Abstract

I trace the development of Davidson's characterizations of action theory and radical interpretation, which appear to be independent of one another. Davidson argues that each lacks an element supplied only by the other. Action theory assumes that theorist and agent share a common language. Radical interpretation assumes knowledge of the agent's beliefs and desires. ;This dependency leads Davidson to his unified theory of meaning and action. This theory describes and explains action in general, both linguistic and non-linguistic. It is an empirical theory true of a particular agent at a particular time. It is holistically and normatively construed and produces causal explanations of actions and a truth-conditional account of meaning. It yields a profile of the agent's quantified beliefs and desires and interpretations of the agent's utterances. I use Davidson's unified theory of meaning and action to defend against two lines of objection to his characterization of action explanation and a theory of meaning. ;The first line of objection argues that beliefs and desires, as construed by Davidson, cannot be the causes of actions. This charge both neglects the empirical nature of the unified theory and misconstrues the import of Davidson's doctrine of supervenience. ;The second line of objection finds fault with three aspects of Davidson's notion of radical interpretation. The first claims non-effectively decidable sentences render a truth-conditional theory of meaning unable to give informative accounts of the meanings of such sentences. Second, the unified theory's degree of holism is attacked for being too extensive. Finally, it is claimed that in omitting a theory of force as a part of a theory of meaning, Davidson neglects an essential element in a theory of meaning. I argue that the first fault fails to grasp how the unified theory represents an agent's knowledge of what his sentences mean. The second fails to recognize that a theory of meaning's focus should be an idiolect rather than a natural language. The final fault results from misconstruing rules and conventions, which help facilitate communication, as being necessary conditions for communication