Robert H. Myers

The principle of charity was first introduced by Donald Davidson as an essential ingredient of radical interpretation, that is, as a principle that needs to be followed in order to interpret from scratch the speech and thoughts of alien speakers and thinkers. Did Davidson intend it also to be an essential ingredient of meaning itself, that is, a principle whose demands must be satisfied by speakers and thinkers? And did he intend it to apply to evaluative contents as well as to non-evaluative ones? This paper defends affirmative answers to these questions, first by showing how Davidson’s reflections on triangulation both corroborate his account of interpretation and vindicate its essential premise concerning the publicness of meaning, then by showing how these reflections on triangulation apply equally to questions about the nature of evaluative properties and their role in fixing the contents of evaluative attitudes.

According to many commentators, Davidson’s earlier work on philosophy of action and truth-theoretic semantics is the basis for his reputation, and his later forays, first into the theory of interpretation, and ultimately into what became known as the triangulation argument, are much less successful. This book by two of his former students aims to change that perception. In Part One, Verheggen begins by providing an explanation and defense of the triangulation argument, then explores its implications for questions about the social character of language and thought, semantic normativity and naturalism, and skepticism about the external world. In Part Two, Myers considers what the argument has to say about values and reasons, and whether it can quiet skeptical worries based on claims about the nature of motivation, the extent of disagreement, and the authority of morality. The book reveals Davidson’s later writings to be full of innovative and important ideas that deserve much more attention than they are currently receiving.

In my dissertation, I develop and defend a normative theory of reasons for action, then discuss its implications for some questions about the nature and importance of the reasons that people have to act morally. ;The theory that I develop is a sort of self-interest theory, for it says that a person has some reason to perform an action in so far as, and only in so far as, she can optimize the satisfaction of her own interests over time by performing that action. It is a self-interest theory of an unusual sort, however, for it says that the magnitudes of a person's interests depend primarily on facts that, though not as objective as facts about the prerequisites of human flourishing, are not as subjective as facts about the intensities of her desires. I describe these special facts as facts about the orders of her desires. ;Why should we acknowledge that a person's higher-order desires have this special authority? I argue that a self-interest theory is better able to account for the judgments that we make about the reasons for action that people have if it incorporates a theory of interests like mine, in part because a theory of interests like mine makes it easier for a self-interest theory to account for our judgments about the reasons that people have to try to alter their interests in the hope that they will be as readily satisfied as possible in the future. Thus my claim is that my theory offers an attractive account of rational autonomy. ;On the basis of my theory, I then argue, first, that a person is not guaranteed to have any reason to act morally at all, but second, that a person who does have some reason to act morally is likely to have more reason to act morally than in any other way