MoL-2014-11: Davidson on belief, truth, and the sceptic

MoL-2014-11: Eelink, Guus Willem (2014) Davidson on belief, truth, and the sceptic. [Report]

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Abstract

In this thesis the reader finds a critical discussion of Donald Davidson's conception of truth, and of Davison's claim that a proper understanding of the interrelatedness of meaning, truth, and belief leads to the conclusion that scepticism is unintelligible. Davidson argues that, instead of defining or analysing the notion of truth in isolation, we should rather try to understand how it relates to other fundamental notions, like that of meaning and of belief, and what role truth plays in an understanding of rationality. Understanding this for Davidson gives rise to the idea that our conception of the world must be globally adequate (since belief is by nature veridical) and it explains how we can have knowledge of the world and why scepticism, in as far as it goes against the idea that belief is veridical or that knowledge is possible, is unintelligible. In the thesis we try to reconstruct in detail how Davidson approaches these concepts and arrives at the anti-sceptical conclusion. We shall do this on the basis of all of Davidson's works pertaining to this issue, paying attention to chronological development in Davidson's ideas. The general aim of the thesis is to accomplish a critical understanding of this crucial part of Davidson's thought and to show that Davidson succeeds in offering a systematic account of the interrelatedness of truth, meaning, and belief by adopting a third person perspective on epistemology and by explaining the role of these notions in a theory of rational behaviour, and particularly in a theory of linguistic communication. We shall also try to show why Davidson wants to understand truth and the related notions from this perspective.

Item Type:	Report
Report Nr:	MoL-2014-11
Series Name:	Master of Logic Thesis (MoL) Series
Year:	2014
Uncontrolled Keywords:	logic, philosophy
Subjects:	Logic
Date Deposited:	12 Oct 2016 14:38
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2016 14:38
URI:	https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/id/eprint/929

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