Semantics, pragmatics, and knowledge attributions: Trying to solve the problem of skepticism.

摘要

An ideal solution to the problem of skepticism will be one that not only preserves our knowledge of the external world, but also respects the strong intuitive appeal of the skeptic's argument. I consider two ways in which one might attempt to provide such a solution, and argue that both fail.; Contra the contextualist, I argue that a plausible account for the manifest flexibility in our willingness to attribute knowledge is best explained not in terms of semantic shifts, but rather in terms of pragmatic shifts. Thus, the empirical case for skepticism is not as strong as they claim.; I further argue that even if we accept the contextualist's unintuitive claim that the content of a knowledge attribution can shift merely by shifting the context from which the knowledge attribution is made, the contextualist ultimately falls short of providing a successful solution to the problem of skepticism. Given that the epistemic standards operative in the context in which the theory is developed will be unsatisfiably high, we are forced to accept that no one knows anything about the external world, and that no one knows whether any knowledge attributing sentence ever succeeds in expressing a truth. But accepting these two claims is tantamount to accepting skepticism about the external world.; Assuming that contextualism is an unacceptable theory of knowledge, we are obliged to embrace some variety of invariantism. On the assumption that skepticism is to be avoided, I consider a theory according to which it is claimed that the epistemic standards the satisfaction of which are necessary for knowledge are both invariant and low enough to be satisfied. As I argue, however, such a theory can account for our knowledge of the external world as well the intuitive appeal of the skeptic's argument only to the extent that we are willing to abandon some very plausible epistemic principles, as well as some common sense relations that seem to obtain between the notions of knowledge and evidence. But this is not something that we should be willing to do.