Truth, Language, and History is the much-anticipated final volume of Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. In the four groups of essays that comprise it, Davidson continues to explore the themes that occupied him for more than fifty years: the relations between language and the world; speaker intention and linguistic meaning; language and mind; mind and body; mind and world; mind and other minds. He asks: what is the role of the concept of truth in these explorations? And, can a scientific world view make room for human thought without reducing it to something material and mechanistic? Davidson's underlying picture, which can be seen in many of these essays, is that we are acquainted directly with the world, not indirectly via some intermediary such as sense-data, representations, or language itself; that thought emerges in the first place through interpersonal communication in a shared material world, and continues to develop as we engage each other in dialogue; and that language depends on communication, not vice versa. This is the triangulating situation - two creatures communicating about a common world - about which Davidson has written elsewhere.As for the mind-body relation: our ontology need posit nothing more that material objects and events; but as explainers we require two mutually irreducible vocabularies: mind and body. In the last six essays Davidson finds interconnections between his own views and those of some of the major philosophers of the past. Including a new introduction by his widow, Marcia Cavell, this volume completes Donald Davidson's colossal intellectual legacy.

Donald Davidson has prepared a new edition of his classic 1980 collection of Essays on Actions and Events, including two additional essays. In this seminal investigation of the nature of human action, Davidson argues for an ontology which includes events along with persons and other objects. Certain events are identified and explained as actions when they are viewed as caused and rationalized by reasons; these same events, when described in physical, biological, or physiological terms, may be explained by appeal to natural laws. The mental and the physical thus constitute irreducibly discrete ways of explaining and understanding events and their causal relations. Among the topics discussed are: freedom to act; weakness of the will; the logical form of talk about actions, intentions, and causality; the logic of practical reasoning; Hume's theory of the indirect passions; and the nature and limits of decision theory. The introduction, cross-references, and appendices emphasize the relations between the essays and explain how Davidson's views have developed.

"Problems of Rationality" is the eagerly awaited fourth volume of Donald Davidson's philosophical writings. From the 1960s until his death in August 2003 Davidson was perhaps the most influential figure in English-language philosophy, and his work has had a profound effect upon the discipline. His unified theory of the interpretation of thought, meaning, and action holds that rationality is a necessary condition for both mind and interpretation. Davidson here develops this theory to illuminate value judgements and how we understand them; to investigate what the conditions are for attributing mental states to an object or creature; and to grapple with the problems presented by thoughts and actions which seem to be irrational. Anyone working on knowledge, mind, and language will find these essays essential reading.

唐纳德·戴维森是20世纪最重要的哲学家之一。戴维森的哲学论著涉及一系列哲学基本问题；其影响力跨越不同哲学传统。无论是赞成还是反对戴维森(某些)观点的哲学家都一致认为，戴维森思想是激发他们深入进行哲学思考的原动力之一。本卷《真理、意义与方法--戴维森哲学文选》是在《真理、意义、行动与事件--戴维森哲学文选》一书基础上增选9篇文章、重新组织结构并充实有关内容而成。

唐纳德·戴维森（Donald Davidson，1917-2003） 20世纪下半叶最重要的分析哲学家之一。获哈佛大学哲学博士学位，曾先后任教于斯坦福大学、普林斯顿大学、洛克菲勒大学、芝加哥大学以及加州大学伯克利分校。戴维森在语言哲学、行动哲学、心灵哲学、认识论、形而上学以及合理性理论等哲学的众多基础领域都开展了独创性的工作，其成就主要体现为自20世纪60年代以来所发表的一系列论文，它们被收入《行动与事件论文集》（1980）、《对真理与解释的探究》（1984）、《主观的、主观际的、客观的》（2001）、《合理性的难题》（2004）和《真理、语言与历史》（2005）等论文集中。

本书收入了作者有关语言哲学的系列论文，自1984年出版后，本书成为讨论语言哲学的参照点以及相关争论的焦点，其影响已扩展到语言理论、心灵哲学和认识论。
本书讨论的核心问题是，语词为什么具有它们所确实具有的意义。作者认为，哲学上有教益的意义理论应当承认对语言理解的整体论性质，它应当能够解释一个说话者或一群说话者所有实际的和潜在的话语；而它不应当依赖于它所要解释的概念，因为它应当是独立于说话者具体的命题态度而可证实的。本书所涵盖的论题包括了真理论与意义论之间的关系、翻译、引语、信念、彻底的解释、指称、隐喻、交流等。