In Chapters 1–5 we examined the theory of radical interpretation, which Davidson presents as a rational reconstruction of the exchange between speakers and their auditors. His purpose, we have seen, is to answer the Socratic-style question “What is meaning?” by setting it aside and answering the different, but related, query “What knowledge would suffice for an interpreter's understanding a speaker's words?” Davidson's idealized sketch of an interpreter's enterprise offers no insight into cognitive or social psychology, but it does lay bare the connections between the concept of linguistic meaning and a network of closely related notions, especially the concepts of knowledge or understanding, belief and desire, and action. It turns out, then, that Davidson's philosophy of language is part of a more general enterprise, and this confirms our observation in §1.2 that Davidson seeks, in effect, a unified theory of mind, language and action. Indeed, because Davidson characterizes meaning in terms of the reasons for which a speaker makes her utterance, the philosophy of language is properly a chapter in the theory of action and mind.

We turn our attention in Chapters 7 and 8 to Davidson's writings on action theory and the philosophy of mind, and in so doing we shall see their close connection to his philosophy of language. Before we can explore that work, however, we need to do some preliminary spadework and set out Davidson's theory of events and the logic of causal relations.