Davidson has invoked his triangulation' thesis, to show that understanding can rest on the apprehension of mutuality in a shared objective world, and does not presuppose the sharing of rules or practices. I argue that the starting position arrived at from the triangulation thesis itself presupposes the possibility of communication. The triangulation thesis needs, therefore, to be supplemented by a (nonreductive) naturalistic account of nonlinguistic communicative skills. In such an account we must posit shared practices (practices of mutual engagement with a shared world), but not an account of practices conceived on the model of rules or conventions. I note, finally, that by adopting such an approach we offer a way of explicating the formulation of passing theories, which in Davidson's account are the point at which communicative understanding occurs. (edited)
CITATION STYLE
Simpson, D. (2003). Interpretation and Skill: On Passing Theory. In Concepts of Meaning (pp. 251–266). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0197-6_11
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