Preference Logic and Radical Interpretation: Kanger meets Davidson

This paper traces the intellectual effects of an encounter between Stig Kanger and Donald Davidson -two very different philosophers working in two seemingly unconnected areas. Their meeting in Oslo 1979 led the latter to improve his influential theory of radical interpretation and gave the former an inspiration for a rather striking paradox in preference logic. But, as we show, the paradox can be dis-solved and the radical interpretation continues to confront serious difficulties. Simultaneous elicitation of a speaker’s meaning, beliefs and desires merely from his attitudes to sentences in the language he uses is a very ambitious project, but its theoretic viability is strongly questionable