“Davidson, Sellars, and the Problem of Predication”
Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1870-2935
Abstract
There are significant similarities (and equally significant differences) between the doctrines promulgated by Donald Davidson and Wilfrid Sellars—yet it is also evident that it is often difficult to see clearly just how they engage on certain important issues.
The essay tries to untangle the obscurities that make it difficult to compare their respective theories of predication. Sellars addresses the nature and analysis of predication in several places (TTP, NAO especially), none of which, however, are aimed at Davidson, who addressed the issue explicitly only posthumously in his Truth and Predication (2005). In that book, Davidson acknowledges the significance of Sellars’ efforts, but criticizes them as a “failure” (114). Davidson’s criticism of Sellars’ theory is at very least obscure and arguably rests on a misinterpretation of Sellars’ text. These two leading philosophers of the late twentieth century too often seem to be talking past each other.
This essay traces the sources of that “talking past each other” to several significant differences in the assumptions each brings to the problem of predication. These include 1. Differences in their respective conceptions of what the “problem of predication” is and what would count as a solution. (NB: Nonetheless, both agree that imposing a reifying semantics on predicates (taking them to function like singular terms) is a philosophical horrorshow leading to Bradley’s paradox and making any solution impossible.) 2. Differences in their treatment of truth and consequent disagreement about the significance of the fact that predicates are true of the items they characterize. 3. Differences in their understanding of the nature and significance of quantification: Davidson is a good Quinean on quantification, Sellars is not, and that difference reverberates throughout their approaches. The goal of the paper is not so much to resolve their disagreement as to put it in enough context that others can pick it up on either side without just talking past the other side.
Department
Philosophy
Publication Date
2025
Publisher
Routledge
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Recommended Citation
“Davidson, Sellars, and the Problem of Predication” in Sellars and Davidson in Dialogue: Truths, Meanings, and Minds, Willem A. deVries and Marc Joseph, eds. (New York: Routledge, 2025): 143-63.