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What Is Radical Interpretation, Davidson, Fodor and The Naturalization of Philosophy (Robert Sinc PDF
What Is Radical Interpretation, Davidson, Fodor and The Naturalization of Philosophy (Robert Sinc PDF
Jerry Fodor and Ernest Lepore have recently criticized Davidsons methodolog y of
radical interpretatio n because of its apparent failure to reflect how actual
interpretatio n is achieved. Responding to such complaints , Davidson claims that he is
not interested in the empirical issues surroundin g actual interpretatio n but instead
focuses on the question of what condition s make interpretatio n possible. It is argued
that this exchange between Fodor and Lepore on one side, and Davidson on the
other, cannot be viewed simply as a naturalis t reaction to non-naturalis t philosophica l
inquiry. Through a careful excavatio n of the hidden assumptions and commitments
underlyin g this debate, we recognize a more serious disagreemen t over the
intellectua l obligations of naturalism ; a position with a firm hold on current
philosophica l imaginations . In the process, we gain a new appreciatio n for how such
commitments shape these naturalis t positions, and recogniz e that any resolutio n to
this specific debate will require careful attention to the divergent commitments that
are its real source.
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characterize Fodor and Lepores naturalism. Despite the fact that Fodor and
Lepore explicitly recognize Davidsons claim that radical interpretation is
concerned with the question of what makes interpretation possible, they
assess the idea of radical interpretation by considering whether it accurately
describes the situation of actual interpretation. This move makes explicit the
key dialectical problem of this article; how can Fodor and Lepore recognize
Davidsons interest in the conditions that make interpretation possible yet
continue to question this account on the grounds that it presents an inaccurate
picture of how interpretation actually is done? My suggestion is that it is
precisely Fodor and Lepores naturalist commitment that causes them to
evaluate the question in this speci c way. As a result, they proceed to assess
radical interpretation on empirical grounds in order to determine whether it
can provide genuine explanatory truths concerning the phenomena with
which it deals. This can be shown by focusing more closely on the
commitments present in Fodors naturalist conception of philosophy.4
Like many recent forms of naturalism, Fodors owes much to Quines
elaboration and defense of this position. Quine explains his view in the
following way: . . . my position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as
an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with
science.. . . There is no external vantage point, no rst philosophy (1969, pp.
1267). On this construal, naturalism maintains a certain understanding of the
relationship between philosophy and science where there is no independent a
priori philosophical perspective that remains insulated from scienti c inquiry.
To engage in philosophica l investigation is to work from within the same
understanding of the world provided by science, and to reject the claim that
philosophy can justify the results offered by science. Call this the continuity
requirement.
Many naturalists build on this requirement of continuity between
philosophy and science by claiming that natural science has a methodological
priority over other disciplines, imposing constraints on the conditions under
which these disciplines may claim to provide literal truths. Fodor explains the
reasons for this methodological priority in the following way:
[S]cience is privilege d not because the scienti c method is infallible , but because the
natural realm is the only realm there is or can be; everything that ever happens . . . is the
conformity of nature to law. And our science is the best attested story about the conformity of
nature to law that we know how to tell. (1998, p. 4)
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emphasized by this sort of naturalism, that it strive for the discovery of nomic
connections between the phenomena being investigated. Call this the nomic
priority requirement.
A nal commitment of Fodors naturalism is the claim that phenomena can
legitimately count as real only if they can be characterized as dependent on
more basic underlying phenomena. To accomplish this is to construe
phenomena in terms of a vocabulary that is more fundamental than the one in
which they are initially characterized. A vocabulary is more fundamental, in
the relevant sense, in so far as it allows for the formulation of laws of greater
generality than those we can frame in terms of the vocabulary we initially
used to introduce these objects. Now, we have seen that Fodor takes genuine
explanation as requiring nomic characterization since everything that happens
is the conformity of nature to law. The most general theory of the world
would provide a complete description of natures conformity to law; it would
be the most basic or fundamental vocabulary in terms of which we can
account for any event as an instance of some perfectly general physical law.
Taking physics as supplying this sort of generality leaves it with the
responsibility of providing the closest possible articulation of how nature
conforms to law. Since it strives for this more general account of how nature
conforms to law, all other levels of nomic explanation need to be shown to
depend on it. Such a requirement places constraints on the type of explanation
one can give at higher levels of explanation. Psychological laws or the laws of
any other special science are constrained by the existence of more basic
physical processes that implement such laws. If there are intentional laws, the
regularities they articulate must in turn be explananda of accounts that appeal
to underlying, more basic regularities. In other words, that there are
psychological (or other higher-level) laws of a particular sort needs to be
explained in terms of more basic laws. It should be noted that, in Fodors case,
these constraints on psychological theories do not result in their theoretical
reduction to physics, but that all genuine, real phenomena are ontologically
dependent on physical phenomena. Call this the ontological dependency
requirement.
Let us, then, take Fodors naturalism to involve the three main components
that I have called the requirements of continuity, nomic priority, and
ontological dependency. Underlying this naturalist commitment is a more
fundamental metaphysical commitment, which results in the speci c
naturalist view outlined above. This metaphysical view is a form of
essentialism, the ontological doctrine that posits a world consisting of a xed
totality of mind-independent entities admitting of only one true and complete
description (Putnam [1981, p. 49]). This prior essentialism has a signi cant
impact on Fodors naturalism; it informs a certain reading of the continuity
requirement, which then leads to the further requirements of nomic priority
and ontological dependency. In other words, the continuity requirement alone
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does not imply the further requirements of nomic priority and ontological
dependency. Since Fodor is committed to all three, there must be an
additional assumption that when combined with the continuity thesis leads to
these further requirements. I suggest that we nd Fodors essentialism playing
this role. Recently he has emphasized that Science discovers essences . . .
(Fodor [1998, p. 5]) revealing that it is this speci c essentialist reading of the
task of science that underwrites his distinctive conception of naturalism.
This essentialism takes there to be only one true description of a world
independent of ourselves, one level of description in which all genuine truths
can be expressed. When combined with the continuity requirement, the view
that philosophical investigations are continuous with the world described by
science, this results in a methodological priority given to natural science as
the method for arriving at that one true description of reality. In turn, this
gives rise to the nomic priority thesis, because by giving methodological
priority to natural science we are now committed to striving for nomic
empirical explanation. That is, nomic explanation now serves as the criterion
for legitimate explanation, because scienti c explanation just is nomic
empirical explanation. Finally, this gives rise to Fodors ontological
dependency requirement. With methodological priority given to natural
science, combined with the essentialist view that there is only one true
complete description of reality, we need to demonstrate how any level of
explanation, including intentional explanation, derives its force and
legitimacy from the form of description that seeks to provide us with the
most general theory of the world. Once this essentialism is in place,
philosophical attempts to characterize the intentional realm as amenable to
natural science involve, in part, the task of specifying how this characterization is dependent on the most general theory of the world, now viewed as the
one true description of reality.
Fodors essentialism then has a signi cant impact on his brand of
naturalism. However, the fact that Fodors essentialism is an ontological
doctrine accepted quite independently of the continuity requirement suggests
that it is not a necessary part of a commitment to naturalism. This leaves open
the possibility for a conception of naturalism devoid of such a requirement.
The next section presents Davidsons naturalism as anti-essentialist, rejecting
the need for any ontological legitimization of the sort required by a
commitment to essentialism.
Returning to Fodors conception of naturalism, we can further note that it
takes philosophica l investigations about mind and language as requiring that
science be brought to bear on these issues if they are to provide genuine
explanations: . . . philosophical problems about mind and world have to be
situated within the general scienti c enterprise, if literal truth is what
philosophers aim for (Fodor [1998, p. 4]). Philosophical investigations
concerning the nature of thought and language are, in part, a kind of
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We can now understand the context in which Fodor and Lepore examine
and then criticize radical interpretation. They treat it as an account that is
responsive to their conception of naturalism, and therefore read radical
interpretation as providing the philosophica l transformation required for the
empirical resolution of these issues. Whether radical interpretation is possible
ought then to be an empirical question, to be assessed by an appeal to the
relevant empirical data. If it does not proceed in this way, then how could
radical interpretation hope to bring the mental under the scope of natural
science? Seen from this perspective the question of the possibility of
interpretation viewed from within the epistemic constraints imposed by
radical interpretation, must itself be brought into contact with relevant
empirical evidence. This move is signaled with Fodor and Lepores remark
that: The epistemic situation of the radical interpreter is thus the epistemic
situation in which languages are actually interpreted (1994, p. 103). By
understanding the defense of the possibility of radical interpretation as
contingent on actual situations of interpretation, Fodor and Lepore have
transformed the question so that empirical evidence is now relevant for our
answer. Once they approach the issue from this standpoint, they proceed to
consider different cases of actual interpretation, the eld linguist and child,
demonstrating that in these actual cases interpreters do not operate within the
constraints given in radical interpretation. Hence, there is little reason to think
that interpretation from that standpoint is possible. They conclude that the
project captured under the heading radical interpretation has failed to
receive the empirical support required, that is, it has failed to provide a
naturalistic transformation of the phenomena with which it deals.
Davidson himself seems to have a very different view of the motivations
and philosophical point of his use of radical interpretation. He claims that
Fodor and Lepore badly misread him when they proceed to read his question
as an empirical one. Here he is explicit: I do not think I have ever con ated
the (empirical) question how we actually go about understanding a speaker
with the (philosophical) question what is necessary and suf cient for such
understanding. I have focused on the latter question . . . (1994b, p. 3).
However, I think this dialectic is more complicated than Davidsons dismissal
of Fodor and Lepore suggests.6 Let us again consider Fodor and Lepores
reading of radical interpretation.
Taking a commitment to naturalism as involving a transformation of
philosophical concerns into questions susceptible to natural-scienti c
investigation, Fodor and Lepore read Davidsons use of radical interpretation
as if it were supposed to be contributing to such a transformation. The claims
then made in the name of radical interpretation qualify as legitimate truths
about communication only if they receive the sort of empirical support that
this scienti c transformation of philosophy demands. On this score, the
failure of radical interpretation appears complete; assessed as an attempt that
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lies, or sincerely uttered falsehoods, prevents him from taking the external
environment as a direct source of evidence for the truth-conditions of the
utterance in question. These assumptions work in tandem to overcome the
central problem of the interdependence of belief and meaning:
[A] speaker holds a sentence to be true because of what the sentence (in his language) means,
and because of what he believes. Knowing that he holds the sentence to be true, and knowing
the meaning, we can infer his belief; given enough information about his beliefs, we could
perhaps infer the meaning. (Davidson [1973, p. 134])
Normally making our way into this interdependence of belief and meaning
is unproblematic, but in radical interpretation it becomes serious, since the
evidence which is to serve as the basis for our theory of interpretation crucially
does not depend on assumed knowledge of meanings or of detailed knowledge
of beliefs. The problem is solved through the use of our assumptions, by rst
identifying the intention to utter a true sentence and then, second, taking the
speakers utterance just made as in fact a correct one. This does not violate any
of the restrictions of our approach since we have not appealed to any detailed
knowledge of the speakers beliefs or intentions, but we do take the creature
before us as having beliefs and intentions that are causally related to states of
the external environment. At this juncture we still have no detailed knowledge
of their beliefs, or of the content of their words, but we have put ourselves in a
position to provide empirical support to our theory.
Consider the radical interpreters attempt to interpret Es regnet. Whatever
this happens to mean on the occasion in which it is uttered, it can only count
for evidence of (T) if we assume that Es regnet is used correctly on that
occasion. Once we take it that an individual could be wrong in asserting Es
regnet, then the right side of the T-sentence gains no support from this
utterance, since we would now have to realize that the circumstances of
utterance are of no use for the establishment of the truth conditions of this
utterance. Therefore, assuming that the interpreter can identify true assertions
is not enough to provide evidence for our theory; we need to further take the
speakers utterance to be in fact true. Proceeding in this way, we notice that
Kurt utters Es regnet when it is raining in the near vicinity, and conclude
that this provides evidence for a T-sentence of the language in question. From
this initial starting point we continue to develop our theory, isolating more
evidence of the sort required and constructing the relevant T-sentences on that
basis. Davidson is well aware that at best this gives us only truth-conditions,
when what we want are interpretations. However, as we proceed to construct
our theory to t the total evidence available, the holistic constraints found in
language will permit acceptable interpretations to emerge in the form of
T-sentences. 11
We have seen how the second assumption involved taking the speaker as
being largely correct concerning what he asserts and therefore what he
believes. This so-called principle of charity highlights the rational interests
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construction of a theory of interpretation. The need for charity then falls out of
our prior interest in successfully communicating with others and the principle
of charity is then revealed as a truth about our mental vocabulary that is built
into the very successful application of the concepts we use to interpret others.
The explanation for our adherence to charity involves a particular description
of the speci c interests found in our attempts to describe one another as rational
agents and in the process we recognize that charity is unavoidably built into
these attempts, making that vocabulary exactly what it is, a level of description
designed for displaying events as rational.
This discussion helps bring out the way in which Davidsons use of howpossible questioning helps him delineate the, admittedly, a priori constitutive
conditions that are built into our use of this vocabulary. In asking how such an
activity as interpretation is possible, Davidson elucidates the constitutive
principles that inform our intentional vocabulary. These are claims made
about the nature of a vocabulary, and explain how it achieves its point and
purpose from the sort of principles that comprise the vocabulary. Here,
Davidson is making explicit important features of our intentional vocabulary
by describing the ways that such features connect up with general kinds of
human interests. They express the fundamental nature of these interests, in
this case the rational interests that comprise intentional vocabulary, and
re ect the way that these interests shape the particular vocabulary in question.
However, and this is the crucial point, the support for such principles is, at
least, indirectly empirical, in the sense that their status depends on the
explanatory power with which they give the account of the vocabulary to
which they belong as a de ning feature. This involves, in part, an analysis of
this vocabulary that is able to account for our success in using a certain class
of concepts, the kind of inferences and intuitions that are built into their use
and partly a matter of how these interests allegedly served can be tied to a
scienti cally respectable picture of creatures like us. It is this second aspect
that adds a noticeably naturalistic component to this type of inquiry. The
speci cation of the non-empirical elements that comprise the de ning
interests of this vocabulary is naturalistic in the sense that the plausibility of
the analysis, with its substantive appeal to various concrete human interests,
will depend in some measure on our empirical picture of what type of
creatures we are. Given this fact, the constitutive principles at the very core of
the proposed account of a vocabulary are themselves subject to empirical
revision, as our very conception of the vocabulary in question may change as
a result of a change in our empirical view of what we are.
This understanding of the relationship between Davidsons use of
constitutive principles and empirical facts demonstrates why they are not
properly read as formal presuppositions for the possibility of interpretation.
Such a reading depends on a clear division between the non-empirical and the
empirical, since it is the a priori structure that is to serve as the framework
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NOTES
1 Fodor and Lepore offer several critical points against radical interpretation , but here I focus
on the arguments that are directly relevant for elucidatin g the naturalist conception s of
philosophy at work in this debate.
2 This background theory includes facts about the cognitive psychology of conspeci cs, how
language learning works, laws concerning linguistic change, and the existence of linguistic
universals. All these facts are acquired through the linguists professiona l training (Fodor
and Lepore, p. 107).
3 Fodor and Lepore mention that innatenes s is not the only possibility . Here they appeal to
the work of Piaget (1926) and Bruner (1983) which claims that in order to learn a rst
language the child needs rst to acquire a whole host of conceptual and social capacities.
4 Although Lepore (1982) has defended Davidsons truth-theoretica l approach to semantics,
he appears to share the assumptions and commitments of Fodors naturalism . For the
purposes of this article, I will assume this is the case.
5 For more on Fodors attempt to scienti cally vindicate folk psychology , see his (1987),
(1990), and (1994).
6 Davidsons reply (1994a) to Fodor and Lepores article is less dismissive and indicates his
varied misgivings with their reading of radical interpretation .
7 One notable dissenter is Richard Rorty. See his essays on Davidson in (1991).
8 See Davidson (1974a, p. 143), (1974b, p. 195), and (1990a, p. 315).
9 Davidson is explicit on this point: I have stressed that a radical interpreter already has a
language , and . . . has the concepts of truth, of intention, of belief, of desire and of assertion
(and many, many more) (1994a, p. 125).
10 This assumption gains in plausibilit y once we remember that the radical interprete r knows
much about interpretatio n and meaning in general. See note 9.
11 For more on these additional constraints , see essays 2, 9, and 12 in Davidson (1984).
12 This point is made in Representatio n and Interpretation : . . . the point is . . . that we all
have such norms, and that we cannot recognize as thought phenomena that are too far out of
line (Davidson [1990b, p. 24]).
13 Recent articles that claim Davidson offers transcendenta l arguments include Cutrofello
(1999), Genova (1999), and Maker (1991).
14 This brief sketch is not meant to do justice to the various accounts given for why Davidson
should be counted as part of the transcendenta l tradition. However, I think it does capture
the general framework that many take as comprising Davidsons alleged transcendentalism .
15 Friedman himself does not offer this Kantian reading of Davidson. However, given his
recent attempts to defend a neo-Kantia n constitutive a priori in the face of Quinean
naturalis m (1997, 2000), it is not surprising to see him emphasize in a footnote what he
describe s as, Davidsons genuinel y novel contribution : the attempt to show how our
constitutiv e ideal of rationality can survive in a post-Quinea n context (1996, p. 458).
16 This is precisely why Davidson question s the point of illuminating the mental by an appeal
to physical standards: Would this science differ from, or add to, ordinary physics? Not in
any way. The laws would be those of physics, and all the phenomena treated would be
describe d in physical terms. But what would such a science tell us about intentional
action? (Davidson [1987b, p. 48]). He makes a similar remark in (1987a, p. 447).
17 I thank Michael Arciszewski, Donald Davidson, Paul Forster, Philip Hanson, Mathieu
Marion, Bjrn Ramberg, Judith Stapleton, and Neil Williams for their helpful comments on
earlier drafts of this paper. Financial support from the Fonds pour la Formation de
Chercheurs et LAide a` la Recherche is also gratefull y acknowledged .
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Rorty, Richard 1991. Objectivity , Relativism and Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University
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Received 24 July 2001
Robert Sinclair, Department of Philosophy , Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. Canada
V5A 1S6. E-mail: resincla@sfu.c a