In defence of a perspectival semantics for'know'

Episteme

The ambiguity theory of ‘knows’ is the view that ‘knows’ and its cognates have more than one sense, and that which sense of ‘knows’ is used in a knowledge ascription or denial determines, in part, the meaning (and as a result the truth conditions) of that knowledge ascription or denial. In this paper, I argue that the ambiguity theory of ‘knows’ ought to be taken seriously by those drawn to epistemic contextualism. In doing so I first argue that the ambiguity theory of ‘knows’ is a distinct view from epistemic contextualism. Second, I provide independent philosophical and linguistic considerations to motivate the ambiguity theory. Third, I argue that the ambiguity theory has the same central, generally agreed upon virtues ascribed to epistemic contextualism (namely, the ability to solve certain persistent epistemological problems relating to skeptical arguments and the ability to preserve the truth of most of our everyday, ordinary usages of ‘knows’ and its cognates). Finally, I provide an ambiguity-theory-friendly account of why contextualism may be initially appealing, and why this shouldn’t dissuade us from taking the ambiguity theory seriously nonetheless.

The contextualistic account for the semantic behaviour of the term "know" -a position labelled as "epistemic contextualism" -combined with the widely accepted idea that "know" is a factive verb seems to lead to a very unpleasant conclusion: epistemic contextualism is inconsistent. In section 1 we first examine some aspects of the epistemological meaning of the contextualist semantics of "know", then in section 2 we sketch the problem which leads to the supposed inconsistency of epistemic contextualism and in section 3 we analyse some solutions that have been proposed to solve the problem which are, in our view, unsatisfactory. In section 4 we present our attempt of solution. 32 On this point Brendel seems to agree with Baumann, see pp. 45-47. 33 Baumann (2008) pag. 583.

in D. Lukasiewicz & R. Pouivet (eds.), Scientific Knowledge and Common Knowledge, 2009

Analytic epistemology in the post-Gettier era has mainly focused on the task of providing an analysis, perhaps a definition, of the "common" notion of knowledge. In the last two or three decades, this project has seen a major "linguistic turn" (Ludlow 2005), through the increased reliance, in contemporary debates, on syntactic, semantic and pragmatic "evidence" about usual (uses of) linguistic constructions in terms of know, the main working assumption being that the common notion of knowledgethat is, the way we (ought to) commonly think about knowledgeis best reflected in the way we commonly talk about knowledge. A consequence is that instead of trying to spell out directly the conditions for knowledge, the focus is on trying to spell out the conditions for the truth of knowledge attributions.

Erkenntnis, 2013

This paper explores how the purpose of the concept of knowledge affects knowledge ascriptions in natural language. I appeal to the idea that the role of the concept of knowledge is to flag reliable informants, and I use this idea to illuminate and support contextualism about 'knows'. I argue that practical pressures that arise in an epistemic state of nature provide an explanatory basis for a brand of contextualism that I call 'practical interests contextualism'. I also answer some questions that contextualism leaves open, particularly why the concept of knowledge is valuable, why the word 'knows' exhibits context-variability, and why this term enjoys such widespread use. Finally, I show how my contextualist framework accommodates plausible ideas from two rival views: subject-sensitive invariantism and insensitive invariantism. This provides new support for contextualism and develops this view in a way that improves our understanding of the concept of knowledge.

My aim in this paper is to motivate and defend a version of epistemic contextualism; a version, that is, of what came to be called attributor or ascriber contextualism. I will begin by outlining, in the first part, what I take to be the basic idea of and motivation behind the version of epistemic contextualism that I favor. In the second part, a couple of examples will be presented in order to illustrate the contextualist point. Since epistemic (ascriber) contextualists commonly claim that knowledge ascriptions are context-sensitive, the third part of the paper will be concerned with the phenomenon of context-sensitivity at a more general level. A more detailed inquiry into the context-sensitivity natural language expressions exhibit will prove helpful in order to counter the objection that postulating context-sensitivity in the case of knowledge ascriptions is an ad-hoc-maneuver. Given that epistemic contextualism is partly an epistemological thesis, party a linguistic thesis, the remainder of the paper will be devoted to the question of how to semantically model the kind of context-sensitivity exhibited by knowledge ascriptions. The upshot will be that there are two different ways of semantically accommodating the context-sensitivity at issue. Both call for a more or less drastic departure from epistemological and semantic orthodoxy.

Metaphilosophy, 2015

Contextualism in epistemology has traditionally been understood as the view that `know' functions semantically like an indexical term, encoding different contents in contexts with different epistemic standards. But the indexical hypothesis about `know' faces a range of objections. This paper explores an alternative version of contextualism on which `know' is a semantically stable term, and the truth-conditional variability in knowledge claims is a matter of pragmatic enrichment. The central idea is that in contexts with stringent epistemic standards, knowledge claims are narrowed: `know' is used in such contexts to make assertions about particularly demanding types of knowledge. The resulting picture captures all of the intuitive data that motivate traditional contextualism while sidestepping the controversial linguistic thesis at its heart. After developing the view, I show in detail how it avoids one influential linguistic objection to traditional contextualism concerning indirect speech reports, and then answer an objection concerning the unavailability of certain types of clarification speeches.

Philosophical Studies, 2000

Linguistics and Philosophy

Epistemic contextualism in the style of Lewis (1996) maintains that ascriptions of knowledge to a subject vary in truth with the alternatives that can be eliminated by the subject's evidence in a context. Schaffer (2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2015), Schaffer and Knobe (2012), and Schaffer and Szabó (2014) hold that the question under discussion or QUD always determines these alternatives in a context. This paper shows that the QUD does not perform such a role for "know" and uses this result to draw a few lessons about the metasemantics of context-sensitivity.

2015

Analytic epistemology in the post-Gettier era has mainly focused on the task of providing an analysis, perhaps a definition, of the “common ” notion of knowledge. In the last two or three decades, this project has seen a major “linguistic turn ” (Ludlow 2005), through the increased reliance, in contemporary debates, on syntactic, semantic and pragmatic “evidence ” about usual (uses of) linguistic constructions in terms of know, the main working assumption being that the common notion of knowledge – that is, the way we (ought to) commonly think about knowledge – is best reflected in the way we commonly talk about knowledge. A consequence is that instead of trying to spell out directly the conditions for knowledge, the focus is on try-ing to spell out the conditions for the truth of knowledge attributions. Constitutive of this “new linguistic turn ” in epistemology is “contextualism”, the view that the reference of the verb know shifts with features of the context in which it is used....