Epistemic Contrastivism, Knowledge and Practical Reasoning

I offer a critical treatment of the contrastivist response to the problem of radical scepticism. In particular, I argue that if contrastivism is understood along externalist lines then it is unnecessary; while if it is understood along internalist lines then it is intellectually dissatisfying. Moreover, I claim that a closer examination of the conditions under which it is appropriate to claim knowledge reveals that we can accommodate many of the intuitions appealed to by contrastivists without having to opt for this particular brand of epistemological revisionism.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (2014): 533-555.

Social Epistemology, 2008

General contrastivism holds that all claims of reasons are relative to contrast classes. This approach applies to explanation (reasons why things happen), moral philosophy (reasons for action), and epistemology (reasons for belief), and it illuminates moral dilemmas, free will, and the grue paradox. In epistemology, contrast classes point toward an account of justified belief that is compatible with reliabilism and other externalisms. Contrast classes also provide a model for Pyrrhonian scepticism based on suspending belief about which contrast class is relevant. This view contrasts with contextualism, invariantism, and Schaffer's contrastivism.

Springer eBooks, 2018

Knowing the Facts: a Contrastivist Account of the Referential Opacity of Knowledge Attributions  'I know' is supposed to express a relation, not between me and the sense of a proposition (like 'I believe') but between me and a fact. (Wittgenstein, On Certainty, § 90) Ordinary speakers of English, but also philosophers acting in their professional capacity, often describe agents as 'knowing the facts of the matter', characterise the outcome of our epistemic dealings with the world as 'knowledge of facts', and refer to what has successfully been established by inquiry as the 'known facts'. By using these and other such phrases, they seem to imply that knowledge is, at least in some cases, a relation to facts. However, in epistemological circles the type of knowledge that is canonically ascribed to agents by issuing statements of the form 'S knows that p' goes under the label of 'propositional knowledge'. And, although the qualifier 'propositional' is sometimes used rather innocently as just a way to register the form of such knowledge attributions, the view that propositional knowledge is a relation to propositions is currently taken for granted by many epistemologists. This may be due to the circumstance that the idea that knowledge (from now on I will omit the qualifier 'propositional') is a species of belief has largely survived the demise of the traditional analysis that equates it to justified true belief. For belief is standardly assumed to be a propositional attitude, i.e., a relation to propositions; and if knowledge is just an especially valuable

Acta Analytica

In this paper, I defend epistemological contrastivism-the view that propositional knowledge is a three-place, contrastive relation between an agent, a proposition (or fact) and a contrast term-against two a priori arguments recently offered by Mikkel Gerken for the conclusion that intuitive judgements exhibiting a contrast effect on knowledge ascriptions are false positives. I show that the epistemic argument for false positives begs the question against contrastivism by assuming the independently implausible claim that knowledge of a contrastive proposition always presupposes knowledge of a related ordinary proposition. This claim is apparently also presupposed by the doxastic argument for false positives, the conclusion of which, I argue, is not only perfectly compatible with epistemological contrastivism but also heavily dependent on a (questionable) de dicto construal of the relevant knowledge ascriptions.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2006

In this paper I examine the way appeals to pretheoretic intuition are used to support epistemological theses in general and the thesis of epistemic contextualism in particular. After outlining the sceptical puzzle and the contextualist's resolution of that puzzle, I explore the question of whether this solution fits better with our intuitive take on the puzzle than its invariantist rivals. I distinguish two kinds of fit a theory might have with pretheoretic intuitions–accommodation and explanation, and consider whether achieving either kind of fit would be a virtue for a theory. I then examine how contextualism could best claim to accommodate and explain our intuitions, building the best case that 1 can for contextualism, but concluding that there is no reason to accept contextualism either in the way it accommodates nor the way it explains our intuitions about the sceptical puzzle.

Synthese

We constantly assess each other's epistemic positions. We attempt to distinguish valuable from worthless information, reliable from unreliable informants, etc. Without established social practices of epistemic evaluations we could not navigate the flood of information we are exposed to every day in order to perform essential selections of valiable information. Yet the way we epistemically evaluate each other, ascribe or deny knowledge, who we deem knowledgeable or ignorant, and whom we refer to as an expert or a layman also crucially shape our epistemic milieu and the structure of our society. Epistemic asymmetry often results in and reflects social asymmetry; higher epistemic appraisal often increases social standing. Also, epistemic evaluations such as knowledge ascriptions are commonly performed against the background of certain epistemic and non-epistemic (e.g., practical) concerns and interests. Consequently, epistemic and non-epistemic factors interact in guiding our epistemic practice. To advance our understanding of how they do so is not only a worthwhile project from an epistemological point of view but can be expected to have repercussions on decision making, in debates within political and social theory as well as within ethics, and help us understand and evaluate how we act and even how to act. Moreover, it might shed light on the perennial question of how theoretical and practical rationality relate to one another. A much-discussed question in recent debates on knowledge ascriptions is the question of whether-and if so, how-epistemic standards (standards of how much it takes to count as knowing or as a knower) are influenced by, and/or contextually vary with, non-epistemic factors such as stakes, interests, aims, etc., and whether this in turn affects the truth-conditions of knowledge ascriptions or only their assertibility (or sayability) conditions. This has been a main point of contention between contextualists, invariantists and relativists (of various brands) concerning knowledge acsriptions (cf.,

2019

In the recent epistemological debate over the rationality of justification of epistemic claims, there is much attempt to justify human claims to knowledge by determining the extent of the role played by either reason or sense experience. This is in furtherance of widening the scope of justification of knowledge arising from the problem surrounding the rationality of knowledge right from the Socratic and Platonic period in ancient philosophy. This is given that there is a big gulf in the claims to knowledge and the evidence justifying such epistemic claims. For instance, Plato's traditional conception of knowledge of 'Justify True Belief' (JTB) popularly conceived and known as a 'tripartite condition of knowledge'; is an attempt to justify the rationality underlying true or justified epistemic claims in epistemology. On several grounds, this Platonic conception of knowledge had been questioned. For example, Edmund Gettier, an epistemologist, in his own challenge, ...

Philosophical Quarterly

The editors and contributors for this excellent and timely volume have provided a great service to epistemology. Over the last thirty years or so, epistemology has taken somewhat of a "linguistic turn." This is perhaps most clearly seen in the development of views like contextualism, contrastivism, and the ambiguity theory of 'know', all of which seek to explain certain persistent