Contextualism and Warranted Assertibility Manoeuvres

Abstract

Contextualists such as Cohen and DeRose claim that the truth conditions of knowledge attributions vary contextually, in particular that the strength of epistemic position required for one to be truly ascribed knowledge depends on features of the attributor's context. Contextualists support their view by appeal to our intuitions about when it's correct (or incorrect) to ascribe knowledge. Someone might argue that some of these intuitions merely reflect when it is conversationally appropriate to ascribe knowledge, not when knowledge is truly ascribed, and so try to accommodate these intuitions even on an invariantist view. DeRose (Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, 1998; Philosophical Review, 2002) argues that any such 'warranted assertibility manoeuvre', or 'WAM', against contextualism is unlikely to succeed. Here, I argue that his objections to a WAM against contextualism are not persuasive and offer a pragmatic account of the data about ascriptions of knowledge.KEY WORDS: Cohen, Contextualism, DeRose, warranted assertibility manoeuvres Contextualists such as Cohen and DeRose claim that the truth conditions of knowledge attributions vary contextually, in particular that the strength of epistemic position required for one to be truly ascribed knowledge depends on features of the attributor's context ('attributor factors').

Knowledge, Pragmatics, and Error

“…17 Brown (2006) and Rysiew (2007) in places liken knowledge claims to cases of what Kent Bach calls 'implicitures' (Bach, 1994). The differences between Gricean conversational implicatures and Bachian implicitures won't matter to the features of implicatures I discuss here.…”

“…10 See also Cohen's airport case (Cohen, 1999, 58) 11 Reservations about the empirical generalizability of such judgments aside (see footnote 1), we may still qualify these reported responses on behalf of MPI: Hazlett (2009) Lutz (2014) and Pritchard (2010) cast doubt on the widespread acceptability judgment concerning the knowledge denial in case B and only see the need to account for ordinary speakers' rejection of knowledge attributions ('I know it'll be open') in case B. However, even Hazlett (2009) and Lutz (2014) along with Brown (2006) and Rysiew (2001) (but not Pritchard (2010) offer pragmatic accounts of knowledge denials in cases like B, so I will take my target here to be the version of MPI that accounts for acceptable knowledge denials in case B.…”

“…By SP-Insensitivity, speakers can't distinguish between what's literally expressed and what is pragmatically meant by an assertion of P1. They take what 33 Hazlett (2009) and Pritchard (2010) also also argue that the pragmatics adds to moderate invariantism's rejection of scepticism, while Brown (2006), Lutz (2014) and Locke (forthcoming) do not explicitly argue for MPI's potential to address sceptical worries. As I point out below, there are good reasons to think that if MPI applies to non-sceptical ordinary knowledge claims, it applies to sceptical ones as well.…”

Two Purposes of Knowledge-Attribution and the Contextualism Debate

“…The best moderate invariantist account available is due to Brown (2006) and Rysiew (2007), who base their accounts on the maxim of relation ("be relevant"). The claim is that knowledge-attributions, when made in certain sorts of cases (precisely the ones at issue), pragmatically impart or "implicate" propositions about the knower having sufficient grounds for P. The account is roughly as follows (here we focus on agent-evaluation).…”

Surveys, intuitions, knowledge attributions

“…8 S&K (Section 6.3) anticipate an attempt to explain the results in the 'context' case in terms of conversational pragmatics, one that's styled afterRysiew (2001) andBrown (2006). While they think the imagined view represents ''an interesting and plausible strategy'', they register two objections to it: it cannot explain why we would deny certain claims, they think, and it fails the cancelability test Brown (2006). andRysiew (2001Rysiew ( , 2005, Section 3; 2007b, Section 4) have responded to just these worries about their views.…”