Contextualism Flashcards
What is epistemological contextualism?
Standards of knowledge and justification vary within context.
Cf. attributor based contextualism: standards vary with context of attribution. E.g., children in garden, but Harold knows of kidnapper on loose. Knowledge for one, not the other.
How does contextualism provide a response to scepticism?
Explains knowledge in everyday situations, yet allows sceptical doubt to be taken seriously.
DeRose’s rule of sensitivity. If X asserts s knows p, standards of knowledge require s’s belief p to be sensitive, where s wouldn’t believe p if p were false. E.g. House is red - if house were another colour, wouldn’t believe it. Subjunctive conditional=close possible worlds. I.e., can still tell colour of house.
With sceptical alternatives, v. far from actually world therefore reject. But once considered in that context, we would believe p even though p is false. When entertaining sceptical alternative, s doesn’t know p.
What is the main objection to contextualism?
Charge of relativism. 1. Accept statements ‘s knows p, but evidence staying same, s doesn’t know p’
Rep: attributor based contextualism.
- Single proposition can be both true and false. Not truth, but truth from certain POV.
Rep: treat knows as indexical (cf. I or that). S in good enough epistemic position with respect to p. E.g., water in glass. Different for gardening vs scientific experiment.
Does knowledge require uniformity?
Function of knowledge to tag reliable information, but if epistemic standards constantly shifting, can’t rely on info gained.
Rep: grant some standards. Truths that hold in all contexts.
