Contextualism and fallibility: pragmatic encroachment, possibility, and strength of epistemic position

Synthese 188 (2):247-272 (2012)
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Abstract

A critique of conversational epistemic contextualism focusing initially on why pragmatic encroachment for knowledge is to be avoided. The data for pragmatic encroachment by way of greater costs of error and the complementary means to raise standards of introducing counter-possibilities are argued to be accountable for by prudence, fallibility and pragmatics. This theme is sharpened by a contrast in recommendations: holding a number of factors constant, when allegedly higher standards for knowing hold, invariantists still recommend assertion (action), while contextualists do not. Given the knowledge norm of assertion, if one recommendation is preferable to the other, the result favors the preferred recommendation's account of knowledge. In the final section, I offer a unification of these criticisms centering on the contextualist use of 'epistemic position'. Their use imposes on threshold notions of justification, warrant, or knowledge tests that are suitable only to unlimited comparative or scalar notions like confidence or certainty and places them at one with an important strand of sceptical reasoning

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Citations of this work

Pragmatic encroachment in epistemology.Brian Kim - 2017 - Philosophy Compass 12 (5):e12415.
Moderate Skeptical Invariantism.Davide Fassio - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (4):841-870.
Relativism and Conservatism.Alexander Dinges - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (4):757-772.
Kumārila and Knows-Knows.Daniel Immerman - 2018 - Philosophy East and West 68 (2):408-422.

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References found in this work

Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Knowledge and lotteries.John Hawthorne - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Knowledge and practical interests.Jason Stanley - 2005 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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