Donald Davidson > Quotes

“There are three basic problems: how a mind can know the world of nature, how it is possible for one mind to know another, and how it is possible to know the contents of our own minds without resort to observation or evidence. It is a mistake, I shall urge, to suppose that these questions can be collapsed into two, or taken into isolation.”
― Donald Davidson

“The aim of interpretation is not agreement but understanding”
― Donald Davidson

“Terminological infelicities have a way of breeding conceptual confusion.”
― Donald Davidson

“... In this essay, however, I once more try the positive assumption, that the question is a good one, that there is a fairly definite subclass of events which are actions. The costs of the assumption are the usual ones: oversimplification, the setting aside of large classes of exceptions, the neglect of distinctions hinted by grammar and common sense, recourse to disguised linguistic legislation. With luck we learn something from such methods. There may, after all, be important and general truths in this area, and if there are how else will we discover them?”
― Donald Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events (The Philosophical Essays of Donald Davidson

“Metaphor is the dreamwork of language
and, like all dreamwork,
its interpretation reflects as much on the interpreter as on the originator.
The interpretation of dreams requires collaboration
between a dreamer and a waker,
even if they be the same person;
and the act of interpretation
is itself a work of the imagination.
So too understanding a metaphor is
as much a creative endeavour
as making a metaphor,
and as little guided by rules.”
― Donald Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation

“Að undrast suma hluti er nauðsynlegt og nægjanlegt skilyrði hugsunar almennt.”
― Donald Davidson