logical (or semantic) form in natural languages by requiring that a role be assigned to each word or construction in the language that determines its systematic contribution to the truth conditions of any sentence in which it is used.
In “Truth and Meaning,” Davidson had proposed that a merely ex- tensionally adequate truth theory for a natural language would also meet a suitable analog of Tarski’s Convention T. A natural language contain- ing context-sensitive elements, particularly demonstratives, requires axioms that accommodate any potential application of a predicate to any object a speaker might demonstrate, putting greater constraints on a correct truth theory for a context-sensitive language than for one that is not. If any true truth theory met a suitable analog of Convention T, then merely showing that a theory for a language was true would enable one to use it, in the fashion just described, to interpret speakers of that language. However, this is not adequate, since replacing one extensionally adequate axiom with an- other will not disturb the distribution of truth values over sentences, though it may result in a failure to meet (an analog of ) Convention T (for details, see Chapter 1,§5). Davidson returned to the question of what informative
constraints one could place on a truth theory in order for it to be used for interpretation in “Radical Interpretation.” (See Chapter 1 for further discussion.)
4. PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION
“Actions, Reasons, and Causes” (Davidson 1980 [1963]) defended the view that reasons – that is, beliefs and desires (or pro attitudes) in the light of which we act – are causes of actions, conceived as bodily movements (broadly construed to include mental acts), and that action explanation is a species of causal explanation. Action explanations cite belief-desire pairs that conjointly cause the action, but that also show what was to be said in favor of it from the point of view of the agent. The desire (or, more generally, pro attitude) specifies an end that the agent has, and the belief links some particular action to some likelihood of achieving the end. Davidson calls action explanations “rationalizations.” On this view, the concept of an action is a backward-looking causal concept, in the sense that it is the concept of an event (a bodily movement) that is caused and rationalized by a belief-desire pair. The concepts of belief and desire, on the other hand, are forward-looking causal concepts, in the sense that they are understood as concepts of states with a propensity conjointly to cause
Introduction 15
bodily movements. This basic picture of the nature of human action and its relation to our reasons for acting was elaborated, extended, and refined in a series of articles. “How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?” (Davidson 1980b [1970]) takes up a specific puzzle about how irrational behavior is possible, namely, the puzzle of how someone can intentionally do some- thing that he does not believe, all things considered, is the best thing for him to do. Davidson here abandons a view he had held in “Actions, Rea- sons, and Causes,” namely, that the propositions that express a person’s reasons for action are deductively related to the proposition that expresses the desirability of the act that they would rationalize; rather, the conclusion drawn about the desirability of the act is conditioned by the specific reasons for it, and not detachable from them. The causal account is deployed in ex- plaining the possibility of weakness of the will by distinguishing between which reasons for action are causally strongest and which reasons provide the best grounds for action. “Agency” (Davidson 1980a [1971]) takes up the question of the relation between an agent and those events that are his actions; this essay defends the view that actions are bodily movements that can be picked out under different descriptions – under some of which an action can be intentional and under others of which it is unintentional – and that an action may be described in terms of its effects – so that a killing, for example, is nothing more than a bodily movement that causes a death, and so occurs before the death does. Davidson despairs of a final analysis in this paper, largely because of the problem of deviant causal chains – that is, the problem of describing how reasons must cause an action or event for it to count as an action done for those reasons (see Chapter 2,§5, for further
discussion). “Freedom to Act” (Davidson 1980a [1973]) defends the causal theory against the charge that it allows no room for free action. “Intending” (Davidson 1980 [1978]) returns to, and rejects, a claim made in “Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” namely, that acting intentionally is acting with an intention, and that the phrase ‘an intention’ in ‘acting with an intention’ is syncategorematic, merely signaling by what follows ‘with’ another de- scription of the action in terms of its reasons. The paper instead identifies intentions as distinct attitudes that play an important role in mediating rea- sons and the actions they cause. This revision of the earlier view had already made an appearance in “How Is Weakness of the Will Possible?” where it plays a role in the explanation of how one can form a judgment, all things considered, to do something, and yet not form an all-out or unconditional judgment in favor of it (i.e., an intention to do it) but instead form an all- out judgment in favor of (an intention to do) something judged, all things considered, less favorably. (See Chapter 2,§4 for an extended discussion.)