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Single Idea 19561

[filed under theme 13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 6. Contextual Justification / a. Contextualism ]

Full Idea

Maybe contextualists are too quick to appeal to our conflicting intuitions regarding knowledge.

Gist of Idea

We shouldn't jump too quickly to a contextualist account of claims to know

Source

Stewart Cohen (Contextualism Defended (and reply) [2005], 1)

Book Ref

'Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2nd ed)', ed/tr. Steup/Turri/Sosa [Wiley Blackwell 2014], p.79

A Reaction

An important point (from Earl Conee). I thoroughly approve of contextualism, but the whole status of whether a witness or a teacher knows what they are talking about is in danger of collapsing into relativism. This is what peer review is all about.

The 18 ideas with the same theme [defence of context as vital to knowledge claims]:

12895 Knowing is context-sensitive because the domain of quantification varies [Lewis, by Cohen,S]
19562 We have knowledge if alternatives are eliminated, but appropriate alternatives depend on context [Lewis, by Cohen,S]
9166 People vary in their epistemological standards, and none of them is 'correct' [Field,H]
19558 Our own intuitions about whether we know tend to vacillate [Cohen,S]
19561 We shouldn't jump too quickly to a contextualist account of claims to know [Cohen,S]
19563 The context sensitivity of knowledge derives from its justification [Cohen,S]
19560 Contextualism is good because it allows knowledge, but bad because 'knowing' is less valued [Cohen,S]
12893 Contextualism says sceptical arguments are true, relative to their strict context [Cohen,S]
12896 Knowledge is context-sensitive, because justification is [Cohen,S]
19514 Classical invariantism combines fixed truth-conditions with variable assertability standards [DeRose]
19515 We can make contextualism more precise, by specifying the discrimination needed each time [DeRose]
19510 In some contexts there is little more to knowledge than true belief. [DeRose]
19516 Contextualists worry about scepticism, but they should focus on the use of 'know' in ordinary speech [DeRose]
10341 Justification depends on the audience and one's social role [Kusch]
6597 A rule of justification might be: don't raise the level of scrutiny without a good reason [Fogelin]
19555 People begin to doubt whether they 'know' when the answer becomes more significant [Conee]
19508 Contextualism needs a semantics for knowledge sentences that are partly indexical [Schiffer,S]
19509 The indexical aspect of contextual knowledge might be hidden, or it might be in what 'know' means [Schiffer,S]