Donald Davidson and the Three Term Paper

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What is more, in order to be able to attribute a thought to someone else, we must first be aware of what our own thoughts are. Thus, self-knowledge and the knowledge of the minds of others are interrelated. Ultimately, Davidson reasons, communication is what unites these two forms of knowledge, serving as an objective confirmation. What it comes down to, in the end, is that a community of minds forms the basis of all knowledge.

The skeptic might object that there is a difference between personal, subjective thoughts that are thus individual and private, in that a person does not express them out loud, and the objective thoughts that Davidson is discussing in the bulk of his essay. To this, Davidson responds that, while subjective thoughts may be personal and individual, the concept of such thoughts is not, as the thoughts are still rooted in the world that we inhabit - and are aware that we inhabit - as a community of individuals. Our private thoughts occupy the same conceptual space and are situated on the same public map.

Subjectivity is thus formed from the contextual interlaying of the objective, external world and the other minds that inhabit it - and not the other way around, as skeptics such as Descartes and Hume would have it. One's awareness of oneself speaking to oneself is contingent on an awareness of speaking in the context of having others listen and interpret what one says. Self-knowledge is contingent on having knowledge of what other people think. In order to know what other people think, one must live in the same world as them and share in reactions to its numerous features.

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This theory serves as an interesting response to Descartes' famous dictum, "I think, therefore I am." Descartes felt that the only thing that could be confirmed in the world was the existence of the self, which was arrived at via thought. But thought alone does not suffice in Davidson's conception of knowledge; another thinking, feeling individual must be present in order to serve as a sort of receptacle or mirror for those thoughts. For Descartes, the skeptic, perception is completely unreliable and must be discarded; for Davidson, perception is an integral component of knowledge, in that it links one's self-knowledge ("I think, therefore I am") with one's knowledge of the external world with one's knowledge of others' knowledge.

Where Davidson is most vague is in his formulation of subjective, personal thoughts - that is, those thoughts that are not shared with others. In the empiricist tradition of Hume, a tradition that Davidson would apparently fit into, thoughts come to us via stimulus through the external world. Davidson suggests that one naturally has thoughts that one does not share with others, but then makes the provocative statement that the content of such thoughts is not personal and individual, by which he presumably means they are not original, because of the fact that they are still grounded in the physical world and the conceptual, communal framework that the individual dwells in. By situating the subjective in this triad of knowledge, Davidson avoids answering the skeptic who suggests that it may be possible for some thoughts to originate from within the mind - a suggestion that could seriously disrupt the Davidsonian triad.

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