Donald Davidson (philosopher)
Donald Davidson | |
|---|---|
Portrait by photographer Steve Pyke in 1990 | |
| Born | Donald Herbert Davidson 6 March 1917 |
| Died | 30 August 2003 (aged 86) Oakland, California, U.S. |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Harvard University (BA, MA, PhD) |
| Thesis | Plato's 'Philebus' (1949) |
| Doctoral advisor | Raphael Demos Donald Cary Williams |
| Other advisors | Alfred North Whitehead Willard Van Orman Quine |
| Academic work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School or tradition | Analytic Neopragmatism |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
| Doctoral students | Akeel Bilgrami Michael Bratman Kirk Ludwig Claudine Verheggen Stephen Yablo |
| Main interests | Philosophy of language, Philosophy of action, Philosophy of mind, Epistemology, Ontology |
| Notable ideas | Radical interpretation Anomalous monism Truth-conditional semantics Principle of charity Slingshot argument Reasons as causes Understanding as translation Swampman Events Davidson's translation argument against alternative conceptual schemes (Third dogma of empiricism) |
Donald Herbert Davidson (March 6, 1917 – August 30, 2003) was an American philosopher. He served as Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1981 to 2003 after having also held teaching appointments at Stanford University, Rockefeller University, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago. Davidson was known for his charismatic personality and difficult writing style, as well as the systematic nature of his philosophy. His work exerted considerable influence in many areas of philosophy from the 1960s onward, particularly in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and action theory. While Davidson was an analytic philosopher, with most of his influence lying in that tradition, his work has attracted attention in continental philosophy as well, particularly in literary theory and related areas.