Sensitivity, Indiscernibility and Knowledge

Abstract

Sosa's paper is a deeply insightful contribution to our understanding of skeptical argument and the reply to it. agree with Sosa concerning his doubts about the epistemological significance of contextualism. have one further doubt about it beyond those which he has raised. Many of the arguments to the effect that the context of utterance determines whether it is correct to say, knows that p, for various substitutions of S and require further argumentation to show that the contextual constraints are genuinely semantic and not merely conversational constraints on the appropriateness of saying, knows that Many of the constraints appear to me conversational constraints rather than semantic indices. When a person says, I know that p, for example, he or she often gives their authority or word for the truth of p in the context of the speech act, and whether this is appropriate depends on the context. When the context is one in which a great deal hinges on whether or not p is true, one should be cautious about giving one's word or authority for the truth of p. Consequently, it might be inappropriate to say, I know that p, in such contexts even though one does know that p. might, for