[1][2] His father, who was a minister of the Baptist Tract Society, died shortly after Davis' birth.

[3] He was raised by his mother and step-father, the Reverend John L. Dagg, a Southern Baptist theologian in Alabama.

[2][citation needed] Davis was educated at Mercer University, where his step-father was president, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

[6] One of his notable works was The Theory of Thought (1880), which was based on the writings of Aristotle and covered the subject of deductive logic.

[7][8][9] Davis influenced Collins Denny, a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University who taught poet John Crowe Ransom.