Davidson's Triangulation
Thought requires two thinkers and a shared world
First published: D. Davidson, "Three Varieties of Knowledge", in *Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective* (2001).
Determinate thought-content requires a triangle of self, other, and shared world. Solipsistic content is impossible.
Davidson argues that thought with determinate content requires a "triangle": a thinker, another thinker, and a shared causal-perceptual environment. Linguistic communication is constitutive of the determinacy of meaning; without others reacting to the same stimuli, no fact would settle what one means. The position extends and refines earlier work on radical translation (Quine) and on the externalism of meaning (Putnam), and rejects the Cartesian starting point of solitary reflective subjectivity. Triangulation is a sustained argument that mind, world, and other minds are metaphysically interdependent.
Formulation
Premise: meaning of a thinker's thoughts is fixed by causal connections to features of the world. Premise: which features are causally relevant is determined by triangulating with another thinker who reacts to (some of) the same features. Conclusion: solitary thought has no determinate content; thought presupposes a community.
Dimensions Engaged
Observer
Observer · Number: determinate thought requires multiple cognitive agents in causal interaction.
Information
Information · Ontological Status: meaning is constituted by tri-partite causal-linguistic structures.
Responses — How Schools Engage
Affirms / takes the bait 3
A natural ally: meaning and knowledge are constituted by social practice. Davidson's triangulation is a precise version of long-standing pragmatist insights.
Externalist naturalism congenial: thought-content is fixed by causal-social structure, not by introspectible inner episodes.
Meaning as a structural relation among self, other, and world. A clean structural argument against private content.
Denies / rejects the premise 1
Solipsists deny the premise that others are needed for thought-content; if I am the only mind, my thoughts have content by my own engagement with the world.
Reframes the question 1
The intersubjective constitution of meaning is congenial; the specifically Davidsonian framing — three-place causal triangulation — is sharper than phenomenology requires.
Holds it inconclusive 1
Davidson's argument is influential but contested; defenders of robust solitary content (Fodor) press back.
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Further reading
- Davidson, *Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective* (2001)
- Verheggen (ed.), *Wittgenstein and Davidson on Language, Thought, and Action* (2017)
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