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Epistemological Contextualism: A Semantic Perspective

  • Conference paper
Modeling and Using Context (CONTEXT 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3554))

Abstract

According to epistemological contextualism, a sentence of the form “S knows that p” doesn’t express a complete proposition. Different utterances of the sentence, in different contexts, can express different propositions: “know” is context-dependent. This paper deals with the semantic contextualist thesis grounding epistemological contextualism. We examine various kinds of linguistic context dependence, which could be relevant to epistemological contextualism: ambiguity, ellipsis, indexicality, context-sensitivity of scalar predicates, dependence on standards of precision. We argue that only an accurate analysis of the different varieties of context sensitivity secures us a better understanding and a clearer evaluation of the contextualist approach.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Philosophy, Palazzo Borromeo, University San Raffaele, I-20031, Cesano Maderno, (MI), Italy

    Claudia Bianchi

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Genova, via Balbi 4, I-16126, Genova, Italy

    Nicla Vassallo

Authors
  1. Claudia Bianchi
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  2. Nicla Vassallo
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave, 15213-3891, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Anind Dey

  2. Central and East European Center for Cognitive Science, New Bulgarian University, 21 Montevideo Street, 1618, Sofia, Bulgaria

    Boicho Kokinov

  3. Computer Science Department, Indiana University, 47405, Bloomington, IN, U.S.A.

    David Leake

  4. Department of Computer Science, University of Maine, 04469, Orono, Maine, USA

    Roy Turner

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Bianchi, C., Vassallo, N. (2005). Epistemological Contextualism: A Semantic Perspective. In: Dey, A., Kokinov, B., Leake, D., Turner, R. (eds) Modeling and Using Context. CONTEXT 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3554. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11508373_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11508373_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-26924-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31890-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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