Abstract

In "Contextualism and Confusability" I defend Epistemological Contextualism. Contextualists think that the statements "I know that I have hands," "I don't know that I'm not a brain in a vat," and "if I don't know that I'm not a brain in a vat, I don't know that I have hands," are all true—albeit not simultaneously. The first statement is true when an individual is not cognizant of the hypothesis that he might be a brain in a vat receiving just those sense impressions he is currently receiving. However, once the hypothesis is considered, the standards for knowing become more strict—so strict that the statement "I know that I have hands" is false. People have mistakenly thought that the three statements present a paradox because they have failed to recognize that the skeptical hypothesis really does issue in stricter standards for knowing.The main critic of this approach has been Stephen Schiffer. Schiffer believes that it is implausible that language users would overlook the context sensitivity at work. I begin by explaining and setting out the virtues of accepting the contextualist approach to skepticism. Subsequently, I set out Schiffer's argument and attempt to meet Schiffer's criticism. Specifically, I argue that people can confuse the context of an utterance when that context is relatively unfamiliar. The reason one mistakenly thinks that he knows he has hands, while entertaining the skeptical hypothesis, is that he is overwhelmingly more familiar with the context in which he knows that he has hands