"The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything"
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Philosophers from the United StatesPeople from MassachusettsHarvard University alumniPrinceton University facultyStanford University faculty
Original Language: English
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Donald Davidson. "Radical interpretation." Dialectica 27.3‐4 (1973): p. 324; as cited in; Herman Parret, Jacques Bouveresse (1981) Meaning and Understanding, p. 186
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Davidson_(philosopher)
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Donald Davidson (philosopher)
Donald Herbert Davidson (March 6, 1917 – August 30, 2003) was an American philosopher, whose work exerted considerable influence in many areas of philosophy from the 1960s onward, particularly in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and action theory.
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