Contextualism, Safety and Epistemic Relevance

The paper discusses approaches to "Epistemic Contextualism" that model the satisfaction of the predicate 'know' in a given context C in terms of the notion of belief/fact-matching throughout a contextually specified similarity sphere of worlds that is centred on actuality. The pa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhilosophical studies Vol. 143; no. 3; pp. 383 - 394
Main Author Blome-Tillmann, Michael
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer 01.04.2009
Springer Netherlands
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Actuality
Apparent superluminal motion
Belief
Context
Contextualism
Contrafactuals
Counterexamples
Education
Epistemology
Epistemology. Philosophy of science. Theory of knowledge
Ethics
Knowledge
Logical truth
Metaphysics
Modal realism
Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Predicate
Relevant alternatives
Skepticism
Travel
Modal Space
Close World
Epistemic Position
Actual World
True Belief
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Summary:The paper discusses approaches to "Epistemic Contextualism" that model the satisfaction of the predicate 'know' in a given context C in terms of the notion of belief/fact-matching throughout a contextually specified similarity sphere of worlds that is centred on actuality. The paper offers three counterexamples to approaches of this type and argues that they lead to insurmountable difficulties. I conclude that what contextualists (and Subject-Sensitive Invariantists) have traditionally called the 'epistemic standards' of a given context C cannot be explicated in terms of a contextually specified similarity sphere that is centred on actuality. The mentioned accounts of epistemic relevance and thus the corresponding accounts of the context-sensitivity (or subject-sensitivity) of 'knows' are to be rejected.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0031-8116
1573-0883
DOI:10.1007/s11098-008-9206-4