Type of Document Master's Thesis Author Gutherie, Luanne URN etd-06222007-092429 Title Contextualist Responses to Skepticism Degree Master of Arts Department Philosophy Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Stephen Jacobson Committee Chair Andrea Scarantino Committee Member George Rainbolt Committee Member Keywords
- external world
- relevant alternatives
- knowledge
- theories of assertion
- radical skepticism
- contextualism
Date of Defense 2007-05-04 Availability unrestricted Abstract External world skeptics argue that we have no knowledge of the external world. Contextualist theories of knowledge attempt to address the skeptical problem by maintaining that arguments for skepticism are effective only in certain contexts in which the standards for knowledge are so high that we cannot reach them. In ordinary contexts, however, the standards for knowledge fall back down to reachable levels and we again are able to have knowledge of the external world. In order to address the objection that contextualists confuse the standards for knowledge with the standards for warranted assertion, Keith DeRose appeals to the knowledge account of warranted assertion to argue that if one is warranted in asserting p, one also knows p. A skeptic, however, can maintain a context-invariant view of the knowledge account of assertion, in which case such an account would not provide my help to contextualism.Files
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