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.     

Anti-Skepticism Under a Linguistic Guise

In this paper I consider the plausibility of developing anti-skepticism by framing the question in linguistic terms: instead of asking whether we know, we ask what falls within the extension of the word “know”. I first trace two previous attempts to develop anti-skepticism in this way, from Austin (particularly as presented by Kaplan) and from epistemic contextualism, and I present reasons to think that both approaches are unsuccessful. I then focus on a recently popular attempt to develop anti-skepticism from the “function-first” approach associated with Craig, which I also show to be problematic. I then argue that the apparent prima facie plausibility of fighting skepticism on linguistic grounds is due to a methodological spill-over from linguistics. Once we recognize this, it becomes clear that the skepticism debate should not be conducted in linguistic terms.