Abstract
I argue that epistemic contextualism, as conceived by Lewis and DeRose, cannot accommodate knowledge-ascribing behavior in contexts where expert counsel is sought. Narrowly focusing on the subject’s epistemic position with respect to p in ∼p possibilities yields the wrong verdict in such cases. To account for our judgments, I propose that contextualists should look to virtue responsibilism, which founds epistemic evaluation both on the mastery of relevant underlying principles and their explicit and implicit application. Such assessment is not measured by S’s ability to rule out relevant alternatives or track the truth of p, and for this reason, is not captured by either version of contextualism.
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Notes
- 1.
Take for example, Matt McGrath’s train cases in “Evidence, Pragmatics and Justification,” Philosophical Review 111, no. 1 (2002): 67–94. Stewart Cohen’s airport cases in “Contextualism, Skepticism and The Structure of Reasons,” Philosophical Perspectives 13: Epistemology, ed. James E. Tomberlin (Atascadero: Ridgeway, 1999): 57–89.
- 2.
Keith DeRose, “Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52, no. 4 (December 1992): 913–929.
- 3.
Invariantists offer an alternative explanation according to which the standards of knowledge remain fixed, but what is communicated varies from one context to the next. See, for example, Patrick Rysiew, “The Context-Sensitivity of Knowledge Attributions”. I will not be discussing this view here as my objective is to present and suggest a possible solution for problems internal to contextualism.
- 4.
David Lewis, “Elusive Knowledge,” in Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader, eds. Keith DeRose and Ted Warfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 225.
- 5.
Fred Dretske, “The Pragmatic Dimension of Knowledge,” Philosophical Studies 40, no. 3. (Nov., 1981): 370–1.
- 6.
Keith DeRose, “Solving the Skeptical Problem,” in Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader, eds. Keith DeRose and Ted Warfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 206.
- 7.
See discussion in Duncan Pritchard, “Virtue Epistemology and the Acquisition of Knowledge,” Philosophical Explorations 8, no. 3 (September 2005): 229–243.
- 8.
I am not here defending a virtue-theoretic analysis of knowledge, but rather suggesting that contextualists broaden their view to incorporate virtues as significant to knowledge ascriptions. This is because I accept the basic contextualist thesis that knowledge standards will vary and it is not clear that virtues will be relevant to identifying knowers in all contexts. For a different view, see Christopher Hookway, “How to be a Virtue Epistemologist,” in Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives from Ethics and Epistemology, eds. Michael DePaul and Linda Zagzebski. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003): 183–202.) Hookway suggests that the central focus of epistemology move towards an examination of the deliberative process, rather than the analysis of the static cognitive states of justified belief and knowledge. He discusses virtues not as an element of knowledge, but rather as relevant to epistemic evaluation outside of this focus.
- 9.
Zagzebski, Linda. Virtues of the Mind. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
- 10.
Zagzebski, 177.
- 11.
Christopher Hookway, “Epistemic Norms and Theoretical Deliberation” Ratio 22 (December 1999): 380–397. Hookway also discusses negative norms of deliberation in his “Epistemic Akrasia and Epistemic Virtue” in Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, eds. Linda Zagzebski and Abrol Fairweather (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 178–199.
- 12.
Hookway, “Epistemic Norms” 386.
- 13.
Ibid., 392.
- 14.
Hookway, “How to be a Virtue Epistemologist” 187.
- 15.
Indeed, Bonjour attempts to include the input of observation states, but maintains that they do not provide justification for resulting perceptual beliefs. Laurence BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), chapter 6.
- 16.
Pritchard, “Virtue Epistemology and the Acquisition of Knowledge”.
References
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Rothenfluch, S. (2016). Ascribing Knowledge to Experts: A Virtue-Contextualist Approach. In: Redmond, J., Pombo Martins, O., Nepomuceno Fernández, Á. (eds) Epistemology, Knowledge and the Impact of Interaction. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 38. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26506-3_13
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