Revista Filosofía UIS

Vol. 20 No. 2 (2021): Revista Filosofía UIS
Articles

The Problem of the Counterfactuals in the Davidson's Semantics

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  • Jhojan Alejandro Díaz Rico
Jhojan Alejandro Díaz Rico
Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18273/revfil.v20n2-2021008

Published 2021-06-11

Keywords

  • action,
  • counterfactual,
  • circumstance,
  • semantics,
  • content

How to Cite

Díaz Rico, J. A. (2021). The Problem of the Counterfactuals in the Davidson’s Semantics. Revista Filosofía UIS, 20(2), 165–194. https://doi.org/10.18273/revfil.v20n2-2021008

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Abstract

I discuss Davidson´s semantics of action sentences to argue that it doesn´t have enough elements to deal with counterfactuals. I propose two criticisms. In the first one, I argue that due to the author´s ontology regarding actions, it is impossible to consider the same actions in counterfactuals circumstances. In the second, I claim that the descriptive character of the actions sentences prevent that one speaker can extrapolate the Davidson´s semantics from sentences that he knows to counterfactual actions sentences.

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