ABSTRACT
The concern with the meaning of language and the meaning of actions involved, as much as anything else, a response to and critique of behaviourist tendencies in the study of social activities. D. Davidson follows Quine in assuming that understanding a language is the same as translating it. Similarly he adopts a holistic view of language. Davidson treats the business of understanding others mainly in terms of a trade-off between belief and meaning. Of course, it is important to remember that Davidson's confidence in the inter-translatability of languages goes along with a scepticism that language has any intrinsic meaning. P. Roth's argument is worked out in terms of Quinean views about the indeterminacy of translation and, in part, by a critique of Winch. On the basis of a broadly Quinean approach, Roth attempts to resolve the Rationalitätstreit, that is, the struggle about rationality.
