In this essay,the indeterminacy of interpretation is that when we construct belief and meaning,the significantly different theories of truth,which based on the formal and empirical restrictions,will fit the evidence equally well,and,hence,that there will be equally competitive but different theories of interpretation,theories which capture equally well the speaker’s dispositions.Some philosophers argued that,the indeterminacy of interpretation is unacceptable,for it conflicts with the obvious determinacy of self-knowledge.We will explore the problem based on Davidson’s Program,and claim that this conflict is surface but not a real one.From then on,we clarify the significance of the indeterminacy thesis of interpretation in philosophy.
The key problem of philosophy of language is that "how the language-understanding is possible?",and it is the aim that Davidson’s Program deals with.In this essay,we try to elaborate that the semantic externalism,which proposed by Davidson based his critical investigation on social externalism and perceptual externalism,is a necessary condition to make the language-understanding possible.This idea can be demonstrated in two aspects:first,it provides a semantic-ontological basis for objective truth of belief in the communication;second,it makes the skeptic assumption impossible that our belief would be systematic error,thus it offers a new approach to refute skepticism.
Inquiring into what knowledge would serve for interpretation is a significant topic on the theory of meaning and epistemology by making them combinations. This paper analyses several possible knowledge through the approaches to two general requirements on the possible theory for interpreting the utterance of a language which were drafted by Donald Davidson. The main points are analytic knowledge of radical interpretation which distinguish and connect to radical translation and Convention-T, thus revealing its characteristics and the possibility serving for interpreting the utterance of a language.
