Contextualists in epistemology maintain that the conditions for the correct application of epistemic terms like ‘know’ vary from context to context. Contextualists may disagree about whose context, and which features of that context, are relevant, but they typically agree that in some contexts the standards for knowledge are low enough to underwrite the truth of everyday knowledge claims, while in other (skeptical) contexts we may not be able to truly claim to know anything. Contextualism thus explains both why we find skeptical arguments compelling when faced with them and why we so easily go back to our everyday knowledge-attributions afterward.

background

Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions

Contextualism in Epistemology

People who defend “pragmatic encroachment” about knowledge generally advocate two ideas: (1) you can rationally act according to what you know; (2) knowledge is harder to achieve when more is at stake. In their chapter in this volume, Charity Anderson and John Hawthorne argue that these two ideas may not fit together so well. This chapter extends Anderson and Hawthorne’s argument. By applying some standard decision theory, we can calculate a precise quantity of “how much is at stake” that does fit together with knowledge and action. While this calculated quantity matches intuitions about how much is at stake in certain standard cases, in others it does not.Keywords

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How Much is at Stake for the Pragmatic Encroacher

This paper argues for a solution to a problem that contrastivism faces. The problem is that contrastivism cannot preserve closure, in spite of claims to the contrary by its defenders. The problem i...

Contrastivism and Closure

Knowledge closure is the claim that, if an agent S knows P, recognizes that P implies Q, and believes Q because it is implied by P, then S knows Q. Closure is a pivotal epistemological principle that is widely endorsed by contemporary epistemologists. Against Knowledge Closure is the first book-length treatment of the issue and the most sustained argument for closure failure to date. Unlike most prior arguments for closure failure, Marc Alspector-Kelly's critique of closure does not presuppose any particular epistemological theory; his argument is, instead, intuitively compelling and applicable to a wide variety of epistemological views. His discussion ranges over much of the epistemological landscape, including skepticism, warrant, transmission and transmission failure, fallibilism, sensitivity, safety, evidentialism, reliabilism, contextualism, entitlement, circularity and bootstrapping, justification, and justification closure. As a result, the volume will be of interest to any epistemologist or student of epistemology and related subjects.

Against Knowledge Closure

The preface paradox does not show that it can be rational to have inconsistent beliefs, because preface writers do not have inconsistent beliefs. I argue, first, that a fully satisfactory solution to the preface paradox would have it that the preface writer's beliefs are consistent. The case here is on basic intuitive grounds, not the consequence of a theory of rationality or of belief. Second, I point out that there is an independently motivated theory of belief – sensitivism – which allows such a solution. I sketch a sensitivist account of the preface writer's (consistent) doxastic state.

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Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions

Citations

Contextualism in Epistemology

How Much is at Stake for the Pragmatic Encroacher

Contrastivism and Closure

Against Knowledge Closure

Preface Writers are Consistent

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