more from Donald Davidson

Single Idea 14612

[catalogued under 19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions]

Full Idea

Davidson's program was to show the underlying structure of natural languages as that of first-order logic.

Gist of Idea

Davidson aimed to show that language is structured by first-order logic

Source

report of Donald Davidson (Semantics for Natural Languages [1970], 2) by J.J.C. Smart - The Tenseless Theory of Time 2

Book Reference

'Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics', ed/tr. Sider/Hawthorne/Zimmerman [Blackwell 2008], p.229


A Reaction

First order logic just reasons about a domain of objects with predicates attached to them. Language appears to refer to properties and relations as well as objects.