From Radical Translation to Radical Interpretation – Quine, Davidson and beyond

Abstract

The Willard Van Orman Quine and Donald Davidson-Tradition was a dominant philosophy over thirty years beginning in the 1970s years in the theory of interpretation (language), epistemology and ontology. As my first step I give a sketch of Quine’s turn from the theory of meaning to a theory of translation. This is at the same time a turn to a naturalized epistemology, the post-empiricism theory of meaning and to the radical translation and its basis theory. The post-empiricism theory of meaning states: beliefs and other attitudes and the meaning of sentences are connected inextricably. The naturalized epistemology claims to break the interplay between both by the stimulus meaning as a non-conceptual net-meaning. In the next step is argued that the stimulus meaning as the net meaning cannot explain the epistemic constraints of radical translation. Subsequently to Quine’s turn, I analyse Davidson’s rebuilding of the radical translation into the radical interpretation, as well as his semantic model of radical translation as a continuation of the problem dimension, yet at the same time as a rejection of the basis theory of radical translation. It is of particular interest whether the truth-conditional theory of meaning and the application of the principle of charity (consistency and the truth of the beliefs of the speaker) as a constraint of every interpretation can close the epistemic gap. It is shown that the utterances of a speaker under study cannot be understood by the application of the principle of charity as the constraints of radical interpretation generally. At the same time it should be considered whether a theory of truth and meaning in the style of A. Tarski gives us a satisfactory answer of the instantiation of the truthpredicate. Finally, I give a sketch of an alternative framework of interpretation.