Abstract

Early in his career, Donald Davidson criticized what he termed the ‘Third Dogma of Empiricism,’ namely, the idea that a rigid distinction can be drawn between conceptualizing scheme and empirical content. Later on in his career, Davidson developed a theory of triangulation in order to explain how successful communication is possible. In this paper, I identify two interpretations of Davidsonian triangulation – the Causal-Similarity View and the Constitutive Interpretation. After highlighting some problems with the Causal-Similarity View, I question whether the Constitutive Interpretation requires implementing the scheme/content distinction Davidson rejected in his earlier writings. Ultimately, I argue that, by drawing from Davidson’s principle of charity and his notion of a passing theory, the Constitutive Interpretation of triangulation does not require the scheme/content distinction and so the early and later theories of Davidson do not come into conflict.