Jessica Brown contends that Keith DeRose's latest argument for contextualism fails to rule out contextualism's chief rival, namely, classic invariantism. Still, even if their position has not been ruled out, classic invariantists must offer considerations in favour of their position if they are to show that it is superior to contextualism. Brown defends classic invariantism with a warranted assertability manœuvre that utilizes a linguistic pragmatic principle of relevance. I argue, however, that this manœuvre is not as effective as it might be. I propose a different warranted assertability manœuvre, which utilizes a pragmatic principle of strength, affords a more successful defence of classic invariantism, and helps to establish that classic invariantism is superior to contextualism.

Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions

Classic invariantism, relevance and warranted assertability manœvres

Geo-historical context, or GHC, is a contextual setting based on the interconnectedness of phenomena, events, and place across multiple spatial and temporal scales. GHC allows for situations to be understood and reasoned with, often with aid of visual representations such as maps. This paper introduces a conceptual model of GHC that theoretically motivates a Geovisual Analytics application called the Context Discovery Application (CDA), which is also presented. The CDA is designed to aid in the production of geo-historical context by using computational processes to identify and extract potentially relevant context information from heterogeneous, implicit situation information. This information can then be explored through visual interfaces to help users explain and understand the information. A hypothetical humanitarian context analysis case study is used to show how the CDA can be applied to real world problems.

background

Producing Geo-historical Context from Implicit Sources: A Geovisual Analytics Approach

/pdf/mindreading-in-gettier-cases-and-skeptical-pressure-cases-3cxppmgw98.pdf

Mindreading in Gettier Cases and Skeptical Pressure Cases

From Epistemic expressivism to epistemic inferentialism

©  Ralph Wedgwood <www.philosophersimprint.org//> I   , I shall defend a version of epistemological contextualism. Unlike almost all versions of epistemological contextualism that philosophers have defended so far, my version will be a contextualist account of terms like ‘justified belief’, rather than of terms like ‘knowledge’. So, according to this version of contextualism, traditional epistemologists were wrong to assume that there is a unique standard of justified belief. On the contrary, there are many dierent standards of justified belief; and it is the context in which we utter a sentence involving the term ‘justified belief’ that determines which of these many standards is relevant to the truth-value of the sentence in that context. The general idea of contextualism about ‘justified belief’ is not completely new: it has clearly been endorsed by Stewart Cohen (, ). However, my version of contextualism incorporates many new elements. First, in Sections  and  of this paper, I oer a new argument for contextualism about justified belief, grounded in considerations about the nature of belief. Secondly, in Section , I provide a new account of the exact role that the many dierent standards of justified belief play in the thinking of a rational believer. Thirdly, in Section , I give a new account of the linguistic features of contexts that determine which of these standards of justified belief is relevant to the truth-value of sentences involving terms like ‘justified belief’. Finally, I dier from other contextualists in my assessment of why contextualism is an important truth for epistemology. The other contextualists have argued that the chief importance of contextualism lies in the way in which it helps to defuse the threat of scepticism, even while it preserves the “closure” of knowledge under known entailment. As I shall argue in Section , however, it is doubtful whether contextualism can help to defuse the threat of scepticism. In Section , I shall explain why, although contextualism does indeed preserve “single-premise closure”, it does not

Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions

Citations

Classic invariantism, relevance and warranted assertability manœvres

Producing Geo-historical Context from Implicit Sources: A Geovisual Analytics Approach

Mindreading in Gettier Cases and Skeptical Pressure Cases

From Epistemic expressivism to epistemic inferentialism

Contextualism about Justified Belief

Related Papers (5)

Knowledge and lotteries

Knowledge and Practical Interests

Contextualism, skepticism, and the structure of reasons

Solving the Skeptical Problem

Knowledge and Its Limits