Abstract
Epistemic contextualism holds that the content of a knowledge sentence of the form ‘S knows that P’ is context sensitive. This view respects the context sensitivity of ordinary speakers’ use of knowledge sentences. But this context sensitivity can be accommodated equally well by relativism, which holds that the content of a knowledge sentence is the same in every context, but the truth-value of this content depends on context-sensitive epistemic standards. Relativists argue that their view should be preferred to contextualism, because it respects what we may call the intuition of disagreement: ordinary speakers take themselves to be disagreeing with speakers in contexts where different epistemic standards prevail. In this paper, I distinguish between two forms of relativism, and show that neither can provide a better account of disagreement than contextualism. Disagreement thus does not supply a reason to favor the relativist’s revisionist semantics over contextualism.
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Notes
- 1.
I will remain neutral about what epistemic standards consist in. Contextual variations in epistemic standards may be identified with variations in the alternatives the subject must rule out, or with the set of possible worlds in which the subject must track the truth, or with some other epistemic requirement. Furthermore, I will remain neutral between the following two contextualist accounts: an indexicalist view that holds that the predicate ‘know’ is context sensitive and designates a binary relation (between a person and a proposition) corresponding to different epistemic standards in different contexts; and an account according to which ‘know’ designates a ternary relation between a subject, a proposition and (context-sensitive) epistemic standards.
- 2.
However, as I argue in my Montminy (2013), there are good reasons to reject the single scoreboard view. See also DeRose (2009, pp. 148–152), for a proposal about how to deal with cases in which a speaker says, ‘S knows that P,’ and another speaker in a later context disputes the first speaker’s claim. Although I do not have the room to discuss this proposal here, I should mention that many of my objections against the single scoreboard view also apply to it.
- 3.
DeRose (2005) makes the same point.
- 4.
I will say more about how contextualists can deal with this issue in Sect. 3.7.
- 5.
However, unlike MacFarlane, I will talk of the truth of an acceptance rather than its accuracy. This terminological difference will not affect the points made here.
- 6.
Moderate relativism is the view that MacFarlane (2009) calls nonindexical contextualism.
- 7.
MacFarlane (2007, p. 22) makes the same point.
- 8.
On this view, the propositional content expressed by an utterance of ‘It’s raining’ does not contain a location: the location is rather included in the circumstances of evaluation.
- 9.
Roughly, centered propositions have truth-values relative to a world and a center, that is, an agent and time. So the centered proposition that I am in New York is true at a world/time/agent triple < w, t, i > just in case i is in New York at t in w.
- 10.
Or consider agents in two different worlds (or the same agent in actual and counterfactual situations) respectively believing that P and believing that not-P. It seems that these agents are not in disagreement, since their beliefs concern different worlds. See MacFarlane (2007, p. 23) for the same point. However, Cappelen and Hawthorne (2009, pp. 63–66) dispute this intuition.
- 11.
Note that disagreement can also occur between two speakers if they do not give the same credence to a certain proposition, say, if one is extremely confident that P and the other merely thinks that it is likely that P.
- 12.
Kölbel’s view is a form of moderate relativism.
- 13.
Beebe (2010, p. 706) for a similar account. Note that this account talks about the acceptance (rejection) of sentences rather than propositions.
- 14.
Perhaps Judge thinks Sam is wrong to employ low standards, and this is where their disagreement is located. This suggestion, which strikes me as plausible, will be discussed further in Sect. 3.7.
- 15.
It should be clear from this passage that MacFarlane defends a radical relativist account of judgments of taste such as ‘Skiing is fun.’
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
Consider, for example, invariantists who favor what DeRose calls a warranted assertability maneuver. On this view, speakers often do not use ‘S knows that P’ literally. According to WAMs, what a speaker means in uttering ‘S knows that P’ may differ from what ‘S knows that P’ conventionally means. In some contexts, one may use ‘know’ to convey stronger (or weaker) epistemic standards than what ‘know’ conventionally requires. Hence, on this view, there is a possibility that you and I are not in disagreement if I say, ‘We know that natural selection is the driving force of evolution’ and you say, ‘We don’t know that natural selection is the driving force of evolution,’ for one of us may not be speaking literally.
- 19.
What epistemic standards is G.E. Moore invoking when he claims to ‘know’ that he has hands? He is typically assumed to adopt low epistemic standards, but BonJour (2010, p. 78) holds that Moore claims to meet the skeptic’s high standards. This interpretive issue is, it seems to me, far from easy to resolve.
- 20.
To be accurate, contextualism does not hold that ‘know’ has multiple senses. According to the indexicalist view (see Footnote 1), ‘know’ has an invariant character, but a context-sensitive content. And on an alternative contextualist account, ‘know’ designates the same relation in every context; however, this relation involves context-sensitive epistemic standards.
- 21.
I am grateful to Sherri Irvin for useful comments on an earlier version of this article.
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Montminy, M. (2014). Knowledge and Disagreement. In: Lihoreau, F., Rebuschi, M. (eds) Epistemology, Context, and Formalism. Synthese Library, vol 369. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02943-6_3
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