Donald Davidson and Michael Dummett - Language and Philosophy

[@afdulmitdemklappstuhl9607]

My subtitles show the word "dummest" when the moderator says dummet

[@josebolivar4364]

Great channel! Congrats!

[@StopFear]

At 18:50 AHAHAHA

[@suzettedarrow8739]

It is hard to see that there’s anything of value in the debates over these ideas. I truly struggle to see any value in these mens’ debates about truth, error, etc. I don’t mean that rudely. I’m just expressing a retrospective embarrassment. I’m sorry.

[@die_schlechtere_Milch]

Of course you learn much more when you read their books and papers, but their live discussions can also be of value, especially if you are only starting to look at these philosophers and their questions or for example if you read some earlier and some later papers of the same philosopher and were confused and in need of clarification. Even someone like Dummett wanted Davidson to clarify some of his points and clarify his how his change of mind came to be.

[@suzettedarrow8739]

Yeah, I get that. I just mean, like, the work on a theory of truth, a theory of meaning, a theory of error hasn't actually paid off. Like, for all the work these men attempted, no work was actually completed. Like, I don't mean that disrespectfully. It's just that, looking back now from 2024, these topics weren't fruitful or useful.@@die_schlechtere_Milch

[@manning6]

Well, I can see that it might be hard to detect value in conversations carried out at such a level of abstraction (not many would pick Davidson and Dummett as the clearest of writers), but from a historical point of view Davidson has had more of an impact on the wider landscape than most other philosophers. His work on theories of meaning had an enormous impact on linguistics. Anyone doing a semantics course at university will study Davidson’s work and his approach to semantics is one of the main ones taken by current researchers in the field (another would be intensional semantics, also pioneered by philosophers). Modern semantics owes a lot to the work of philosophers of language of the 50s to the 80s.