"Contextualism vs. Knowledge as a Natural Kind"

2005

2.

The Philosophical Quarterly, 2013

John Greco has recently raised two worries for epistemic contextualism, viz it deprives epistemology of its subject matter and renders objective knowledge impossible. He argues that these problems are not restricted to contextualism, but apply to rival theories, like subject sensitive invariantism, and that they are overstated. I develop Greco’s worries, which show that contextualism suggests either that there is no such thing as knowledge, or a weird view of knowledge: as disparately varied and undisciplined, individual-dependent and arbitrary. I then argue that these issues are not overstated and that they can be avoided if one opts for moderate insensitive invariantism.

2005

Many philosophers hold some verion of the doctrine of "basic knowledge". According to this doctrine, it's possible for S to know that p, even if S doesn't know the source of her knowledge that p to be reliable or trustworthy. Stewart Cohen has recently argued that this doctrine confronts the problem of easy knowledge. I defend basic knowledge against this criticism, by providing a contextualist solution to the problem of easy knowledge.

2008

Epistemic contextualism—the view that the content of the predicate ‘know’ can change with the context of utterance—has fallen into considerable disrepute recently. Many theorists have raised doubts as to whether ‘know’ is context-sensitive, typically basing their arguments on data suggesting that ‘know’ behaves semantically and syntactically in a way quite different from recognised indexicals such as ‘I’ and ‘here’ or ‘flat’ and ‘empty’. This paper takes a closer look at three pertinent objections of this kind, viz. at what I call the Error-Theory Objection, the Gradability Objection and the Clarification-Technique Objection. The paper concludes that none of these objections can provide decisive evidence against contextualism.

My aim in this paper is to motivate and defend a version of epistemic contextualism; a version, that is, of what came to be called attributor or ascriber contextualism. I will begin by outlining, in the first part, what I take to be the basic idea of and motivation behind the version of epistemic contextualism that I favor. In the second part, a couple of examples will be presented in order to illustrate the contextualist point. Since epistemic (ascriber) contextualists commonly claim that knowledge ascriptions are context-sensitive, the third part of the paper will be concerned with the phenomenon of context-sensitivity at a more general level. A more detailed inquiry into the context-sensitivity natural language expressions exhibit will prove helpful in order to counter the objection that postulating context-sensitivity in the case of knowledge ascriptions is an ad-hoc-maneuver. Given that epistemic contextualism is partly an epistemological thesis, party a linguistic thesis, the remainder of the paper will be devoted to the question of how to semantically model the kind of context-sensitivity exhibited by knowledge ascriptions. The upshot will be that there are two different ways of semantically accommodating the context-sensitivity at issue. Both call for a more or less drastic departure from epistemological and semantic orthodoxy.

Jaster, R. (2013), "Contextualism and Gradability". In: T. Spitzley, M. Hoeltje & W. Spohn (Hgg.), GAP.8 Proceedings: 313-323.

Abstract: Epistemic Contextualism is the claim that the knowledge predicate is contextsensitive. Jason Stanley objects against this view that if it were correct, “know” should be gradable in the same way as for instance 'tall' and 'flat'. I show that the contextualist is not committed to the gradability of the knowledge predicate in the first place. I will distinguish between what I will call pure threshold predicates, which in each context either apply simpliciter or not at all, and impure threshold predicates, for which context determines whether they apply simpliciter, but which can also be satisfied to certain degrees. Pure threshold predicates are not gradable, but since many of them are contextsensitive, a lack of gradability does not in itself jeopardize contextsensitivity. Pace Stanley, three claims are going to be established: that the lack of gradability of the knowledge predicate (i) does not jeopardize its contextsensitivity, (ii) does not dismantle the relevant analogies between “know” and gradable adjectives, and (iii) is perfectly consistent with the idea of varyingly high epistemic standards.

Dialogue, 2016

The possibility of knowledge attributions across contexts (where attributor and subject find themselves in different epistemic contexts) can create serious problems for certain views of knowledge. Amongst such views is subject-sensitive invariantism—the view that knowledge is determined not only by epistemic factors (belief, truth, evidence, etc.), but also by non-epistemic factors (practical interests, etc.). I argue that subject-sensitive invariantism either runs into a contradiction or has to make very implausible assumptions. The problem has been very much neglected but is so serious that one should look for alternative accounts of knowledge.

2009

Jason Stanley has argued recently that Epistemic Contextualism (EC) and Subject-Sensitive Invariantism (SSI) are explanatorily on a par with regard to certain data arising from modal and temporal embeddings of 'knowledge'-ascriptions. This paper argues against Stanley that EC has a clear advantage over SSI in the discussed field and introduces a new type of linguistic datum strongly suggesting the falsity of SSI.

Philosophical Inquiries 3:2 https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v3i2.89

In “Elusive Knowledge” (1996), David Lewis advocates epistemic contextualism on the basis of an analysis of the nature of knowledge. For Lewis, the context-sensitivity of 'knowledge' depends on the fact that ‘knowledge that p’ implies the elimination of all the possibilities in which ‘~p’. But since 'all' is context-sensitive, 'knowledge' is also context-sensitive. In contrast to Lewis, in Knowledge and Practical Interests (2005), Jason Stanley argues that since all context-sensitive expressions can have different interpretations within the same discourse, contextualists cannot consistently embrace the following two claims: (i) 'knowledge' functions like a quantifier and (ii) distinct occurrences of 'knowledge' within the same discourse must be associated with the same standard. In response to Stanley, I argue that (i) and (ii) are both true. More specifically, I argue that with the help of global domains, we can overcome Stanley’s objections to Lewis and, accordingly, provide the linguistic basis that epistemic contextualism needs.

Philosophical Studies, 2000

The paper I gave at the conference has subsequently split into two papers. The other descendant of the original paper (Stanley (forthcoming)) focuses on developing a noncontextualist account of knowledge that captures the intuitive data as well as contextualism. Discussion with the participants at the conference at the University of Massachusetts was very helpful. I should single out John Hawthorne and my commentator Barbara Partee for special mention; e-mails with Stewart Cohen since then have also been invaluable. I am also indebted for discussion to Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies Contextualism in epistemology is the doctrine that the proposition expressed by a knowledge attribution relative to a context is determined in part by the standards of justification salient in that context. The (non-skeptical) contextualist allows that in some context c, a speaker may truly attribute knowledge at a time of a proposition p to Hannah, despite her possession of only weak inductive evidence for the truth of that proposition. Relative to another context, someone may make the very same knowledge attribution to Hannah, yet be speaking falsely, because the epistemic standards in that context are higher. The reason this is possible, according to the contextualist, is that the two knowledge attributions express different propositions.