Charity in Radical Interpretation

Abstract In later work, Davidson distinguished two strands in the Principle of Charity which he called the Principle of Coherence and the Principle of Correspondence (“Three Varieties of Knowledge” 1991). The Principle of Coherence tells us to find another to be rational and intelligible. The Principle of Correspondence deals with the connection between another’s hold true attitudes and her environment. I focus on the Principle of Correspondence. I consider three interpretations suggested in Davidson’s work. The first is the Principle of Sentential Truth, which requires the interpreter to find the speaker’s hold true attitudes to be true. The second is the Principle of Agreement in Belief, which requires the interpreter to find the speaker to be largely in agreement with the interpreter about her environment. The third is the Principle of True Belief, which requires the speaker to be largely right about her environment. I argue none of these is adequate to the task Davidson sets himself. I consider a fourth principle, the Principle of Salience, which requires the interpreter to find the speaker to be speaking truly about things that the interpreter would find salient in the speaker’s position. The last of these is connected with the intuitive idea of triangulation in Davidson’s later work. I argue that the interpreter needs to employ the Principle of Salience, but this requires the interpreter to justify an a posteriori assumption about targets of interpretation. I assess the implications of this for Davidson’s anti-Cartesian epistemology and philosophy of mind.