The Variability of Know(s)-that Judgments

The usage evidence—various scenarios that realistically depict where and when we attribute knowledge to ourselves and others—shows that all the alternatives (epistemic contextualism, subject-sensitive invariantism, knowledge relativism) to intellectual invariantism fail. They fail for several reasons: When cases are compared, speaker-hearers tend to retract one or the other conflicting knowledge claim; the intuitions elicited by various cases don’t consistently satisfy any particular position; the situations under which speaker-hearers retract knowledge claims under pressure seem to support an invariantist position. Nevertheless, no standard invariantist position seems supported by the usage data because speaker-hearers do seem to shift because of differences either in the interests of the agents to whom knowledge is attributed, for example, oneself, or because of other apparently non-epistemic reasons. Attempts to use pragmatic tools, such as implicatures, to handle the apparent shifts in knowledge standards are shown to fail as well.

Kuhn the Contextualist?

According to Kuhn’s account of the nature of scientific paradigms, how one experiences the world varies drastically from one context to another depending on the accepted paradigm of the context in question. In other words, one’s pre-existing conceptual structure concerning the world not only acts as an epistemological framework for its possible understanding, but also fundamentally affects the phenomenological observations of the world as something; this latter function of the conceptual structure motivates the view that mature scientific paradigms/theories and the data of scientific observation/experimentation are essentially two sides of the same coin. What is interesting, then, is that even between different historical eras that generally regarded the world in clearly incompatible ways, albeit still informed by paradigms, Kuhn still attributes scientific knowledge to each. To make sense of this, the explanatory resources of epistemological contextualism are used to specify potentially one way in which epistemic standards for knowledge must change between different historical eras for one to justifiably claim scientific knowledge within these different contexts. As we shall see, the argument for Kuhn’s account of paradigm being contextualist in character is apparently best made through the notion of doubt-driven context-shifts as actualising change in the form of P between different contexts in which “S knows that P” is asserted. As such, this paper first explores Kuhn’s account of scientific knowledge and paradigms before considering how the account can be considered contextualist in nature. Moreover, other context-concerned systems, such as Traditional, and Subject-Sensitive Invariantism, are briefly investigated to substantiate claims of what cannot be accurately ascribed to Kuhn’s epistemology.

Who Wants to Know?

This chapter argues that professional inquirers, including professional philosophers, are subject to special epistemic obligations which require them to meet higher standards than those that are required for knowing. Perhaps the most obvious examples come from the experimental sciences, where professionals are required to employ rigorous methodological procedures to reduce the risk of error and bias; procedures such as double-blinding are obligatory in many experimental contexts, but no parallel bias-reducing measures are generally expected in ordinary epistemic activity. To expect such would, in fact, be over-demanding. I argue that this variation in epistemic requirements cannot be accounted for adequately via the usual standard-shifting accounts of knowledge, such as contextualism or subject-sensitive invariantism. Instead, it calls for a more pluralistic approach—it suggests that knowledge is simply not the only epistemic state worthy of philosophical attention.

SUBJECT-SENSITIVE INVARIANTISM, HIGH-STAKES/LOW-STAKES CASES, AND PRESUPPOSITION SUSPENSION

ABSTRACTIt is a familiar criticism of Subject-Sensitive Invariantism that the view makes incorrect predictions about cases in which the attributor of knowledge is in a high-stakes situation and the subject of the attribution in a low-stakes situation. In a recent paper in this journal, Brian Kim has argued that the mentioned type of case should be ignored, since the relevant knowledge ascriptions are inappropriate in virtue of violating an epistemic norm of presupposing. I show, pace Kim, that the mentioned utterances do not carry factivity presuppositions. To this end I discuss a phenomenon known as presupposition suspension, which is widely associated with the presuppositions of epistemic factives such as know that p or discover that p. I argue further that the problem of unknown presuppositions discussed by Kim can be circumvented by slightly amending the cases at hand. In particular, I demonstrate that factivity presuppositions are unobjectionable in problem cases in which the high-stakes ascriber knows the presuppositions at issue to be true.

Contextualism in Epistemology

In epistemology, contextualism is the view that the truth-conditions of knowledge claims vary with the contexts in which those claims are made. This article surveys the main arguments for contextualism, describes a variety of different approaches to developing the view, and discusses how contextualism has been used to treat the problem of radical skepticism. Many different objections to contextualism have appeared since the view first achieved prominence. This article explores and responds to a range of objections to contextualism, focusing particularly those arising from aspects of the linguistic behavior of the word “know” and its cognates. Finally, several alternatives to contextualism are described, including: traditional invariantism, contextualism’s original opponent; subject-sensitive invariantism, which emerged as a way of accommodating the primary data that motivates contextualism within an invariantist framework; and relativism, a new competitor according to which the truth-conditions of knowledge claims vary not with the context in which they are made, but the context in which they are assessed.

Knowledge across Contexts. A Problem for Subject-Sensitive Invariantism

The possibility of knowledge attributions across contexts (where attributor and subject find themselves in different epistemic contexts) can create serious problems for certain views of knowledge. Amongst such views is subject-sensitive invariantism—the view that knowledge is determined not only by epistemic factors (belief, truth, evidence, etc.), but also by non-epistemic factors (practical interests, etc.). I argue that subject-sensitive invariantism either runs into a contradiction or has to make very implausible assumptions. The problem has been very much neglected but is so serious that one should look for alternative accounts of knowledge.

IN DEFENSE OF SUBJECT-SENSITIVE INVARIANTISM

ABSTRACTKeith DeRose has argued that the two main problems facing subject-sensitive invariantism (SSI) come from the appropriateness of certain third-person denials of knowledge and the inappropriateness of now you know it, now you don't claims. I argue that proponents of SSI can adequately address both problems. First, I argue that the debate between contextualism and SSI has failed to account for an important pragmatic feature of third-person denials of knowledge. Appealing to these pragmatic features, I show that straightforward third-person denials are inappropriate in the relevant cases. And while there are certain denials that are appropriate, they pose no problems for SSI. Next, I offer an explanation, compatible with SSI, of the oddity of now you know it, now you don't claims. To conclude, I discuss the intuitiveness of purism, whose rejection is the source of many problems for SSI. I propose to explain away the intuitiveness of purism as a side-effect of the narrow focus of previous epistemological inquiries.

Contextualism and Testimony

It has recently been argued that Subject-Sensitive Invariantism conflicts with an attractive testimonial principle of transmission. One might think, given the differences between Subject-Sensitive Invariantism and Contextualism, the latter would not be susceptible to related objections. I argue however that some testimonial principles with much intuitive appeal give us a related though different reason to reject Contextualism. In short, while some argue that Subject-Sensitive Invariantism seems to sometimes make testimonial knowledge too easy to come by, I argue that Contextualism seems to often make testimonial knowledge too hard to come by. Contextualism then does not enjoy an advantage over Subject-Sensitive Invariantism when it comes to capturing the transmissive role of knowledge.

Knowledge and Social Roles: A Virtue Approach

Attributor contextualism and subject-sensitive invariantism both suggest ways in which our concept of knowledge depends on a context. Both offer approaches that incorporate traditionally non-epistemic elements into our standards for knowledge. But neither can account for the fact that the social role of a subject affects the standards that the subject must meet in order to warrant a knowledge attribution. I illustrate the dependence of the standards for knowledge on the social roles of the knower with three types of examples–focusing on knowledge attribution, action, and a mix of the two–and show why neither attributor contextualism nor subject-sensitive invariantism can explain them. I then suggest that subject-sensitive invariantism should be supplemented with insights from virtue epistemology so that it can explain the dependence of the standards of knowledge on social roles. This supplementation of subject-sensitive invariantism helps to solve a persistent problem facing that theory: the case of knowledge attributions made by those in high-stakes contexts about subjects in low-stakes contexts.