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The Systematicity of Davidson’s Anti-skeptical Arguments

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Abstract

Donald Davidson contributed more deeply to our understanding of language, thought, and reality than perhaps any other recent philosopher. His discussions of skepticism are sometimes seen as peripheral to those contributions. As I read him, Davidson argued against three skeptical worries. First, beliefs are true or false relative to a conceptual scheme. Second, beliefs generally are false. Third, other minds and an external world do not exist. Call those worries ‘conceptual relativism’, ‘falsidicalism’, and ‘solipsism’, respectively. I investigate how Davidson’s arguments are connected. I then show that those connections are so systematic that Davidson ultimately offers a single, master argument with two premises. Premise one is that I think. Premise two is an application of his account of radical interpretation. Focusing on the systematicity of Davidson’s anti-skeptical arguments demonstrates that discussions of skepticism were more central to his views than often appreciated and shines fresh light on his project overall.

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Notes

  1. See Platts (1997), Lepore and Ludwig (2007, 2009), Lepore and Lower (2011), Myers and Verheggen (2016), Yang and Myers (2021), and Goldberg (2015, pp. 80–108, 167–87).

  2. In their landmark two volume-work on Davidson, Lepore and Ludwig (2007, 2009) discuss skepticism only in portions of three of their thirty-six chapters. Verheggen may come closest to appreciating ways in which skepticism is connected to Davidson’s other views, but she focuses on the systematicity of Davidson’s analysis of meaning and thought and especially (Myers and Verheggen 2016, pp. 2, 65–77; Verheggen 2017, p. 11; Verheggen 2021) the continuity of Davidson’s earlier work on radical interpretation with his later work on triangulation, discussed below. Skepticism, even when Verheggen considers it, is discussed only in the service of those. Nor does Verheggen (or anyone else) distinguish the three skeptical worries against which Davidson argued, as I do next.

  3. On ambiguity, Davidson (1967/2001, p. 30) argued that, if ambiguity in the object language is preserved in the meta-language, then no problems arise. On paradox, Davidson (28–29) counseled that we accept the translatability between object and meta-language except concerning the object language’s truth-predicate. On regimentation, Davidson (e.g., 1969/2001, 1970/2001, 1973/2001) observed that many natural-language locutions had been regimented and hoped that eventually all would.

  4. See Davidson (1979/2001) and Lepore and Ludwig (2009, ch. 12) for sentences that are not statements.

  5. For Davidson, because interpretation is indeterminate, ‘La rosa es roja’ need not be interpreted only as the rose is red. See Goldberg (2015, p. 101).

  6. While one might question whether charity is the only constraint capable of playing this role—Lepore and Ludwig (2007, pp. 194–196) offer “grace,” a modified version of charity—charity is crucial for Davidson because, as explained below, it provides a causal, external component to belief attribution.

  7. See Goldberg (2004b) for earlier formulations and below generally.

  8. Stroud (1999) claims that Davidson secured the veridical nature of belief attribution rather than belief content. Yet, as explained, Davidson claimed of radical interpretation: “the evidence available is just that speakers of the language to be interpreted hold various sentences to be true at certain times and under specified circumstances” (1973/2001, p. 135). So bound up in radical interpretation is an account of not only attributing but also having beliefs. Verheggen makes the same point: “Stroud pays insufficient attention to the fact that Davidson’s aim is to provide not just conditions of belief-attribution but also conditions of belief-possession” (2011, p. 32) and so the content of what is believed.

  9. See Evnine (1991, chs. 6, 7), Fodor and Lepore (1992, ch. 3), Glock (2003, ch. 6), Lepore and Ludwig (2007, part II), Myers and Verheggen (2016, ch. 3), and Goldberg (2015, pp. 82–90) for more on radical interpretation.

  10. Lepore and Ludwig (2007, p. 307), Haddock (2011, pp. 36–37), and Turner (2011, p. 347) also read Davidson as concerned with evidence.

  11. These include that it misconstrues Convention T and that it is an argument from elimination that fails to eliminate obvious alternatives.

  12. Davidson was replying to Fodor and Lepore (1992) and directly to Fodor (1994), who mistakenly thought that, for Davidson, all interpretation was radical.

  13. Even if everything up until this point is granted, the charity and compositionality constraints may seem insufficient to guarantee one-hundred percent translatability in all cases. I am unsure whether they need to guarantee it for Davidson’s argument to be valid. Regardless, they nevertheless might guarantee it. According to Davidson, just as

    [i]f we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behavior of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our own standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything (1973/2001, p. 137),

    perhaps if we cannot find a way to interpret a particular utterance as meaningful, we have no reason to count that particular utterance as rational, as expressing a belief, or as saying anything, either.

  14. See Goldberg (2015, pp. 80–108) and its relevant works cited.

  15. See Foley and Fumerton (1985), Genova (1999), Stroud (1999), and Goldberg (2003).

  16. Davidson (1982/2001, 1988a/2001, 1988b/2001, 1990/2001, 1991/2001, 1997/2005, 2001a) used his model of triangulation to advance psychological and semantic externalism, to speculate on conditions necessary for thought and talk to emerge, and (relevant here) to argue against solipsism. See Goldberg (2008, 2012b) for triangulation’s relation to Lepore and Ludwig’s (2007, pp. 337–342) account of Davidson’s semantic externalism. At one point (2001a, pp. 306–307), Davidson identified three kinds of triangulation. See Goldberg (2009) for discussion and for a fourth kind. Finally, see Amoretti (2011) for discussion of semantic externalism (her “content externalism”) and what she calls “epistemic internalism,” roughly the view that, for beliefs to be justified, their believer must be aware that they are.

  17. In that article, Davidson bifurcated the principle of charity:

    The Principle of Coherence prompts the interpreter to discover a degree of logical consistency in the thought of the speaker; the Principle of Correspondence prompts the interpreter to take the speaker to be responding to the same features of the world that he (the interpreter) would be responding to under similar circumstances. Both principles can be (and have been) called principles of charity: one principle endows the speaker with a modicum of logic, the other endows him with a degree of what the interpreter takes to be true belief about the world. (1991/2001, p. 211).

    However, as I read him on the compositional nature of belief attribution, Davidson already got the Principle of Coherence from the compositionality constraint. I take the Principle of Correspondence to be the principle of charity, since it provides the charity constraint.

  18. See Davidson (1992/2001).

  19. Talmage (1997) objects that, because Davidson appealed to a language learner’s innate dispositional responses to external objects, for him, a second person was unnecessary. Contrapositively, Yalowitz (1999) argues that those dispositions should not be relevant for Davidson given his argument against conceptual relativism (117). He nevertheless agrees with Talmage that, since Davidson thought that they were, a second person was unnecessary (119–126). Finally, Lepore and Ludwig (2007, p. 402) propose three alternatives to a second person as communicator: our past selves, observable behavior of but not communication with others, and incompatibility with one’s own other beliefs (2007, p. 402). See Pagin (2001), Montminy (2003), and Glüer (2006) for variations on these objections.

  20. Bar-On and Priselac (2011) claim that Davidson’s model of triangulation itself entails a kind of skepticism. Because, for Davidson, though lower animals can engage in primitive triangulation but only linguistic creatures can have thought with particular content, “continuity skepticism” between lower animals and (at least) humans follows. Bar-On and Priselac respond by appealing to expressive behaviors such as yelps, growls, and teeth-bearings as communicative signals showing rather than telling their expressed states as bridging the continuity gap, which seem as promising as any.

  21. Rejecting conceptual relativism might be thought consistent with accepting idealism in the sense of rejecting the existence of an external world. It is not. As long as speakers have beliefs, which (given Davidson’s (1974/2001) argumentative structure) accepting or rejecting conceptual relativism entails, and the truth-value of beliefs does not depend on a conceptual scheme, which (given the same structure) rejecting conceptual relativism entails, then their truth-value instead depends on an external world.

  22. Contra Davidson, Nagel, and myself, Davidson’s starting point might be thought distinct from Descartes’s, because Descartes’s “I” referred to a disembodied thinker yet Davidson’s “I” did not. Indeed, while Descartes was following the lead of the skeptic, Davidson might be thought to beg the question against them.

    There are two reasons that this is not so. First, there is nothing stopping the skeptic from believing that both Descartes’s and Davidson’s “I” refer to a disembodied thinker. They are therefore free to accept both Descartes’s and Davidson’s first premise: “I think.” Subsequent premises may be suspect. Second, regarding such premises, though there is debate on how Descartes’s Cogito proceeds (Markie 1992), as I read it Descartes claimed that a condition of the possibility of my thinking is my existing, while Davidson claimed that a condition of the possibility of my thinking is other minds besides mine and an external world (including my body) existing. If the skeptic believes that Davidson is begging the question with this subsequent claim, then they therefore have reason to believe the same of Descartes. Admittedly, as explained below, Descartes needed a separate argument to conclude that the world (including the skeptic’s body) existed. But that is just to repeat that Davidson’s philosophy is Cartesian only in a circumscribed sense.

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    Nathaniel Goldberg

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Goldberg, N. The Systematicity of Davidson’s Anti-skeptical Arguments. Topoi 42, 47–59 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09829-7

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