The status of the knowledge iteration principles in the account provided by Lewis in “Elusive Knowledge” is disputed. By distinguishing carefully between what in the account describes the contribution of the attributor’s context and what describes the contribution of the subject’s situation, we can resolve this dispute in favour of Holliday’s (2015) claim that the iteration principles are rendered invalid. However, that is not the end of the story. For Lewis’s account still predicts that counterexamples to the negative iteration principle (
 $$\lnot Kp\rightarrow K\lnot Kp$$
 ) come out as elusive: such counterexamples can occur only in possibilities which the attributors of knowledge are ignoring. This consequence is more defensible than it might look at first sight.

background

Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions

Lewis on iterated knowledge

This paper brings together two lines of thought. The first is the broadly contextualist idea that what is takes to satisfy central epistemic concepts such as the concept of knowledge or that of objectively justified belief may vary with the stakes faced in settings or contexts. Attributions of knowledge, for example, certify an agent to those who might treat them as a source on which to rely. Henderson and Horgan write of gate-keeping for an epistemic community. The second line of thought turns on the idea that such central epistemic concepts are keyed to the conformity with epistemic norms for the fitting fixation of belief—and that the epistemic norms function in important ways as social norms by which folk regulate their epistemic lives as members of communities of interdependent agents. The two lines of thought are practically made for one another! I develop the connections and show how the results both vindicate and reinforce a form of contextualist epistemology, but refine and limit the range of contextual variation one should envision.

The place of non-epistemic matters in epistemology: norms and regulation in various communities

The present paper defines two versions of contextualism about "know": "normal-indexical" contextualism, and "monster-indexical" contextualism. We argue that the former yields counterintuitive results, while the latter entails the rejection of the factivity of knowledge. We conclude that neither of them can properly account for the notion of knowledge.

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00556242/document

Contextualism and the Factivity of Knowledge

Justification logics are constructive analogues of modal logics. As such, they provide perspicuous models of those modalities that have inherently constructive character, such as intuitionistic mathematical provability or the knowledge operator of evidentialist epistemology. In this dissertation, I examine a variety of positions in epistemology, along with their associated ontological commitments, and develop various classical and non-classical justification logics that are suitable for use as models of these positions. New Directions in Justification Logic

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New Directions in Justification Logic

On the assumption that there are no objective normative facts, what is the best theory of normative language? I try to answer this question. Chapter 1 argues for a presumption against noncognitivism and explains why error-theories are of limited interest: they concern adverbs and adjectives like ‘moral’, but not words like ‘ought’, ‘good’ and ‘reason’. This narrows down the options: the best subjectivist theory of normative language is a truth conditional, non-error-theoretic account. Chapter 2 argues for contextualism about normative statements. Contextualists hold that their truth conditions (can) vary with the context of utterance. Chapter 3 starts the assessment of contextualist theories. It looks into Humean accounts. Problems are revealed with both Harman’s and Schroeder’s versions. Chapter 4 develops a form of indexical relativism according to which the truth of normative statements depends on contextually salient rules. I present imperative-based analyses of ‘ought’ and ‘reason’ and show how they can explain why ‘A ought to X’ entails that the balance of reasons favours that A X-es. Chapter 5 further develops the theory of chapter 4 and applies it to the words ‘good’ and ‘must’. It turns out to be hard to analyse ‘good’. It also emerges that ‘must’ and ‘ought’ cannot be given different truth conditions. Chapter 6 explains Stephen Finlay’s end-relational theory. On this account, normative statements concern the relation in which acts or objects stand to contextually salient ends. In the case of ‘ought’ and ‘good’, this relation is one of probability raising. Chapter 7 discusses and answers some familiar objections to Finlay’s view. Chapter 8 raises some new problems, related to the fact that normative judgments are often made in the light of several ends. Chapter 9 explains why the end-relational theory is nonetheless the best subjectivist theory of normative language.

Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions

Citations

Lewis on iterated knowledge

The place of non-epistemic matters in epistemology: norms and regulation in various communities

Contextualism and the Factivity of Knowledge

New Directions in Justification Logic

Subjectivist theories of normative language

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