“Knowledge”

Abstract

This chapter explains contextualism about knowledge ascriptions—the idea that the content expressed by a sentence containing “knows” varies according to the conversational context of the speaker. It articulates and develops a form of contextualism based closely on David Lewis's “relevant alternatives” approach to knowledge. Special attention is given to the idea and proper understanding of an “epistemic standard”—important questions about the relationship between contextualism and rival views turn on this notion. On the approach of the chapter, epistemic standards interact with subject situations to produce sets of relevant alternatives. The chapter also provides some novel linguistic motivations for a contextualism of this sort, and raises questions about how it fits into ideas about broader theoretical roles for knowledge. Those questions define the project of the remainder of the book.