Donald Davidson (March 6th 1917 - August 30th 2003) American philosopher, whose work had a great influence, in all the fields of the thought, as from the years 1960, and particularly in Philosophie of the action, Philosophie of the spirit and in Philosophie of the language. Its work, very coherent, makes the synthesis of several philosophers, such as Aristote, Kant, Wittgenstein, Frank Ramsey, Quine, and Anscombe.

Biography

Donald Herbert Davidson was born on March 6th, 1917 in Springfield, in the United States (Massachusetts).

He is deceased on August 30th, 2003 with Berkley in the United States (California).

Philosophy

Theory of the action

Its test more known, Actions, Reasons and Causes (1963) are an attempt to refute a largely received thesis, allotted to Wittgenstein, according to which the reasons or reasons to act of an agent cannot be the causes of its action. The causal laws, indeed, must be precise and mechanical, and have an explanatory capacity, whereas the explanations in terms of motivations are not and are rather confused to it. The objective of Davidson is to show that to have a reason to act is a state able to exert an influence on the behavior.

In particular, Davidson regards the action as a kind of event, but an event which would be characterized by intentionality. This one is so to speak the criterion of the action. In corollary, any action is likely to receive an intentional description. On the other hand, so to an event no intentional description applies, then it is of an event which simply “arrives” and not about something which “is done” or “is carried out”. While giving the reasons of the agent, one gives an account of the intentional character of his action. And to give the reasons of the agent, it is to rationalize the action by means of an pro-attitude (a conative state) and of a belief (a cognitive state): " Antoine made has because it wished D (pro-attitude) and that it believed that to make has was a suitable means to obtain D ". Until there, Davidson does not go against the models competitor non-causalists.

It observes however that the rationalization is too weak like explanation of the action. Because the same action can receive various valid rationalizations which all clarify the action considered. But how to decide which of these rationalizations is indeed “the good one”, that for which the action was carried out? This problem brings water to the mill of the thesis causalist. Indeed, it seems that the only means to decide that such reason rather than another is that for which an agent actually acted, is to say that it is about that which because the action. Davidson calls it the primary reason.

Anomism of the mental one

In Mental Vents , Davidson supports a form of causal interaction between the body and the spirit, but rejects the thesis of the identity in Philosophie of the spirit (For any mental event there exists a physical event such as the mental event = the physical event). Such an identity supposes that there exist psychophysical laws . However Davidson considers that there do not exist laws connecting of the mental events to event physiques (for example of the neuronal configuations of the brain). But, according to him, the thesis of the identity is not necessary to support the thesis according to which a mental event can cause a physical event: it would be indeed possible that each state or individual mental event corresponds to a state or mental event, without there being laws connecting the types of states the ones to the others. Its thesis is called the anomism of mental the (of nomos , which means law in Greek) One also sometimes speaks about the anomalous monism (“anomalous monism”).

In spite of the fact that we do not know them, Davidson however affirmed that the laws of cover of the explanations of actions (cf Philosophie of the action) causal could not be of psychophysical type, as one could expect it, nor psychological. It is its principle of the saddle-oyster of mental which consists in saying that there do not exist laws connecting the mental events between them, nor mental events with the physical events.

Davidson affirms that this kind of laws cannot exist. I.e. there does not exist any law connecting, for example, the desire of Paul to release the roller and its action to release the roller; no law connecting reasons with actions, i.e. no law connecting mental events with physical events. It is only because any mental event is likely to receive a physical description which we can say that it causes another physical event, because it is only on the level of physical descriptions that there exist laws; there are physical laws, but not psychophysical laws.

That is due so that there does not exist identity between the mental events (EM) and the physical events (EP). In other words, according to Davidson the following proposal is false:

∀x x=y}

Davidson rejects it because, he says, it does not have there identity between the mental one and the physique, at least not in the direction where a certain mental event would be always accompanied by a physical event. But each particular mental event can also receive a physical description. Rather, there exists for each event a physical description and a mental description. This kind of identity presupposes of the laws of correlation between the mental one and the physique, but Davidson precisely denies the existence of such laws. There exist laws between physical events, but there does not exist a certain type of physical events corresponding to a certain type of mental events.

Two events can be causalement dependant even if the cause is a mental event and the effect a physical event. This causality can exist even if there does not exist any law of cover for these events under their particular descriptions. But since a causal link is of nomologic type, then it must exist a law of cover of these events under another description: a physical description.

Random links:

Bifocal frame of reference | Jimmy (film, 1996) | Company of ordinance | BK Barons | Nelson Rodríguez