Abstract
The standard contextualist solution to the skeptical paradox is intended to provide a way to retain epistemic closure while avoiding the excessive modesty of radical skepticism and the immodesty of Moorean dogmatism. However, contextualism’s opponents charge that its solution suffers from epistemic immodesty comparable to Moorean dogmatism. According to the standard contextualist solution, all contexts where an agent knows some ordinary proposition to be true are contexts where she also knows that the skeptical hypotheses are false. It has been hoped that contrastivist theories of knowledge can mirror the contextualist solution while avoiding this epistemic immodesty. I review the main problems for contrastive closure and argue that none of the arguments currently in the literature pose an insurmountable problem for the contrastivist solution. However, I argue that contrastivist theories of knowledge, like their contextualist rivals, are indeed committed to epistemic immodesty.
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Notes
See Schaffer (2007, p. 238), Dretske (2004, pp. 181–185). One important point on which Dretske and Schaffer differ is that Dretske thinks the immodesty of contextualism arises as a result of the contextualist’s commitment to epistemic closure principles, whereas for Schaffer it is their commitment to a binary view of knowledge and binary closure principles.
How this talk of lack of reasons and evidence should be understood by contrastivists will be made clear below.
Schaffer (2007, p. 238).
Blaauw (2008, p. 227). Schaffer and others put it in terms of different contrast propositions. Really this distinction is unimportant. Either we can think of the contrast clause in a knowledge claim expressing a set of propositions that the agent must rule out, or we can think the contrast clause expresses a disjunction of propositions, and the agent must be in a position to rule out the disjunction. Either way, the proposals come to the same thing.
See Sinnott-Armstrong (2008) for a discussion of ways to be a contrastivist, not just about epistemic reasons or justifications, but also about moral reasons, explanations, etc.… Also, I would like to thank an anonymous referee for pushing me to clarify the contrastive notion of evidence. This has helped to make the main objection below much clearer.
The interpretation of the skeptical premises is explained in Kelp (2011, p. 288).
Kvanvig (2008, p. 248).
See Schaffer (2007, pp. 243–246) for a more detailed presentation of the principles. Also, I have simplified the presentation slightly. Statements in brackets represent my simplified paraphrase of Schaffer’s formal presentation. The paraphrase is intended to allow for easier translations between Kvanvig and Schaffer’s proposals.
Schaffer puts the closure principles in terms of an agent’s evidential position, and not knowledge, in order to avoid counter-examples to epistemic closure where an agent’s beliefs aren’t closed under deduction, or counter-examples based on a lack of logical omniscience. The idea is that, if the contrastive knowledge ascription is true, then the agent’s evidential position is such that the agent could expand her knowledge via deduction. Obviously, agents regularly choose not to so deduce, or are unaware that they can.
Kvanvig (2007, p. 136).
Before arriving at his proposal, Kvanvig considers several alternative ways one might try to revise the closure principles to allow for the replacement of the contrast proposition. I won’t review them here as it would take us too far away from our central purposes. I refer the interested reader to other possibilities to Kvanvig (2008).
See Kelp (2011, p. 290) for his presentation of the argument.
Kvanvig (2008, p. 253).
Kelp (2011, p. 291).
Kelp (2011, p. 292).
Kvanvig’s solution doesn’t face these problems because he isn’t forced to go in for the context-sensitivity of that-clauses. Nonetheless, we will have to consider later on whether or not the context sensitivity of that-clauses might provide a more plausible way around the objection I shall pose below.
Schaffer (2007, p. 247).
This clause is only added to block counterexamples where the agent hasn’t performed the deduction, or lacks the relevant belief.
See my discussion above on pp. 10–11, and Kelp (2011).
See above p. 9.
References
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Dretske, F. (2004). Externalism and modest contextualism. Erkenntnis, 61, 173–186.
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Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank Patrick Greenough, Casey Johnson, Michael Lynch, Jeremy Wyatt, and an anonymous referee.
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Hughes, M. Problems for contrastive closure: resolved and regained. Philos Stud 163, 577–590 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9832-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9832-0