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C o n t e x t u a l i s m i n P h i l o s o p h y Knowledge, Meaning, and Truth Edited by Gerhard Preyer and Georg Peter (cid:1) CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD http://avaxho.me/blogs/ChrisRedfield 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxfordox26dp OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwidein OxfordNewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto WithoYcesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress intheUKandincertainothercountries PublishedintheUnitedStates byOxfordUniversityPressInc.,NewYork (cid:1)Theseveralcontributors2005 Themoralrightsoftheauthorshavebeenasserted DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker) Firstpublished2005 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, withoutthepriorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress, orasexpresslypermittedbylaw,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriate reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment, OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover andyoumustimposethesameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Dataavailable TypesetbySPIPublisherServices,Pondicherry,India PrintedinGreatBritain onacid-freepaperby BiddlesLtd,King’sLynn,Norfolk ISBN0-19-926740-5 978-0-19-926740-8 ISBN0-19-926741-3-X(Pbk.) 978-0-19-926741-5(Pbk.) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Contributors vii 1 1 Introduction: The Limits of Contextualism Gerhard Preyer and Georg Peter Part I Contextualism in Epistemology 2 Contextualism and the New Linguistic Turn in 11 Epistemology Peter Ludlow 3 51 The Emperor’s New ‘Knows’ Kent Bach 4 91 Knowledge, Context, and the Agent’s Point of View Timothy Williamson 5 115 What Shifts? Thresholds, Standards, or Alternatives? Jonathan Schaffer 6 131 Epistemic Modals in Context Andy Egan, John Hawthorne, and Brian Weatherson Part II Compositionality, Meaning, and Context 7 171 Literalism and Contextualism: Some Varieties Franc¸ois Recanati vi Contents 8 ATall Tale: In Defense of Semantic Minimalism and 197 Speech Act Pluralism Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore 9 221 Semantics in Context Jason Stanley 10 255 Meaning before Truth Paul M. Pietroski 11 303 Compositionality and Context Peter Pagin 12 349 Presuppositions, Truth Values, and Expressing Propositions Michael Glanzberg 397 Index Contributors Professor Kent Bach,Department of Philosophy,San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA. Professor Herman Cappelen, Department of Philosophy, Vassar College, 124 Raymond Ave, Poughkeepsie, NY 12604, USA. Professor Andy Egan,DepartmentofPhilosophy,AustralianNational University, Cambarra ACT 0200, Australia. Professor Michael Glanzberg,DepartmentofPhilosophy,Univer- sity of California, Davis, 2238 Social Science and Humanities Building, Davis, CA 95616, USA. Professor John Hawthorne, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, 26 Nichol Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA. Professor Ernie Lepore, Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers Uni- versity, New Brunswick Psych Bldg Addition, Busch Campus, 152 Frelin- ghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8020, USA. Professor Peter Ludlow, Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003, USA. Professor Peter Pagin, Department of Philosophy, Stockholm Uni- versity, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. Dr Georg Peter,J.W.Goethe-University,Protosociology,60054Frank- furt am Main, Germany. Professor Paul M. Pietroski, Department of Philosophy, Skinner Building, College Park, MD20742, USA. Dr Gerhard Preyer, J. W. Goethe-University, Protosociology, 60054 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Professor Francois Recanati,InstitutJean-Nicod(CNRS/EHESS/ ENS), 1bis, avenue de Lowendal, 75007 Paris, France. viii Contributors Professor Jonathan Schaffer, Department of Philosophy, Univer- sityofMassachusetts-Amherst,352BartlettHall,Amherst,MA01003,USA. Professor Jason Stanley, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 26 Nichol Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1411, USA. Professor Brian Weatherson, Department of Philosophy, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA. Professor Timothy Williamson, New College, Oxford OX1 3BN, UK. 1 Introduction: The Limits of Contextualism Gerhard Preyer and Georg Peter In contemporary epistemology, the thesis that epistemic vocabulary is con- text-sensitive has been adopted by a number of authors. Since the thesis is a semantic claim, evaluation of its truth has interested those working in philosophy of language. In particular, serious consideration of the thesis requires some account of when a linguistic construction is context-sensitive. This book will look at contextualism in epistemology and its linguistic underpinnings, and at related general issues in the philosophy of language. The fruitful interaction between empirical questions about language and philosophical issues in epistemology that occurs in the essays in this book can perhaps be viewed a considerably more empirically grounded return to the linguistic turn in epistemology oVered by Wittgenstein, Austin, and Malcolm. The motivations of epistemic contextualism, until recently, had chieXy to do with its supposedly enabling good responses to scepticism, showing where—at least a certain form of—sceptical arguments get their seeming strength,withoutactuallyendorsing(acontextually,anyway)theconclusions thereof (see for example the work of Keith DeRose, Stewart Cohen, David Lewis). Thinking about our use of epistemic terms, DeRose advertises contextualismas atleastasmuchmotivatedbyasortof ‘ordinarylanguage’. Inhisessay,PeterLudlowusesthetestcaseofcontextualismtoillustratethis new linguistic turn in epistemology, and raises some of the many subtle questionsthatweneedtoconsiderwhenwetakeuptopicssuchasthenature of gradable predicates, the diVerent forms that implicit arguments can take, and the way in which diVerent deWnitions of contextualism will yield diVer- ent predictions about bound variable anaphora in knowledge reports. He 2 Preyer, Peter: Introduction concludes that linguistic resources, handled carefully, can be a valuable tool, but that theycannot be deployed in isolation. Contextualists try to resolve sceptical paradoxes not by refuting sceptical argumentsbutbyconWningthemtocontextsinwhichfar-fetchedpossibilities are raised. In so doing, they assume that the conXicting intuitions that generatetheseparadoxesrelatetothetruthconditionsofknowledgeandare not merely vaccillating responses to sceptical considerations. Contextualists reject invariantism about knowledge attributions and claim that a given knowledge-ascribing sentence can express diVerent propositions in diVerent contexts,whichimpliesthattherearemanyknowledgerelations,notjustone. However,asKent Bach argues inhis essay,this thesis isnotas dramaticas it sounds,forevenifitwerecorrect,thosepropositionsthemselveswouldnotbe context-bound.Moreimportantly,thefactthatitcanvaryfromonecontextto anotherhowstrictlyweapply‘know’doesnotrequireacontextualistexplan- ation. It also does not require dubious warranted assertibility arguments (WAMs), whose use DeRose imputes to invariantism. The fact that people usewordswithvaryingdegreesofstrictnessandloosenessdoesnotshowthat thewordsthemselveshavesemanticcontentsthatcomeinvariousdegrees.It couldwellbe,Bachsuggests,thatwith‘know’weoftenattributeknowledgeto people who do not have it and often resist attributing it to people who do. Sometimes we are extra cautious, and sometimes we are even taken in by seductive scepticalarguments.Either way,wecannotattribute knowledge to someone,evenifhehasit,whenhebelievessomethingongroundsthatleave uswithdoubtsorworriesaboutthetruthofthepropositioninquestion.We sometimes demand more from knowledge than it requires. Bach argues that contextualism does not really come to grips with scepticism or with the sceptical version of invariantism, according to which knowledge requires thehighestdegreeofevidence,justiWcation,andconviction. Scepticism denies that we have knowledge by ordinary standards, and sceptical invariantism does not use WAMs to explain why we casually make the knowledge attributions that we do. In any case, these sceptical views are implausible on independent grounds. Much more plausible is a moderate, non-sceptical version of invariantism, which also can interpret contextualist data without resorting to WAMs. What vary in contexts where special concerns arise, whether sceptical or practical, are not the truth conditions ofknowledgeattributionsbuttheknowledgeattributionspeopleareprepared to make. It is not the standards for the truth of knowledge attributions that go up but the attributor’s threshold of conWdence regarding the relevant proposition. Preyer, Peter: Introduction 3 OneelementofBach’sdefenceofmoderateinvariantismistheanswertoa questionraisedbyLewis’sversionofcontextualism:howcanapossibilitythat is ignored be properly ignored? He suggests that this is so to the extent that thecognitiveprocesseswherebybeliefsareformedandsustainedaresensitive to realistic counterpossibilities (so-called relevant alternatives). The occur- renceofthethoughtofapossibilitycontrarytoatemptingpropositiongives oneprima-faciereasontotakeitseriously.Andthefactthatsuchapossibility doesnotcometomindis(defeasible)evidenceforitsirrelevance.Butthisfact shows evidently that one cannot explicitly consider it, since to consider it would bring that counterpossibility to mind. Contextualism is a mild form of relativism about the truth of sentences. Thereisastandardformofcontextualiststrategyforexplainingtheappealof scepticalarguments.Whilevaguenessisnotmerelyacaseofcontext-depend- ence, it does appear to be highly conducive to context-dependence. In his essay, however, Timothy Williamson shows that context-dependence in representation causes its own problems in the retention and transmission of information, especially when language users are unaware of the context- dependence. Moreover, a contextualist treatment of certain problems of practical reason is implausible, because the agent’s context seems to have primacy over the speaker’s context in practical respects. This primacy is incompatible with contextualism about the relevant terms. The case of practical reasoning suggests a way in which vagueness need not induce context-dependence. Williamson draws an analogy between the case of practical reasoning and the case of epistemic appraisal to show how the vagueness of epistemological vocabulary need not make it context-depen- dent.Theanalogyisthenarguedtobemorethanananalogy,becausethereis a practical aspect to epistemic appraisal with respect to the formation and retention of beliefs. Therefore, Williamson concludes, something is wrong with epistemological contextualism; he suggests an alternative explanation. Contextualists speak of the semantic value of knowledge ascriptions as somehow shifting with context. But what is it that shifts? What is the parameter that shifts with the context? What epistemic gear do the wheels of context turn? In his essay, Jonathan SchaVer considers three possible answers. What shifts might be: (T) the threshold of justiWcation (Cohen), (S) the standard of epistemic position (DeRose), or (A) the set of epistemic alternatives (Lewis). He assesses these three answers in the light of four desiderata. The parameter of shift must be: (D1) linguistically plausible, (D2) predictively adequate, (D3) in accord with contextualist resolutions of scepticism, and (D4) connected to our practices of inquiry. He argues that

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