Davidson Methodology on Radical Meaning and Interpretation and Dummett's Criticism

Davidson, inspired by some famous philosophers, such as Frege, Tarski and Quine, poses a kind of theory of meaning which includes the theory of truth, in style of Tarski’s theory. This theory has two sides; formal and empirical. Therefore, applying this theory for interpreting speakers’ linguistic behaviors and utterances depends on satisfying some formal and empirical restrictions. Formal restrictions are taken from Tarski’s works on formal adequacy of an adequate definition of truth. For empirical examination of the theory, Davidson leaves it to be inquired empirically in the radical interpretation’s procedure. However, there are other crucial factors which Davidson enters in his works on meaning, such as holism, insisting on imposing rational patterns on linguistic behaviors of speakers which the Principle of Charity dictates, and so on. But, Dummett has had explicit criticisms on the various parts of this kind of theory. He criticizes using the notion of truth as the central notion in a theory of meaning, and makes some different criticisms about knowing explicitly truth conditions of sentences that the theory deals with. In this essay, after describing the Davidsonian meaning theory and the process of radical interpretation, I will illustrate the most important criticisms that Dummett has made about the theory. Eventually, the question which will be discussed is that are Dummett's criticism of the Davidson’s views, acceptable and defendable?