Precis of The Case forContextualism: Knowledge,Skepticism, and Context, Vol. 1

keith derose

Yale University

Contextualism is the view that the epistemic standards that a subject

must meet in order for a sentence attributing knowledge to her to be

true vary according to the contexts in which those sentences are

uttered. This volume argues that contextualism is true and is superior

to its rival, invariantism, in both of the latter’s main forms.

Chapter 1 is an initial exposition of contextualism, in which the view

is explained and distinguished from other views, and especially from its

rival, invariantism, whose two main forms, classical invariantism and

subject-sensitive invariantism, are explained. The various views are dis-

cussed largely by reference to how they handle examples that display

an important feature of the ordinary usage of ‘‘know(s)’’: that what

speakers are happy to call ‘‘knowledge’’ in some contexts they won’t

count as such in others. After various preliminary issues are addressed

and a brief history of contextualism is provided, the relation between

contextualist solutions to philosophical skepticism and contextualism’s

roots in what transpires in ordinary, non-philosophical conversation

are explained.

Chapter 2 presents the main argument for contextualism: the argu-

ment from the ordinary, non-philosophical usage of ‘‘knows.’’ Both the

features of ordinary usage that support contextualism and the reasons

why these features provide such strong support are scrutinized. Hence,

there is considerable focus on the methodology of ordinary language

philosophy, and especially on the question of just when it is important

for a theory of the meaning of a term to make ordinary claims involv-

ing that term come out true. The chapter’s Appendix looks briefly at

contextualist accounts of terms other than ‘‘knows that,’’ and discusses

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Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVol. LXXXIV No. 3, May 2012� 2012 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LLC

Philosophy andPhenomenological Research

whether similarly powerful grounds exist for these other contextual-

isms.

Chapter 3 battles the most common objection to the contextualist’s

argument from ordinary usage and presents a second argument for

contextualism. The common objection is that what the contextualist

takes to be a variation in the truth-conditions of knowledge-ascribing

sentences is really just a change in the conditions under which those

sentences are proper to assert. By investigating the conditions under

which such ‘‘warranted assertability maneuvers’’ should be heeded, it is

argued that this objection is highly unsuccessful. The knowledge

account of assertion is presented, defended, and used both to under-

mine an advanced form of the warranted assertability objection, the

‘‘Generality Objection,’’ and to provide a second positive argument for

contextualism: an argument from the variation in warranted assertabili-

ty conditions of simple (non-knowledge-ascribing) claims. The chapter’s

Appendix combats particular attempts, by Peter Unger and Patrick

Rysiew, to provide invariantist accounts of the linguistic phenomena

that contextualists utilize.

In disputes involving context-sensitive terms, speakers can seem to

be contradicting one another, even as they also appear to be pushing

the ‘‘conversational score’’ in different directions. Several options for

how to deal with such situations are presented in Chapter 4, culminat-

ing in the ‘‘gap view,’’ a supervaluational approach. The ‘‘asymmetrical

gap’’ view is presented as a way to handle the relation between claims

made at different times in a single conversation and also to handle

cases of ‘‘one-way disputes’’: cases where a speaker in one context

disputes a claim made by another speaker in a different context. By

showing the issues addressed to be general issues that arise even with

terms that are uncontroversially context-sensitive, and by showing ways

to resolve such issues, this chapter rebuts objections to contextualism

based on its alleged inability to respect our sense that disputants in

arguments over what is ‘‘known’’ are contradicting one another.

Chapter 5 responds to several objections to contextualism, some of

which have been prominent: objections from judgments of comparative

content, and objections based on how ‘‘know(s)’’ behaves within meta-

linguistic claims, belief reports, speech reports, and in connection with

devices like ‘‘I never said that.’’ By comparing ‘‘know(s)’’ with the

behavior of clearly context-sensitive terms, and especially by focusing

on the right sorts of cases—cases in which the contextualist really will

hold that the content of ‘‘know(s)’’ changes—it is shown that these

objections fail. Against the claim that the contextualist must make

a lame and costly appeal to ‘‘semantic blindness’’ to escape certain

problems, it is shown that the way in which contextualism actually

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implicates speakers in such blindness does not hurt the view, because

speakers are implicated in equally problematic semantic blindness

whether or not contextualism is accepted.

In Chapter 6, contextualism is shown to avoid certain problems, and

to thereby gain an important advantage over subject-sensitive invarian-

tism, by its ability to respect ‘‘intellectualism,’’ the thesis that questions

concerning whether subjects’ true beliefs amount to knowledge turn

exclusively on features of those subjects’ situations that are truth-

relevant, in that they affect how likely it is that the belief is true, and

by its related ability to avoid sanctioning very implausible-sounding

‘‘Now you know it; now you don’t’’ claims. The ‘‘fallacy of semantic

descent,’’ by which it is held against a theory that it has a certain

implausible implication, when the theory’s actual implications are

instead higher-level claims, is exposed, to disarm resistance to contextu-

alism based on such confusions.

Subject-sensitive invariantism is shown to be wrong by its inability

to handle certain important third-person uses of ‘‘know(s)’’ in Chapter

7. Attention is then turned to important uses of ‘‘know(s)’’ made in

connection with certain evaluations, explanations, and predictions of

agents’ actions. Some writers have thought that an important advan-

tage of subject-sensitive invariantism over contextualism is to be found

in the former’s superior ability to account for the connections here.

Particular objections to contextualism based on such considerations are

answered. Finally, it is argued that contextualism actually does a better

job with the uses of ‘‘know(s)’’ related to evaluating and predicting

actions than does subject-sensitive invariantism, because only contextu-

alism can handle cases where whether a subject does or does not

‘‘know’’ is cited in connection with a variety of potential actions the

subject may, or may not, take.

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