Radical interpretation

Radical Interpretation and the Permutation Principle *

Davidson has argued1 that there is no fact of the matter as to what any speaker's words refer to because, even holding truth conditions fixed, a radical interpreter will always be able to come up with many equally good interpretations of the interpretee’s language. This conclusion, which Davidson (following Quine) refers to as the "inscrutability of reference", has caused many to reject the rad...

Textual Interpretation and Complexity -radical Hermeneutics

Radical Interpretation Described using Terms from Biological Evolution

A common method of improving how well understood a theory is, is by comparing it to another theory which has been better developed. Radical interpretation is a theory which attempts to explain how communication has meaning. Radical interpretation is treated as another time dependent theory and compared to the time dependent theory of biological evolution. Several similarities and differences ar...

‘Radical Interpretation’ and the Assessment of Decision-Making Capacity

The assessment of patients' decision-making capacity (DMC) has become an important area of clinical practice, and since it provides the gateway for a consideration of non-consensual treatment, has major ethical implications. Tests of DMC such as under the Mental Capacity Act (2005) for England and Wales aim at supporting autonomy and reducing unwarranted paternalism by being 'procedural', focus...

Observations of total peroxy nitrates and aldehydes: measurement interpretation and inference of OH radical concentrations

We describe measurements of total peroxy nitrates (6PNs), NO2, O3 and several aldehydes at Granite Bay, California, during the Chemistry and Transport of the Sacramento Urban Plume-2001 (CATSUP 2001) campaign, from 19 July–16 September 2001. We observed a strong photochemically driven variation of 6PNs during the day with the median of 1.2 ppb at noon. Acetaldehyde, pentanal, hexanal and methac...