Donald Herbert Davidson: P. CAYETANO ACUÑA VIGIL.

DONALD DAVIDSON

Donald Herbert Davidson: 6 March 1917 Springfield, Massachusetts

Died 30 August 2003 (aged 86) Berkeley, California

Education Harvard University (AB, 1939; PhD, 1949)

Donald Herbert Davidson (March 6, 1917 – August 30, 2003) was an American philosopher. He served as Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1981 to 2003 after having also held teaching appointments at Stanford University, Rockefeller University, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. Davidson was known for his charismatic personality and the depth and difficulty of his thought.[5] His work exerted considerable influence in many areas of philosophy from the 1960s onward, particularly in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and action theory.

 While Davidson was an analytic philosopher, and most of his influence lies in that tradition, his work has also attracted attention in continental philosophy, particularly in literary theory and related areas.[6]

Swampman is the subject of a philosophical thought experiment introduced by Donald Davidson in his 1987 paper "Knowing One's Own Mind". In the experiment, Davidson is struck by lightning in a swamp and disintegrated; simultaneously, an exact copy of Davidson, the Swampman, is made from a nearby tree and proceeds through life precisely as Davidson would have, indistinguishable from Davidson. 

The experiment is used by Davidson to claim that thought and meaning cannot exist in a vacuum; they are dependent on their interconnections to the world. Therefore, despite being physically identical to himself, Davidson states that the Swampman does not have thoughts nor meaningful language, as it has no causal history to base them on.[10]

Suppose lightning strikes a dead tree in a swamp; I [Davidson] am standing nearby. My body is reduced to its elements, while entirely by coincidence (and out of different molecules) the tree is turned into my physical replica. My replica, The Swampman, moves exactly as I did; according to its nature, it departs the swamp, encounters and seems to recognize my friends, and appears to return their greetings in English. It moves into my house and seems to write articles on radical interpretation. 

No one can tell the difference. But there is a difference. My replica can't recognize my friends; it can't recognize anything, since it never cognized anything in the first place. It can't know my friends' names (though of course, it seems to), and it can't remember my house. It can't mean what I do by the word 'house', for example, since the sound 'house' it makes was not learned in a context that would give it the right meaning—or any meaning at all. Indeed, I don't see how my replica can be said to mean anything by the sounds it makes, nor to have any thoughts.

— Donald Davidson, Knowing One's Own Mind

Decision-Making: An Experimental Approach, co-authored with Patrick Suppes and Sidney Siegel. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1957.

"Actions, Reasons, and Causes," Journal of Philosophy, 60, 1963. (Reprinted in Davidson, 2001a.)

"Truth and Meaning," Synthese, 17, 1967. (Reprinted in Davidson, 2001b.)

"Mental Events," in Experience and Theory, Foster and Swanson (eds.). London: Duckworth. 1970. (Reprinted in Davidson, 2001a).

 Pragmatism – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

 Malpas, Jeffrey. "Donald Davidson," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005.

 Davidson, Donald. "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 47(1) (1973–1974): 5–20.

 Michael Dummett, The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy, Duckworth, 1981, p. xv.

References.

1. ^ Pragmatism – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
2. ^ Malpas, Jeffrey. "Donald Davidson," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2005.
3. ^ Davidson, Donald. "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 47(1) (1973–1974): 5–20.
4. ^ Michael Dummett, The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy, Duckworth, 1981, p. xv.
5. ^ McGinn, Colin. "Cooling it". London Review of Books. 19 August 1993. Accessed 28 October 2010.
6. ^ Dasenbrock, Reed Way, ed. Literary Theory After Davidson. Penn State Press, 1989.
7. ^ Baghramian, Maria, ed. Donald Davidson: Life and Words. Routledge, 2013.
8. ^ "Nancy Ann Hirschberg, In Memoriam, 1937 - 1979"
9. ^ "In Memoriam: Donald Davidson Archived 2015-02-26 at the Wayback Machine"
10. ^ Malpas, Jeff (2019), Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), "Donald Davidson", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2019 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2020-07-29
11. ^ Davidson, Donald (1987). "Knowing One's Own Mind". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 60 (3): 441–458. doi:10.2307/3131

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/davidson/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Davidson_(philosopher)