Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Radical interpretation, philosophy: is an expression for a family of thought experiments, which has the object of the translation of a completely foreign language into the language of the interpreter, which the interpreter does not understand at all. See also translation, indeterminacy, Gavagai._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Jerry Fodor on Radical Interpretation - Dictionary of Arguments
IV 70 Radical Interpretation/RI/Davidson/Fodor/Lepore: 1) Radical interpretation specifies empirical evidence. 2) Since different ways of selecting evidence lead to different truth theories, the choice must be justified by the radical interpretation theory. Problem: the truth theory cannot be attributed regardless of the correctness of the meaning theory. VI 72 Evidence/Quine: everything that is accessible to the radical interpretation is evidence (e.g. language learning of the child, stimuli). >Learning, >Stimuli, >Language acquisition. IV 77 Similarity Spaces/Quine/Fodor/Lepore: similarity spaces are not available to the radical interpreter (because different culture must be assumed, other than in language learning). >Radical interpretation. IV 86 Holism/RI/Davidson/Fodor/Lepore: his argument for holism is based on his assumption that individual sentences, e.g. "Kurt belongs to the German-speaking Community and Kurt holds true: it's raining on Saturday afternoon and it's raining around Kurt on Saturday afternoon" are law-like (laws). Fodor/LeporeVsDavidson: the generalizations thereof e.g. (x)(t)(if x belongs to the German-speaking community, then (x holds it rains to be true at t iff it is raining in the vicinity of x at t) do not support counterfactual conditionals and are therefore not law-like according to Davidson's definition of law. There is no support of counterfactual conditionals e.g. the meaning of "it's raining" could be: "the cat is on the mat". Then it does not follow that the cat is not on the mat when it is not raining. IV 87 Solution: for a relation R and every speaker S: is then nomological but not yet a radical interpretation. Lawlikeness: we only had to assume it because of the conventionality of language. Problem: by definition, radical interpretation cannot find out the conventionality. IV 89 Radical Interpretation/RI/Fodor/Lepore: our image of the radical interpretation is much richer than that of Davidson. IV 90 Problem: the nomological approach is not holistic. >Holism, >Semantic holism. IV 88 Conventionality/language/RI/Fodor/Lepore: by definition, conventionality is nothing that the radical interpreter can find out, e.g. non-German speakers do not say "Hund" when the are referring to a dog. >Conventions._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
F/L Jerry Fodor Ernest Lepore Holism. A Shoppers Guide Cambridge USA Oxford UK 1992 Fodor I Jerry Fodor "Special Sciences (or The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis", Synthese 28 (1974), 97-115 In Kognitionswissenschaft, Dieter Münch, Frankfurt/M. 1992 Fodor II Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz Sprachphilosophie und Sprachwissenschaft In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle, Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 Fodor III Jerry Fodor Jerrold J. Katz The availability of what we say in: Philosophical review, LXXII, 1963, pp.55-71 In Linguistik und Philosophie, G. Grewendorf/G. Meggle, Frankfurt/M. 1974/1995 |
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> Counter arguments against Fodor
> Counter arguments in relation to Radical Interpretation
Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-28