Davidson and the Existence of Conventional Language.
This paper is written about Donald Davidson and the existence of conventional language. In his essay "A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs," Davidson defends the highly controversial thesis that 'there is not such a thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed' and that 'we should give up the attempt to illuminate how we communicate by appeal to conventions'. It falls beyond the scope of this paper to evaluate Davidson's arguments for this thesis. Its point will be to defend the plausibility of its conclusion against the widely held view that the rejection of languages is clearly false, or even absurd.
