Not if I saw it with mayonnaise

In general, we conceal logical structure when we treat prepositions as integral parts of verbs; it is a merit of the present proposal that it suggests a way of treating prepositions as contributing structure … it is also good to be able to keep track of the common element in "fly to" and "fly away from" and this of course we cannot do if we treat these as unstructured predicates.

An example, perhaps, is this: "I flew my spaceship" may entail, "I flew", but if it does, it is not, I think, because of the logical form of the sentences. My reason for saying this is that I find no reason to believe the logical form of "I flew my spaceship" differs from that of "I sank the Bismarck", which does not entail "I sank" though it does happen to entail "the Bismarck sank".

The most important thing to take away here is that the punctuation, which I have reproduced punctiliously, is correct. The next is this: of course in general we might conceal logical structure by treating prepositions like that; it is nice to be able to go from "on that day he stood for about an hour" to "he stood", "on that day he stood", and "he stood for about an hour". But of course one can't go from "on that day he stood for something noble" to "on that day he stood" or "he stood", or even "he stood for something noble" (since he may have been on every other day an absolute bastard of whom there was nothing good to be said whatsoever who stood, sans phrase, for rapine and slaughter). Confronted with the accusation "your problem is you've never stood for anything!", responding "that's not so—just yesterday I stood for hours in line" gets you a one-way ticket to the Catskills (note that we are not generally taken in by these superficial structural analogies or grammatical matters for longer than it takes to get the joke, which is not very long at all in most cases, which is not to say it won't lead to befuddlement in others). So, right: after all he does just say "in general". Presumably "he stood for something noble" has a different logical form than does "he stood for about an hour". Presumably too we know this because, observing what inferences will be allowed, we choose a proper begriffschriftlich formalization which will respect what we already know anyway. Which suggests that Davidson's monetary metaphor, in which the paper bills of ordinary phraseology is backed up by a mysterious specie of some sort (just try, though, to get it accepted as legal tender, the next time you have a request or proclamation), is suboptimal, and a better one would be this: we trade just fine in ordinary language based on barter, and some would propose, for ease of economic analysis, to introduce money into the equation; in doing so, they attempt to find out what the values of various phrases would be under the new system, based on the way they're currently traded.

Here I would like to say: this would be a nice place to quote Wittgenstein on crystalline purity. But PI is all the way across the room. So I won't even say it.

The second quotation is there because, if we do want to say that from "I flew my spaceship" one can infer "I flew", I don't see why we can't also infer "I sank" from "I sank the Bismarck". If one can come up with a context in which "I flew" meant "I flew something reference to which has been deleted" rather than "I flew, intransitively, perhaps as a passenger, who knows?", the latter being the relevant contrast (because it wouldn't be terribly interesting to learn that, to use a language in which these senses are distinguished even in the words, going from "ich habe mein Raumschiff geflogen" to "ich bin geflogen" relies on more than just the form), that same one could probably also come up with a context in which "I sank" meant something like "I sank objects reference to which has been deleted". This is plainly unimportant, though, since there are examples of the sort Davidson intends to draw (and as he acknowledges, "I flew my spaceship"->"I flew" might be one of them). It's just kind of an odd example. Likewise his claim that "deliberately" in "Jones buttered the toast slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at midnight" imputes intention, such that it would be improper to use that word if he were had in fact intended to butter his comb. This strikes me as plainly false: "slowly, deliberately, with eyes shut to enhance the effect, Jones buttered his toast, thinking it was his comb" makes perfect sense (I included the "with eyes shut" part only to be able to omit an "and" between "slowly" and "deliberately", while cutting out the other modifiers), because "deliberately" can, obviously, mean something like "with great care and consideration (as someone who has deliberated about how to proceed)", as one can advance slowly and deliberately, or do something absurd, if one is Groucho Marx, say, ceremoniously and deliberately. Again, unimportant. I would like to say something like "telling", but I'm not sure what it might tell.