Contextualism and the Skeptic: Comments on Engel |
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Authors: | Gilbert Scharifi |
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Institution: | (1) Philosophische Fakultät I Philosophisches Institut, Universität des Saarlandes, Postfach 151150, 66041 Saarbrücken, Germany |
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Abstract: | Mylan Engel s paper (2004) is divided into two parts: a negative part, criticizing the costs of contextualism and a constructive part proposing a noncontextualist resolution of the skeptical problem. I will only address the constructive part here. The constructive part is composed of three elements: (i) a reconstruction or reformulation of the original skeptical argument, which draws on the notion of epistemic possibility (e-possibility), (ii) a distinction between two senses of knowledge (and two corresponding kinds of e-possibility): fallibilistic and infallibilistic, and (iii) an argument which tries to hoist the skeptic by their own petard, namely the closure principle (CP). As I will argue, there are two ways to understand Engel s anti-skeptical argument. Only in one interpretation does the argument depend on the proposed reconstruction of the skeptical argument in terms of e-possibility. But this version of the argument is unsound. More importantly, the skeptic has a strong prima facie objection at her disposal, which applies to both interpretations of the argument. If this objection is valid, Engel s argument does not hold. But once it is invalidated, his argument is superfluous. |
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