The Case for Contextualism: Knowledge, Skepticism, and Context, Vol
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The Case for Contextualism: Knowledge, Skepticism, and Context, Vol. 1 Draft of 10/18/08 Keith DeRose [email protected] Chapter 1: Contextualism, Invariantism, Skepticism, and 1 What Goes On in Ordinary Conversation Chapter 2: The Ordinary Language Basis for Contextualism 50 Chapter 3: Assertion, Knowledge, and Context 87 Chapter 4: Single Scoreboard Semantics 138 Chapter 5: “Bamboozled by Our Own Words”: Semantic 165 Blindness and Some Objections to Contextualism Chapter 6: Now You Know It, Now You Don’t: 201 Intellectualism, Contextualism, and Subject-Sensitive Invariantism Chapter 7: Knowledge, Assertion and Action: Contextualism 246 vs. Subject-Sensitive Invariantism References 302 Acknowledgements vii Chapter 1: Contextualism, Invariantism, Skepticism, and 1 What Goes On in Ordinary Conversation 1. Contextualism and the Old Bank Cases 1 2. Cases Involving Speakers in Different Conversations Talking About the Same 4 Subject 3. Contextualism and Invariantism 7 4. “Strength of Epistemic Position,” Comparative Conditionals, and Generic 8 Contextualism 5. Semantic Mechanism? 10 6. Which Claims to Take Seriously and the “Floor” of “Know(s)” 15 7. Is This Epistemology or Philosophy of Language? 20 8. Contextualism Regarding Other Epistemic Terms 22 9. Contextualism is Not a Thesis about the Structure of Knowledge or of Justification 23 10. “Subject” Vs. “Attributor” Contextualism 24 11. Intellectualism and the Distinction between “Classical” and “Subject-Sensitive” 26 Invariantism 12. A Brief History of Contextualism 28 13. Contextualism, Invariantism, and Relevant Alternatives 32 14. Against Contextualist Versions of RA That Tie the Content of Knowledge 37 Attributing Claim Directly to What the Range of Relevant Alternatives Is 15. Against Contrastivism 41 16. The Contextualist Approach to Skepticism and to What Goes on in Ordinary 44 Conversation 17. Relativism, Fervent Invariantism, and the Plan for this Volume 47 -ii- Contents and Acknowledgements Chapter 2: The Ordinary Language Basis for Contextualism 50 1. The Main Argument for Contextualism 50 2. Mutually Reinforcing Strands of Evidence 52 3. Truth/Falsity Asymmetry 54 4. The Best Cases: Standards Appropriate to Practical Context 56 5. The Best Cases: Cases Involving No Dispute, No Reversals, and No Exceedingly 59 High, “Philosophical” Standards 6. Problems with First-Person Cases 62 7. Third-Person Cases 65 8. The Importance of Arguments from Ordinary Language 69 Appendix. Similar Arguments for Other Contextualisms: But I Still Don’t Know Who 73 Hong Oak Yun Is! Chapter 3: Assertion, Knowledge, and Context 87 1. The Classical Invariantist’s Warranted Assertability Objection 88 2. The Myth of Jank Fraction: A Cautionary Tale 90 3. Lame WAMs and the Warranted Assertability Objection to Contextualism 92 4. The Generality Objection 97 5. The Knowledge Account of Assertion 100 6. The Knowledge Account of Assertion Contextualized 106 7. Assertability and Knowledge: Getting the Connection Right 109 8. The Argument from Variable Assertability Conditions 114 9. An Argument for Contextualism? 115 10. The Generality Objection Defeated 117 -iii- Contents and Acknowledgements 11. Check the Negations! 120 Appendix: Rysiew’s and Unger’s Invariantist Accounts 125 Chapter 4: Single Scoreboard Semantics 138 1. Contextualism and Philosophical Debates over Skepticism 138 2. Contextualism and Disagreement 139 3. The Type of Debate Addressed Here 142 4. Multiple, Personal Scoreboards 144 5. Single Scoreboard Semantics 145 6. Higher Standards Prevail, So the Skeptic Wins 147 7. Does It Matter if the Skeptic “Wins”? 149 8. Veto Power 150 9. Reasonableness Views: Pure Reasonableness and “Binding Arbitration” 152 10. The Exploding Scoreboard 154 11. The “Gap” View 155 12. One-Way Disputes and the Asymmetrical Gap View 160 13. The Asymmetrical Gap View Applied to Relations between Earlier and Later 161 Claims Made During the Same Two-Way Dispute 14. Is There a Good Objection to Contextualism to be Found in Its Inability to Handle 162 Cases of Disagreement? Chapter 5: “Bamboozled by Our Own Words”: Semantic 165 Blindness and Some Objections to Contextualism 1. Methodology, Straightforward Data, and Objections to Contextualism Based on 165 -iv- Contents and Acknowledgements Fancier Features of Ordinary Usage 2. The Objection from Judgments of Comparative Content 167 3. “Semantic Blindness”: Get Used to It! 171 4. The Objection from Metalinguistic Claims 172 5. Hawthorne and Belief Reports 174 6. “Know(s)” and “Tall”: A Better Objection Involving Belief Reports 180 7. “Know(s)” and “Tall”: Some Speech Reports 184 8. “Know(s)” and “Tall”: “I Never Said That!” 184 9. “Know(s)” and “Tall”: Summary 187 10. Schiffer’s Attack on Contextualist Solutions to Skepticism: Being “Bamboozled by 188 Our Own Words” Appendix: An Objection to Contextualism from a (Relative) Lack of Clarifying Devices 193 for “Know(s)”? Chapter 6: Now You Know It, Now You Don’t: 201 Intellectualism, Contextualism, and Subject-Sensitive Invariantism 1. Intellectualism, SSI, and Contextualism 201 2. The Problem with Denying Intellectualism 205 3. Stakes and Confidence Levels 206 4. “Now You Know It, Now You Don’t” Problems 210 5. KAA to the Rescue? 213 6. Does SSI Have Good Company in its Misery? 214 7. Contextualism and the Advantages of Intellectualism 215 8. Contextextualism and Simple “Now You Know It, Now You Don’t” Sentences: The 216 -v- Contents and Acknowledgements Apparent Problem and Two Unsatisfying Contextualist Responses 9. Why Contextextualism Does Not Endorse the Simple “Now You Know It, Now You 221 Don’t” Sentences 10. The Fortified Objection: “What I Said” 224 11. Elusive Knowledge? 230 12. Lewis and Semantic Ascent 233 13. The Fallacy of Semantic Descent 236 14. Dretske and the Fallacy of Semantic Descent? 241 Chapter 7: Knowledge, Assertion and Action: Contextualism 246 vs. Subject-Sensitive Invariantism 1. Contextualism, SSI, and First-Person Cases 246 2. Third-Person Cases that Vindicate Contextualism 250 3. The Projection Defense 254 4. Other Third-Person Cases: A Big, Ugly Tie? 259 5. Some Uses of “Know(s)” in Evaluating, Explaining, and Predicting Actions and 262 Assertions 6. Hawthorne’s Charges that Contextualism Breaks the Connections that Knowledge 264 Bears to Assertion and to Practical Reasoning 7. Contextualism and Some Strange Sentences Concerning Knowledge and 265 Assertability 8. Contextualism and Hawthorne’s Strange Sentence Concerning Knowledge and 273 Practical Reasoning 9. Can the Contextualist Claim that Knowledge Is the Norm of Assertion? 280 10. Principles Connecting Knowledge with Action 285 11. Multi-Tasking and the Case of the Walking Talker 293 -vi- Contents and Acknowledgements 12. Contextualism’s Advantage over SSI in Accounting for Uses of “Know(s)” Made in 296 Connection with Evaluations, Predictions, and Explanations of Actions 13. The Need for the Flexibility Contextualism Posits 300 References 302 Acknowledgements I have been intermittently obsessing over the issues covered in this book since my second year of graduate school. (In fact, though I haven’t checked this, I suspect that I composed some of the sentences in this book over 20 years ago, as bits of my grad school papers were incorporated into my dissertation, then into early papers, and now into this book.) During that long time, I have greatly benefited from many discussions – in person, by e-mail, sometimes on-line at philosophical weblogs, and even occasionally by old-fashioned mail – with many excellent philosophers. I know I am forgetting many, but I thank all those who have helped me with these ideas, including the following people, whose kind help I do recall right now: Bob Adams, Kent Bach, Matt Benton, Michael Bergmann, Paul Boghossian, David Braun, Jessica Brown, Tony Brueckner, Stewart Cohen, Earl Conee, Troy Cross, Rachel DeRose, Keith Donnellan, Delia Graff Fara, Richard Feldman, Graeme Forbes, Alvin Goldman, Richard Grandy, John Greco, John Hawthorne, Richard Heck, Chris Hitchcock, Thomas Hofweber, Larry Horn, Michael Huemer, Ernie Lepore, David Lewis, Peter Ludlow, Bill Lycan, John MacFarlane, Michael McGlone, Matt McGrath, Ruth Millikan, Jennifer Nagel, Ram Neta, Michael Nelson, Duncan Pritchard, Patrick Rysiew, Jonathan Schaffer, Stephen Schiffer, Ernie Sosa, Robert Stalnaker, Steve Stich, Zoltan Szabo, Ted Warfield, Brian Weatherson, and Timothy Williamson. I also thank the audiences at and the organizers of the following events where I gave talks in which I floated some of the ideas that appear here: the 1997 International Colloquium on Cognitive Science in San Sebastian, Spain; the 20th World Congress of Philosophy in Boston, Massachusetts; the Fifth Annual Franklin & Marshall College Symposium in Metaphysics and Epistemology; the 1999 Spindel Conference at the University of Memphis; the 2002 Rocky Mountain Student Philosophy Conference at the University of Colorado at Boulder; the 2002 "Contextualism in Epistemology and Beyond" conference at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; the 2003 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Colloquium; the 2004 conference on "Epistemological Contextualism" at the University of Stirling; the 2005 Rutgers Epistemology Conference; and colloquia for the philosophy departments at Tulane University; Temple University; University of Connecticut, Storrs; University of California, Los Angeles; C.U.N.Y. Graduate Center; Fordham University; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; University of Virginia, Charlottesville; Rice University;