Contextualism, externalism and epistemic standards

Philosophical Studies

Volumn 103, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 1-23

  Williams, Michael ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33746041438     PISSN: 00318116     EISSN: 15730883     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1010349100272     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. Versions of this paper were given at a conference "New Directions in Epistemology," held at the University of Tuebingen, January 1999, and the 1999 Oberlin Colloquium. I want to thank the participants in those conferences for much stimulating discussions, but especially Stewart Cohen, Fred Dretske, Thomas Grundmann, Hilary Kornblith, Bill Lycan, Karsten Stueber and my commentator at Oberlin, Tim Williamson.
2. See e.g. Stewart Cohen, "Knowledge, Context and Social Standards," Synthese 73 (1987), pp. 3-26. Lewis' original hint is found in
3. David Lewis, "Scorekeeping in a Language Game," in Lewis, Philosophical Papers, vol 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1983).
4. Lewis gives a detailed discussion of knowledge and scepticism in "Elusive Knowledge," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (1996), pp. 549-567;
5. reprinted in Lewis, Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); subsequent references are to this reprinting and are given in the main text by page numbers in parentheses. Keith DeRose offers an intricate development of non-justificationist contextualism
6. in "Solving the Skeptical Problem," Philosophical Review 104 (1995), pp. 8-51. I hope to discuss DeRose's views in detail on another occasion.
7. Robert Fogelin, Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification (Oxford, Oxford University Press 1994). I should note, however, that Fogelin is less straightforwardly anti-sceptical than the others, using contextualist ideas to argue for the correctness, or at least irrefutability, of a certain kind of scepticism.
8. Lewis takes the first option, DeRose the second.
9. For a defence of the view that underdetermination is the key to Cartesian scepticism, see Anthony Brueckner, "The Structure of the Skeptical Argument," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LIV (1994).
10. Stewart Cohen replies to Brueckner in "Two Kinds of Skeptical Argument," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Ibid., LVIII (1998).
11. I owe the phrase "high standards" scepticism to Hilary Kornblith, who presented a powerful critique of DeRose's contextualism at the 11th Annual SOFIA conference, University of Oviedo, June 1998.
12. This reply was suggested to me by Stewart Cohen.
13. This is, in effect, Dretske's (externalist) notion of a conclusive reason: E is a conclusive reason for P in the sense that, if P were false, S would not have experience E. See Fred Dretske, "Conclusive Reasons," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 29 (1971), pp. 1-22.
14. Hilary Kornblith, "Ever Since Descartes," The Monist 68 (1985), pp. 264-276.
15. Fogelin, Ever since Descartes, The Monist op. cit., ch. 1.
16. He is not alone in this: for example, Fogelin also holds that the "level of scrutiny" to which knowledge-claims are subject can be "raised by reflection alone." See Pyrrhonian Reflections, p. 93ff.
17. Michael Williams, Unnatural Doubts: Epistemological Realism and the Basis of Scepticism (Oxford, Blackwell 1992; paperback edition, Princeton N.J., Princeton University Press 1996).
18. I give further details in Problems of Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).