Triangulating with an Envatted Brain
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15173/jhap.v16i2.5695Abstract
During a conversation about skepticism at a closed 1986 Stanford Conference, Donald Davidson remarks that an envatted brain might correctly be interpreted as talking about the world outside its vat, to which it could have access via an “indirect causal chain.” In this paper, I examine this puzzling suggestion in the context of Davidson’s theory of triangulation, which would seem to preclude the interpreter being a mediate cause in the chain stemming from objects to the subject of interpretation. By prying apart a range of scenarios that the conference participants discuss, I distinguish Davidson’s antiskeptical argument from others in the semantic externalist family to which it belongs, and argue that his approach to language and mind may provide particular consolation to a person made anxious by the threat of solipsism.
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