Daniel Nagase

In this article, I examine Davidson’s surprising argument, in his John Locke Lectures, that speaking the truth is what he calls an essentially disengaged act. I show he defends in these lectures a type of semantic conventionalism, and how he took this conventionalism to entail the essentially disengaged character of speaking the truth. I then show how his characterization of the Principle of Charity, in those lectures themselves, suggests a powerful argument against the essentially disengaged character of speaking the truth, and, thus, against semantic conventionalism. Finally, I examine how he could have failed to notice this in the lectures by examining his changing picture of communication and the role the Principle of Charity plays in such exchanges.

In this article, I will offer some remarks about Tarski’s nominalism. First, I will show that, even though it was mainly developed in private conversation and lectures, Tarski did try to develop a rigorous nominalistic theory, which shows that the issue was of some importance to him. In particular, I show how Tarski’s formulation is based on the idea of a humanly understandable language and show how he tried to develop this idea throughout his career. Unfortunately, even though his formulation is interesting, it seems to face an insurmountable obstacle, which I examine in detail in the article. Finally, I offer some remarks about what went wrong with Tarski’s nominalist program.