Yep. On this we agree. — Banno
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Despite this, much of Peirce's work was unpublished or unorganized during his lifetime, and he died in relative obscurity.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.
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.
I’m watching this happen in real time after Charlie Kirk’s shooting. And the process is not so simple.
The problem is that we do live in a world where everyone is telling self-interested stories. Governments - even when their intentions are good - will edit the facts to make them palatable for public consumption. — apokrisis
And some will rationalize the evidence that doesn't fit. For example, by claiming it's contrived by the conspirators. "This is what they want you to think." So it becomes further "proof" of the conspiracy, in their minds.Any citizen who starts to dig into the facts as they are presented will always seem to find more and more that does not fit the narrative.
Answers to 'Why' questions all end up the same way, sooner or later— "Because I said so!" or the less responsible version, "It's Godswill!". — unenlightened
The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history. — George Orwell
Of course, coverups are possible, but possibilities are not evidence. — Relativist
Orwell said a lot in favor of objective truth and the perils of this commonsense notion’s destruction by tyrants—including that he unfrivolously feared its loss in society more than he feared bombs of any kind — javra
Hence my interest in the new conspiracy theory industry on YouTube. Candace Owen and the like. Is this the new free press with the power to investigate or something compounding the problem, playing into the hands of information autocracy by amplifying the public confusion? — apokrisis
Yes. I used to be reassured that governments lied routinely but that also the truth would eventually be declassified. Wait 20 to 40 years and history would get written.
[...]
It used to be the case that life lived as truth seemed just commonsense. Now maybe life lived as conspiracy theory is what is and always has been real. Or life lived as a reality show. A juicy topic. Debord in the age of the accelerationist. — apokrisis
But, as facts go, Hume never once claimed that causation was in fact illusory … hence, that there was no objective truth to causes (not in these or any other words). — javra
Mr. Locke divides all arguments into demonstrative and probable. In this view, we must say, that it is only probable all men must die, or that the sun will rise to-morrow. But to conform our language more to common use, we ought to divide arguments into demonstrations, proofs, and probabilities. By proofs meaning such arguments from experience as leave no room for doubt or opposition. — Enquiry, section VI, Probability, footnote to title
They rely on their audience (and perhaps themselves) believing that their end is truth when in fact it is views, or popularity, or drama, or something like that. When the dissimulation gets too far over its skies it becomes noticed that the person is not conveying truth but is instead merely gratifying their own desire for popularity, and at the point the game is up. — Leontiskos
However, I think it is a misrepresentation to call Hume a sceptic about this issue. He provided an account of causation as the result of an association of impressions and ideas that leads us to believe in causal relationships through "custom or habit". The issue about this account is that it seems to assert that we have this custom or habit but not to justify it. — Ludwig V
IMHO, that is not sufficient basis to draw that conclusion. — Relativist
I couldn’t follow your question. Are you asking me to successfully define “the good” as something physically real and beyond the collective pragmatic narrative? Or what exactly? — apokrisis
The likewise rationally justifiable objective truth regarding meta-ethics, explained in manners that accounts for all possible values and value theories, including that of “The Good”, also wouldn’t hurt—this for the same purposes. — javra
It would be nice if that were true. But I think instead that people get used to living in a reality show. The fact that the dramas are made up becomes neither here nor there. Instead the heightened life becomes what absorbs us into its reality. — apokrisis
So reality shows became a huge industry. And conspiracy theory is now moving out of the fringe and into the mainstream. It is becoming corporate and industrial. It is a flourishing economy with a real power grip on society.
Charlie Kirk is an event. And now it becomes this season’s freshest hit. The Epstein show still rolls. But Charlie Kirk could become even splashier if any of the conspiracy analysis is even a little bit true.
Reality shows spawned something real enough in Donald Trump. Conspiracy shows are becoming mainstream franchises now. An even more blurred line. What does that look like when it is the new dominant form of media owned by those with a will to power? — apokrisis
My conclusion - identifying one element as the cause of another depends on where you look. What constitutes the cause is a matter of convention, not fact. It works when you can isolate the elements of the phenomena you are studying at from their environments... e.g. if I push the grocery cart it moves. — T Clark
That's right. For Hume (by implication), association of ideas and impressions is the one piece of equipment built in to your minds. (Contrast Kant). The thing is - again by implication - it is a causal account. Again, it would be very odd, wouldn't it, if a sceptic about causality proposed causal relationships to explain what causes are. I think the best way of understanding this is by comparison with Wittgenstein's exasperated "This is what I do."Operant and classical conditioning in animals (and in humans), for one example, would be impossible without such innately held means of association. — javra
Yes - emphasis on interaction. Hume doesn't seem to escape from the passive observer trying to piece the world together. But causality plays a vital role in our ability to do things in the world and to change things in the world. I think there is still a hunger for something beyond regularities - as everyone keeps reminding me, correlation is not causality. If that's not looking for a secret power, what does it mean? Regularities are a brute fact, perhaps.On this view, causes are not waiting out there in the world to be discovered; they are part and parcel of the way we interact with the world. — Banno
Well, yes. But we do still use purposive explanations; the difference is that we only use them in specific domains and we don't (most of us) have a grand overall hierarchy of purposes and values. However, I'm not sure that material and formal causes make much sense any more.but it's clear Hume rejected the Aristotelian idea of causation, replacing it with habit and custom. — Banno
but it's clear Hume rejected the Aristotelian idea of causation, — Banno
Javra agrees, and adds that these customs or habits may arise from the evolutionary inheritance of predispositions and behaviours via genotypes. — Banno
I meant that Hume does not question the idea of causation itself; he questions, and rejects, a particular account of what (efficient) causes are.However, I think it is a misrepresentation to call Hume a sceptic about this issue. — Ludwig V
I was referring partly to his rejection of metaphysics as such, and to his criticism of the traditional conception of causal powers.Ludwig rightly emphasizes that Hume rejects the idea of causation as a metaphysical reality. — Banno
So one example would be the shift from the popularity of WWF and WWE to the popularity of MMA. — Leontiskos
he popularity distribution will be a bell curve between non-conspiratorial material and excessively conspiratorial material. The sweet spot must still mind the further extreme, and truth or plausibility is one of the central variables governing that sweet spot. — Leontiskos
But when you introduce magnifiers like YouTube or AI it's hard to know whether the pendulum will swing in the same manner it has in the past, or if a new dynamic will emerge. — Leontiskos
That nicely frames the incipient circularity in explaining causation in terms of evolution. To make use of evolutionary explanations, we are already talking in terms of causation. It's not mistaken, so much as unsatisfactory.Again, it would be very odd, wouldn't it, if a sceptic about causality proposed causal relationships to explain what causes are. I think the best way of understanding this is by comparison with Wittgenstein's exasperated "This is what I do." — Ludwig V
This is where we might sidestep Wittgenstein and invoke Davidson. We might overcome Hume's passive observation using something like Davidson's interactive process of interpretation; which is itself a development from Wittgenstein's language games. We sidestep the circularity problem by seeing causation not as something to be explained only by invoking causal mechanisms but as something continuously enacted and interpreted in practice."This is what I do." — Ludwig V
Regularities are a brute fact, perhaps. — Ludwig V
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.