Suppose we had a set of Davidsonian meaning rules. Could the sentences constructed using these rules be arbitrarily long, or complex? We could not set a limit based on cognitive capacity, because this cannot be represented within the rules. How could we write down a limit that wasn't arbitrary?
Would we otherwise be committed to saying, for some 'long' sentences, that they had a meaning but it was not practical to work out what it was?
We might say that a complex computer programme, represented in a high-level language, has a 'meaning' in this way. As soon as we begin to summarise or analyse the code - in terms of it's functions, or into different functional 'blocks' - we are hostage to interpretive ambiguities.
Is this also true about a large piece of language? A book, or this blog?
Does the whole book have a 'meaning' which could be analysed in terms of a Davidsonian theory?
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