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    Davidson's triangulation argument is redundant if semanti... — Carmelics
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    Davidson's triangulation argument is redundant if semantic externalism is invoked to rule out triangulation with automata

    Philosophy of LanguageSkepticism
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

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    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Semantic externalism (Burge, Putnam) grounds content in causal-historical relations to the environment without requiring triangulation between two subjects.
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    • 2.Davidson's triangulation argument requires a second creature to fix determinate content, but externalism fixes content through distal causal chains independently of any intersubjective triangle.
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    • 3.If content-determination is already achieved by externalist causal chains, introducing triangulation adds no additional epistemic or semantic work, making it structurally redundant.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of radical interpretation shows that triangulation with automata fails to fix determinate meaning no less than triangulation with creatures, undermining Davidson's exclusion criterion.
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    • 2.Davidson must invoke semantic externalism specifically to distinguish genuine triangulation partners from mere causal relays, but this invocation concedes that externalism is doing the foundational work.
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    • 3.Once semantic externalism is granted as the ground of determinacy, Davidson's transcendental move from triangulation to objective world-knowledge collapses into a restatement of externalist commitments already in play.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.If Davidson rules out triangulation with automata by appeal to semantic externalism, then semantic externalism does the work of establishing the mind-world link
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    • 2.If the mind-world link is already established by semantic externalism, the transcendental argument itself is unnecessary
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    Related

    Davidson must invoke semantic externalism specifically to distinguish genuine tr...Davidson's triangulation argument requires a second creature to fix determinate ...If Davidson rules out triangulation with automata by appeal to semantic external...If content-determination is already achieved by externalist causal chains, intro...
    +4 moreShow less
    If the mind-world link is already established by semantic externalism, the trans...Once semantic externalism is granted as the ground of determinacy, Davidson's tr...Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of radical interpretation shows that triangu...Semantic externalism (Burge, Putnam) grounds content in causal-historical relati...

    Similar

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    Source

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    SEP: transcendental-arguments
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    The problem that Stroud has highlighted may be briefly illustrated by returning to the exemplars of transcendental arguments that we considered in Section 1. Thus, when it comes to Kant’s Refutation of Idealism, it can be said that the most that Kant really establishes is that we have experience as of things outside us in space, while all that Strawson’s objectivity argument shows is that we must apply the is/seems distinction to our experience, and so believe that things exist without us experi
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    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit