Traditional theistic arguments conclude that God exists. Pragmatic theistic arguments, by contrast, conclude that you ought to believe in God. The two most famous pragmatic theistic arguments are put forth by Blaise Pascal (1662) and William James (1896). Pragmatic arguments for theism can be summarized as follows: believing in God has significant benefits, and these benefits aren’t available for the unbeliever. Thus, you should believe in, or ‘wager on’, God. This article distinguishes between various kinds of theistic wagers, including finite (...) vs. infinite wagers, premortem vs. postmortem wagers, and doxastic vs. acceptance wagers. Then, we’ll turn to the epistemic-pragmatic distinction, and discusses the nuances of James’ argument, and how views like epistemic permissivism and epistemic consequentialism provide unique “hybrid” wagers. Finally, we’ll cover outstanding objections and responses. (shrink)

This is a discussion of the state of discussion on pragmatic reasons for belief.

On an intellectualist approach to belief, the intellectual endorsement of a proposition (such as “The working poor deserve as much respect as the handsomely paid”) is sufficient or nearly sufficient for believing it. On a pragmatic approach to belief, intellectual endorsement is not enough. Belief is behaviorally demanding. To really, fully believe, you must also “walk the walk.” This chapter argues that the pragmatic approach is preferable on pragmatic grounds: It rightly directs our attention to what matters most in thinking (...) about belief. (shrink)

‘Know-that’, like so many natural language expressions, exhibits patterns of use that provide evidence for its context-sensitivity. A popular family of views – call it prag- matic invariantism – attempts to explain the shifty patterns by appeal to a pragmatic thesis: while the semantic meaning of ‘know-that’ is stable across all contexts of use, sentences of the form ‘S knows [doesn’t know] that p’ can be used to communicate a pragmatic content that depends on the context of use. In this (...) paper, the author argues that pragmatic invariantism makes inaccurate predictions for a wide range of well- known use data and is committed to attributing systematic pragmatic error to ordinary speakers. But pragmatic error is unprecedented, and it is doubtful that speakers are systematically wrong about what they intend to communicate. (shrink)

Some computational phenomena rely essentially on pragmatic considerations, and seem to undermine the independence of the specification from the implementation. These include software development, deviant uses, esoteric languages and recent data-driven applications. To account for them, the interaction between pragmatics, epistemology and ontology in computational artefacts seems essential, indicating the need to recover the role of the language metaphor. We propose a User Levels (ULs) structure as a pragmatic complement to the Levels of Abstraction (LoAs)-based structure defining the ontology (...) and epistemology of computational artefacts. ULs identify a flexible hierarchy in which users bear their own semantic and normative requirements, possibly competing with the logical specification. We formulate a notion of computational act intended in its pragmatic sense, alongside pragmatic versions of implementation and correctness. (shrink)

Pragmatics is the study of the role of context in communication. This chapter discusses experimental research in pragmatics. It provides clarity on pragmatics by contrasting the role of context in communication with the role of sentence meaning. There is some disagreement about which communicative effects are due to which thing, so there is some disagreement as to where to draw the boundary between semantics and pragmatics. The chapter considers a rich experimental research project in pragmatics, (...) which has developed primarily within linguistics and psychology over the course of the last several decades in response to the boundary disputes. Finally, it talks about a more nascent experimental research project, which, building upon insights from psychology, aims towards understanding survey pragmatics. These two projects are discussed and attention is paid to the methods unique to each project and the philosophical and linguistic underpinnings they share in common. (shrink)

_Pragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology_ offers a complex analysis of the pragmatic theses that are present in the works of leading phenomenological authors, including not only Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as it is often the case within Hubert Dreyfus’ tradition, but also Husserl, Levinas, Scheler, and Patocka. Starting from a critical reassessment of existing pragmatic readings which draw especially on Heidegger’s account of Being-in-the-world, the volume’s chapters explore the following themes as possible justifications for speaking about the pragmatic turn in phenomenology: the (...) primacy of the practical over theoretical understanding, criticism of the representationalist account of perception and consciousness, and the analysis of language and truth within the context of social and cultural practices. Having thus analyzed the pragmatic readings of key phenomenological concepts, the book situates these readings in a larger historical and thematic context and introduces themes that until now have been overlooked in debates, including freedom, alterity, transcendence, normativity, distance, and self-knowledge. This volume seeks to refresh the debate about the phenomenological legacy and its relevance for contemporary thought by enlarging the thematic scope of pragmatic motives in phenomenology in new and revealing ways. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of phenomenology who are interested in moving beyond the analytic-continental divide to explore the relationship between practice and theory. (shrink)

In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (2017), we outline a systematic pragmatic account of rephrasing. For this purpose, we combine two interrelated methods of inquiry into the variety of uses of rephrase as a persuasive device: (i) the annotation of rephrase types to identify locutionary and illocutionary aspects of rephrase, (ii) the crowd–sourced examination of rephrase types to investigate their perlocutionary effects. As it draws on Waltonian insights and on empirical (...) and experimental research on the (mis)use of rephrase, our approach allows us to ground a novel theoretically–informed and data–driven pragmatic account of rephrase. (shrink)

This chapter has three aims. Firstly, it elaborates the so-called pragmatic approach to fictionalism. By evoking some classical pragmatic theories of fictive utterances, it gives an account of pragmatic properties responsible for the difference between serious and fictive utterances. The authors argue for the thesis that the pragmatic approach can be applied plausibly to all kinds of fictionalism, that is from instrumentalism to figuralism. Secondly, the authors investigate some consequences of the suggested account for fictionalist theories in general. They show (...) that some more or less known difficulties of fictionalist theories become more serious if one accepts the pragmatic approach. The chapter discusses two of them, namely the problem of entirely fictional discourses and the apparent contradiction between hermeneutic fictionalism and first person authority. Thirdly, the authors investigate the consequences of the pragmatic approach for mental fictionalism in particular. At the end of the paper, they argue that once the pragmatic approach is applied to mental fictionalism, the well-known problem of cognitive suicide becomes especially nagging. They suggest it is highly questionable that mental fictionalism is worth to endorse in the light of these serious difficulties. (shrink)

Infallibilism leads to skepticism, and fallibilism is plagued by the threshold problem. Within this narrative, the pragmatic turn in epistemology has been marketed as a way for fallibilists to address the threshold problem. In contrast, pragmatic versions of infallibilism have been left unexplored. However, I propose that going pragmatic offers the infallibilist a way to address its main problem, the skeptical problem. Pragmatic infallibilism, however, is committed to a shifty view of epistemic certainty, where the strength of a subject’s epistemic (...) state can vary depending upon the practical context. Pragmatic views of epistemic strength are quite radical so the argumentative goal of my discussion is to argue for its plausibility, thereby arguing for the plausibility of pragmatic infallibilism. To do so, I discuss the role that the framing of decision problems and the construction of our deliberative attitudes have in our theories of rational choice. And I explore a way in which these necessary components of a normative theory of rationality can be used to motivate pragmatic views of evidential support. Finally, since the plausibility of our pragmatic account will depend upon the plausibility of a constructive account of rational choice, I conclude by comparing the adequacy of the constructive account with orthodox Bayesian and knowledge-based accounts. (shrink)

According to pragmatic encroachment, whether an epistemic attitude towards p has some positive epistemic status (e.g., whether a belief is epistemically rational or justified, or it amounts to knowledge) partially depends on practical factors such as the costs of being wrong or the practical goals of the agent. Pragmatic encroachment comes in many varieties. This survey article provides an overview of different kinds of pragmatic encroachment. It focuses on three dimensions under which kinds of pragmatic encroachment differ: the type of (...) epistemic status affected by practical factors, the type of practical factors affecting the epistemic status, and the type of normative considerations encroaching on the epistemic status. (shrink)

This article introduces a new pragmatic framework for dual character concepts and their expressions, offering an alternative to the received lexical‐semantic view. On the prevalent lexical‐semantic view, expressions such as “philosopher” or “scientist” are construed as lexical polysemes, comprising both a descriptive and a normative dimension. Thereby, this view prioritizes established norms, neglecting normative expressions emerging in specific contexts. In contrast, the pragmatic view integrates pragmatic modulation as a central element in explaining context‐dependent dual character concepts and expressions. This not (...) only accounts for a wider range of phenomena but also addresses several theoretical shortcomings of the lexical view. (shrink)

Pragmatics and Literature is an important collection of new work by leading practitioners working at the interface between pragmatic theory and literary analysis. The individual studies collected here draw on a variety of theoretical approaches and are concerned with a range of literary genres. All have a shared focus on applying ideas from specific pragmatic frameworks to understanding the production, interpretation and evaluation of literary texts. A full-length introductory chapter highlights distinctions and contrasts between pragmatic theories, but also brings (...) out complementarities, shared aims and assumptions, and ways in which different pragmatic theories can make different contributions to our understanding of literary texts. The book as a whole encourages a sense of coherence for the field and presents insights from various approaches for systematic comparison. Building on previous work by the editors, the contributors and others, it makes a significant contribution to the growing field of pragmatic literary stylistics. (shrink)

I argue that the offense generation pattern of slurring terms parallels that of impoliteness behaviors, and is best explained by appeal to similar purely pragmatic mechanisms. In choosing to use a slurring term rather than its neutral counterpart, the speaker signals that she endorses the term. Such an endorsement warrants offense, and consequently slurs generate offense whenever a speaker's use demonstrates a contrastive preference for the slurring term. Since this explanation comes at low theoretical cost and imposes few constraints on (...) an account of the semantics of slurs, this suggests that we should not require semantic accounts to provide an independent explanation of the offense profile. (shrink)

Pragmatic encroachers argue that whether you know that p depends on a combination of pragmatic and epistemic factors. Most defenses of pragmatic encroachment focus on a particular pragmatic factor: how much is at stake for an individual. This raises a question: are there reasons for thinking that knowledge depends on other pragmatic factors that parallel the reasons for thinking that knowledge depends on the stakes? In this paper I argue that there are parallel reasons for thinking that knowledge depends on (...) social factors such as one’s social role or identity. I call this social encroachment. After defending social encroachment, I compare and contrast social encroachment with some key ideas in feminist epistemology. I argue that, while there are some important similarities, there are also some important differences. I finish by commenting on what I take the upshots of these differences to be. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway presents a series of essays on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1913), the 'founder of pragmatism' and one of the most important and original American philosophers.

Pragmatic processes crucially rely on background or contextual information supplied by the hearer, which may significantly affect the outcome of the comprehension process. Construed as a branch of cognitive psychology, pragmatics is the study of the cognitive systems apart from the I‐language and the parser which enable speaker and hearer (or communicator and audience) to co‐ordinate on the intended interpretation, and this is how we propose to treat it here. This chapter considers some of Noam Chomsky's suggestions about how (...) the cognitive systems underlying human abilities might be investigated. It discusses his reasons and consider how far this skepticism may be due to his particular conception of pragmatics. The chapter outlines an approach to pragmatics that seems to be compatible with his general methodology and is based on an alternative conception of pragmatics that we sketch out. (shrink)

This book is about meaning - not the meaning of certain concepts such as the meaning of life or the meaning of freedom but about what it means for linguistic expressions to mean something. It is also a book about meaning for humans. The qualification 'human meaning' is not yet common in linguistics book titles but it is increasingly important to add it. We are already experiencing fundamental differences in how, and what kind of, meaning is approached in computational linguistics (...) and computer science in general on the one hand, and in philosophy of language or sociopragmatics on the other. (shrink)

Those aspects of language use that are crucial to an understanding of language as a system, and especially to an understanding of meaning, are the acknowledged concern of linguistic pragmatics. Yet until now much of the work in this field has not been easily accessible to the student, and was often written at an intimidating level of technicality. In this textbook, however, Dr Levinson has provided a lucid and integrative analysis of the central topics in pragmatics - deixis, (...) implicature, presupposition, speech acts, and conversational structure. A central concern of the book is the relation between pragmatics and semantics, and Dr Levinson shows clearly how a pragmatic approach can resolve some of the problems semantics have been confronting and simplifying semantic analyses. The complexity of these issues is not disguised, but the exposition is always clear and supported by helpful exemplification. The detailed analyses of selected topics give the student a clear view of the empirical rigour demanded by the study of linguistic pragmatics, but Dr Levinson never loses sight of the rich diversity of the subject. An introduction and conclusion relate pragmatics to other fields in linguistics and other disciplines concerned with language usage - psychology, philosophy, anthropology and literature. Many students in these disciplines, as well as students of linguistics, will find this a valuable textbook. (shrink)

The Pragmatics of Multi-Verb Sequences: The Case of the Verb Go This paper is an empirical investigation into the nature of multi-verb sequences in English. Multi-verb sequences such as V-to-VP and V-and-VP present a natural construction type of investigating recurring patterns of event sequences as conceived situations. This paper focuses on the image-schematic properties of both the go-to-VP construction and the go-and-VP construction to which previous accounts have paid little attention, and it demonstrates that the interpretation of the image-schemas (...) has enhanced research. The go-to-VP and the go-and-VP constructions require different image schemas. With respect to the go-to-VP construction, the SOURCE-PATH-GOAL schema plays an important role; sometimes a compound image schema of that type are necessary. Specifically, the image-schematic properties of the first verb go are incorporated into the event structure of the second verb to allow the speaker to construe the event denoted by the second verb in accordance with the image-schematic meaning of the first verb go. Consequently, this paper offers a pragmatic and cognitive account of the two constructions respectively. Some results in a data-driven analysis in this paper also reinforce selected convincing explanations. (shrink)

Pragmatic-Psychoanalytic Interpretations of Amos Oz's Writings: Words Significantly Uttered presents intermediate links between three intellectual domains: the literary works of Amos Oz, American Pragmatism, and object-relations psychoanalysis.

Christopher Hookway has been influential in promoting engagement with pragmatist and naturalist perspectives from classical and contemporary American philosophy. This book reflects on Hookway’s work on the American philosophical tradition and its significance for contemporary discussions of the understanding of mind, meaning, knowledge, and value. -/- Hookway’s original and extensive studies of Charles S. Peirce have made him among the most admired and frequently referenced of Peirce’s interpreters. His work on classical American pragmatism has explored the philosophies of William James, (...) John Dewey, and Josiah Royce, and examined the influence of pragmatist ideas outside of the United States. Additionally, Hookway has participated in a number of celebrated exchanges with some of the most high-profile figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy, including Karl-Otto Apel, Philip Pettit, Hilary Putnam, and W.V.O. Quine, through which his treatments of a large range of topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language have been developed and promoted. The chapters in this book—which include contributions from several of Hookway’s former students and colleagues—include studies of Hookway’s engagement with the works of Peirce, James, and Dewey, his contributions to virtue epistemology, and his discussions of hope and pragmatist metaphysics. -/- Pragmatic Reason will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, and epistemology. (shrink)

Does knowledge depend in any interesting way on our practical interests? This is the central question in the pragmatic encroachment debate. Pragmatists defend the affirmative answer to this question while purists defend the negative answer. The literature contains two kinds of arguments for pragmatism: principle-based arguments and case-based arguments. Principle-based arguments derive pragmatism from principles that connect knowledge to practical interests. Case-based arguments rely on intuitions about cases that differ with respect to practical interests. I argue that there are insurmountable (...) problems for both kinds of arguments, and that it is therefore unclear what motivates pragmatism. (shrink)

We argue, contrary to epistemological orthodoxy, that knowledge is not purely epistemic—that knowledge is not simply a matter of truth‐related factors (evidence, reliability, etc.). We do this by arguing for a pragmatic condition on knowledge, KA: if a subject knows that p, then she is rational to act as if p. KA, together with fallibilism, entails that knowledge is not purely epistemic. We support KA by appealing to the role of knowledge‐citations in defending and criticizing actions, and by giving a (...) principled argument for KA, based on the inference rule KB: if a subject knows that A is the best thing she can do, she is rational to do A. In the second half of the paper, we consider and reject the two most promising objections to our case for KA, one based on the Gricean notion of conversational implicature and the other based on a contextualist maneuver. (shrink)

The concept of meaning, since Frege initiated the linguistic turn in 1884, has been the subject of numerous theories, hypotheses, methodologies and distinctions. One distinction of considerable strategic value relates to the location of meaning: some aspects of meaning can be found in language and are modelled with semantic values of various kinds; some aspects of meaning can be found in communicative processes and are modelled with pragmatic inferences of one sort or another. One hypothesis of great heuristic utility concerns (...) the relationship that is assumed between the semantic and the pragmatic. This collection of especially commissioned papers examines current thinking on the plausible nature of the semantic, the possible character of the pragmatic and the mechanics of their intersection. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Invention of the Picturesque Style Olmsted and Central Park: Ethics, Politics, Aesthetics “The Gates” and the Meaning of the Park Notes.

Sometimes we draw conclusions about a thing's existence or its value by considering what are thought to be its consequences. I shall say that an argument is pragmatic when it consists in estimating an action, or any event, or a rule, or whatever it may be, in terms of its favourable or unfavourable consequences; what happens in such cases is that all or part of the value of the consequences is transferred to whatever is regarded as causing or preventing them.

Any form of overt communication, be it gestural or linguistic, involves pragmatic skills. This article investigates the social–cognitive foundations of pragmatic development from infancy to late childhood and argues that it is driven by, among other things, the emergence of the capacities to assess the communicator's competence (e.g. perceptual access, epistemic states) and honesty. We discuss the implications of this proposal and show how it sheds new light on the developmental trajectory of a series of pragmatic phenomena, with a specific (...) focus on the development of irony comprehension. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a noticeable yet largely unacknowledged ‘pragmatic turn’ in the scientific realism debate, inspired in part by van Fraassen’s work on ‘epistemic stances’. Features of this new approach include: an ascent to the meta-level (the focus is not so much on whether scientific realism is true, but on the prior questions of the nature of the positions in this debate, how to decide whether to be a scientific realist, etc.); a reinterpretation of scientific realism and (...) anti-realism as (or as closely associated with) stances or frameworks, rather than theories or beliefs; a move away from the previously dominant empirical-explanatory (i.e. quasi-scientific or naturalistic) conception of scientific realism, anti-realism, and their justification; and a stress on the pragmatic and values-based elements in the debate. The traditional scientific realism debate is concerned with determining which position is true, or most epistemically justified. The new approach by contrast is concerned with determining which position best serves certain values, e.g. is most useful, fruitful, or otherwise prudentially preferable. In this paper we try to bring together the various strands in this new orientation, summarise its key features, contrast it with superficially similar but opposing views, and explore the similarities and differences among some of its adherents. Given we are advocates of the turn, we also offer a defence of the value and fruitfulness of this reconceptualization of the debate. (shrink)

I present a challenge to epistemological pragmatic encroachment theories from epistemic injustice. The challenge invokes the idea that a knowing subject may be wronged by being regarded as lacking knowledge due to social identity prejudices. However, in an important class of such cases, pragmatic encroachers appear to be committed to the view that the subject does not know. Hence, pragmatic encroachment theories appear to be incapable of accounting for an important type of injustice – namely, discriminatory epistemic injustice. Consequently, pragmatic (...) encroachment theories run the risk of obscuring or even sanctioning epistemically unjust judgments that arise due to problematic social stereotypes or unjust folk epistemological biases. In contrast, the epistemological view that rejects pragmatic encroachment – namely, strict purist invariantism – is capable of straightforwardly diagnosing the cases of discriminatory epistemic injustice as such. While the challenge is not a conclusive one, it calls for a response. Moreover, it illuminates very different conceptions of epistemology’s role in mitigating epistemic injustice. (shrink)

This paper argues that all-purpose pejoratives such as ‘jerk’ or ‘bastard’ are just plain vanilla descriptions of personality traits that are generally seen as impairing for the self and for interpersonal relationships across different contexts. Thus, all-purpose pejoratives derogate their referents through generalized conversational implicatures: it is common knowledge that those who use these terms accept certain kind of (negative) evaluations and that uses of those terms express such evaluations. One of the main advantages of this approach is that it (...) can be extended to more ‘thick’ pejoratives such as ‘wimp’ or ‘chicken’, which, as Kaplan (1998) himself suggested, are ‘purely descriptive’ of personality traits that are generally seen as ‘personal failings’. Before defending this theory, I criticize i) the standard assumption that allpurpose pejoratives are expressive and ii) the alternative semantic view that allpurpose pejoratives are conventionally associated with a judge parameter. (shrink)

The central problem for pragmatics is that sentence meaning vastly underdetermines speaker’s meaning. The goal of pragmatics is to explain how the gap between sentence meaning and speaker’s meaning is bridged. This paper defends the broadly Gricean view that pragmatic interpretation is ultimately an exercise in mind-reading, involving the inferential attribution of intentions. We argue, however, that the interpretation process does not simply consist in applying general mind-reading abilities to a particular (communicative) domain. Rather, it involves a dedicated (...) comprehension module, with its own special principles and mechanisms. We show how such a metacommunicative module might have evolved, and what principles and mechanisms it might contain. (shrink)

For the Intentionalist, utterance content is wholly determined by a speaker’s meaning-intentions; the sentence uttered serves merely to facilitate the audience’s recovering these intentions. We argue that Intentionalists ought to be Particularists, holding that the only “principles” of meaning recovery needed are those governing inferences to the best explanation; “principles” that are both defeasible and, in a sense to be elaborated, variable. We discuss some ways in which some theorists have erred in trying to tame the “wild west” of (...) class='Hi'>pragmatics and context-sensitivity -- including recent work that makes essential appeal to the information structure of a discourse -- and in so doing, offer a general recipe for defending the Particularist picture of utterance content and its recovery that we favor. (shrink)

Relational theories of normative language allegedly face special problems in accounting for the extent of disagreement, but this is everybody’s problem because normative sentences are relativized to different information in contexts of deliberation and advice. This paper argues that a relational theory provides a pragmatic solution that accounts for some disagreements as involving inconsistent preferences rather than beliefs. This is shown to be superior to the semantic solution offered by expressivists like Allan Gibbard, as it accounts for a wider range (...) of disagreements, explains a puzzling asymmetry, and avoids the expressivist’s problem with negation. This pragmatic account extends to fundamental disagreements involving preferences for different ends. Three different kinds of normative disagreement are distinguished: instrumental, rational, and outright. (shrink)

Pragmatic justifications of epistemic norms tell us to observe these norms as the best means to attaining the things we value. I argue that such justifications do not work, because they harbour an irresolvable tension: their non-alethic character intrinsically conflicts with the truth-aiming character of the epistemic norms they are justifying. We should abandon, then, either epistemic norms or pragmatic justifications of these norms. I therefore argue that we should abandon pragmatic justifications.

This paper addresses some apparent philosophical tensions between realism and enactivism by means of Charles Peirce’s pragmatism. Enactivism’s Mind-Life Continuity thesis has been taken to commit it to some form of anti-realist ‘world-construction’ which has been considered controversial. Accordingly, a new realist enactivism is proposed by Zahidi (_Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences,_ _13_(3), 461–475, 2014 ), drawing on Ian Hacking’s ‘entity realism’, which places subjects in worlds comprised of the things that they can successfully manipulate. We review this attempt, and (...) argue that whilst Zahidi rightly urges enactivists towards ‘internal realism’, he cannot sustain a non-negotiable aspect of realism that is crucial for scientific progress – the claim that multiple subjects inhabit _the same world_. We explore Peirce’s pragmatism as an alternative solution, foregrounding his distinction between existence and reality, and his inquiry-based account of cognition. These theoretical innovations, we argue, fruitfully generalize Zahidi’s _manipulation-based_ enactivist realism to a richer, _inquiry-based_ enactivist realism. We explore how this realism’s pan-species monism about truth encourages and supports the investigation of non-human animal cognition, and conclude by considering some implications of our discussion for long-standing realism debates within pragmatism. (shrink)

The relation between knowledge and action has been a lengthy debate in philosophy which traces back to Descartes and Locke. Purism holds that the practical factors related to action are fundamentally independent of the standard of knowledge, while pragmatic encroachment argues that practical considerations about action can impact judgments about knowledge. This traditional debate was put front and center recently by discussions on some knowledge attribution cases and relevant empirical studies. This paper reports three empirical studies based on three pairs (...) of classic knowledge attribution cases on Chinese participants. The results indicate that folk's understanding of knowledge is more compatible with purism and suggest a conversational implicature account of the connection between judgments about knowledge and action. (shrink)

Contextualism in epistemology has traditionally been understood as the view that “know” functions semantically like an indexical term, encoding different contents in contexts with different epistemic standards. But the indexical hypothesis about “know” faces a range of objections. This article explores an alternative version of contextualism on which “know” is a semantically stable term, and the truth-conditional variability in knowledge claims is a matter of pragmatic enrichment. The central idea is that in contexts with stringent epistemic standards, knowledge claims are (...) narrowed: “know” is used in such contexts to make assertions about particularly demanding types of knowledge. The resulting picture captures all of the intuitive data that motivate contextualism while sidestepping the controversial linguistic thesis at its heart. After developing the view, the article shows in detail how it avoids one influential linguistic objection to traditional contextualism concerning indirect speech reports, and then answers an objection concerning the unavailability of certain types of clarification speeches. (shrink)

If knowledge is sensitive to practical stakes, then whether one knows depends in part on the practical costs of being wrong. When considering religious belief, the practical costs of being wrong about theism may differ dramatically between the theist (if there is no God) and the atheist (if there is a God). This paper explores the prospects, on pragmatic encroachment, for knowledge of theism (even if true) and of atheism (even if true), given two types of practical costs: namely, by (...) holding a false belief, or by missing out on a true belief. These considerations set up a more general puzzle of epistemic preference when faced with the choice between two beliefs, only one of which could become knowledge. (shrink)

Evidentialism is the thesis that epistemic justification for belief supervenes on evidential support. However, we claim there are cases in which, even though two subjects have the same evidential support for a proposition, only one of them is justified. What make the difference are pragmatic factors, factors having to do with our cares and concerns. Our argument against evidentialism is not based on intuitions about particular cases. Rather, we aim to provide a theoretical basis for rejecting evidentialism by defending a (...) “pragmatic” necessary condition on epistemic justification. We argue for the following necessary condition for justification: S is justified in believing that p only if S is rational to prefer (and, hence, act) as if p. In light of this necessary condition, the price of evidentialism is skepticism, or something close to it. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss what I will call “skeptical pragmatic invariantism” as a potential response to the intuitions we have about scenarios such as the so-called bank cases. SPI, very roughly, is a form of epistemic invariantism that says the following: The subject in the bank cases doesn’t know that the bank will be open. The knowledge ascription in the low standards case seems appropriate nevertheless because it has a true implicature. The goal of this paper is to (...) show that SPI is mistaken. In particular, I will show that SPI is incompatible with reasonable assumptions about how we are aware of the presence of implicatures. Such objections are not new, but extant formulations are wanting for reasons I will point out below. One may worry that refuting SPI is not a worthwhile project given that this view is an implausible minority position anyway. To respond, I will argue that, contrary to common opinion, other familiar objections to SPI fail and, thus, that SPI is a promising position to begin with. (shrink)

This chapter addresses concerns that pragmatic encroachers are committed to problematic knowledge variance. It first replies to Charity Anderson and John Hawthorne’s new putative problem cases, which purport to show that pragmatic encroachment is committed to problematic variations in knowledge depending on what choices are available to the potential knower. It argues that the new cases do not provide any new reasons to be concerned about the pragmatic encroacher’s commitment to knowledge-variance. The chapter further argues that concerns about knowledge-variance are (...) not limited to the pragmatic encroacher, but come up for traditional purist invariantism as well. (shrink)

We develop a novel challenge to pragmatic encroachment. The significance of belief-desire psychology requires treating questions about what to believe as importantly prior to questions about what to do; pragmatic encroachment undermines that priority, and therefore undermines the significance of belief-desire psychology. This, we argue, is a higher cost than has been recognized by epistemologists considering embracing pragmatic encroachment.

Polysemy, understood as instances of a single linguistic expression having multiple related senses, is not a homogenous phenomenon. There are regular (apparently, rule‐based) cases and irregular (resemblance‐based) cases, which have different processing profiles. Although a primary source of polysemy is pragmatic inference, at least some cases become conventionalised and linguistically encoded. Three main issues are discussed: (a) the key differences between regular and irregular cases and the role, if any, of a “core meaning”; (b) the distinction between pragmatic polysemy and (...) semantic polysemy; and (c) the role of syntactic meaning in both generating and constraining polysemy. (shrink)