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. 

John Coltrane, Jazz Piano Solos v. 24

Yet another book of solo piano arrangements, this time of tunes either written by or recorded by John Coltrane. The ones he wrote (most of them, at least) cannot be 'played', as of this writing, presumably due to the need to pay royalties for such 'playing'.

The arrangements in this book are by Brent Edstrom.

Are "Facials" Misogynistic?

This paper has been on my website for a while (here). It has now been accepted for publication at Porn Studies, which is a peer-reviewed journal published by Taylor & Francis. I've been wanting for some time now to publish something in a non-philosophy, gender-and-sexuality-studies sort of journal, so it looks like that will finally happen.

Abstract:

So-called ‘facial’ cumshots, when a man ejaculates onto a woman’s face, are very common in pornography. While they are frequently said to be degrading and misogynistic, the fact that women are usually shown as enjoying this act should make us think again. Facials may instead be rooted in male insecurity: of a fear that an aspect of how men orgasm—semen—is disgusting to women. By contrast, the fantasy, which pornography makes vivid, is that women might not just tolerate but celebrate and eroticize both ejaculation and its product. The way mainstream pornography presents facials may often be misogynistic, but it does not have to be, and it is not always.

 

Melanie Spanswick: Women Composers, Book 2

A collection of works by women composers, from baroque to modern, for intermediate to early advanced, edited by Melanie Spanswick. See here for more information.

Complete YouTube Playlist here. 

New Paper: Does Davidson Argue For Compositionality?

 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, that the argument in question is invalid. I argue here that the first claim is mistaken and that the latter, though it offers a helpful corrective, does not undermine the interest of the argument Davidson gives. But there is a deep tension in Davidson's work here, to which Pagin may well be responding, and that tension is not resolvable.

Get it here. 

This paper has now been accepted for publication at the Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy. 

Truth, Reflection, and Implicit Commitment

 New paper, forthcoming in a volume on the foundations of mathematics. Abstract:

The 'Implicit Commitment Thesis' (ICT) states that, if you accept a mathematical theory, then you are 'implicitly committed' to its consistency, and perhaps also to various sorts of reflection principles. This is meant to have various consequences, such as that consistency proofs can never be cogent: give us reason to believe that a theory is consisetent. I here consider a sampling of arguments for ICT and argue that they are all wanting. At the end, I suggest that we should, anyway, think of soundness proofs, in particular, not as attempts to justify reflection principles but as attempts to explain why they are true. 

Get it here. 

This is the paper for which the two short notes posted earlier, "A Note on the Strength of Disentangled Truth-Theories" and "Some Remarks on 'Logical' Reflection", are essentially appendices.