Helmut Fahrenbach (ed.),Wirklichkeit und Reflexion: Walter Schulz zum 60,Geburtstag, Neske, Pfullingen, 1973.
A succinct statement of the above claims is found in Jurgen Habermas, ‘Interpretive Social Science versus Hermeneuticism’, in Norma Haan et al. (eds.),Social Science as Moral Inquiry, Columbia University Press, New York (1983), p. 259.
In any case, arguments directly parallel to the arguments presented in earlier paragraphs show that understanding what an utterance says cannot be identified with understanding its validity conditions.
This ambiguity and unclarity are particularly prominent in a paragraph found in Jurgen Habermas,Der Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne, Suhrkamp: Frankfort am Main, 1985, cf., pp. 364–5.
What I describe as a “responsible” person, Habermas would describe as a “responsible and rational” person, see pp. 14, 22. For reasons I will not discuss, responsibility and rationality usually come together.
‘Thought and Talk’, pp. 20–22.
‘Belief and the Basis of Meaning’, p. 321.
‘Thought and Talk’, p. 20.
‘Belief and the Basis of Meaning’, p. 321.
I would like to thank Hubert Dreyfus, Hans Sluga, and especially John Searle, Bruce Vermazen and Steve Yablo for comments on this essay.
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Schatzki, T.R. The rationalization of meaning and understanding: Davidson and Habermas. Synthese 69, 51–79 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01988287
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01988287