The Practical Origins of Epistemic Contextualism
Erkenntnis 78 (4):899-919 (2013)
Abstract
This paper explores how the purpose of the concept of knowledge affects knowledge ascriptions in natural language. I appeal to the idea that the role of the concept of knowledge is to flag reliable informants, and I use this idea to illuminate and support contextualism about ‘knows’. I argue that practical pressures that arise in an epistemic state of nature provide an explanatory basis for a brand of contextualism that I call ‘practical interests contextualism’. I also answer some questions that contextualism leaves open, particularly why the concept of knowledge is valuable, why the word ‘knows’ exhibits context-variability, and why this term enjoys such widespread use. Finally, I show how my contextualist framework accommodates plausible ideas from two rival views: subject-sensitive invariantism and insensitive invariantism. This provides new support for contextualism and develops this view in a way that improves our understanding of the concept of knowledge.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1007/s10670-012-9426-z
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Citations of this work
The Practical Origins of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering (Open Access).Matthieu Queloz - 2021 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
From Paradigm-Based Explanation to Pragmatic Genealogy.Matthieu Queloz - 2020 - Mind 129 (515):683-714.
The genealogical method in epistemology.Martin Kusch & Robin McKenna - forthcoming - Synthese 197 (3):1057-1076.
A Solution to Knowledge’s Threshold Problem.Michael Hannon - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (3):607-629.
Teleologies and the Methodology of Epistemology.Georgi Gardiner - 2015 - In David K. Henderson & John Greco (eds.), Epistemic Evaluation: Purposeful Epistemology. Oxford University Press. pp. 31-45.