Abstract
The concept of knowledge is used to certify epistemic agents as good sources (on a certain point or subject matter) for an understood audience. Attributions of knowledge and denials of knowledge are used in a kind of epistemic gate keeping for (epistemic or practical) communities with which the attributor and interlocutors are associated. When combined with reflection on kinds of practical and epistemic communities, and their situated epistemic needs for gate keeping, this simple observation regarding the point and purpose of the concept of knowledge has rich implications. First, it gives one general reason to prefer contextualism over various forms of sensitive invariantism. Second, when gate keeping for a select community of experts or authorities, with an associated body of results on which folk generally might then draw (when gate keeping for a general source community) the contextual demands approximate those with which insensitive invariantists would be comfortable.
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Notes
It is plausible that in addition to the gate-keeping purpose focused on here, there is a kind of crediting purpose. One who independently knows that p, may credit others with having gotten to the same result in a way that made them fitting sources for their respective communities.
It is sometimes said that contextualists hold that ‘knows’ is indexical. I resist saddling all contextualists with this commitment. Consider Cohen’s caution: “according to contextualism, ‘knows’ … is context-sensitive in ways analogous to indexical terms” (Cohen 2005, p. 202). Compare Schaffer (2004), Stalnacker (2004), and Greco (2008).
However the pithy “rules out” locution seems inappropriately to suggest a kind of epistemic certitude.
It is just at such cases that the sensitive invariant commonly have recourse to pragmatics—distinguishing between what is correct to say and what is true.
Concepts such as that of rationality, and of subjective justification, would seem more attuned to the subjects interests—and whether the subject is epistemically situated to distinguish between the alternatives that salient and relevant to the subject.
The problem I point to here is closely associated with problems that sensitive invariantists have dealt with concerning the treatment of high attributor stakes/low subject stakes cases.
Source-community attestations to an applied community take two forms. First, the attributor may be certifying that the agent in question counts as knowing within the source community—with its high, general purpose, standards—soon to be discussed. Alternatively, the attributor may be translating the source community epistemic situation into knowledge claims that would be fitting given the epistemic gate keeping demands for the applied community audience.
Albert Casullo, Matthew McGrath, and John Greco worry that my account may make for a form of skepticism. Andrew Newman worries that the present formulation would make for problems for the autonomy of the various sciences—for the kinds of sensible standards that disciplines individually develop. The present point should help. Still, my present formulations may need further qualification.
Kitcher (1993) portrays the cycles of training in, and informed evolution of, such standards (see also Henderson & Horgan [forthcoming] on “suitable modulational control”).
Williamson (2005b) raises related concerns regarding contextualism in connection with testimony.
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Henderson, D. Motivated contextualism. Philos Stud 142, 119–131 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9306-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9306-1