Abstract
It has been argued that epistemic contextualism faces the so-called factivity problem and hence cannot be stated properly. The basic idea behind this charge is that contextualists supposedly have to say, on the one hand, that knowledge ascribing sentences like “S knows that S has hands” are true when used in ordinary contexts while, on the other hand, they are not true by the standard of their own context. In my paper, I want to show that the argument to the factivity problem fails because it rests on the mistaken premise that contextualists are committed to the truth of particular ordinary knowledge attributions.
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Notes
There are some views that would presumably have to be called “contextualist” even though they do not fall under the above definition (for example, the view that “knows” invariably expresses one and the same relation, a relation though that has, say, an epistemic standard as one relatum). I take it that my subsequent arguments apply to these views as well, but I will not discuss them explicitly.
Freitag (2011, p. 277n; 2013, p. 135) tries to defuse the factivity problem by claiming that the skeptic says that ordinary knowledge attribution are necessarily false, not that they are false as a matter of contingent fact. Correspondingly, on Freitag’s view, the anti-skeptical contextualist only has to say that ordinary knowledge ascriptions can be true, and this claim does not give rise to the factivity problem (as will become apparent below). Freitag’s definition of skepticism, however, goes against the grain of the contemporary discussion (see above). That is why, I think, his response to the factivity problem is not fully satisfactory.
To simplify the discussion, I pretend that there are only two relations “knows” can express, the relation of knowledge\(_{\mathrm{O}}\) and the relation of knowledge\(_{\mathrm{S}}\). The contextualist will actually say that there are many more such relations.
It is, of course, debatable whether the contextualist response to the skeptical argument can ultimately be sustained. See e.g. (Schiffer 1996) for further discussion.
Setting up the factivity problem in the way I did indicates two drawbacks of at least the presentation of the response to the factivity problem given in (Brueckner and Buford 2009, 2010). First, Brueckner and Buford seem to endorse what I take to be the conclusion of this argument. They write that a contextualist “cannot ‘knowledgably’ state the contextualist thesis that ‘[S knows that h at t]’ is true in O.” (2009, p. 436) We need not bother here about the specific thesis contextualists supposedly cannot “knowledgably” state. What matters for our purposes is only that this thesis is claimed to be a “contextualist” thesis. It is not entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. One plausible interpretation, though, is that a contextualist thesis is a thesis that is, in some sense, part of contextualism. If that is so, Brueckner and Buford are committed to hold that contextualists cannot “knowledgably” state a claim that is part of contextualism and, as a consequence, cannot “knowledgeably” state contextualism itself. Given (KNA), this just means that contextualism cannot be stated properly and hence entails the conclusion of the factivity problem. (I take this to be the bottom line of why Jäger (2012, p. 496) thinks that Brueckner and Buford’s response to the factivity problem can be dismissed.) Brueckner and Buford may object that I am misconstruing their idea of a “contextualist thesis.” A contextualist thesis need not be a thesis that is part of contextualism; it could also be a thesis that, say, just involves contextualistic vocabulary. Similarly, they may object that the claim quoted above is immaterial to their overall argument and that retracting it wouldn’t do harm to their response to the factivity problem. Even so, the above considerations show that, as it stands, Brueckner and Buford’s response to the factivity problem is not fully satisfactory because it has an obvious reading according to which it entails the conclusion of the factivity problem. Second, Brueckner and Buford mainly argue that the contextualist can accept the “contextualist dogma” that it “is possible for there to be two contexts C1 and C2 such that a sentence of the form ‘[X knows that p at t]’ is true in C1 and not true in C2” without being committed to the factivity problem (2009, p. 434, p. 437). But this dogma seems to be just a statement of contextualism per se. If that is so, their argument is beside the point. Even proponents of the factivity problem do not (or at least should not) claim that contextualism per se cannot be stated properly. Only anti-skeptical contextualism (conjoined with the above general principles) is supposed to be unstatable. (I take this to be the bottom line of why Peter Baumann (2010, p. 85, p. 87) thinks that their argument can be dismissed.) Now, it may be that Brueckner and Buford’s dogma is supposed to already entail a certain form of anti-skepticism. Similarly, it may be that, despite the fact that they to do not explicitly consider this issue, their arguments show that the contextualist can properly accept not only contextualism per se but also anti-skepticism. But be that as it may, a fully satisfactory response to the factivity problem should make these issues explicit.
The above reasoning to the first premise of the factivity problem seems to be present in most presentations of the factivity problem. Baumann (2008, p. 583; 2010, p. 87), for example, claims that contextualism without the claim that “knowledge attributions made in a lower context are in fact true” would be “not very attractive [...].” Wright (2005, p. 243) concurs that the contextualist “has no point to make” unless she can accept that “common sense’s claims to knowledge are, in their proper context, perfectly good [...].” Jäger (2012, p. 491f) quotes DeRose in saying that we do not speak falsely “when we claim to know [...] in [ordinary] contexts in which no skeptics are calling our attention to [skeptical] hypotheses” (DeRose 1999, p. 18). And Williamson states that according to contextualism, “in everyday contexts many assertions of ‘knowledge’ are [...] correct.” (2005, p. 689) All four authors use these claims to straightforwardly justify the premise that contextualists must concede that “S knows that h” is true in an ordinary context.
Note that it is not entirely obvious that \((\hbox {LOW}_{\mathrm{C}})\) follows from the thesis that “S knows that h” is true in an ordinary context. For contexts are often construed as possible situations of the utterance of a sentence. And even if there are possible ordinary situations in which “S knows that h” is true, it does not follow that S knows\(_{\mathrm{O}}\) that h. All that would follow is that possibly S knows\(_{\mathrm{O}}\) that h. So, contexts must be seen here as (something like) actual situations of the utterance of a sentence. I mention these points because confusion about these two notions of a context may easily make it seem that \((\hbox {LOW}_{\mathrm{C}})\) is just a trivial consequence of contextualism: Contextualists clearly accept that there are ordinary (possible) contexts such that “S knows that h” is true. It is also trivial that if there are ordinary (actual) contexts such that “S knows that h” is true, then S knows\(_{\mathrm{O}}\) that h. But, contrary to what may seem to be the case if the two notions of a context aren’t kept apart, these two claims cannot be put together to yield that contextualists trivially accept that S knows\(_{\mathrm{O}}\) that h. I don’t want to claim that proponents of the factivity problem did confuse these notions of a context. Certainly, though, a lax use of “context” can easily make their arguments seem more attractive than they are.
There is room for doubt as to whether philosophical contexts (or at least those philosophical contexts where contextualism is stated) need to be skeptical contexts and, indeed, I am not unsympathetic to the idea of rejecting the factivity problem on the basis of the claim that they are not. In this paper, however, I want to attack the factivity problem from a different, so far un(der)explored angle and hence take this point for granted. For arguments to the conclusion that philosophical contexts aren’t skeptical, see e.g. (Montminy 2008, pp. 2–6) and (Ashfield 2013, Sect. 8). For arguments to the conclusion that they are, see (Jäger 2012, p. 496f). Note also that Baumann (2008, p. 582f) argues that the factivity problem arises already if the contextualist tries to state her position in a demanding but not necessarily skeptical context. If that is so, the factivity problem requires only the weaker (and presumably indisputable) assumption that philosophical contexts are demanding contexts. All these issues though go beyond the scope of this paper.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this worry.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for rasing this worry.
See e.g. (DeRose 2009, p. 1f).
See FN 11 for a related point.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing out the need to clarify this issue.
Thanks to another anonymous referee for pointing out that this point needed clarification as well.
I do not want to commit myself to saying where exactly the arguments go awry because this seems to be a tricky logical issue. One possible source of the wrongness of the arguments could be that “h,” as introduced, is ambiguous between what we could call a referential and a descriptive reading. On the referential reading, I don’t know\(_{\mathrm{tnow/S}}\) that h because I do not stand in the knowledge\(_{\mathrm{tnow/S}}\) relation to the proposition denoted by “h.” On the descriptive reading I do know\(_{\mathrm{tnow/S}}\) that h because I do know\(_{\mathrm{tnow/S}}\) that whatever proposition “h” picks out, this proposition is true because it is supposed to be a proposition I know\(_{\mathrm{tpast/O}}\) and hence, given factivity, a true proposition. Thanks to Bruno Jacinto for helpful discussion.
Kompa (2005: 18f) endorses the argument but doesn’t add any substance.
This line of argument is, of course, inspired by Putnam. For helpful discussion, see (Brueckner 2012).
See e.g. (DeRose 1999) for this last observation.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing out the need to address this issue.
See e.g. (Davidson 1983).
The present response may seem to rely on too simplistic a construal of the brain in a vat scenario. Maybe the supercomputer not only feeds faulty experiences but also directly modifies the beliefs of the contextualist. If, however, such a construal of the brain in a vat scenario is required to get General* going, this by itself may already betray a relevant disanalogy to the case of the Conceded arguments. For these arguments do go through on the simplistic interpretation (if they go through).
This raises the question whether there is a lottery proposition for the thesis that ordinary claims are generally true. I take this to be at least unclear. But fully answering this question would require a more complete discussion of what lottery propositions are (one that goes beyond merely citing examples). This is a topic for another occasion.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Elke Brendel, Christoph Jäger, Geert Keil, Crispin Wright, Julia Zakkou and the participants of the EJK Seminar at Arché (St Andrews, 2013), Tobias Rosefeldt’s Lehrstuhlkolloquium (Berlin, 2013), the LOGOS Seminar and GRG (Barcelona, 2011) and Geert Keil’s Lehrstuhlkolloquium (Berlin, 2011). Thanks also to two anonymous referees for this journal. Very special thanks to Dan López de Sa for invaluable discussion at every stage of the development of this paper.
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Dinges, A. Epistemic contextualism can be stated properly. Synthese 191, 3541–3556 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0459-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-014-0459-5