Abstract

The Peircean idea of interpretation as an inferential process of hypothesis adoption reveals a suprising anticipation of the account of interpretation deployed by Davidson in his article “A nice Derangement of Epitaphs”. For Davidson, the process of interpretation is a transformation of “prior theories” into “passing theories”. In the following I want to point out the similarities between the Davidsonian and the Peircean model of interpretation by highlighting the crucial role that the interpreter´s “abductive competence” plays in the process of communication.