What might be wrong with Epistemic Contextualism?

[MSC]

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Epistemic contextualism (EC) is a recent and hotly debated position. EC is roughly the view that what is expressed by a knowledge attribution — a claim to the effect that S ‘knows’ that p — depends partly on something in the context of ‘the attributor’, and hence the view is often called ‘attributor contextualism’. Because what such an utterance expresses is context-dependent, so too is whether the knowledge attribution is true. The typical EC view identifies the pivotal contextual features as the attributor’s practical stake in the truth of p, or the prominence in the attributor’s situation of skeptical doubts about knowledge. The typical EC view has it that as the stakes rise or the skeptical doubts become more serious, the contextual standard gets more demanding. It requires S to be in a better position if the attributor's claim, ‘S knows that p’, is to express a truth. In contrast, ‘invariantists’ about knowledge hold that such factors in the attributor’s context do not affect the standards that must be met by a true ‘knowledge’ attribution.

In addition to marking an important departure from traditional epistemological assumptions, EC is claimed to provide a novel resolution to certain puzzles about knowledge—not least, skeptical ones—as well as to best comport with our everyday knowledge-attributing practices. What follows describes the leading forms of EC, so understood, as well as the principal arguments for and major objections to EC. Along the way, EC is situated with respect to certain other views, both kindred and competing

- SEP

What are the arguments against Epistemic Contextualism?

What are the arguments for Epistemic Contextualism? 

If you wish to learn more before answering, please visit the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy. 

For more information; Dretske, Cohen, Feldman and Wittgenstein are all extremely important figures to this new idea. Being familiar with Philosophical investigations by L. Wittgenstein is probably essential to really understanding the context that gave birth to this type of thinking about epistemology. 

If you aren't much of a reader, Director Derek Jarmons, Jubilee and Wittgenstein will also help reach a more,  Artistically impressionistic feeling of what this form of epistemic thought entails. 

 

Personal note: Really happy to be in this forum. I have seen a lot of really interesting and critical discussions taking place, in so many fields, that I am stuck for choice of where to begin to engage with you all.