Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

attribution of beliefs and the interpretation of sentences.”
(Davidson 1974, p. 195)
And the very exercise of interpreting someone’s
words requires from us a knowledge of a “good deal about
what the speaker believes (and intends and wants), and
that fine distinctions between beliefs are impossible
without understood speech.” (Davidson 1974, p. 195)
To Davidson only a “theory that simultaneously
accounts for attitudes and interprets speech, and which
assumes neither” (Davidson 1974, p. 195) can be a good
theory to explain our practices of interpretation.
Therefore, to assume that practices of interpretation
and linguistic interaction can take part in a situation of
complete ignorance is an option we must give up if we
follow Davidson’s steps. Both knowledge about some of
the speaker’s beliefs and knowledge about the world are
required 1 .
Following this path we can arrive at both argument(i)
and (ii). And if we focus on the first of these arguments -
the thesis about the requirement of some level of
agreement between those who are participating in a dialog
– it is possible to understand the importance of Davidson’s
words: “Since knowledge of beliefs comes only with the
ability to interpret words, the only possibility at the start is
to assume general agreement on beliefs.” (Davidson 1974,
p. 196)
4. Throughout the previous sections we could see how
Davidson could lead us out of the dilemma I alluded to in
the first section. If we want to accept that there are some
differences between the ways different cultures see the
world, these differences must be understandable without
the appeal to the inaccessibility between them. Differences
can be understood only on a general ground of agreement.
It is useful to hear Davidson again:
48
“If by conceptual relativism we mean the idea that
conceptual schemes and moral systems, or the
languages associated with them, can differ massively –
to the extent of being mutually unintelligible or
incommensurable, or forever beyond rational resolve –
then I reject conceptual relativism. Of course there are
contrasts from epoch to epoch, from culture to culture,
and person to person, of kinds we all recognize and
struggle with: but these are contrasts which with
sympathy and effort we can explain and understand.”
(Davidson 1988, p. 39-40)
5. Up to here I have tried to show that Davidson has
something to say about intercultural dialog because he
offers an approach on differences between cultures that
does not need to be explained in terms of an
incommensurable distinction between them. But, in order
to do so, I have considered relativism as an issue that
somehow deserves our attention.
I would like to briefly contrast this kind of reasoning
with another one that sees relativism as a kind of
philosophical artificial problem. The reasoning I have in
mind was developed by R. Rorty. Rorty once said he could
see three different senses in which the label “relativism”
was normally understood; he says:
“The first is the view that every belief is as good as every
other. The second is the view that “true” is an equivocal
term, having as many meanings as there are procedures
of justification. The third is the view that there is nothing
1
See Davidson (1973) and Davidson (1991) for a very clear exposition of his
argumentation.
Davidson on Intercultural Dialog - Cristina Borgoni
to be said about either truth or rationality apart from
descriptions of the familiar procedures of justification
which a given society – ours – uses in one or another
area of inquiry.” (Rorty 1985, p. 23)
After defending himself against being put down as a
relativist in the first two senses – one being a “self-refuting”
position and the other an “eccentric” one – Rorty seems to
dismiss any importance this question could have by stating
the following:
“But the pragmatist does not have a theory of truth,
much less a relativistic one. As a partisan of solidarity,
his account of the value of cooperative human inquiry
has only an ethical base, not an epistemological or
metaphysical one. Not having any epistemology, a
fortiori he does have a relativistic one.” (Rorty 1985, p.
24)
6. The importance of Rorty’s consideration in this paper is
that besides seeing another way of overcoming relativism,
by undermining its sources, he offers metaphilosophical
considerations that may have consequences as to how we
can see Davidson’s position. If his metaphilosophical
criticism is accurate, the results reached by Davidson can
be seen as a mere extension of historical quandaries.
Accordingly, it would be difficult to accept that quandaries
have consequences to practical queries such as the one
concerning intercultural dialog.
Rorty has important and interesting reasons for
dismissing some of the queries philosophy has been
traditionally engaged in. I believe that his effort to do away
with obscure philosophical convictions merits philosophical
reflection; two of those convictions attacked by Rorty are
pointed out by Ramberg as:
“the Kantian idea that knowledge, or thinking generally,
must be understood in terms of some relation between
what the world offers up to the thinker, on one side, and
on the other the active subjective capacities by which
the thinker structures for cognitive use what the world
thus provides. The second is the Platonic conviction that
there must be some particular form of description of
things, which, by virtue of its ability to accurately map,
reflect, or otherwise latch on to just those kinds through
which the world presents itself to would-be knowers, is
the form in which any literally true – or cognitively
significant, or ontologically ingenuous – statement must
be couched.” (Ramberg 2000, p. 351)
One direct consequence of this kind of attack from
Rorty is the dismissal of the concept of truth as constituting
an important philosophical question. And it is because of
this that it is easy to understand that, following Rorty, once
we can stop worrying about “truth”, the danger of a
relativist position is automatically defused.
Davidson’s approach, however, refuses to take this
step by focusing on the importance of talking about truth
and so we might be tempted to think that relativism
remains a query.
Everything that could be said in favor of Davidson
against the risk of being under the sway of useless
philosophical convictions has probably already been said
by Ramberg (2000). Even Rorty himself, despite some
specific criticisms, has paid a great deal of attention to
Davidson’s philosophical works. And also it seems that
Davidson is in the same side as Rorty if we remember his
rejection of the dualism of conceptual scheme and
empirical content.