Knowledge claims and context: belief

Davis, Wayne A.

doi:10.1007/s11098-014-0309-9

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…It's open until noon.' 1 SPI, so understood, is defended in Conee (2005a, 52 f.), Douven (2007) and Davis (2004Davis ( , 2007Davis ( , 2010Davis ( , 2015. Bach (2010) "suggests, without endorsing," it.…”

Section: What Is Spi?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Skeptical pragmatic invariantism: good, but not good enough

Dinges

2015

Synthese

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In this paper, I will discuss what I will call "skeptical pragmatic invariantism" (SPI) as a potential response to the intuitions we have about scenarios such as the so-called bank cases. SPI, very roughly, is a form of epistemic invariantism that says the following: The subject in the bank cases doesn't know that the bank will be open. The knowledge ascription in the low standards case seems appropriate nevertheless because it has a true implicature. The goal of this paper is to show that SPI is mistaken. In particular, I will show that SPI is incompatible with reasonable assumptions about how we are aware of the presence of implicatures. Such objections are not new, but extant formulations are wanting for reasons I will point out below. One may worry that refuting SPI is not a worthwhile project given that this view is an implausible minority position anyway. To respond, I will argue that, contrary to common opinion, other familiar objections to SPI fail and, thus, that SPI is a promising position to begin with.

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Section: What Is Spi?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But this does not mean that one's epistemic position could not be better.) 24 See Conee (2005b, p. 66) and Davis (2007, p. 436;2015) for the idea of separating the account of our reactions to skeptical arguments and the account of the bank case intuitions. 25 See Sosa (1999, p. 148) for a fallacy that might be involved in skeptical arguments.…”

Section: Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

Skeptical pragmatic invariantism: good, but not good enough

Dinges

2015

Synthese

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“…Interestingly, it is worth pointing out that the fictionalist can also account for what is going on when speakers “stick with” their utterances (even after having been presented with skeptical arguments), which, as many commentators have pointed out, tends to happen from time to time (cf. Cohen 2000b; Hawthorne 2000; Davis 2007, 2015). What they are sticking with is what they asserted (what they used a sentence of the form “S knows p” to convey), not what they said (what the sentence that they used expresses).…”

Section: Applying Fictionalist Arguments In Epistemologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Could Knowledge-Talk Be Largely Non-Literal?

Chung¹

2017

Episteme

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Much work in epistemology, old and new, is devoted to explaining – or explaining away – the appeal of skeptical arguments (that is, arguments designed to impugn most, if not all, of our claims to know), as well as the fact that it also often seems as if we use knowledge-attributing sentences to express truths. More recently, philosophers have sought to explain other kinds of variability in our use of knowledge-attributing sentences besides, such as the kinds of variability that occur as a result of changing what is at stake or the salience of alternative possibilities, as in scenarios such as Keith DeRose's “bank cases.” These cases, and others like them, pose a dilemma very much like that posed by skeptical arguments. For they appear to suggest that we are wrong about something. Either we speak falsely when we attribute knowledge in the situations under consideration, or we speak falsely when we deny it. Or so it would seem. This paper argues that an alternative approach to explaining the relevant variability in our use of knowledge-attributing sentences – namely, a fictionalist one – merits serious consideration.

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“…as a surprise that similar objections beset strict or sceptical pragmatic invariantisms (SPI), revealing a parallel commitment to IPT. Here, I air sample objections against Davis (2004Davis ( , 2007Davis ( , 2015, one of the main proponents of SPI. 45 SPI is the view that most of our ordinary knowledge claims are false.…”

Section: Against Strict Pragmatic Invariantismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The semantic strategy: Epistemic contextualists 2 and relativists 3 argue that 'know-that' is semantically context-sensitive: the truth-value of knowledge sentences -declarative sentences of roughly the form 'S knows that p' and 'S doesn't know that p' -depends on epistemologically relevant factors, such as interests, purposes, stakes, and the salience of error possibilities, at the context of use (contextualism) or at the context of assessment (relativism). 4 Strict Pragmatic Invariantism (SPI) comprises theses (S), (P), and (I); its proponents include Davis (2004Davis ( , 2007Davis ( , 2015 and Schaffer (2004b). 8 To keep the discussion focused, the primary target in this paper will be MPI -specifically, the versions defended by Brown, Hazlett, and Rysiew.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge, Pragmatics, and Error

Kindermann

2016

Grazer Philos Stud

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ABSTRACT. 'Know-that', like so many natural language expressions, exhibits patterns of use that provide evidence for its context-sensitivity. A popular family of views -call it pragmatic invariantism -attempts to explain the shifty patterns by appeal to a pragmatic thesis: while the semantic meaning of 'know-that' is stable across all contexts of use, sentences of the form 'S knows [doesn't know] that p' can be used to communicate a pragmatic content that depends on the context of use. In this paper, I argue that pragmatic invariantism makes inaccurate predictions for a wide range of well-known use data and is committed to attributing systematic pragmatic error to ordinary speakers. But pragmatic error is unprecedented, and it is doubtful that speakers are systematically wrong about what they intend to communicate.

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Knowledge claims and context: belief

Cited by 9 publications

References 69 publications

Skeptical pragmatic invariantism: good, but not good enough

Skeptical pragmatic invariantism: good, but not good enough

Could Knowledge-Talk Be Largely Non-Literal?

Knowledge, Pragmatics, and Error

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