Knowledge in Context
Abstract
Abstract: 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.
Keywords: Epistemic Contextualism; Nonindexical Contextualism; Indexical Contextualism; Context-sensitivity; Knowledge Ascriptions.
La conoscenza contestuale
Riassunto: In questo lavoro intendo motivare e difendere una variante del contestualismo epistemico; una variante di cosa si è definito contestualismo delle attribuzioni o delle imputazioni. Comincerò, nella prima parte, ponendo in evidenza ciò che assumo essere l’idea di fondo e i motivi che stanno alla base della variante del contestualismo epistemico per cui propendo. Nella seconda parte saranno discussi un paio di esempi per illustrare la prospettiva contestualista. Dal momento che di solito i contestualisti epistemici (in merito alle attribuzioni) sostengono che le iscrizioni di conoscenza sono sensibili ai contesti, la terza parte di questo lavoro si occuperà in maniera più generale del fenomeno della sensibilità ai contesti. Un’indagine più dettagliata sulle espressioni del linguaggio naturale sensibili ai contesti si rivelerà utile per replicare all’obiezione secondo cui il postulato della sensibilità ai contesti nel caso delle attribuzioni di conoscenza sarebbe una manovra ad hoc. Poiché il contestualismo epistemico è una tesi in parte epistemologica e in parte linguistica, il resto del lavoro sarà dedicato al come modellare semanticamente il genere di sensibilità al contesto proprio delle attribuzioni di conoscenza. L’esito sarà che ci sono due diversi modi di soddisfare semanticamente la sensibilità ai contesti in discussione. In entrambi i casi è richiesta una deviazione più o meno drastica dall’ortodossia epistemologica e semantica.
Parole chiave: Contestualismo epistemico; Contestualismo non-indessicale: Contestualismo indessicale; Sensibilità al contesto; Attribuzione di conoscenza.
Parole chiave
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.4453/rifp.2014.0005
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