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To cite this article: Andrew Benjamin (1988) Translation and the history of philosophy, Textual Practice, 2:2, 242-260, DOI:
10.1080/09502368808582035
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ANDREW BENJAMIN
242
history, understood as temporal alterity, and only thereby as conceptual
difference, introduces into this relationship the possibility that the other
may remain elusive.
One philosopher who would deny the possibility of the problems posed
above is Donald Davidson. His influential essay, 'On the very idea of a
conceptual scheme',1 attempts to present a sustained argument against the
existence of the potential problems inherent in the ability to understand
and to recover the thoughts and beliefs of others and therefore to translate.
Mutual understanding is almost inescapable. The importance of Davidson's
approach as outlined in this paper lies in his presentation of an argument
that there can be no 'intelligible' account of either partial or complete
'failure' of translation. This argument has the further consequence that
'Given the underlying methodology of interpretation we could not be in a
position to judge that others had concepts or beliefs radically different
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from our own' (p. 197). There are therefore two elements in the position
stated here. The first is a metaphysical position concerning the nature of the
relationship between meaning, belief, and truth. The second is an
anthropological premise concerning the nature of the interpreter and the
interpreted. Though these positions are clearly related, they are deployed
within Davidson's writings so as to be mutually reinforcing, one providing
the foundation of the other. In his essay 'Radical interpretation' part of the
justification for the so-called 'principle of charity' is advanced in the
following terms:
The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes
agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption
of 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 own
standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as
having beliefs,'or as saying anything, (p. 137)
Both of these texts advance a constant position that involves the interplay
of the anthropological and the metaphysical. That interplay signals
Davidson's debt to Kant, a debt which, once acknowledged, will allow
further insight into Davidson's own position. In analysing the interplay
between metaphysics and anthropology, what is essential is to trace its
effectuation by isolating its conditions of existence - that is, those
discursive elements which are held as constant and which therefore sustain
it.
References to conditions of existence and discourse are intended to
highlight the fact that the articulation of a philosophical position involves
the essentially and necessarily discursive. As such, this makes the object of
analysis one that is generated and sustained by specific metaphysical,
including ontological and temporal, commitments. This is not to argue,
however, that all aspects of texts are the simple instantiation of their con-
ditions of existence, for this would be to argue that the text is an organic
unity. Indeed, it is invariably the case that the practice of the text signals
the pedestrian fact that the truth of a sentence is relative to (among other
things) the language to which it belongs. Instead of living in different
worlds, Kuhn's scientists may, like those who need Webster's dictionary,
be only words apart, (p. 189)
Giving up the dualism of the analytic and the synthetic, present in the work
of Kuhn and Feyerabend, yields a dualism between conceptual schemes and
empirical content that is for Davidson equally problematic. However, in
assuming that Davidson is right to object to the modus operandi suggested
by Quine and Smart, what still must be investigated is the basis of his
interpretation of Kuhn and Feyerabend — namely, his claim that they hold a
prescriptive attitude about the future. The reason for this clarification is
that behind Davidson's interpretation is a specific view of the relationship
between language and language users. It is this relationship that must be
examined because it structures, in part, his understanding of translation
and the way in which the metaphysical and the anthropological figure
within it.
Early in the text, at the point where he establishes the problem of
conceptual schemes, he advances the position that the criteria for
translation provide a way of proceeding in resolving the problem. He goes
on to note that'
neither being assumed, will in the end indicate that even partial translation
failure is an impossibility.
The answer to the problem of how to provide a theory of interpretation
and to account for beliefs, wants, etc., while assuming neither, is via truth.
Following Quine, Davidson claims that what can be accepted as
unproblematic is that speakers hold their utterances to be true. Such an
assumption does not commit the interpreter to prior knowledge of either a
specific utterance or a belief. It is perhaps important to point out that this
approach is not only compatible with but also a consequence of the fart
that truth for Davidson is not in a strict sense propositional; rather it
involves the interrelationship between the speaker, the utterance, and a
specific context. This is made clear in his essay 'True to the farts', where he
states that 'Truth (in a natural language) is not a property of sentences: it is
a relationship between sentences, speakers and dates' (p. 43). As shall be
seen, this interrelationship plays a significant role within his theory of
interpretation.
In the case of an utterance which presents an interpretative problem,
given the assumptions of its being held true, it has to be and can be
reinterpreted in order, as Davidson suggests, 'to preserve a reasonable
theory of belief (p. 19z). Interpretation starts with the assumption that the
utterance, though problematic for the interpreter, is believed to be true by
the speaker. This forms the stated basis of his theory of interpretation — a
theory that is equally as applicable in trivial cases as it is in complex ones,
where the speaker's language may not even be known. It also delimits a
procedural methodology for interpretation. Even though the first can be
described as the assumption of holding true, there is in fart a more basic
and unstated assumption that does not concern truth per se but the
extension of truth. It is hardly remarkable to state that the extension of
truth must be universal; however, the problem is that this merely states a
condition that has to be fulfilled by truth, and does not indicate that this
condition has been met. All that is indicated is its necessity. It is interesting
to note that, at the moment when not just the condition but its being met
must be argued for, Davidson opts for a move that could perhaps be
truth itself and in relation to the nature and content of the disposition of
holding true. The only justification for the second instance of universality -
and, it must be added, necessary universality — is the posited but unargued-
for conception of self as universal rational man. Davidson does attempt,
however, to dissociate himself from some of the universalistic assumptions
mentioned above. He does, for example, argue in relation to 'Convention
T' that 'it isn't of course a definition of truth, and it does not hint that there
is a single definition or dieory that applies to languages generally' (p. 194).
None the less, despite these protestations about the formulation of truth, it
remains the case that at a deeper level what counts as holding true has to be
viewed as universal. Perhaps this may mean that 'Convention T could and
would be argued for in terms of its universality. However, this is not the
issue, for whether or not there is an attempt, either implicit or subsequent,
to argue for the universality of 'Convention T' any universal theory or
definition of truth will have to be compatible with the interrelationship
between holding true and universal self. Furthermore, Davidson's principle
of charity finds its metaphysical support within this interrelationship.
Davidson summarizes his conclusion thus:
The method is not designed to eliminate disagreement, nor can it; its
purpose is to make meaningful disagreement possible, and this depends
entirely on a foundation — some foundation — in agreement. The
agreement takes the form of widespread sharing of sentences held true by
speakers of the same language, or agreement in the large mediated by a
theory of truth contrived by an interpreter for speakers of another
language, (pp. 196-7)
The position stated here eloquently sums up some of the aims and
presuppositions of his theory of interpretation and therefore of translation.
It furthermore brings a number of important points into focus. The first is
that the term 'disagreement' must be read as a metaphor that includes
translation within its ambit of possible and potential meanings. Translation
and the overcoming of simple disagreement are possible to the extent that
do not give up the world, but re-establish unmediated touch with the
familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or
false' (p. 198). Clearly the main problematic element here is the claim that
an 'unmediated touch' is in fact possible. The familiar objects are
presumably objects in the world or part of the world with which 'we' are
familiar, thereby excluding those parts of the world with which 'we' are
not familiar. The 'antics' or at least the attribution of 'antics' to objects is
not, presumably, a form of vitalism but merely indicates that among other
things 'we' have an active relationship with objects in the world and that
they have an active rather than passive relationship with us. However, I
want to focus on the possibility of an 'unmediated touch'.
The contrast between the mediated and the unmediated is explicable in
terms of the presence and absence not just of conceptual schemes but of the
dualism of scheme and world. In its absence 'we' ('we' here standing for the
universal individual) have an unlimited access to the world. The important
aspect to note is that Davidson does not actually say that 'we' have an
unlimited access to the world per se but only to the familiar in it. Were he
to be arguing that the absence of dualism enabled unmediated access to the
world itself, then he would be opting for a radical empiricism in which the
world gave itself to consciousness and the conscious subject apprehended
the world as it is. The history of scepticism and the critique of reflexivity
would mean that this is a position for which arguments would have to be
advanced. In distinguishing, albeit implicitly, between the world per se and
familiar objects, Davidson calls into question the very possibility of the
unmediated, since an 'unmediated touch' cannot, without involving
mediation, distinguish between those things in the world that are touched
and are therefore familiar, and those things that either are not touched
because they are unfamiliar or are unfamiliar because they are not touched.
To distinguish on the grounds of familiarity is already to establish a
mediated relationship between self (the 'we' of the passage) and the world.
It is mediated, first, because there are two specific modes of existence at
play within the distinction between the familiar and the unfamiliar and,
secondly, because there is something that occasions and allows a
University of Warwick
NOTES