Lenny Clapp Davidson’s Program and Interpreted Logical Forms

The “Interpreted Logical Form” (ILF) analysis of attitude ascriptions has been proffered, most notably by Higginbotham (1986) and Larson and Ludlow (1993), as a means of resolving within the framework of Davidson’s semantic program the familiar problems posed by attitude ascriptions.1 In this paper I argue that only an analysis of attitude ascriptions along the lines of Davidson’s (1968) “paratactic” analysis can resolve the problem posed by attitude ascriptions within the constraints of Davidson’s semantic program. The ILF analyses, though following Davidson in providing recursive formal theories that entail statements of the truth conditions of sentences, violate theoretical constraints that Davidson takes pains to satisfy. That the ILF analyses violate these constraints raises two theoretical questions: First, do the ILF analyses nonetheless adequately perform what Davidson calls the “central task of a theory of meaning”, viz. explaining how “speakers of a language can effectively determine the meaning or meanings of an arbitrary expression” (Davidson, 1967)? Or does this violation serve to undermine their plausibility as explanations of our semantic competence? I will argue that because the ILF analyses violate the theoretical constraints of Davidson’s semantic program their plausibility as explanations of our semantic competence is significantly undermined.