The Dizzying Turn of Epistemic Contextualism

The debate concerning epistemic contextualism represents a kind of linguistic turn in epistemology, where the focus has shifted from theorising about knowledge to theorising about knowledge attributions. Such a shift may well prove valuable, but only if we are clear on what the relationship is between a semantic analysis of knowledge attributions and a philosophical analysis of knowledge. One plausible approach is to claim that the semantic analysis entails and is entailed by the philosophical analysis. Yet this view—referred to here as the default view—has been explicitly adopted by few in the contextualism debate. This paper considers a form of argument in favour of the default view, and then considers the challenges that arise from either accepting or rejecting the default view.     

Pragmatic Contextualism

Contextualism in epistemology has traditionally been understood as the view that “know” functions semantically like an indexical term, encoding different contents in contexts with different epistemic standards. But the indexical hypothesis about “know” faces a range of objections. This article explores an alternative version of contextualism on which “know” is a semantically stable term, and the truth‐conditional variability in knowledge claims is a matter of pragmatic enrichment. The central idea is that in contexts with stringent epistemic standards, knowledge claims are narrowed: “know” is used in such contexts to make assertions about particularly demanding types of knowledge. The resulting picture captures all of the intuitive data that motivate contextualism while sidestepping the controversial linguistic thesis at its heart. After developing the view, the article shows in detail how it avoids one influential linguistic objection to traditional contextualism concerning indirect speech reports, and then answers an objection concerning the unavailability of certain types of clarification speeches.     

Abstract concepts,compositionality, and the contextualism-invariantism debate

Invariantists argue that the notion of concept in psychology should be reserved for knowledge that is retrieved in a context-insensitive manner. Contextualists argue that concepts are to be understood in terms of context-sensitive ad hoc constructions. I review the central empirical evidence for and against both views and show that their conclusions are based on a common mischaracterization of both theories. When the difference between contextualism and invariantism is properly understood, it becomes apparent that the way the question of stability is currently investigated will not lead to a consensus. Instead of focusing directly on stability, we should turn our attention to other desiderata on a theory of concepts. In particular, I show that invariantism, but not contextualism, fails to account for compositionality and abstract concepts.     

Epistemic Contextualism,Semantic Blindness and Content Unawareness

It is held by many philosophers that it is a consequence of epistemic contextualism that speakers are typically semantically blind, that is, typically unaware of the propositions semantically expressed by knowledge attributions. In his ‘Contextualism, Invariantism and Semantic Blindness’ (this journal, 2009), Martin Montminy argues that semantic blindness is widespread in language, and not restricted to knowledge attributions, so it should not be considered problematic. I will argue that Montminy might be right about this, but that contextualists still face a serious and related problem: that it is a consequence of epistemic contextualism that subjects are typically unaware of contents conveyed by knowledge attributions, independently of whether these are semantic or non-semantic contents. Even if semantic blindness is widespread in language, it does not seem that content unawareness of this sort is.     

Toward an Ethics of Knowledge

Abstract. Modern science is one form of knowledge, demarcated by its time (modernity) and by other “knowledges.” There is a fair amount of clarity as to what does not count as scientific, but there is a twilight zone of knowledges whose scientific status is ambivalent. In this zone the encounter between science and religion takes place. The particular contribution of religion and theology in this encounter is to call for an ethics of knowledge in the epistemological endeavors of science.     

Skeptical Parasitism and the Continuity Argument

Abstract: Recent literature on skepticism has raised a nearly univocal voice in condemning skeptical argumentation on the grounds that such argumentation necessarily involves our adopting some nonordinary or unnatural perspective. Were this really so, then skeptical conclusions would not speak to us in the way in which skeptics think they do; we would be “insulated” from any such conclusions. I argue that skeptical argumentation need not rely on any nonordinary or unnatural standards. Rather, the skeptic's procedure is to offer a critique from within. Having given my argument for this claim (which I call the Continuity Argument), I consider and respond to two important objections. I conclude that the skeptic has a powerful meta‐argument to be deployed in defending the legitimacy of his skeptical conclusions against the slings and arrows of (those I call) the half‐true theorists.     

New Horizons for a Theory of Epistemic Modals

Recent debate over the semantics and pragmatics of epistemic modals has focused on intuitions about cross-contextual truth-value assessments. In this paper, we advocate a different approach to evaluating theories of epistemic modals. Our strategy focuses on judgments of the incompatibility of two different epistemic possibility claims, or two different truth value assessments of a single epistemic possibility claim. We subject the predictions of existing theories to empirical scrutiny, and argue that existing contextualist and relativist theories are unable to account for the full pattern of observed judgments. As a way of illustrating the theoretical upshot of these results, we conclude by developing a novel theory of epistemic modals that is able to predict the results.     

Knowledge does not necessarily make the heart grow fonder: The moderating role of knowledge on accessibility experiences

Accessibility experiences have been a subject of interest since Tversky and Kahneman (1973) published their account of the availability heuristic—specifically, individuals often utilize the phenomenological experience of ease or difficulty of recall in constructing a judgment (Schwarz, 1998). The reported studies contribute further to work in this area by examining the moderating role of knowledge on accessibility experiences and their use in evaluative judgments. We argue that knowledgeable individuals are more likely to experience interference effects in early stages of recall. This would result in a reversal of the usual phenomenon such that while low knowledge individuals would find recalling larger sets effortful, which would lead them to form more negative evaluations when recalling larger amounts of information, high knowledge individuals would find recalling smaller sets effortful and would form more negative evaluations when recalling smaller amounts of information. We discuss potential explanations and draw attention to the distinction between generating a response and the appropriateness of the response in accessibility experiences.     

Luck,Knowledge, and “Mere” Coincidence

There are good reasons for pursuing a theory of knowledge by way of understanding the connection between knowledge and luck. Not surprisingly, then, there has been a burgeoning of interest in “luck theories” of knowledge as well as in theories of luck in general. Unfortunately, “luck” proves to be as recalcitrant an analysandum as “knows.” While it is well worth pursuing a general theory of luck despite these difficulties, our theory of knowledge might be made more manageable if we could find a more restricted notion that captured the core phenomena of luck that are relevant to whether or not someone knows. This essay makes the attempt to delineate such a notion, called “mere coincidence.”     

Knowledge despite falsehood

I examine the claim, made by some authors, that we sometimes acquire knowledge from falsehood. I focus on two representative cases in which a subject S infers a proposition q from a false proposition p. If S knows that q, I argue, S's false belief that p is not essential to S's cognition. S's knowledge is instead due to S's belief that p′, a proposition in the neighbourhood of p that S (dispositionally) believes (and knows). S thus knows despite her false belief. The widely accepted and plausible principle that inferential knowledge requires known premises is unscathed.     

Rules for Reasoning from Knowledge and Lack of Knowledge

In this paper, the traditional view that argumentum ad ignorantiam is a logical fallacy is challenged, and lessons are drawn on how to model inferences drawn from knowledge in combination with ones drawn from lack of knowledge. Five defeasible rules for evaluating knowledge-based arguments that apply to inferences drawn under conditions of lack of knowledge are formulated. They are the veridicality rule, the consistency of knowledge rule, the closure of knowledge rule, the rule of refutation and the rule for argument from ignorance. The basic thesis of the paper is that knowledge-based arguments, including the argument from ignorance, need to be evaluated by criteria for epistemic closure and other evidential rules that are pragmatic in nature, that need to be formulated and applied differently at different stages of an investigation or discussion. The paper helps us to understand practical criteria that should be used to evaluate all arguments based on knowledge and/or ignorance.

Epistemological Contextualism and the Knowledge Account of Assertion

In this paper, I take up an argument advanced by Keith DeRose (Philosophical Review, 111:167–203, 2002) that suggests that the knowledge account of assertion provides the basis of an argument in favor of contextualism. I discuss the knowledge account as the conjunction of two theses—a thesis claiming that knowledge is sufficient to license assertion KA and one claiming that knowledge is necessary to license assertion AK. Adducing evidence from Stalnaker’s account of assertion, from conversational practice, and from arguments often raised in favor of the knowledge account, I suggest that neither the AK nor the KA theses are plausible. That is, I argue that the knowledge account of assertion to which DeRose appeals is in fact not suitable as an account of assertion. Given that DeRose’s argument stands and falls with the knowledge account, I claim that the argument therefore fails.

Children's Understanding of Behavioral Consequences of Epistemic States: A Comparison of Knowledge,Ignorance, and False Belief

The author addressed the issue of the simultaneity of false belief and knowledge understanding by investigating children's ability to predict the behavioral consequences of knowledge, ignorance, and false belief. The second aim of the study was to explore the role of counterfactuals in knowledge understanding. Ninety-nine (99) children, age 3–7 years old, completed the unexpected transfer task and a newly designed task in which a protagonist experienced 1 of the following 4 situations: knowing a fact, not knowing a fact, knowing a procedure, and not knowing a procedure. The results showed that factual ignorance was as difficult as false belief for the children, whereas the other conditions were all easier than false belief, suggesting that the well-known lag between ignorance and false belief may be partly methodologically based. The results provide support for a common underlying conceptual system for both knowing and believing, and evidence of the role of counterfactual reasoning in the development of epistemic state understanding. Methodological variations of the new task are proposed for future research.     

Indicatives at stake

Several authors have claimed that indicative conditionals are sensitive to the epistemic perspective of agents. According to this sort of view, the truth of an indicative conditional depends on the background evidence of some relevant agent or group of agents. In this paper, I argue that the context-dependence of indicative conditionals goes beyond this. Indicative conditionals are not only sensitive to the evidence of agents, but also to contextual factors that determine what is inferable from such background evidence (plus the antecedent of the conditional). More specifically, my proposal is that when the inference associated with a conditional is defeasible, the truth of that conditional is sensitive to practical stakes (in a similar way that knowledge claims are sensitive to practical stakes).     

Evaluating the multiple proposition strategy

Contextualism about many expressions faces a common objection: in some discourses it appears that there is no single interpretation which can explain how a speaker is justified in making her assertion and how a hearer with different information or standards is justified in negatively evaluating what the speaker said. According to the Multiple Proposition Strategy, contextualists may attempt to explain these competing features pragmatically in terms of different propositions in play. In this paper I argue against the Multiple Proposition Strategy, first focusing on epistemic modals and then generalising the results to other expressions. I show how when purportedly contextualist terms are embedded in belief reports, we get similar problems but that the Multiple Proposition Strategy does not provide a satisfactory explanation of such cases. I suggest, therefore, that we reject the Multiple Proposition Strategy in favour of a theory that explains the unembedded and embedded cases in similar ways.     

Physicalism and our knowledge of intrinsic properties

This paper examines recent arguments by Rae Langton and David Lewis intended to prove Humility: the thesis that we have no knowledge of the intrinsic properties of substances. I argue that at best, these arguments are internally incoherent. They at once presuppose a strong version of physicalism according to which physical science is in a position to give a complete list of the fundamental properties of reality, and at the same time various metaphysical principles which in actuality challenge the completeness of the list of properties given by science. Although these arguments are unsound, their consideration enables us to draw important conclusions regarding the tension between the metaphysician's practice of positing intrinsic properties that give colour to the world, and the scientific attempt at giving a complete account of all phenomena.     

SOSA ON EPISTEMIC CIRCULARITY AND REFLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE

Abstract: Ernest Sosa has done important work on epistemic circularity, epistemic virtue, and reflective knowledge. He holds that epistemic circularity need not be vicious and need not prevent us from knowing that our ways of forming beliefs are reliable. In this article, I briefly explore Sosa's defense of this view and raise some questions about what is required for reflective knowledge.     

儿童类别学习中知识效应的年龄差异

采用特征主题的类别学习实验范式,考察了儿童类别学习中知识效应的年龄差异。63名小学4年级学生(年龄范围9～10岁)、65名小学6年级学生(年龄范围11～12岁)和77名初中2年级学生(年龄范围13～14岁)参加了本实验。结果表明:当类别特征能够在已有知识的基础上形成主题时,3个年龄组儿童类别学习的轮次和错误数均显著下降,而且主题突出时,这种趋势更加明显;在统一主题条件下,小学4年级、小学6年级和初中2年级3个年龄组儿童类别学习的轮次和错误数依次减少;而在无主题和突出主题条件下,3个年龄组儿童类别学习的成绩无显著差异。     

A Map of Common Knowledge Logics

In order to capture the concept of common knowledge, various extensions of multi-modal epistemic logics, such as fixed-point ones and infinitary ones, have been proposed. Although we have now a good list of such proposed extensions, the relationships among them are still unclear. The purpose of this paper is to draw a map showing the relationships among them. In the propositional case, these extensions turn out to be all Kripke complete and can be comparable in a meaningful manner. F. Wolter showed that the predicate extension of the Halpern-Moses fixed-point type common knowledge logic is Kripke incomplete. However, if we go further to an infinitary extension, Kripke completeness would be recovered. Thus there is some gap in the predicate case. In drawing the map, we focus on what is happening around the gap in the predicate case. The map enables us to better understand the common knowledge logics as a whole.     

Complete Axiomatizations for Reasoning about Knowledge and Branching Time

Sound and complete axiomatizations are provided for a number of different logics involving modalities for the knowledge of multiple agents and operators for branching time, extending previous work of Halpern, van der Meyden and Vardi [to appear, SIAM Journal on Computing] for logics of knowledge and linear time. The paper considers the system constraints of synchrony, perfect recall and unique initial states, which give rise to interaction axioms. The language is based on the temporal logic CTL*, interpreted with respect to a version of the bundle semantics.