Disagreement from the Radical Interpreter’s Point of View

This chapter introduces Donald Davidson’s thoughts on interpretation in their relevance to the book’s subject matter. It argues that there is a tension between interpersonal interpretation based on charity on the one hand and the epistemological problem of peer disagreement on the other. The idealized situation of a peer apparently disagreeing with me, and there being no independent reasons for me to attribute a belief to him or her which I, according to my original evaluation of extant evidence, would consider false or unreasonable, suggests that the apparent disagreement fails to be genuine. Rather than being confronted with a clear and distinctive piece of evidence in the form of a deviating opinion, the participants in a dispute face a situation where they need to strike a balance between their assessment of the issue at stake and their assessment of the beliefs of the other person.