This is a concise, systematic introduction to all the main elements of the philosophy of Donald Davidson, one of the 20th century's deepest analytic thinkers. It places the theory of meaning and content at the very centre of his thought. By using interpretation, and the interpreter, as key ideas it clearly brings out the underlying structure and unified nature of Davidson's work. The author carefully outlines his principal claims and arguments, and discusses them in some detail
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Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- About the authors -- Preface -- Acknowledgement -- 1. Introduction: Toward Understanding Knowledge Resistance in High-Choice Information Environments -- 2. What is Knowledge Resistance? -- 3. From Low-Choice to High-Choice Media Environments: Implications for Knowledge Resistance -- 4. Disinformation, Misinformation, and Fake News: Understanding the Supply Side -- 5. Selective Exposure and Attention to Attitude-Consistent and Attitude-Discrepant Information: Reviewing the Evidence -- 6. Relevance-Based Knowledge Resistance in Public Conversations -- 7. Responsiveness to Evidence: A Political Cognition Approach -- 8. Reports of the Death of Expertise may be Exaggerated: Limits on Knowledge Resistance in Health and Medicine -- 9. Is Resistance Futile? Citizen Knowledge, Motivated Reasoning, and Fact-Checking -- 10. Uninformed or Misinformed? A Review of the Conceptual-Operational Gap Between (Lack of) Knowledge and (Mis)Perceptions -- 11. Striving for Certainty: Epistemic Motivations and (Un)Biased Cognition -- 12. Political Polarization Over Factual Beliefs -- 13. The Democratic Gold-Standard of Fact-Based Issue Ambivalence -- 14. Overcoming Knowledge Resistance: A Systematic Review of Experimental Studies -- Index.
While increasing scholarly attention has been devoted to news avoidance, there are only few studies taking the distinction between intentional and unintentional news avoidance into consideration, and none that has investigated the linkage between the two types of news avoidance and knowledge about politics and society. To fill this void, this study explores this relationship while distinguishing between knowledge related to uncontested issues and knowledge related to issues that have been subject to public controversies (climate change, vaccination, genetically modified organisms, crime, and immigration). Relying on a large-scale survey among Swedish citizens conducted in 2020 ( N = 2,160), we find that the relationship with patterns of news use is substantially different across these types of beliefs. Among other things, the results suggest that knowledge of uncontested issue domains is positively related to news use, but knowledge of contested issue domains is not. The intentional avoidance of news is only negatively related to knowledge of contested issues. Taken together, the results suggest that the mechanisms driving beliefs related to uncontested versus contested issues are substantially different.
