That's part of the problem... the idea is equivocal. — Banno

So the problem is that it speaks to both sides? Curious.

Yep. On this we agree. — Banno

For funs, I popped the question to AI. I well remember how aggressively dismissive you were of Peirce right from the start. Seems that Peirce's reappearance into public prominence would have indeed caused an issue.

So OK AI! Compare and contrast!...

Determining the "more famous" philosopher between Donald Davidson and Charles Sanders Peirce depends on the context, as each has significantly different but profound legacies. However, within academic philosophy, Charles Sanders Peirce is generally considered the more historically significant and foundational figure.

Charles Sanders Peirce

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) is often called "the father of pragmatism" and is recognized as America's first great philosopher. His fame stems from his foundational work across multiple fields, including:

Pragmatism: Peirce originated the philosophical movement of pragmatism, which was later popularized and modified by William James and John Dewey.

Semiotics: He developed a comprehensive theory of signs, or semiotics, that has been highly influential in linguistics, communication, and other fields.

Logic: Peirce made groundbreaking contributions to logic and philosophy of science, including developing concepts of abductive reasoning and second-order quantification, before many of his more famous European counterparts.

Despite this, much of Peirce's work was unpublished or unorganized during his lifetime, and he died in relative obscurity. His wide-ranging influence has been fully recognized only posthumously, as scholars have assembled and studied his papers.

Donald Davidson

Donald Davidson (1917–2003) was a preeminent figure in 20th-century analytic philosophy, most active from the 1960s onward. His fame rests on his influential work in specific areas of philosophy, including:

Philosophy of mind: He introduced the influential theory of "anomalous monism," which states that mental events are identical to physical events but are not governed by strict physical laws.

Philosophy of language: Davidson integrated Alfred Tarski's theory of truth to create a theory of meaning, an approach that was highly influential in the later 20th century.

Action theory: He famously argued that reasons for actions are also the causes of those actions, opposing the prevailing view at the time.

Davidson's influence largely peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, and while his work is still discussed, it is often in relation to specific issues rather than as a singular, dominant school of thought.

Conclusion

In terms of lasting historical impact across a broad range of philosophical traditions and disciplines, C.S. Peirce is the more famous and foundational figure. His ideas in pragmatism, semiotics, and logic laid much of the groundwork for 20th-century thought, though he was not widely celebrated during his own lifetime.

Donald Davidson is extremely important within the 20th-century analytic tradition but is less of a foundational figure spanning the wider history of philosophy.

The interpretive process and meaning holism

Both philosophers developed thought experiments—radical translation for Peirce and radical interpretation for Davidson—to investigate the nature of meaning and the interpretive process itself.
Meaning is a "vector of forces": Both acknowledge that assigning meaning to a speaker's words is not a simple task because it depends on both what the words mean and what the speaker believes. Davidson described this as meaning being a "vector of two forces".

Meaning holism: They share the view that the meaning of a single utterance cannot be determined in isolation. For Peirce, a sign's meaning is embedded in the entire system of signs and its interpretants. For Davidson, a radical interpreter must develop a theory of meaning for a speaker's entire language, inferring the truth conditions of sentences based on observation of behavior and contextual cues.

Explanatory hypothesis and abduction

Both philosophies emphasize the role of hypothesis formation, or abduction, in generating new knowledge.

Peirce's abduction: Peirce introduced abduction as a third mode of inference, distinct from deduction and induction. Abduction is the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis to account for a surprising observation. This provides the "new ideas" that are then tested through deduction and induction.

Davidson's Principle of Charity: In Davidson's radical interpretation, the interpreter uses the Principle of Charity, which attributes beliefs to a speaker that are mostly true and coherent. This can be seen as a form of abduction. The interpreter creates the best possible "explanatory hypothesis"—a Tarski-style truth theory—for the speaker's behavior, which is then tested against further observations.

Ooh dear. And I believe AI has extra training in being charitable in its replies.

But this was a useful prompt. It reminds me now that anomalous monism was the bugbear. Biosemiotics really killed that one stone dead.

Pathetic.

"My daddy's a policeman..."

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I forgot to include the bits where the similarities were stressed. And that was the original point too.

Charles Sanders Peirce and Donald Davidson, despite belonging to different philosophical periods, share striking similarities rooted in their anti-Cartesian pragmatist approaches to truth, meaning, and knowledge. Both philosophers reject the idea of a private, foundational mind and instead situate meaning and belief within a public, intersubjective process of interpretation.

Intersubjectivity and anti-foundationalism

Both Peirce and Davidson reject Cartesian foundationalism, the idea that knowledge rests on a foundation of indubitable inner experience. Instead, they argue that meaning and thought are public, social phenomena that arise from interaction with others and a shared world.

Peirce's semiotics: Peirce's triadic model of the sign—involving a sign, an object, and an interpretant—is inherently social. A sign's meaning is not fixed in a person's mind but is determined by its interpretation within a community of inquirers. Infinite semiosis, the endless chain of interpretants, prevents any ultimate, private foundation for meaning.

Davidson's triangulation: Davidson's concept of triangulation mirrors this social basis for meaning. Meaning and objective thought are possible only through a three-way interaction: one person, another person, and a shared external object or event. This mutual reaction to a common cause provides the necessary external check for thought and meaning to be determined.

Truth, coherence, and the long run

Both thinkers relate truth to a process of rational inquiry rather than to a static correspondence with reality.

Peirce's "long run": Peirce defined truth as the final, settled opinion that a community of inquirers would reach if they pursued a question long enough. A true belief is one that is "unassailable by doubt" in the infinite long run. This is a pragmatic, fallibilist account, holding that our current beliefs are always subject to revision.

Davidson's coherence: Davidson developed a coherence theory of truth, arguing that coherence provides the test for both truth and the judgment that objective truth-conditions are justified.

For Davidson, we have no independent access to reality outside of our beliefs, but the demand that our beliefs cohere sufficiently guarantees a large measure of truth. Coherence acts as a test for a non-confrontational form of correspondence, where a theory of truth is tied to how a speaker's utterances relate to events in the world.