Editing Donald Davidson (philosopher) (section)

==Early life and education==
Donald Herbert Davidson was born on March 6, 1917 in [[Springfield, Massachusetts]] to Grace Cordelia (née Anthony) and Clarence "Davie" Herbert Davidson.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Lepore |first=Ernie |title=An Interview with Donald Davidson |url=https://ruccs.rutgers.edu/images/personal-ernest-lepore/Davidson_interview.pdf |access-date=2025-05-17}}</ref> His family moved around frequently during his childhood; they lived in the [[Philippines]] until he was four, and then in various cities in the [[Northeastern United States]] before finally settling in [[Staten Island]] when he was nine. He briefly attended a public school in Staten Island before receiving a scholarship to study at [[Staten Island Academy]].<ref name=":1" /> He first became interested in philosophy while in high school, where he read works by [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]] as well as [[Plato]]'s ''[[Parmenides (dialogue)|Parmenides]]'' and [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]]'s ''[[Critique of Pure Reason]]''.<ref name=":1" />

After graduating from high school in 1935, he enrolled at [[Harvard University|Harvard]] on an English major before switching to [[classics]] and earning his BA in 1939. It was at Harvard that he came to know many important philosophers of the time, including [[C. I. Lewis]], [[Alfred North Whitehead]], [[Raphael Demos]], and especially [[Willard Van Orman Quine|W. V. O. Quine]], who went on to become a lifelong friend and major philosophical influence. He also befriended the future conductor [[Leonard Bernstein]] while at Harvard.<ref name=":1" />

Soon after earning his BA, he was awarded a Teschemacher Scholarship to pursue graduate studies in classical philosophy at Harvard. As a graduate student, he took courses on logic taught by Quine and was classmates with [[Roderick Chisholm]] and [[Roderick Firth]]. Quine's seminars on [[logical positivism]] greatly influenced his view of philosophy, as they made him realize that "it was possible to be serious about getting things right in philosophy, or at least not getting things wrong."<ref name=":1" />

In his third year of graduate school, he concurrently enrolled at [[Harvard Business School]], but he ended up leaving a few weeks before graduating in 1942 so that he could volunteer for the [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]]. During [[World War II]], he taught spotters how to distinguish enemy planes from allied planes and also participated in the ground invasions of [[Allied invasion of Sicily|Sicily]], [[Operation Avalanche|Salerno]], and [[Battle of Anzio|Anzio]].<ref name=":1" /> After returning from the war, he wrote his PhD dissertation on Plato's ''[[Philebus]]'' under the supervision of [[Raphael Demos]] and [[Donald Cary Williams|D. C. Williams]], but it was not accepted until 1949, which was when he earned his PhD in philosophy.<ref name=":1" />