Doxastic Skepticism

In “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge,” Donald Davidson offers an attempt to refute skepticism, an attempt that is an expansion of the dense argument in part 1 of “The Method of Truth in Metaphysics” for the claim that “massive error about the world is simply unintelligible.”’ To help in his attack, he presses into service tightly interrelated theories about belief and meaning. In particular, he relies on the claim that ideal interpreters, who are fully informed and charitable, must attribute to a speaker what are by their lights largely true beliefs. I argue that this assumption is false, as is his claim to have disarmed skepticism. In fact, 1 shall argue, he only manages to lay the ground for a kind of skepticism that is even worse than the traditional sort. I call it Doxastic Skepticism