Stanley on the Knowledge-Relation

Dialogue, 2016

The possibility of knowledge attributions across contexts (where attributor and subject find themselves in different epistemic contexts) can create serious problems for certain views of knowledge. Amongst such views is subject-sensitive invariantism—the view that knowledge is determined not only by epistemic factors (belief, truth, evidence, etc.), but also by non-epistemic factors (practical interests, etc.). I argue that subject-sensitive invariantism either runs into a contradiction or has to make very implausible assumptions. The problem has been very much neglected but is so serious that one should look for alternative accounts of knowledge.

This work has four aims: (i) to provide an overview of the current debate about the semantics of knowledge attributions, i.e. sentences of the form ⌜S knows that Φ⌝; (ii) to ground the debate in a single semantic-pragmatic framework; (iii) to identify a methodology for describing the semantics of knowledge attributions; (iv) to go some way towards describing the semantics of knowledge attributions in light of this methodology, and in particular to defend moderate invariantist semantics against its main current rivals. Aims (i) and (ii) are largely clarificatory; in §1 I set out a single semantic-pragmatic framework and over the course of this work show that it can be modified to explain and distinguish the various theories of the semantics of knowledge attributions currently on offer. Aim (iii) is also met in §1. I argue that a theory of the semantics of knowledge attributions T must be able to account for at least some ordinary speakers’ intuitions about the felicity or infelicity of utterances of the sentence ⌜S knows that Φ⌝ (felicity intuitions) purely in terms of its semantics. I also identify a number of theoretical considerations about knowledge and argue that if T conflicts with any one of these considerations, we should presume that T is false. Aim (iv) is met over the course of this work. According to moderate invariantism ⌜S knows that Φ⌝ is true if and only if S confidently believes the proposition expressed by Φ, this proposition is true and S’s epistemic position with respect to this proposition meets a moderately high epistemic standard. In §§2 – 5 I argue that the main current rivals to moderate invariantism – attributor contextualism, contrastivism, subject-sensitive invariantism and assessor relativism – conflict with at least one of the theoretical considerations identified in §1. In §6 I argue that moderate invariantism accounts for some ordinary speakers’ felicity intuitions purely in terms of the semantics of ⌜S knows that Φ⌝; I also argue that it is consistent with all of the theoretical considerations identified in §1. Moreover, in §§2 – 6 I argue that no theory is capable of accounting for all felicity intuitions purely in terms of the semantics of ⌜S knows that Φ⌝, and that only moderate invariantism can successfully explain why speakers have all of these intuitions. In §7 I conclude that moderate invariantism correctly describes of the semantics of knowledge attributions, or at least does so better than its main current rivals.

Prolegomena, 2013

Epistemic contextualism in the works of S. Cohen, K. DeRose, D. Lewis and others amounts to the semantic thesis that the truth conditions of knowledge attributions or denials vary according to the contextually shifting standards for knowledge attributions and to the indexical character of the predicate “knows”. This semantic variation is primarily due to the pragmatic features of the attributor context, depending on “what is at stake” for the attributor. In this paper contextualism is confronted with some invariantist objections. These objections are supported, first, by the considerations of the alleged, but indeed not purely the semantic or meta-linguistic character of the main contextualist theses: it is argued that contextualism unavoidably descend to the object level, making certain substantive claims about knowledge, and that the ambiguous evidence of contextualist thought-experiments make the truth- oriented or intellectualist invariantist alternative a more plausible and mor...

In this chapter, we follow Edward Craig's (1990) advice: ask what the concept of knowledge does for us and use our findings as clues about its application conditions. What a concept does for us is a matter of what we can do with it, and what we do with concepts is deploy them in thought and language. So, we will examine the purposes we have in attributing knowledge. This chapter examines two such purposes, agent-evaluation and informant-suggestion, and brings the results to bear on an important debate about the application conditions of the concept of knowledge—the debate between contextualists and their rivals. } The paper responds to arguments from Jessica Brown that there is nothing special about the use of 'knows' to criticize and defend action. Briefly, I respond that by using 'knows that p' in this context we close off a certain sort of objection to one's evaluation of the action -- the "epistemic" objection, according to which the agent doesn't have good enough evidence, strong enough grounds for p. For instance, if I say, "Bob should have taken a left back there, because he knew the restaurant was on Elm Street!," I close off the objection "but Bob didn't have good enough grounds for thinking it was on Elm." Contrast this with criticizing Bob's action by say8ing, "Bob should have taken a left because he had reason to believe it was on Elm Street." This doesn't close off responses of the form "well, he had good reason, but not good enough; he didn't want to take the risk." Such a response isn't always appropriate, but it sometimes is. Using 'knows' closes it off in a way that using 'has reason to believe' doesn't. Using 'knew p' closes it off in a way that merely using 'p' or 'he truly believed that p' doesn't.

Context-Dependence, Perpsective and Relativity (edited by Francois Recanati, Isidora Stojanovic and Neftali Villanueva) de Gruyter Mouton, 2010

The paper is concerned with the semantics of knowledge attributions (K-claims, for short) and proposes a position holding that K-claims are context-sensitive that differs from extant views on the market. First I lay down the data a semantic theory for K-claims needs to explain. Next I present and assess three views purporting to give the semantics for K-claims: contextualism, subject-sensitive invariantism and relativism. All three views are found wanting with respect to their accounting for the data. I then propose a hybrid view according to which the relevant epistemic standards for making/evaluating K-claims are neither those at the context of the subject (subject-sensitive invariantism), nor those at the context of the assessor (relativism), but it is itself an open matter. However, given that we need a principled way of deciding which epistemic standards are the relevant ones, I provide a principle according to which the relevant standards are those that are the highest between those at the context of the subject and those at the context of the assessor/attributor. In the end I consider some objections to the view and offer some answers.

2013

In recent work on the semantics of ‘knowledge’-attributions, a variety of accounts have been proposed that aim to explain the data about speaker intuitions in familiar cases such as DeRose’s Bank Case or Cohen’s Airport Case by means of pragmatic mechanisms, notably Gricean implicatures. This paper argues that pragmatic explanations of the data regarding ‘knowledge’-attributions are unsuccessful and concludes that in explaining those data we have to resort to accounts that (a) take those data at their semantic face value (Epistemic Contextualism, Subject-Sensitive Invariantism or Epistemic Relativism), or (b) reject them on psychological grounds (Moderate Insensitive Invariantism). To establish this conclusion, the paper relies solely upon widely accepted assumptions about pragmatic theory, broadly construed, and on the Stalnakerian insight that linguistic communication takes place against the backdrop of a set of mutually accepted propositions: a conversation’s common ground.

Philosophy Compass, 2008

It has become recently popular to suggest that knowledge is the epistemic norm of practical reasoning and that this provides an important constraint on the correct account of knowledge, one which favours subject-sensitive invariantism over contextualism and classic invariantism. I argue that there are putative counterexamples to both directions of the knowledge norm. Even if the knowledge norm can be defended against these counterexamples, I argue that it is a delicate issue whether it is true, one which relies on fine distinctions among a variety of relevant notions of propriety which our intuitions may reflect. These notions variously apply to the agent herself, her character traits, her beliefs, her reasoning and any resultant action. Given the delicacy of these issues, I argue that the knowledge norm is not a fixed point from which to defend substantive and controversial views in epistemology. Rather, these views need to be defended on other grounds.

2005

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Acta Analytica, 2016

Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer Science +Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com". Abstract In this paper, I present and extend Neta's (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXXV (1): 180-187 2007) counter-example against interest-relative invariantism (IRI hereafter). I first outline IRI, briefly explaining the content of the view and illustrating how it diverges from more classical approaches to epistemology. I then distinguish between two forms the view can take: a strong and a moderate formulation. After this, I argue that Neta's counter-example only succeeds at undermining the strongest variant, leaving the weaker counterpart unscathed. After all of this is accomplished, I extend Neta-style counter-examples to undermine a more moderate variant. I close the paper by considering and responding to several objections. Keywords Pragmatic encroachment . Interest-relative invarianism . Neta Stanley (2008), Fantl and McGrath (2009), Hawthorne , and others have put forth a novel view in epistemology sometimes called Binterest-relative invariantism.Î nterest-relative invariantism (IRI hereafter) is the view that whether S knows that p partially depends on what is at stake for S. If IRI is correct, then our understanding of knowledge requires a radical alteration, for what turns a true belief into knowledge requires both traditional and non-traditional epistemic constraints. IRI can be contrasted with a more classical approach to epistemology, whereby only traditional epistemic features can turn a true belief into knowledge (features such as justification, truth, belief, and a non-Gettier condition). While classical epistemologists disagree on which features are relevant, or even the proper way to understand them, there is a consensus that non-traditional epistemic features play no significant role in determining whether a true belief is an instance of knowledge.

Philosopher's Imprint, 2009

©  Matt Weiner M    investigates knowledge through the semantics of the word ‘know’. Contextualists, relativists, and various kinds of invariantist posit dierent kinds of rules for the truth of sentences containing the word ‘know’; and much of the dispute among these three parties concerns which rules best capture our actual use of the word ‘know’. These parties share the presupposition that our use of the word ‘know’ will be best captured by some consistent semantics. I will argue that this presupposition is false. Our use of the word ‘know’ is best captured by a set of inference rules that I will call collectively the Knowledge Principles, and the Knowledge Principles are inconsistent. This is a radical thesis; it will require an elaborate argument to show that it is better to admit that ‘know’ lacks consistent semantics than to reject one of the Knowledge Principles. However, the thesis is radical only at the theoretical level; it does not call for a ra...