A Companion to Donald Davidson by Lepore Ernest; Ludwig Kirk; & Kirk Ludwig

Author:Lepore, Ernest; Ludwig, Kirk; & Kirk Ludwig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

If most of one's beliefs about any subject matter must be true and rational, as Davidson insists, then there really cannot be significant difference across conceptual schemes. To recur to an example that I developed in Henderson (1994), the Zande utterances regarding mangu are translated as utterances about “witchcraft” – but only with what are in effect monograph-length qualifications. Associated with this “subject matter” – mangu – are various matters or topics that do seem much less delicate in their specification. Death and disease are associated with mangu, as the Azande seem to commonly associate disease with the workings of mangu. Grain and granaries are associated with mangu, as the Azande seem to find mangu implicated in the cases of misfortune – for example, a misfortune in which one's granary collapses or goes bad. Evans-Pritchard's confidence in these associations, and in the identification of these related topics, is presumably rooted in significant agreement. As he understands them, much that the Azande believe about grain and granaries is true. Certain grains are good to eat, can commonly be stored for certain periods in certain conditions, and so on. Much that the Azande believe about disease is doubtless true – that certain folk have diseases, that there are classes of disease common in their setting, that certain diseases have characteristic developments and prognoses, and so on. What seems false is that one can or need say the same thing about the Zande beliefs about mangu. Evans-Pritchard argued that these beliefs functioned effectively in the context of Zande society, and that individual's regulated their lives with notable successes (and notable limits) using these beliefs. But, this is not to say that the (1930s-vintage) Zande beliefs about this subject matter – mangu – are preponderantly true.

We do not need to go so far afield to illustrate the point. Stahlian chemists, such as Priestly, held many true beliefs about the compounds that they manipulated in their laboratories. They isolated a number of important “airs” – and they developed the ability to distinguish samples of one from another, and to identify samples of the same air. They noted how some of these airs combined to leave other materials (in one important case, two airs combined to leave a residue of water), or arose out of those materials (as when “the red calx of mercury” was heated in a closed vessel). They noted that these airs had various effects on objects and animals exposed to them. There is a lot about such matters that they had right. But, consider one famous topic on which they held beliefs – they had beliefs about an air that they believed was the result of removing the “phlogiston” from common air. For example, they noted (correctly) that mice and candle flames were particularly lively when exposed to this “dephlogistonated” air. (And again, they had many true beliefs about many of these topics – mice, candles, flames, water, mercury, the calx of mercury, and so on.) One might even argue that most of their beliefs about these related topics were true.

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