Abstract
Williamson and others have argued that contextualist theories of the semantics of ‘know’ have a special problem of accounting for our practices of ‘consuming’ knowledge attributions and denials made in other contexts. In what follows, I shall understand the objection as the idea that contextualism has a special problem of accounting for how we are able to acquire epistemically useful information from knowledge claims made in other contexts. I respond to the objection by arguing (a) that the defeasibility of knowledge makes it difficult for everyone to acquire epistemically useful information from knowledge claims made in other contexts, and (b) that there is no special problem for contextualism when it comes to acquiring epistemically useful information from knowledge claims made in other contexts.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
This paper focuses exclusively on indexical contextualism as opposed to MacFarlane’s (2009) non-indexical alternative.
In a somewhat similar spirit, Hawthorne (2004, pp. 109–111) argues that, if contextualism is true, we appear semantically blind to the shiftiness in the semantic value of ‘know’ in ways that make it “\(\ldots \)very unclear, on the one hand, how we could manage to preserve information in memory, and, on the other, how we could avoid finding ourselves with hundreds of false beliefs on account of failure to update in line with shifting standards. (2004, p. 111).
The expression ‘epistemic scorekeeping’ is borrowed from Rysiew (2012).
See Footnote 9 below for some brief remarks on how the considerations in this section apply to other semantics for ‘know’.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for helping me to improve on this and the following case.
There is an interesting question about how this kind of observation interacts with a motivation sometimes given for accepting the knowledge norm of assertion. Fricker (2007) writes: “The basic force of asserting that P to an audience is that the asserter vouches for the truth of P, she offers to her audience her word that P. Correlative with this (conventionally constituted and mutually known) import of the speech act of assertion is the fact that it is governed by the norm: one should assert P only if one knows that P.” (2007, p. 104). In this and other places Fricker (2007) seems to suggest that the knowledge norm of assertion in part is motivated by how it combines with fact that testimony is a source of knowledge. A proper view of the role of defeaters in communication may at least complicate our picture of the connection between the norm of assertion and the circumstances under which we can acquire knowledge by testimony.
How much epistemic scorekeeping improves our ability to keep track of ‘who knew what when’ depends to some extent on how often we have misleading evidence and how often epistemic scorekeeping makes a difference as to whether that misleading evidence has defeating force. While these are empirical questions, it is worth noting that misleading evidence can take many different forms and are not restricted to false testimony of the kind considered here. Misleading evidence might, for example, be evidence about the likelihood of certain events, evidence of the reliability of certain sources of information, evidence about one’s own ability to evaluate the evidence etc. It would therefore not be surprising if epistemic scorekeeping is often helpful in keeping track of ‘who knew what when’ even if MII is true.
To be more precise, Craig’s (1990) idea is that we use ‘know’ to flag reliable informants, and that we need to keep track of ‘who knows whether’ exactly because we need to keep track of who the reliable informants are. For present purposes, I will focus only on the related and Craig-inspired idea that we need to keep track of ‘who knows whether’, because we need to keep track of potential sources of knowledge.
While my discussion in this section has focused on MII, it should be clear that the above considerations apply to a number of different semantics for ‘know’. Most proponents of subject-sensitive invariantism, contextualism, contrastivism and relativism will agree that “I knows that Man U won” is true as uttered (or assessed) by me when I have read a correct match report in The Guardian. Similarly, most proponents of these different semantics will agree that when I subsequently read a match report to the contrary in The Times, I will no longer be in a position to determine whether my initial self-attribution of knowledge was true. Consequently, most proponents of these different semantics should agree that misleading evidence can complicate the retrieval of epistemically useful information from knowledge claims made in other contexts. Furthermore, most proponents of these semantics should agree that some level of epistemic scorekeeping can improve my ability to retrieve epistemically useful from knowledge claims made in other contexts. If my initial belief about Man U’s match had been based on having watched the match on TV, then keeping track of my source of information might have been helpful when reading a contrary match report in The Times.
Skeptical invariantists are, of course, an exception to this general picture. Skeptics will think that more or less any attribution of knowledge is false (including my initial self-attribution of knowledge after having read The Guardian). A skeptical invariantist who wants to maintain that our ordinary knowledge attributions and denials can serve as sources of epistemically useful information will therefore have to develop a story that does not appeal to the truth-value of our ordinary knowledge claims (e.g. a story about the pragmatics of knowledge attributions and denials). Trying to provide the details of such an account is, however, beyond the scope of the present paper. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to clarify the implications of my argument for other semantics for ‘know’.
Although the considerations in this section are not restricted to any particular semantics for ’know’, it will simplify my discussion to focus on MII. See Footnote 12 below for some brief remarks on how the considerations in this section apply to other semantics for ‘know’.
It is, of course, an empirical question exactly what the consequences are of implementing any particular strategy of this kind. Maybe carefully attending to what error-possibilities are actually salient goes along with a more general disposition to be overly attentive to error-possibilities in a way that turns any situation into a high-standards context. If so, encouraging people to do so may not be very good advice.
While my discussion above is focused on MII, it should be clear that the considerations generalize to other semantics for ‘know’. Retrieving epistemically useful information from knowledge claims made in other cases is no less demanding if subject-sensitive invariantism, relativism or contrastivism is the correct semantics for ‘know’. While it is questionable whether skeptical invariantists would want to maintain that ordinary knowledge attributions and denials are sources of epistemically useful information that we can access and make use of, similar considerations apply to skeptics who are so inclined.
Someone might suggest that there is a residual problem for contextualism when it comes to our ‘consumption’ of knowledge claims made in other contexts. In particular, it might seem that contextualism has difficulties explaining how we are able to understand and re-express the semantic content of knowledge claims made in contexts very different from our own. While MII is no better placed to explain our retrieval of epistemically useful information from knowledge claims made in other contexts, MII is at least able to explain how we are able to understand and re-express the semantic content of such claims, since the semantic content does not vary with changes in stakes and/or salient error-possibilites according to MII. It is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a full discussion of whether contextualism can satisfactorily account for our ability to understand and re-express the semantic content of knowledge claims made in other contexts. I do, however, think it is worth poiting out that for a number of context-sensitive terms we are often able to understand and re-express the semantic content of utterances made in contexts very different from our own. That is so, even when we have very little information about the context in which the initial utterance was made. See, e.g. Hawthorne (2006) for an illuminating discussion of how much cross-contextual flexibility terms such as ‘nearby’ and ‘local’ allow for. There is no reason why ‘know’ shouldn’t allow for the same kind of flexibility, and at this stage there is therefore little reason to think that our ability of understand and re-express the semantic content of knowledge claims made in other contexts poses a serious problem for contextualism.
References
Cohen, S., et al. (1999). Contextualism, skepticism, and the structure of reasons. Supplement: Philosophical Perspectives, 33(13), 57–89.
Craig, E. (1990). Knowledge and the state of nature: An essay in conceptual synthesis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DeRose, K. (1992). Contextualism and knowledge attributions. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52(4), 913–929.
DeRose, K. (2009). The case for contextualism (Vol. I). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fricker, E. (2007). Audi on testimony. In M. Timmons, J. Greco, & A. R. Mele (Eds.), Rationality and the good: Critical essays on the ethics and epistemology of Robert Audi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hawthorne, J. (2004). Knowledge and lotteries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hawthorne, J. (2006). Testing for context-dependence. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 73(2), 443–450.
MacFarlane, J. (2009). Nonindexical contextualism. Synthese, 166(2), 231–250.
Rysiew, P. (2012). Epistemic scorekeeping. In J. Brown & M. Gerken (Eds.), Knowledge ascriptions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schaffer, J. (2004). From contextualism to contrastivism. Philosophical Studies, 119, 73–103.
Williamson, T. (2005). Knowledge, context, and the agent’s point of view. In G. Preyer & G. Peter (Eds.), Contextualism in philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Simona Aimar, Lizzie Fricker, Sebastian Koehler, Harvey Lederman, Tim Williamson, and Jens Ziska for written comments and conversations about an earlier version of this paper, and participants at the 2012 European Epistemology Network meeting in Bologna for helpful discussion. A special thanks to John Hawthorne for advice, encouragement and insightful comments on several versions of the paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Moeller, E.F.L. Consuming knowledge claims across contexts. Synthese 192, 4057–4070 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0732-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0732-2