Presented by Pierluige Miraglia

In this talk I intend to elucidate a certain conception of meaning that emerges primarily from the work of W.V.O. Quine and Donald Davidson, two of the most important American representatives of what is generally termed analytic philosophy. This current of philosophy arose from developments of post-Kantian thought in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and is commonly associated with an approach to philosophical problems that emphasizes linguistic analysis of concepts and empirical methods.

A central concept in this approach is meaning, as an essential feature of both linguistic communication and mental representation, and both Quine and Davidson have made essential contribution to a theory of meaning. I will focus most closely on the work of Davidson, and a family of notions that are core to his understanding of meaning: radical interpretation and conceptual schemes. The interesting thing is that Davidson arrives at a conception of meaning that may seem quite distant from the original positivist methodology of analytical philosophy: meanings, representations and in general intentional content are social and communicative features, not easily reducible to behavioristic or physicalist constructions.

Reading: The Mechanics of Meaning

Location: Mim's,685 Gonzales Rd, Santa Fe NM

Please park on the street, or the farthest you can get up the gravel driveway in front of the house