On Davidson and interpretation

Davidson's theory of interpretation, I argue, is vulnerable to a number of significant difficulties, difficulties which can be avoided or resolved by the more Quinean approach which I develop. In Section 1 I note difficulties which apply to T-theories but are avoided by translation manuals. In Section 2 I show how to construct what I call T-manuals, which are like T-theories in requiring Tarskian structure, but like translation manuals in avoiding the difficulties discussed in Section 1. In Section 3 I show that the approach using T-manuals does at least as well as Davidson's with respect to a number of other concerns of his. In Section 4 I show that it does better than Davidson's with respect to reporting interpretations, especially where demonstrative utterances are concerned. In Section 5 I argue for (somewhat modified) Quinean empirical constraints, which go with manuals, as superior to the empirical constraints Davidson imposes, which go with T-theories. In Section 6 I show that Davidson is unable to offer an adequate account of what an interpreter knows; and propose a more acceptable theory of language mastery which gives a central role to the requirement that the interpreter's language usage satisfy the refined and amplified Quinean empirical constraints of Section 5.I wish to thank Susan Haack for her help in turning a draft into the present paper.