Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

For this reason I think we are entitled to consider
Davidson as not dealing with artificial problems in the
Rorty’s sense, and thus able to say something with
practical consequences.
7. I have argued that we can draw out conclusions
from Davidson’s philosophy on language and interpretation
and apply them to the issue of intercultural dialog by
saying that differences among cultures or among “world
views” are just possible because there is a great amount of
common ground between them.
As final observations, I would like to stress that this
apparent platitude is one of the most interesting results of
Davidson’s works. Because it is by doing so that Davidson
is able to stress that all the rest is our responsibility. Or in
other words, it is the interpreter’s responsibility to be an
interpreter. We thus have to recognize that to interpret
someone requires from us a kind of self-disposition to
listen the others with the direct consequence that not to
listen is revealed as an open choice.
I have said that one of Davidson’s central
conclusions is that a relevant part of interpreter’s and
speaker’s beliefs has to be shared. And a great part of
these beliefs has to be in fact accurate, i.e., has to be
knowledge about ourselves and about the world. But which
of those beliefs are shared and accurate is our task to
discover.
Davidson on Intercultural Dialog - Cristina Borgoni
References
Davidson, Donald 1973 “Radical Interpretation”, in: Inquiries into
Truth and Interpretation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 125-154.
Davidson, Donald 1974 “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual
Scheme”, in: Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 183-198.
Davidson, Donald 1988 “The Myth of the Subjective”, in:
Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
39-52.
Davidson, Donald 1991 “Three Varieties of Knowledge”, in:
Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
205-220.
Rorty, Richard 1985 “Solidarity or Objectivity?”, in: Objectivity,
Relativism, and Truth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
21–34.
Ramberg, Bjorn 2000 “Post-ontological Philosophy of Mind: Rorty
versus Davidson”, in: Robert B. Brandom (ed.) Rorty and His
Critics, Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing, 351- 377.
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