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Brains and Barns : the Role of Context in Epistemic Attribution University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-2005 Brains and barns : the role of context in epistemic attribution. Julie M. Petty University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Petty, Julie M., "Brains and barns : the role of context in epistemic attribution." (2005). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2387. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2387 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BRAINS AND BARNS: THE ROLE OF CONTEXT IN EPISTEMIC ATTRIBUTION A Dissertation Presented by JULIE M. PETTY Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2005 Department of Philosophy © Copyright by Julie M. Petty 2005 All Rights Reserved BRAINS AND BARNS: THE ROLE OF CONTEXT IN EPISTEMIC ATTRIBUTION A Dissertation Presented by JULIE M. PETTY Approved as to style and content by: *7 Fred Feldman, Chair '7 Edmund L. Gettier, Member r> - Phillip Bricker, Department Head Philosophy ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Fred Feldman, for the many, many years of excellent philosophical instruction and for his caring and personal support of my efforts to complete my doctorate. I also thank my committee members - Ed Gettier, Jonathan Schaffer, and Angelika Kratzer — for their time and their contributions to this work. I thank my fellow graduate students for their helpful comments along the way. I thank my parents, my brother, and my husband for their encouragement, hopefulness, and patience during the course of this long and difficult endeavor. Finally, I thank my daughter, Blanche; she’s great at napping. i IV ABSTRACT BRAINS AND BARNS: THE ROLE OF CONTEXT IN EPISTEMIC ATTRIBUTION FEBRUARY 2005 JULIE M. PETTY, B.A., RANDOLPH-MACON WOMAN”S COLLEGE Ph.D, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Fred Feldman The topic of the dissertation is this: How well does contextualism, in general, fare as an epistemic theory? And the answer comes in three parts: The Root of The Skeptical Problem : I argue that the source of the skeptical problem is neither the underdetermination principle nor the closure principle. Instead, I claim that it is a change in context that generates the problem in the first place. Though I make no explicit argument in favor of contextualism as a solution to skeptical problems, the chapter amounts to a de facto defense of the contextualist solution to skeptical problems. capacity to The Problem with Gettier: I consider criticisms of contextualism’ s resolve a wide range of resolve Gettier cases. As it stands, Lewis’ contextualism can’t Similarity, as a Gettier cases. However, I offer a new rule, the Rule of Special though replacement rule for Lewis’ Rule of Resemblance. I then show how the new rule, Gettier problem. not problem-free, can do a much better job of resolving the problems; it can. Contextualism, then, needn’t fail because it can’t solve Gettier one that The Wavs of Context: One goal is to get a clear map of the territory, incorporated into the theory matters underscores the fact that precisely how context is v epistemically. Another is to make the point that contextualism - the claim that context plays an essential semantic role in knowledge ascriptions - is not just one particular view, but a family of similar views. Also, I offer a new kind of contextualism that avoids many of the substantial criticisms aimed at the others in the family. Though the primary aim of the dissertation is a defense in three parts of the contextualist approach I general, a view emerges from the dissertation. I call the view condexicalism, and the dissertation is, secondarily, a development and defense of that view. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ... v CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ... 1 2. THE ROOT OF THE SKEPTICAL PROBLEM .11 3. THE PROBLEM WITH GETTIER .50 4. THE WAYS OF CONTEXT .86 5. LOOSE ENDS 141 BIBLIOGRAPHY 157 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Descartes, in Meditations on First Philosophy, introduced something like the following argument: (51) I don't know that I am not being deceived (about having hands) by an evil demon. (52) If I don't know that I am not being deceived (about having hands) by an evil demon, then I don't know that I have hands. (53) Therefore, I don't know that I have hands. The argument above is a typical version of an argument a skeptic might offer in trying to establish that we can never know any ordinary propositions. Intuitively, ordinary propositions are those like that my car is in the lot but not ones like that all bachelors , are unmarried men or that I am here now. In the skeptic's argument, SI seems true; if , none of my evidence rules out the possibility that I'm being deceived by an evil demon, then how could I possibly know that I'm not being so deceived? This premise relies on the idea that knowledge is infallible. If we know P, then our evidence eliminates all possibilities in which not P. S2 seems true. If for all I know I am being deceived by an evil demon, then for all I know the demon may be deceiving me into thinking that I have form of the closure hands when I do not. Many think this premise is an instance of some principle. One form of the closure principle is: If S knows P and S knows P implies Q, -- then S knows Q. The skeptic's argument is deeply plausible. Yet the conclusion, S3 false. along with the skepticism that shortly follows - is widely rejected and pretty clearly to be that SI, S2, and the denial At first glance, the problem of skepticism appears inconsistent. But this isn't all of S3 are each widely held to be true, yet they appear to be well-known response would have there is to the problem. Otherwise, G. E. Moore's 1 sufficed to solve it. The Moorean solution — that we are more certain that the conclusion is false than we are that either of the premises is true - requires that we sacrifice either the infallibility of knowledge or knowledge's closure under implication. Part of the problem, then, is that we want to avoid skepticism, but we don't want to do so at the expense of knowledge's infallibility or its closure under implication. One nod toward a solution is that there are two senses of the word 'know' - an ordinary sense and a philosophical sense. In everyday discourse we use the word's ordinary sense, and the sort of whole-scale skepticism described above is false. But when we do philosophy, we use the word's strict and philosophical sense, and some very limited "philosophical skepticism" is actually true. In some strict and philosophical sense, we do not know any ordinary propositions. But what reasons are there for accepting that 'know' is ambiguous? And what further explanations can be given for these two senses of the word? A more complete statement of the problem is needed: How can we maintain that knowledge (even in its everyday sense) is infallible and closed under implication, yet skepticism (of the serious variety) is false? In addition to offering an account of knowledge that resolves the problem of skepticism, the mark of a successful solution will be that it offers some theoretical explanation of the appeal of the skeptic's argument in the first place (see DeRose 3 and Cohen 1988, 93-94). Though any reasonable solution will imply that skepticism is false, the successful solution may well allow for (and provide a defense for) a very limited sort of philosophical skepticism. Finally, the account of knowledge that provides a successful solution to the problem of skepticism must not in 2 offering a solution open itself to other defeating objections, such as a failure to solve the Gettier problem or lottery problems. David Lewis offers a solution to the problem of skepticism in which he claims that sentences such as I know I have hands are true in some contexts and false in others. It is the appeal to context that is the key to solving the problem of skepticism. In "Elusive Knowledge", Lewis proposes the following definition of knowledge: S knows that P iff S's evidence eliminates every possibility in which not-P —Psst! except for those possibilities we are properly ignoring (Lewis 554*). Notice that this definition does not contain the word 'context'. But it is context, via a set of rules, that determines which possibilities are properly ignored. The application of the rules to the context yields the set of possibilities that are epistemically relevant in that context. And it is this set of possibilities against which S's evidence is compared in that context. Lewis’ epistemology, then, is contextualist. Understanding the consequences of Lewis’ brand of contextualism—in particular its response to the skeptical problem — requires determining which possibilities may, and which may not, be properly ignored according to the account. Lewis’ rules of relevance divide into two types: those that prohibit a possibility from being ignored, and those that allow -defeasibly - a possibility to be ignored. The Rule of Actuality, for example, is of the former kind; it says that the possibility that actually obtains may never properly be ignored (Lewis 554).
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