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Abstract
Philosophers disagree about how meaning connects with history. Donald Davidson, who helped deepen our understanding of meaning, even disagreed with himself. As Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig note, Davidson's account of radical interpretation treats meaning as ahistorical; his Swampman thought experiment treats it as historical. Here I show that while Lepore and Ludwig are right that Davidson's views are in tension, they are wrong about its extent. Unbeknownst to them, Davidson's account of radical interpretation and Swampman thought experiment both rely-in different ways-on the same model of triangulation. I revise one of those ways to resolve the tension within Davidson's views. I close by detailing what role history should play in Davidson's views overall.
Is meaning in any interesting sense connected with history? Some philosophers, like Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, J. L. Austin, H. P. Grice, W. V. Quine, and John Searle, are committed to a generally negative response. On none of their views need the historical use of a term, whether by the speaker or by whomever first uttered the term in its current context, be considered when evaluating its meaning.1 Other philosophers, however, like Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke, Ruth Millikan, and Fred Dretske, have responded affirmatively. Each of them insists that the meaning of at least some terms depends in one way or another on historical use.
Strangely enough, one major philosopher of language is committed to both responses: Donald Davidson. Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig have drawn attention to this by noting the following. On the one hand, Davidson maintains that his hypothetical "radical" interpreter can determine an utterance's meaning by considering the external circumstances under which it is uttered and constructing a charitable, Tarski-style truth theory based on it and other utterances. Historical facts about the speaker and her environment are unimportant. On the other hand, Davidson introduces his thought-experimental Swampman, who shares all of Davidson's own linguistic dispositions but who has had no past causal interactions with objects, to maintain that such interactions are necessary for utterances to be meaningful. According to Lepore and Ludwig, Davidson's views are in tension because, by Davidson's own lights, Swampman's utterances would be radically interpretable and so would be meaningful. But this contradicts the point of the thought experiment. Lepore and...