Published: Does Davidson Argue For Compositionality?

Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 16 (2026), no. 3, pp. 1-24.

Get it here: https://jhaponline.org/article/view/6884

ABSTRACT

Donald Davidson is generally supposed to have offered an argument for the principle of compositionality in “Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages”. Peter Pagin, however, has argued that Davidson offers no such argument. Indeed, Pagin claims that Davidson explicitly rejects any demand that compositionality should be justified and, moreover, claims that the argument in question is unsound. I argue here that the first claim is mistaken and that the latter, though it offers a helpful corrective to the usual interpretation, does not apply to the argument Davidson actually gives. But there is a deep tension in Davidson’s work here, to which Pagin may well be responding, and it is a tension that Davidson himself cannot resolve. 

I now wish I had said something in the abstract about what happens toward the end of the paper: I make some suggestions about the intellectual climate in which Davidson was writing; more precisely, who his opponents were. Quine, it turns out, had made some suggestions of his own about how our 'infinite aptitude' for language arises. Davidson must have known of these, although he does not mention Quine by name.

Edge Banding Technique

When using plywood to build things, one problem you (almost) always have is: What to do about the edges? Unlike with solid wood, when the edges look like, uh, wood, with plywood the edges look like, uh, plies of wood stacked on top of each other. Not usually the look you want. So the usual thing to do is apply 'edge banding'. The easiest way to do this is to buy iron-on edge banding, for example, from Veneer Supplies (which is where I get all my cool veneers). This works great, but it comes in a limited variety of woods, and you do still end up with the edge of the edge banding being visible, which isn't too bad, in most cases, but isn't ideal.