Grazer Philosophische Studien

Volume 36, 1989

The Mind of Donald Davidson

Davidson on Assertion, Convention and Belief

The attitude of believing or "holding true" fulfils a twofold role in Davidson's theory of meaning: it provides the basic evidence for a theory of radical interpretation and it also constitutes the key notion in terms of which the linguistic act of assertion is to be characterized. It is however doubtful whether the notion of "holding true" can fulfil either of these two roles without presupposing an implicit grasp of the public significance of the practice of making assertions. The lack of specific conventions governing assertoric force and linking assertion to what is believed true is no ground for supposing that a theory of meaning can dispense with an account of the act of assertion: on the contrary, such an account is indispensable if we are to understand the bearing of the notion of truth on that of linguistic meaning.