Page 151 - Contribution To Phenomenology

144 / N. MOHANTY

formulating the problem of constitution of the other culture analogously
to what Husserl does in the 5th. Meditation. I have found no way of
expelling the other from within my own world. The "foreign," then, is
that which I do not understand. But understanding and failure to
understand, the familiar and the strange, have their place within every
world. It is not simply one-sidedly knowing the other, but "mutual"
communication which removes "strangeness." The idea of one world for
all is constituted through such communication, and may serve as a norm
for critiquing one*s home-world.

A Note on Davidson

As against Davidson, I will press for an irreducibly intentional element
in the idea of culture. As for language, while the auditor interprets the
speaker, the speaker does not merely produce noises but intends to mean
something: thus there is a complicated web, and also layers of intentions.
I agree largely with Davidson's principle of charity as it applies to an
interpreter, but I see the danger of overemphasizing it in an extreme
version. There is something called "understanding false sentences." To
understand a sentence is not eo ipso so to interpret it that it comes out
true, it is to know under what possible conditions it will be true or false.
Thus while understanding a foreign culture (and so interpreting it), I will
do my best to make its behefs come out true, I must also recognize the
limits of such an effort. The other's intention, and the other's insistence
opposing me—if he is a bilingual—will remind me that I am not at
Uberty to interpret him to fit my belief-system. It may also be that I am
to change my belief system in order to fit his. It is at this point that
Davidson's physicalism helps him. Since the mental is the physical, the
other's utterances are all that are there until I, or some one else, or
even the speaker himself, interprets them. Interpretation constitutes the
mental. For me, the mental (and the intentional) is sui generis. The
interpreter's efforts aim at grasping, by approximation, the speaker's
intention, the latter is its goal, and the speaker, were he aware of the
interpreter's work, may, despite recognizing his generosity, oppose him.
It is through such conflict of points of view that an agreed meaning may
emerge. As a result, I take the question of truth out of the theory of
interpretation. To understand the other is to grasp his intention, to confer
on his speech/action a meaning which, were he bilingual, he would ideally
accept—even if for me the impUed beliefs (ascribed to him) were false.