Epistemic Contextualism: An Idle Hypothesis. Issue 1 (2nd January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Turri, John
• Is Part Of: Australasian journal of philosophy. Volume 95:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 141
• Page End: 156
• Publication Date: 2017-01-02
• Subjects: knowledge -- belief -- evidence -- philosophical method -- social cognition -- deferral hypothesis; Philosophy -- Periodicals; Psychology -- Periodicals; 105
• DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2016.1153684
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0004-8402

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Epistemic contextualism is one of the most hotly debated topics in contemporary epistemology. Contextualists claim that 'know' is a context-sensitive verb associated with different evidential standards in different contexts. Contextualists motivate their view based on a set of behavioural claims. In this paper, I show that several of these behavioural claims are false. I also show that contextualist test cases suffer from a critical confound, which derives from people's tendency to defer to speakers' statements about their own mental states. My evidence consists in results from several behavioural experiments. I conclude that contextualism is an idle hypothesis and I propose some general methodological lessons.