Contrastivism, Relevance Contextualism, and Meta‐Skepticism

Abstract

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, in his excellent new book, defends what he calls 'moderate Pyrrhonian skepticism.' It is moderate because, with regard to qualified epistemic judgments about beliefs, the view allows that affirmative epistemic judgments involving modest contrast classes can be true. It is a version of Pyrrhonian, as opposed to Academic skepticism, because, with respect to affirmative unqualified epistemic judgments, the Pyrrhonian refuses to take a stand on whether such judgments are true or false, while the Academic claims that they are all false. In defending Pyrrhonianism, Sinnott-Armstrong criticizes epistemological invariantism and contextualism.1 In what follows, I will comment on Sinnott-Armstrong's challenges to contextualism with the modest aim of making a few tentative suggestions about how a contextualist might begin to respond to these challenges.