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The Library of Living Philosophers

Donald Davidson

by J. Hopkins

Human beings have a striking capacity to understand themselves. In everyday life we discern motive and meaning in people’s sounds and movements continually and with remarkable precision. Donald Davidson’s philosophical essays report stages in a continuous attempt to cast light on this mode of understanding.

Davidson’s first focus was upon action. He stressed that both linguistic utterances and non-verbal actions were bodily events performed for reasons, physical changes caused by beliefs and desires.

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