[MD] Are There Bad Questions?: Rorty

[Matt Kundert]

Hey Steve,

Steve said:
I remember reading Rorty reference Davidson's claim that 
most of our beliefs must be true, but what is the reasoning 
behind it?

Matt:
The claim that "most of our beliefs must be true" is also 
known as Davidson's principle of charity, and also goes by 
the less colloquial and more philosophically jargony "belief 
by its nature is veridical."  It also has to do with his notion 
of triangulation, the inextricable nature of 
person-community-world relations.

If I understand it correctly, it goes something like this:
One first starts with the principle of charity.  Davidson says 
that for communication to even successfully occur between 
two beings, you must _assume_ that most of your 
interlocutor's beliefs are true.  Rorty backs up this claim 
through a thought-experiment adapted from Quine (who uses 
it for his related notion of radical translation): think of a field 
linguist (or anthropologist) being dropped into the middle of a 
foreign tribe without any clue how to communicate in their 
language, or vice versa.  So how would communicative links 
proceed?  First thing you do is assume that the two of you 
share a world.  Then you assume that the noises, gestures, 
and/or scratches (in the dirt, snow, on paper, whatever) are 
about the same world you would make your noises, gestures, 
and scratches about.  Then you muddle about until the 
noises, gestures, and scratches parallel each other enough 
that you can make a foreign-sounding noise and predict the 
reply-noise of your foreign interlocutor.  Now--if you are 
correct in your prediction, then you've just produced a true 
statement in a now learned language.  If you can coordinate 
your noisy behavior with their's, then that means most of 
their beliefs (statements) must have been true to begin with, 
as you certainly think yours are.  And as everyone is doing 
this to each other whenever they communicate (i.e. 
coordinate behavior), successful communication by its nature 
establishs that there is a shared world and that most of the 
statements about that world are true.  We just don't know 
for sure which ones specifically.

I think that's roughly how the argument goes.  I'm not a pro 
at it, and I mainly know Rorty's interetation and not where 
all the pieces come from in Quine and Davidson, though 
perhaps I should put that on my to-do list for the summer.

Matt
 		 	   		  
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