Abstract
Davidson argues that his version of interpretivism entails that sceptical scenarios are impossible, thus offering a response to any sceptical argument that depends upon the possibility of sceptical scenarios. It has been objected that Davidson’s interpretivism does not entail the impossibility of sceptical scenarios due to the possibility that interpreter and speaker are in a shared state of massive error, and so this response to scepticism fails. In this paper I show that the objection from the possibility of shared error rests on a misunderstanding of Davidson’s interpretivist position. Properly understood, Davidson’s view does entail that sceptical scenarios are impossible. I also give a reason independent of its anti-sceptical implications to prefer Davidson’s interpretivism over the version of interpretivism erroneously attributed to him (at least implicitly) by those who object to his anti-sceptical argument.
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Notes
Davidson (1986, p. 315).
As Byrne (1998) notes, it is possible to read ‘all there is to learn’ in this quotation in a way that leaves open the possibility that a speaker has beliefs and meanings that cannot be discovered by an interpreter. On this reading, the possibility of the facts about a speaker’s meanings and beliefs outrunning what a fully informed interpreter could learn is compatible with Davidson’s claim. However, Davidson clearly did not intend his claim to be read in this way. By ‘all there is to learn’ he simply meant all the facts.
Other interpretivists include Lewis (1974), Dennett (1971) and Childe (1994). It is an interesting question whether these interpretivist views might form the basis of a response to scepticism. However, in this paper I will focus solely on the anti-sceptical implications of Davidson’s interpretivism.
This specification of what sort of theory the radical interpreter wants to confirm is sufficient for our purposes. However, it might be thought that the theory must fulfil further conditions; see Ludwig and Lepore (2005, pp. 151–173) for discussion.
For the sake of clarity, I will use male pronouns to refer to the interpreter and female pronouns to refer to the speaker being interpreted.
It may be that some more sophisticated variant on this principle is needed; see Ludwig and Lepore (2005, pp. 182–192) for discussion. However, the version of the principle that I have given here will be sufficient for our discussion.
See also Stroud (2011, p. 267) for essentially the same point.
My emphasis.
Likewise, it is usually thought that the same argument is being made by Davidson in ‘The Method of Truth in Metaphysics’, (1984, p. 201).
The premise must be that any possible speaker is interpretable, rather than that any actual speaker is interpretable, to preserve the modal status of the conclusion of the argument.
It is worth noting that consideration of the test of an interpretive theory is not the only way of getting to the exegetical point that, for Davidson, a radical interpreter must have true beliefs about the speaker’s environment if she is to follow the method of interpretation correctly. The same point could, for example, have been made by consideration of Davidson’s (2005, pp. 47–62), (1986, pp. 313–316), (1991b, pp. 158–160) repudiation of the Quineian idea of stimulus meaning.
Davidson, ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’, (1980, pp. 3–20).
Davidson, ‘Thought and Talk’, (1984, p. 159).
Davidson, ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’, (1980, pp. 4–5).
Manning (1995, p. 344) can be read as suggesting that it is a condition of doing radical interpretation correctly that the interpreter have true beliefs about the speaker’s environment. However, he does not explain why this is a condition of doing correct interpretation.
Davidson ‘Belief and the Basis of Meaning’ (1984, p. 154).
This is part of the passage quoted at the end of Sect. 1.
Ludwig and Lepore (2005) also suggest that Davidson does not endorse the omniscient interpreter argument, and report Davidson as saying in conversation that he wished he had never mentioned the omniscient interpreter.
Davidson ‘A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge’, (1986, p. 316).
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Acknowledgements
My thanks to Bernhard Salow, Crispin Wright, Peter Sullivan and Adrian Haddock for helpful discussion, and to two anonymous Synthese referees for comments that have greatly improved the paper. I am also grateful for a research grant from the São Paulo Research Foundation (Grant ID No. 2016/03277-1) that allowed me to complete this paper.
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Thorpe, J.R. Radical interpretation, scepticism, and the possibility of shared error. Synthese 196, 3355–3368 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1600-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1600-z